BENEVOLENCE

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 4, 1876

A benevolent man is a happy man; he cannot be otherwise; for it is a universal law of our nature to be made happy by making others so. Those evil passions, such as envy, hatred, malice, and pride do not exist in the heart of a benevolent man. These malign passions are found within the heart of the selfish man, which lead him to deception, fraud, murder, or crimes of the most heinous nature. Yea, the very worst elements in such a one's nature are in activity against him.

A benevolent man has a heart cleansed from all those evil passions that would have a tendency to cause him to commit any act of injustice. He lives to make others happy, for their happiness is his, and he thus realizes the truth of the divine assertion, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.”

Bunyan once put the following riddle into his own peculiar verse.

“There was a man though some did count him mad, The more he gave away the more he had.”

The benevolent man has no difficulty in finding its solution, for he has already learned that for every act of liberality he has received a rich reward; and if not in like, which is often the case, it has been in the true enjoyment of doing good, and making others happy by tenfold. Conclusively, every benevolent man by experience has found that acts of benevolence bring home to his heart happiness and joy which the cares of this world can neither give nor take away.—Sel.