Article February 12, 1944 Issue

Honesty

JOSIAH CHARLES MERRIMAN

To the right-thinking man individual honesty is fundamental. It is so thoroughly inwrought that he dismisses any contrary suggestion instinctively, perhaps with amusement at its absurdity. "Be dishonest—I?" he mentally exclaims. "Ridiculous! I am an honest man!" Such spontaneous denial disposes of the temptation certainly and finally at the moment it arises. In a similarly final manner Jesus banished evil by declaring, "Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God."

This attitude is readily understandable to a Christian Scientist. Honesty, spiritually understood and humanly evidenced, bears witness to the activity of Principle. An honest man is a man governed, to some extent, by Principle, one who lives the Golden Rule. Confronted with the temptation to commit a dishonest act, he intuitively declines to entertain the suggestion, thus affirming his unity with Principle. Then and there he experiences an instantaneous healing of the claim of dishonesty.

This is brought about, of course, by his refusal to identify himself with something apart from Mind. Honesty is too firmly fixed in his consciousness to be open to attack. Any expression of good may be as certainly maintained, and its opposite dismissed as readily. Illness, inharmony, and lack are as foreign to man as dishonesty. One has divine authority to dispose of them as conclusively, without debate or labored process. If his health and harmony are as firmly established as his honesty, he will do so consistently and easily.

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