Life thoughts, gathered from the extemporaneous discourses of Henry Ward Beecher. By one of his congregation.

LIFE THOUGHTS. 167
seed may go to the next generation as blossom, and
that what came to us as blossom may go to them as
fruit. This is what we mean by progress.
DEATH is the dropping of the flower that the fruit
may swell.
IF men whose sympathy is strong for their fellows
have been to churches where they have heard the
preaching of dry doctrines, - if the tree of life has
been to them a girdled tree, leafless, and without
birds in its boughs, - they are very apt to ignore
doctrine, and to go to the opposite extreme, and
say, " It's well enough to sing hymns, and there's
no harm in prayers, perhaps; but the best hymns
and prayers are to do good." It is very true that
to love justice and to show mercy is more than all
sacrifice of hymns and prayers; yet, as the world
goes, I have noticed that most men decry the one,
only for the sake of covering their neglect of the
other.
I AM suspicious of that church whose members
are one in their beliefs and opinions. When a tree
is dead, it will lie any way; alive, it will have its
own growth. When men's deadness is in the