MORE ABOUT GOODNESS
I wrote some words on goodness in my
blog yesterday (3.7.25). They were not enough. In fact, goodness can have no
end. Man’s goodness falls and rises in different eras. We do not know how many
people were there on this earth soon after it came into existence. There is
also no book about the size of population in the different bygone eras of this
world.
Civilization seems to be a late
arrival. Many ages have remained with a
lot of savagery and almost no refinement of character. There was never adequate
goodness nor is it there today. Goodness is still limited.
Nobody can predict a time of
adequate goodness in man. Man has to shed a lot of rudeness before he can touch
even the edge of God’s infinite goodness.
Given below are some aspects of
goodness described by different writers.
*Qualities
of Good Nature.
Its good
nature only wins the heart. It moulds the body to an easy grace, and brightens
every feature of the face; it smoothens the unpolished tongue with eloquence,
and adds persuasion to the finest sense.---English writer and clergyman
Benjamin Stillingfleet (1702-1771).
*Acme of
Goodness. To love
the public, to study universal good, and to promote the interest of the whole
world, as far as lies within our power, is the height of goodness, and makes that
temper which we call divine. ---Anthony Ashley-Cooper 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury
(1671-1713).
*Characteristics
of Goodness. Goodness
I call the habit, and goodness of nature the inclination. This, of all virtues
and dignities of the mind, is the greatest, being the character of the Deity;
and without it man is a busy, mischievous, wretched being.--- English -Essayist
and philosopher Francis Bacon (1561-1626).
*Rewards
of Goodness. ---- A good
deed is never lost; he who sows courtesy reaps friendship, and he who plants
kindness gathers love: pleasure bestowed upon a graceful mind was never
sterile, but generally gratitude begets reward. ---Saint Basil of Caesarea ? (330
Ad-379 AD).
********
G.R.Kanwal
4th July 2025
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