The Good News of God | Page 2

up in
answer to it. They feel at once how beautiful goodness is.
But why?
St. John tells us. That feeling comes, he tells us, from Christ, the light
who is the life of men, and lights every man who comes into the world;
and that light in our hearts, which makes us see, and admire, and love
what is good, is none other than Christ himself shining in our hearts,
and showing to us his own likeness, and the beauty thereof.
But if we stop there; if we only admire what is good, without trying to
copy it, we shall lose that light. Our corrupt and diseased nature (and
corrupt and diseased it is, as we shall surely find, as soon as we begin
to try to do right) will quench that heavenly spark in us more and more,
till it dies out--as God forbid that it should die out in any of us. For if it
did die out, we should care no more for what is good. We should see
nothing beautiful, and noble, and glorious, in being just, and loving,
and merciful. And then, indeed, we should see nothing worth loving in
God himself:- and it were better for us that we had never been born.

But none of us, I trust, are fallen as low as that. We all, surely, admire a
good action, and love a good man. Surely we do. Then I will go on, to
ask you one question more.
Did it ever strike you, that goodness is not merely A beautiful thing,
but THE beautiful thing--by far the most beautiful thing in the world;
and that badness is not merely AN ugly thing, but the ugliest thing in
the world?--So that nothing is to be compared for value with goodness;
that riches, honour, power, pleasure, learning, the whole world and all
in it, are not worth having, in comparison with being good; and the
utterly best thing for a man is to be good, even though he were never to
be rewarded for it: and the utterly worst thing for a man is to be bad,
even though he were never to be punished for it; and, in a word,
goodness is the only thing worth loving, and badness the only thing
worth hating.
Did you ever feel this, my friends? Happy are those among you who
have felt it; for of you the Lord says, Blessed are they that hunger and
thirst after righteousness; for they shall be filled. Ay, happy are you
who have felt it; for it is the sign, the very and true sign, that the Holy
Spirit of God, who is the Spirit of goodness, is working in your hearts
with power, revealing to you the exceeding beauty of holiness, and the
exceeding sinfulness of sin.
But did it never strike you besides, that goodness was one, and
everlasting? Let me explain what I mean.
Did you never see, that all good men show their goodness in the same
way, by doing the same kind of good actions? Let them be English or
French, black or white, if they be good, there is the same honesty, the
same truthfulness, the same love, the same mercy in all; and what is
right and good for you and me, now and here, is right and good for
every man, everywhere, and at all times for ever. Surely, surely, what is
noble, and loveable, and admirable now, was so five thousand years
ago, and will be five thousand years hence. What is honourable for us
here, would be equally honourable for us in America or Australia--ay,
or in the farthest star in the skies.
But, some of you may say, men at different times and in different
countries have had very different notions--indeed quite opposite
notions, of what men ought to be.
I know that some people say so. I can only answer that I differ from

them. True, some men have had less light than others, and, God knows,
have made fearful mistakes enough, and fancied that they could please
God by behaving like devils: but on the first principles of goodness, all
the world has been pretty well agreed all along; for wherever men have
been taught what is really right, there have been plenty of hearts to
answer, 'Yes, this is good! this is what we have wanted all along,
though we knew it not.' And all the wisest men among the heathen--the
men who have been honoured, and even worshipped as blessings to
their fellow men, have agreed, one and all, in the great and golden rule,
'Thou shalt love God, with all thy heart and soul, and thy neighbour as
thyself.'
Believe about this as you may, my friends, still I believe, and will
believe; I