Article September 4, 1909 Issue

HONESTY

KENNETH B. ELLIMAN

When a child, I used often to hear the saying, "Honesty is the best policy;" but nearly everything I saw seemed to teach the contrary, for dishonesty allied with cleverness was generally seen to succeed where what seemed to be honesty often apparently resulted in loss to the one who practised it. In Christian Science, however, we learn that "God never punishes man for doing right:" and also that "consciousness of right-doing brings its own reward" (Science and Health, pp. 384, 37). That these statements are true, and that honesty truly is the best policy, were proved to me some time ago by the following experience.

During the first few years that I was interested in Christian Science, urgent need for a practitioner's help, together with financial limitations, forced me to run into debt for nearly a year's treatment. The practitioner understood my circumstances and told me that he held me under no financial obligations, but I could not feel that this relieved me from paying him as soon as I was able to do so. For about three years after the treatment came to a successful conclusion, my income continued to be too small to allow me to pay the practitioner anything more than a trifling sum on account, so that with interest the debt was a considerable amount of money. At that time I owned a small property which had been left to me, but as I had no other steady income, and the income from this was only enough for my living expenses, I seemed to be dependent upon it. Although I had several times thought of selling part of the property to pay this debt, it did not seem wise to do so.

Meanwhile, however, through study and practice, the truth of Christian Science had been unfolding to me, and I gradually came to see that God was my source of supply, and that this source was sufficient for all my needs. Several small demonstrations of this truth convinced me that it was right for me to pay the debt, and that I could lose nothing by doing so, even though from a worldly point of view it seemed foolish and reckless to sacrifice my means of support to settle a debt which I was not legally obliged to pay. Faith in the right won the day, however, and I wrote to the practitioner who had helped me, offering to pay him the full amount due him for treatment, together with six per cent compound interest to date, and asking if the amount I named was correct.

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