Excerpt from The Sermons of Henry Ward Beecher, in Plymouth Church, Brooklyn: From Verbatim Reports by T. J. Ellinwood; "Plymouth Pulpit," Sixth Series, March September, 1871 Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you. And pray for them which despite fully use you, and persecute you; that ye may be children of your Father which is in heaven; for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? Do not even the publicans [the worst sort of men] the same? And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? Do not even the publicans so? Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect. That is the way in which he is perfect. Disinterestedness is the perfection which is meant. He makes his sun to rise upon the just and upon the unjust. He loves the unlovely. He does good to the undeserving. And when you undertake to be perfect, remember the way in which God himself is perfect, and be perfect according to that manner. It is an exhortation to disinterested benevolence as a su preme ideal, both of divine perfection, and of individual perfection. A little more lengthy consideration of this will, perhaps, give us a power of inference which we could not otherwise get. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.