wax figure in a
show window; who never made a mistake, nor did he ever make anything
else. He was as aggressive as a crawfish and as magnetic as a mummy.
He was "faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null." And one
day we felt called upon to clothe this colorless insipidity, this
incarnate nonentity, with some sort of an adjective, and so we threw
around its scrawny shoulders this once glorious robe "good." We said,
"Yes, he isn't much account, it is true, but he is a good fellow." And
the garment fit him as the coat of Goliath would fit a pigmy. But
little by little the once great cloak seemed to draw up and to come to
fit the figure of the dwarf.

Thus the word "good" lost its reputation, fell, as many words and many
folks do fall, through bad company. But let me remind you that, in
spite of popular misconception, "good" is not after all a weak word.
It is a strong, brawny, masculine word. It has the shoulders of a
Samson. It has the lifting power of a Hercules. And the reason God
employed it here to describe this man Barnabas was not because He had
to say something about him and could not find anything else decent to
say. It was not a word to cover up the deformity of uselessness or the
glaring defect of a moral minus sign. He used the word because there
was none other that would fitly describe the fine and heroic man of
whom He was speaking. It means here all that "Christian" means.

"He was a good man." That was what God said about him. That was how
he looked when seen through "the microscope of Calvary." He had
matriculated in God's school, and after faithful and patient study, his
Master gave him a degree. And what was that degree? Barnabas, the
genius? No. Barnabas, the gifted? No. It was a higher degree than
either of these. It was the highest degree that Heaven itself can
confer. He gave him the degree of "good." Barnabas, the good. "For
he was a good man."

Now, why did God call him good? Or, in other words, what are the
characteristics that go to make up a good man? When is a man good in
the sight of "Him who sees things clearly and sees them whole?" In
what branches must a man show himself proficient in order to receive
this degree? I ask these questions with the hope that some of us who
are here to-day may want to matriculate in God's school to receive the
high degree that was conferred upon Barnabas.

The first branch in which Barnabas showed himself proficient in