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Page 17
You may, also, during the course of this day, be strongly tempted as to
the mode of repeating what another has said in conversation: the
slightest turn in the expression of the sentence, the insertion or
omission of one little word, the change of a weaker to a stronger
expression, may exactly adapt to your purpose the sentence you are
tempted to repeat. You may also often be able to say to yourself that
you are giving the impression of the real meaning of the speaker, only
withheld by herself because she had not courage to express it.
Opportunities such as these are continually offering themselves to you,
and you have ingenuity enough to make the desired change in the repeated
sentence so effectual, that there will be no danger of contradiction,
even if the betrayed person should discover that she is called upon to
defend herself. I have heard this so cleverly done, that the success was
complete, and the poor slandered one lost, in consequence, her admirer
or her friend, or at least much of her influence over them. You, too,
may in like manner succeed: but what is the loss of others in comparison
of the penalty of your success? The punishment of successful sin is not
to be escaped.
In any of the cases I here bring forward as illustrations, as helps to
your self-examination, I am not supposing that there is any tangible,
positive, wilful deceit in your heart, or that you deliberately
contemplate any very serious injury being inflicted on the persons whose
conversations and actions you misrepresent. On the contrary, I know that
you are not thus hardened in sin. With regard, however, to the deceit
not assuming any tangible form in your own eyes, you ought to remember
the solemn words, "Thou, O God I seest me;" and what is sin in his eyes
can only fail to be so in ours from the neglect of strict
self-examination and prayer that the Spirit of the Lord may search the
very depths of the heart. Sins of ignorance seem to assume even a deeper
dye than others, when the ignorance only arises from wilful neglect of
the means of knowledge so abundantly and freely bestowed. When you once
begin in right earnest to try to speak the truth from your heart, in the
smallest as well as in the greatest things, you will be surprised to
find how difficult it is. Carelessness, false shame, a desire for
admiration, a vanity that leads you to disclaim any interest in that
which you cannot obtain,--these are all temptations that beset your
path, and ought to terrify you against adding the chains of habit to so
many other difficulties.
There is one more point of view in which I wish you to consider this
subject; that, namely, of "honesty being the best policy." There is no
falsehood that is not found out in the end, and so turned to the shame
of the person who is guilty of it. You may perpetually dread, even at
present, the eye of the discriminating observer; she can see through
you, even at the very moment of your committal of sin; she quickly
discovers that it is your habit to depreciate people or things, only
because you are not in your turn valued by them, or because you cannot
obtain them; she can see, in a few minutes' conversation, that it is
your habit to say that you are admired and loved, that your society is
eagerly sought for by such and such people, whether it be the case or
not. Quick observers discover in a first interview what others will not
fail to discover after a time. They will then cease to depend upon you
for information on any subject in which your own interest or your vanity
is concerned. They will turn up their eyes in wonder, from habit and
politeness, not from belief. They will always suspect some hidden motive
for your words, instead of the one you put forward; nay, your giving one
reason for your actions will, by itself alone, set them on the search to
discover a different one. All this, perhaps, will in many cases take
place without their accusing you, even in their secret thoughts, of
being a liar. They have only a vague consciousness that you are, it may
be involuntarily, quite incapable of giving correct information.
The habitual, the known truth-speaker, occupies a proud position. Alas!
that it should be so rare. Alas! that, even among professedly religious
people, there should be so few who speak the truth from the heart; so
few to whom one can turn with a fearless confidence to ask for
information on any points of personal interest. I need not to be told
that it is during childhood that the formation of strict habits of
truthfulness is at once most sure and most easy. The difficulty is
indeed increased ten thousandfold, when the neglect of parents has
suffered even careless habits on this point to be contracted. The
difficulties, however, though great, are not insuperable to those who
seek the freely-offered grace of God to help them in the conflict. The
resistance to temptation, the self-control, will indeed be more
difficult when the effort begins later in life; but the victory will be
also the more glorious, and the general effects on the character more
permanent and beneficial. Not that this serves as any excuse for the
cruel neglect of parents, for they can have no certainty that future
repentance will be granted for those habits of sin, the formation of
which they might have prevented.
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