p. 12 | A Noble Purpose by Henry Ward Beecher

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Sep 26, 1911

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 38, No. 38.

A Noble Purpose

By Henry Ward Beecher

A man's purpose of life should be like a river, which was born of a thousand little rills in the mountains; and when, at last, it has reached its manhood in the plain, tho, if you watch it, you shall see little eddies that seem as if they had changed their minds, and were going back again to the mountains, yet all its mighty current flows, changeless, to the sea. If you build a dam across it, in a few hours it will go over it with a voice of victory. If tides check it at its mouth, it is only that, when they ebb, it can sweep on again to the ocean. So goes the Amazon or the Orinoco across a continent,—never losing its way, or changing its direction, for the thousand streams that fall into it on the right hand and on the left, but only using them to increase its force, and bearing them onward in its resistless channel.—Beecher.