The Giving Heart

THE GIVING HEART

The heart does not receive blood to store it up. While it pumps blood in at one valve, it sends it out at another. The blood is always circulating everywhere, and is never stagnant.

The same is true of all the fluids in a healthy body; they are in a constant state of expenditure. If one cell stores for a few moments its particular secretion, it only retains it until it is perfectly fitted for its appointed use in the body. For if any cell in the body should begin to store up its secretion, its store would soon become the cause of chronic disease. The organ would soon lose the power to secrete at all, if it did not give forth its products.

The whole of the human system lives by giving. The eye cannot say to the foot, I have no need of you and will not guide you; for if it does not perform its watchful office, the whole man will be in the ditch, and the eye will be covered with mud.

If the members refuse to contribute to the general stock, the whole body will become poverty-stricken and be given up to the bankruptcy of death.

Let us learn, then, from the analogy of nature, the great lesson, that to get we must give; that to accumulate we must scatter, that to make ourselves happy, we must make others happy; and that to get good and become spiritually vigorous, we must do good and seek the spiritual good of others.

- Charles Haddon Spurgeon, The Quotable Spurgeon, (Wheaton: Harold Shaw Publishers, Inc, 1990)