For he was a good man, and full of the Holy Ghost and of faith: and much people was added to the Lord.
A good man is —
A MAN OF ACTIVE AND ENLIGHTENED BENEFICENCE.
The Second Commandment of the law is as essential to really good as the First. Love to men never fails to flow from love to God. Love is the fulfilment of the law; it completes the character of a true Christian. No gifts or endowments, however excellent, can compensate for the want of Christian love. But all beneficence is not goodness. There is the beneficence of sudden impulses; the beneficence which needs to be awakened by touching representations; the beneficence of the Pharisee, who doeth his alms before men to be seen of them; extorted beneficence compelled by the example of others — the beneficence of fashion or custom, not of religious or even moral principle. True good. ness or beneficence is different from all these. It has its root in a renewed heart. It is constant and uniform — a habit not an act — an ever-flowing stream, not the effervescence of momentary feeling. A good man loves his fellow men, and because he loves them he is earnestly desirous of promoting their real welfare. His “liberal mind deviseth liberal things.”
