One Thousand Gems Author:Henry Ward Beecher General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1872 Original Publisher: Hodder and Stoughton Subjects: Literary Collections / Essays Religion / Sermons / Christian Religion / Christian Ministry / Preaching Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or mi... more »ssing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: 190. Greatness of Women. In my soul I think God meant to teach the world the way to purity and nobility through women ; and in spite of the seeming evidence that I have occasionally had to the contrary, I have never for an hour, or a moment, ceased to feel towards woman in her ideal character almost as a devotee feels towards the Virgin Mary; and the individual exceptions never take anything from the brightness of Divine glory which there is in the conception of mother, wife, sister, and friend, in woman. And I believe with old Martin Luther, that the noblest thing God ever made on earth is the heart of a right noble, loving woman. 191. Evil Spirits. If devils are worse than some men, lam sorry for hell! If there is more malignity, more malice, more selfishness, more heartlessness, more cruelty in the other world than in this, I am mistaken ! I do not conceive that a spirit is worse because it has lost its body. I hope it is better. We see embodied spirits that are bad enough, corrupt enough. And that is not all: not only do they love wrong, but they love those that do wrong, and hate those that do right, and seek to bring them down to their level. And is it inconsistent with the character of a benevolent God that the world should be full of wicked men ? And if God will permit e nbodied spirits to do evil, how can you say that it is against the benevolence of God to permit disembodied spirits to do it ? It is a thing which is beyond all controver...« less