That it leads our hearts to rest at last in heaven,

Far above you;

Do I take you as a gift that God has given

And I love you!”

In his palmy days, Rev. Henry Ward Beecher discoursed of love like this:

"On earth there is nothing more beautiful than the first breaking of the ground of young, strong, new, pure love. No flower that ever blossomed, however fair; no fragrance that any flower ever emitted, however sweet; no drapery of the sky, no witchery of art —nothing that man ever invented or imagined, is to be compared with the hours of dawning love in the young soul. And it is a shame that men should be taught to be ashamed of that which is the prophecy of their highest being and glory. Alas, that it should ever perish in the using! Alas, that men should not know that to endure it must rise higher and higher, since it is only by growing into its full and later disclosures that it may be saved from quick mortality. It must grow or die, for that which suffices for a beginning is not enough for all, and for all time.

"Love, therefore, should be a schoolmaster, carrying its pupils up from room to room, through the whole university of the mind. As the lower begins first, it ends first. The higher, beginning latest, lasts the longest.

"And hence true affection is strongest in the later periods of being. Perhaps it is less witching, perhaps it is less attractive in novelty, perhaps it is less stimulating than young love, but the popular impression that we love strongest when we love earliest is not found in truth or analogy. No one knows the whole lore of love that does not know how to love with the reason, the imagination, and all the moral sentiments. It is the most interior school that the soul can know. Men may know how to deal with numbers and solve problems, but that is the rarest, the innermost, the deepest knowledge that comes with loving by all the parts and faculties of the soul.

"They only can love greatly or fruitfully who are good, since the line, the direction, is from the flesh toward the spirit. It is from the low toward the high. It is from the substantial toward

the invisible. And none can truly love except those whose life is the unfolding of their whole nature on the plan of Christianity.

"How pitiful it is to see men build too low! I cannot bear to see the young gathering together and building their nests as the birds do. On my lawn I see the larks and other birds building in the grass, and know that before the young are fledged, the remorseless mower, with revolving strokes, will sweep the ground, and the nests will be utterly destroyed, and the young cut and wasted. And do I not see men building their nests just so? Do I not see love beginning to nestle in the flowers? But the flowers themselves are rooted in the dirt down low, close to the foot that easily shall crush them.

"I mourn when I see a mother loving her children for time, and for time only. I mourn when I see two natures that should be eternally affianced, loving each other within the horizons of time. There must be something higher than the circlings of this world. No love is fit to be called by the name of love that has not in it something of the other world, and much of immortality. It must rise above an instinct or passion. It must have in it faith and hope. It must be a love that is served by the reason, by the imagination, by all there is in the soul."

And some one writes with equal beauty, about the aged lover: "No longer a lover!" exclaimed an aged patriarch. "Ah! you mistake me if you think age has blotted out my heart. Though silver hair falls over a brow all wrinkled, and a cheek all furrowed, yet I am a lover still. I love the beauty of the maiden's blush, the soft tint of flowers, the singing of birds, and, above all, the silvery laugh of a child. I love the star-like meadows where the buttercups grow, with almost the same enthusiasm as when, with ringlets flying loose in the wind, years ago, I chased the painted butterfly. I love yon aged dame. Look at her. Her face is careworn, but it has ever held a smile for me. Often have I shared the same bitter cup with her, and so shared, it seemed almost sweet. Years of sickness have stolen the freshness of life; but like the faded rose, the perfume of her love is richer than when in the full bloom of youth and maturity. Together we have wept over the graves. Through Sunshine and storm we have clung together; and now she sits with

her knitting, her cap quaintly frilled, the old-style kerchief crossed, white and prim, above the heart that beat so long and truly for me, the dim blue eyes that shrinkingly front the glad day; the sunlight, throwing a parting farewell, kisses her brow and leaves upon its faint tracery of wrinkles angelic radiance. I see, though no one else can, the bright, glad young face that won me first, and the glowing love of forty years thrills through my heart till tears come. Say not again that I can no longer be a lover. Though this form be bowed, God imparted eternal life within. Let the ear be deaf, the eye blind, the hands palsied, the limbs withered, the brain clouded, yet the heart, the true heart, may hold such wealth of love, that all the powers of death and the victorious grave shall not be able to put out its quenchless flame."

Love has many objects, ranging all the way from patriotism, or love of country, up through the various forms of family affection to their highest summit—the love of God. And society, especially our American society, affords ample scope for the exercise of every kind of true affection. Here we have a country worth loving.

"Lives there a man with soul so dead
Who never to himself has said

This is my own, my native land?"

Here we have kindred worthy of purest love. Our parents, our brothers and sisters, our children, our life-long companionsintelligent, devoted, pure, and kind, how richly they deserve the warmest affections of our hearts! They share our sorrows, and we share their joys. We dwell beneath the same roof, chat by the same fireside, and gather at the same board. For us Goldsmith must have written:

"Blest be those feasts, with simple plenty crowned,
Where all the ruddy family around

Laugh at the jests or pranks, that never fail,

Or sigh with pity at some mournful tale."

True family affection rarely fails or disappears. The children may grow up and scatter, but the current of love, like a river, will flow on, ready to bear upon its peaceful bosom in the after years