Thoughts that have their source in God are truthful because God is Truth. And truthfulness is accompanied by peace because peace belongs to God. There is no real peace apart from Him. A departure from truthfulness means loss of peace, a guilty conscience, a restless, uneasy existence. Christian Science points out that truthfulness is natural to man, God's man, who is made in Truth's likeness. Hence this admirable quality is more than a personal virtue and can always be demonstrated as an indestructible element of one's character.

Mary Baker Eddy says in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures: "God fashions all things, after His own likeness. Life is reflected in existence, Truth in truthfulness, God in goodness, which impart their own peace and permanence." ^{Science and Health, p. 516;}

Christ Jesus came to teach mankind the truth of being, which is permanent, and he destroyed what is untrue, impermanent: sin suffering, ignorance, blindness, deafness, death, and the limiting beliefs that claim to be laws of time and space and matter. He called the devil, or evil, a liar and said, "There is no truth in him"; ^{John 8:44:} and he declared to a Samaritan woman at Jacob's well, "The true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth." ^4:23: Later he could say to his followers, as he was about to depart from the earth, "Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you." ^14:27; He had lived a peaceful life because he had lived a truthful one.

In divine Science, which Jesus proved, truthfulness demands far more than the accurate telling of human facts. It demands that one reject all that is not of God, hence not true, and that one fill his consciousness with the spiritual truths that constitute man in God's likeness.

The Master presented that man, and he was absolutely truthful. He showed the world what integrity can do for anyone: provide power with which to destroy the lies of the carnal, or mortal, mind and still the fear and disquietude that come from permitting untruths, or false beliefs, to motivate one.

It is untruthful even to believe in evil, since evil is a lie. It is untruthful, in the light of Christian Science, to remain unforgiving toward someone who has behaved badly toward one, for doing this is supporting the liar's lie, a false concept of man. Once truthfulness is established as a scientific standard of life, the least aberration in one's thought is disconcerting and destroys one's peace.

Great men have been truly great in the measure of their integrity. They have let Truth itself possess them and control their thinking consistently. Abraham Lincoln was such a man. Emerson said of him, "His heart was as great as the world, but there was no room in it to hold the memory of a wrong." ^{Letters and Social Aims, Greatness;} What seemed intuitive in this great American can be developed in the student of Christian Science who learns that God is the Principle of all that is true, and who thereby can arrest and destroy the temptation to believe that he is a mortal and has been wronged.

The Bible records the value that the early Hebrews placed upon the truth. As far back as the book of Deuteronomy we find Moses defining Deity as "a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he." ^{Deut. 32:4;}

Mrs. Eddy says, "The Scriptures require more than a simple admission and feeble acceptance of the truths they present; they require a living faith, that so incorporates their lessons into our lives that these truths become the motive-power of every act." ^{Miscellaneous Writings, pp. 196, 197.}

Acknowledging what is true in Science, or absolute being, does not prevent one from seeing what error, or the suppositional evil mind, is up to. In fact, the truthful mentality is quickest to detect the lies of this false mind and reject them. But evil is never part of man. It has no place in real identity, however intensely it may claim to possess a personal ego and act as and through it. The truthful individual can maintain a sense of peace throughout any attempt of evil to discredit him or to misrepresent him to others. And he can trust divine Mind, or Love, to justify him when such an incident occurs.

The world's peace depends upon the high standard of truthfulness that individuals adhere to. Truthfulness is contagious, and the most villainous mortals often recognize it in others even when they deny it a place in their own thought. Its light never stops shining on the world.

The peace of mankind is inevitable because of the diffusion of the light of truthfulness. Shadows of dishonesty lurking in every kind of human situation, great or small, must yield to this light and disappear. The dishonesty and craftiness of unenlightened humanity, which rob the world of the peace it should experience, are certain to be reduced to the nothingness that they are as the Science of being dawns with increasing glow on mankind, and truthfulness proves the dominion of God and the peace of reality.

Helen Wood Bauman