Echoes in Eternity

If you're like me, you've been given the distinct impression that Puritans and others from the "olde tyme religion" of our spiritual ancestors were stuffy-shirted stoics who cared more about right thinking and right doctrine than living life fully and joyfully. We're told that it was only the secular Romantics of the day who knew how to feel and express real love... just as today's wisdom claims that to know true love is to take many sexual partners and to confuse and conflate one's lust with love.

Yet here is a snippet of a love letter written by John Broadus, a founder of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, to his wife in 1863 that paints a different picture:

Oh, my darling! The love of my life is bound up in your love. Tell me! Tell me that without reserve from a full overflowing heart you love me and that you will always love me with your whole heart! Then I am happy.

Or this excerpt of a letter written by Samuel Pearce, a renowned Baptist preacher, to his wife Sarah in 1795:

Called as I now am to mingle with much society and all its orders, I have daily opportunity of making remarks on human temper and after all I have seen and through my judgment as well as my affections still approves of you as the best of women for me. We have been too long united by conjugal ties to admit a suspicion of flattery in our correspondence or conversation. I begin to count the days which I hope will bring me to a re-enjoyment of your dear company.

Are not modern pop culture's attempts at displaying love largely poor impressions by comparison?