They who in a good and perfect heart, hearing the word of God, keep it.
The Meaning of Goodness
Goodness as Men Know It
If you were told that you had a good heart, you would likely try to recall some act of kindness you had done for the one who so praised you. A good heart, you would remember, is said to be the possession of those who do charitable acts or say kind things or entertain cheerful views of life. Where you see one refusing to believe evil of another, there, you say, is a good heart; where you hear one unselfishly defending a stranger, urged by no motives of local pride or family ties, there you know is a good heart. A good heart, too, like a good nature, dispels clouds and dispenses sunshine. It sees no evil or can excuse the evil. It can lighten or even overlay the darkness of sin and sorrow with the brightness of its own teeming goodness.
Goodness as God’s Word Has It
If, however, the doctor said you had a good heart, you would begin to think of another meaning of good. The doctor makes that statement because he finds no disease, no irregularity, no defect in the heart, but rather every part of it performing its functions perfectly, doing its full duty, coming up to the required standard of excellence. That the doctor may say you have a good heart, I sincerely hope, but that the heavenly Physician of souls, the infallible Searcher of hearts, will make the same judgment about your good will, that is, your heart in a far higher than mere physical sense, I am quite confident. At all events when the Scripture speaks of the good heart, it has in view the doctor’s meaning of good, rather than the more common meaning of the English word. Whatever is good in Scripture has distinctive excellence in its class and is often set in sharp contrast with what is evil in the same class. The good fish are kept and the bad thrown away. The good seed, which brings forth the harvest of wheat, is over-sown with cockle, the bad seed, the products of which are burnt. The good measure discards all shortcomings and is pressed down and shaken together and running over. The good salt has kept its savor and will not be cast forth to be trampled underfoot. The good tree is known by its good fruits, and the good ground is that fertile spot which produces a hundred-fold.
Goodness Produces Fruit
You can now readily understand what is meant by the good heart; it is none other than the good ground of the parable, the productive place which gives back plentiful fruit to the good seed. “But that on the good ground are they who in a good and perfect heart, hearing the word of God, keep it and bring forth fruit in patience.” You understand also why I am confident that you have a good heart. You have welcomed the word of God, have kept it, and in patience, after long waiting perhaps, and after “much toil, but finally, you have borne fruit. The yield, I should say, was a hundredfold, although you would not likely in your humility agree with me.
Goodness Makes Sacrifices
Your heart, then, I know to be good because it responds to the first test of goodness, it is productive of good fruits. Apply to it a second test, and you will see your heart is good because it fulfills that requirement also. You noticed just now that the good heart came from separation and sacrifice. The good haul of fish, the good harvest, the good salt, all these came t as the result of discarding the evil. Recall what had to be rejected that the ground might be good for the sower and his seed. The ground had to be fenced off from the trampling feet and caged off from the birds of the air and dug up in order to be wrested from the dead weight of stone or from the tangle of choking thorns. Then only, after all that preparation, was it fit for the good seed which fell upon it. The good heart is only won at the price of sacrifice, sacrifice of way-side hardness, of faithless shallowness, of the rank growth of dissipation. Ah, how many a pathway must be closed and how often thieving wanderers must be frightened away, although the footsteps may be very sweet and the song and plumage very attractive! How again and again the hand is raw and weary, tossing aside the rough stones or rooting up the weeds! You alone know, good heart, what you have had to pay to make ready and preserve the goodness wherein the Sower sows His seeds of fruitfulness.
Goodness Is Tested in the Heart
Have you ever seen a young lad climbing up or down a chestnut tree? Did you mark him holding fast to the trunk, while he pulled stoutly with his hand at some branch near him or pressed his foot heavily upon it? You know why he acted that way. His life was the next moment to be trusted to that branch, and the test would show whether the branch was good enough to be trusted. Goodness is known by the test. This is Saint Paul’s teaching: “Prove all things; hold fast to that which is good.” It is God’s way also to prove and test and make for Himself good hearts. No doubt, you know that well. In the heart sacrifice reaches its completion; in the heart sacrifice is felt the most. The edge of the sacrificing knife makes there its sharpest incision. You know that, good heart, because God has tested you by sacrifice and has made you and kept you good. His knife is ever dripping with heart-blood, and the incense of the sacrifices in the heart does not cease from the rising of the sun to the going down thereof. The good heart is known by its sacrifices and is made by sacrifice, and because I know you have been proved, I know God holds fast to your heart, which is exceeding good in His sight.
The Comfort of Goodness
Love and Sacrifice United by God
Do not be frightened, good heart, at the prospect of unending sacrifice. Such is the law of God, applied in its uttermost fullness to the best of all hearts. If love and sacrifice go together in your heart, it is because God meant them to go together. Away in the depths of eternity when God would show His love for us, He accompanied that love with the sacrifice of what was dearest to Him. God loved the world; God gave His Only-begotten Son. Infinite love and infinite sacrifice! The Incarnation was begun so, and so too was it consummated. “He loved me and delivered Himself up for me.” “Christ loved the Church and delivered Himself up for it.” When your heart began to love God, you knew that, somewhere, some day, there would be a steep hill and a sacrifice. With Abraham you were destined to hear: “Take thy son whom thou lovest and go into the land of vision and there thou shalt offer him for a holocaust upon one of the mountains which I shall show thee.” Ah, you have heard and you have acted, as Abraham did, and you have put forth your hand and taken the sword. Nor did the angel of the Lord stay the sacrifice; you have made a perfect holocaust of all your children.
Love and Sacrifice In the Heart
Such is the privilege, such is the glory, of good hearts. Like the organ of the body which distributes the blood, the good heart never hesitates; it never stops. It is forever gathering up and discarding what is evil; forever giving forth unstintedly its precious contents, refreshing the currents of the soul by the sacrifice of the base elements, rewarming them by close, intimate contact with living love. The heart of the body never tires in purifying and giving; the good heart of the soul never wearies in its duty of loving and sacrificing.
Lore and Sacrifice Blessed by Christ
You are sustained, good heart, and strengthened and comforted by Him who came to sacrifice Himself. God asked for more perfect oblations than He had received and so Saint Paul speaks of Christ in the words of the Psalmist: “Sacrifice and oblation Thou wouldst not, but a body Thou hast fitted to me. Then said I, behold I come to do Thy will, O God.” When God fitted a Body to Christ, His Son, the Heart was fashioned most carefully. It was to be the source and generous fountain of Blood for the perfect holocaust which was destined to satisfy God. Pressing the meaning of the words, we may say that they express what was really the truth. Christ’s physical Heart was fitted to His spiritual Heart. Both were good in the fullest sense. If it was Christ’s will to shed His Blood, His Blood would not be slow in shedding itself. You have made the same offering as Christ and your good heart is comforted. You are following Him and you shall have the peace which those enjoy who bear His yoke.
Love and Sacrifice Fulfilled by Christ
More than that! You could not possibly lay the keen edge of the knife so often to your heart unless His help was always there. His supreme sacrifice for which He was given to the world, for which He had a Body fitted to Him, has won for you the courage and strength to enact your little Calvaries. Christ called Himself the Good Shepherd because He was ready, as the hireling was not, to lay down His life for His sheep. The Good Shepherd has the good heart. He lived up to His own test of goodness; He fulfilled His own principle that love and sacrifice go together. “He loved me and He delivered Himself for me.” “Greater love than this no man hath than he lay down his life for his friend.” Your good heart is, like its model, the good Heart of Christ, at one moment in the dark shadows of Gethsemani, resisting unto blood until it forms its resolution to make its sacrifice; at another moment mounting its Calvary to consummate its sacrifice.
Love and Sacrifice Constantly Practised
When you kneel before the altar your eyes behold the Cross. The altar of sacrifice is always surmounted by the Cross. Ah, you know that well, because many a time in the darkness there you have struggled with your soul before the hour of oblation. If it were all over and done with at once, if the sacrifice were called for only once, then it would not be so hard. But, as Calvary is renewed daily on the altar, so it is with you, good heart. What you thought slain and dead, lives again. The ties you considered broken, are re-knit; the flames that were quenched, blaze forth more brightly. Along the ways of the heart may be heard the tramp of feet which you imagined had been excluded forever. Flights of wild, tumultuous thoughts, with showers of ravishing melodies, throng in upon you swiftly and insistently. You fondly dreamt that the eye and ear had been sealed effectually against these winged intruders who bear away God’s sown word. Good seed, good ground, good harvests are had at the price of ceaseless vigilance and constant effort. The good heart must ever rest in the shadow of the Cross.
Love and Sacrifice Constantly Consoled
Look up, dear heart, and see that Christ has made of His Heart an altar of sacrifice. There looms the Cross and its shadow never passes away from His Heart. There is the altar-stone which love has made. The Cross reminds you that His Heart is the place of sacrifice; the encircling crown of thorns is witness that the keenness of sacrifice is always felt; the wound in His Heart tells you of the fullness and the completeness of the sacrifice. Even when His executioners found Him dead, even when His Heart had ceased to beat, not yet had He ceased to have the good Heart. They made sure of the entirety of the sacrifice by slaying the slain and by laying open His dead Heart. All that is for you, good heart. His constant, entire, heart-piercing sacrifice is the incentive and the solace which you have Had to make and keep yourself good. Your heart is good because His Heart is infinitely good.