Article January 15, 1966 Issue

"Honesty is spiritual power"

HARRIETTE MELDRIM HILL

My great grandfather once caught a young boy, the son of one of his field hands, stealing something. He took the boy to his mother, related to her what the boy had done, and recommended that she punish him. Passing that way somewhat later, he heard the boy crying and his mother berating him: "You let him catch you! You let him catch you!" To his dismay, my great grandfather realized that the mother was punishing the boy, not for taking something that did not belong to him but for allowing himself to be caught in the act.

Honesty is a moral quality which involves not mere outward appearance of uprightness but also actual soundness and freedom from corruption. To refrain from a dishonest act merely through fear of punishment is not honesty.

In Science and Health, Mrs. Eddy declares (p. 453): "Honesty is spiritual power. Dishonesty is human weakness, which forfeits divine help." The moral quality of honesty is elevated to the spiritual quality of absolute integrity when it is recognized as meaning wholeness and freedom from materialism, or wrong thinking.

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