Love—what It Is
Love is not mere good nature. We speak of the duty of all men to be loving in disposition; to be the incarnation of love as nearly as may be; and one says “That is my doctrine.
I do not believe in those always dry, metaphysical men, arguing, and arguing, and arguing.” Another man says, “That is my idea about it. I do not like those men who arc always combative.
I like a mild, meek, and lowly man.” I do not mean any such thing as that. I do not mean those lazy, sunshiny, good-natured men, who have no particular opinions, and who would about as soon have things go one way as another; who are without sharp and discriminating thought, have no preferences, no indignation, no conscience, no fire. I do not believe in any such men.
I like to see a man who has got snap in every part of him, who knows how to think and to speak, and to put on the screw, if that is his particular mode of working.
This sweet heart quality I am speaking of, is the atmosphere in which every other faculty works. Do you suppose that love has no anger? T
here is no such anger as that which love furnishes. Do you suppose that when a mother sees the child, that is both herself and him whom she loves better than herself, the child in whom her hope is bound up, the child that is God’s glass through which she sees immortality, the child that is more to her than her own life, doing a detestable meanness, that she is not angry and indignant, and that the child does not feel the smart of physical advice? You might as well say the summer shower has no thunder, as to say that love has no anger. —BEECHER.
