Emphasis Preaching Journal

"Have you learn'd only of those who admired you, and were tender with you, and stood aside for you? Have you not learn'd great lessons from those who reject you, and brace themselves against you? or who treat you with contempt, or dispute a passage with you?" Walt Whitman posed these questions in Sands at Seventy. Frederick Eliot quoted those words in a sermon titled, Religion in Silver Slippers. Eliot wrote, "Suppose we start with the idea, not of loving our enemies but of learning from them. Even that will not prove easy, but it may prove a profitable preliminary effort.