Sermons Author:Henry Ward Beecher Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Love, The Fulfilling Of The Law. " But when the Pharisees had heard that he had put the Sadducees to silence, they were gathered together. Then one of them, w... more »hich was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying, Master, which is the great commandment in the law ? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."—Matt., xxii., 34-40. Lr this brief word Christ has drawn away the veil from the heart of God, and let us see its very central secret. It is love. The most wonderful work of art in all ages, doubtless, was that of Phidias—the famous Jupiter. No artist has ever equaled Phidias; probably none ever will; for we shall probably never have an age again whose deepest life will be expressed by the instrumentality of art, and only such ages can produce such artists as Greece had before Christ, and Italy afterward. This wonderful statue of Jupiter which Phidias made was wrought of ivory and of gold. It was a carved figure sitting upon a throne with majestic air, holding in its left hand a statue of Victory, and in its right hand the sceptre of empire. So vast was this extraordinary work, that, sitting in the chair of state, it still towered forty feet in height. Into no other figure and face had art ever thrown such astonishing majesty. Men made pilgrimages to see it. He was counted happy who had seen, and he was counted unfortunate who died without seeing, the Phidian Jupiter. It was placed at the end of the temple; and historians say that if it had risen up it would have carried away the roof and theceiling with it, so...« less