Article August 26, 1916 Issue

Honesty

JOSEPH F. HIBBARD

DICTIONARIES define honesty as fairness, candor, truth, and to be honest as to be upright, just, equitable, fair in dealing with others, free from fraud, frank, sincere, unreserved, according to truth. Mrs. Eddy says, "Honesty is spiritual power" (Science and Health, p. 453). Honesty, or truth, expressed in all our human relationships, is the positive affirmation of good, and is the opposite of all evil. If honesty is truth, its opposite, dishonesty, is a lie. Honesty is the bright sunlight of reality; dishonesty is the darkness of unreality, in which lurk all forms of evil, among which are found arrayed falsehood, hypocrisy, envy, uncharitableness, malice, hate, revenge.

How evident it is that the broad foundation-stone of Christian Science is honesty, and how imperative that every student and every disciple should cultivate this quality and wage unceasing and uncompromising warfare against dishonesty. On page 15 of Science and Health Mrs. Eddy says, "We must resolve to take up the cross, and go forth with honest hearts to work and watch for wisdom, Truth, and Love." On page 21 she also says that if the disciple is honest, "he will be in earnest from the start."

Hypocrisy and deceit have no place in Christian Science, and the Christian Scientist will not give room to either in his consciousness. Jesus commanded, "Let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil." We are commanded to declare the truth, and the truth only, and the declaring of truth is not alone by vocal utterance, but by every motive and act of our lives. We declare the truth when we deal honestly and justly with our fellow men.

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