Your ShelfYour Projects

Untitled article

3%

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Third-day, March 24, 1868

FromReview and Herald, Vol. XXXI, No. 15

Read the full edition

AN AGE OF LIARS, OR A LYING AGE.

By D. F. Newton

“Dare to be true; nothing can need a lie.”
“Wherefore putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbor.” Eph. iv, 25.
Cheating and lying, lying and cheating. It is cheating here, cheating there; it is lying here, lying there.
“A little theft, a small deceit, Too often leads to more.”
“He that is faithful in that which is least, is faithful also in much; and he that is unjust in the least, is unjust also in much.”
Lies are of various kinds, of various degrees of aggravation. There are black lies and white lies, lies of vanity, pride, ambition, flattery, convenience, interest, fear, wantonness, cruelty; lies of first, second, and third rate malignity. There are also passive or practical lies—lies acted out. Point your finger in a wrong direction to an inquiring traveler—you give him the lie.
Again, some are habitual liars—lie at nearly every breath; like the common swearer—he swears, and knows it not.
“A righteous man hateth lying; but a wicked man is loathsome, and cometh to shame.” Prov. xiii, 15.
“Lying is my trade,” said an auctioneer; “I live by falsehood and deception, it is my meat and drink; when I speak a lie, I speak of my own.”
“What! an auctioneer or a lawyer speak the truth? When, where, how? Truth is not taken into account. Lawyers and auctioneers are privileged characters; an honest lawyer or auctioneer these times, would starve to death! Who expects truth from us, excepting now and then perchance? And if so be the truth does slip out occasionally or unintentionally, who knows it? who can tell whether it be the truth or a lie?”
Privileged, indeed! when and where has God given license to lawyers, auctioneers, merchants, or any man to lie, cheat, or steal? Lying is stealing, and stealing is lying. “By swearing, and lying, and killing, and stealing, and committing adultery, they break out, and blood toucheth blood.”
A little African girl, who lived in the missionary house in Africa, was requested by a woman to steal some article, and bring it secretly to her. The child replied, “What shall I say when God speaks to me about stealing? and when I burn what shall I do?”
“Theft will not be always hidden, Though we fancy none can spy; When we take a thing forbidden, God beholds it with his eye.”
The man who uses a short yard-stick, “false weights and measures,” is a thief, a violator of the eighth commandment, and the Lord will not hold him guiltless.
“Ye shall not steal, neither deal falsely, neither lie one to another.” Lev. xix, 11.
“And if thou sell aught unto thy neighbor, or buyest aught of thy neighbor’s hand, ye shall not oppress one another.” “Thou shalt not have in thy bag divers weights, a great and a small; but thou shalt have a just and perfect weight, and just measure shalt thou have.” “A false balance is an abomination to the Lord; but a just weight is his delight.” Prov. xi, 1.
“Do justice. ’Tis thy God’s command, The mandate of thy king; Be prompt in rendering dues to all, And let no fraud-spot, great or small, Unto thy conscience cling.”
A beloved minister, standing at our right hand, informs us that several coal-dealers, members of orthodox churches, unitedly combined to give a specified number of pounds less in every load of coal than the law demands. Let every one of these church-members take their pens forthwith, and write opposite each of their names, “THIEF!” Are they not thieves?
Again, is not every man a thief who adulterates any article of food, and sells it for genuine? Are there not those (not a few) who adulterate milk, sugar, tea, coffee, molasses, and other articles of domestic use, and sell them for genuine, perfect, unmixed? What is this but a species of theft, a violation of a positive precept? “THOU SHALT NOT STEAL.”
Here is a man that sells an article of merchandise as sound and in good order, knowing, meanwhile, it is injured or defaced! Another influential member in an orthodox church, has had goods on his shelves two, three, four, or six years, which he sells to his customers as fresh goods newly purchased! Is not this merchant a liar, a thief?
“The love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.”
Again, “They that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition.”
The covetousness of these last days is most marked. As a result, men are becoming very dishonest, and trying all possible ways to line their pockets with filthy lucre. He who is the most successful in deceiving his fellow-beings, is thought to be the smartest man. The following illustrates the manner of doing business at the present day:
“A London professor lectured recently on adulterations of food. He handed round coffee, which was pronounced excellent, then told the audience that they had been regaled with a mixture of bullock’s blood, chickory, sheep’s liver, dried and old coffee grouts. He gave them capital porter too, made of spirits of wine, gum-arabic, and burnt sugar.”
The ingenuity of the age is taxed to its utmost capacity, to invent ways and means to cheat the people without being detected till after the purchase of the spurious articles. All such should remember that they can have no place in the coming kingdom. None but honest men can be there. All money obtained by dishonesty will only help sink the receiver into eternal perdition. The Scriptures inform us that no “covetous” man “shall inherit the kingdom of God.”
We have become a nation of liars! Most people love to read and to hear lies, quite as well as others like to write and to utter them. Indeed, the one is a pretty fair gauge of the other. The market and the supply of lies are economically adjusted.
The public will have lies, and the man who must get his bread and butter by writing, must have no scruples about lying. One of the most popular writers of a New York journal, said, pathetically: “I detest this coloring of the truth, this eternal exaggeration of lying; but the people will have it, and I must furnish it or starve.” Another popular writer, on recovering from a dangerous illness, told his physician that he should not be able to pay him, until he had got his returns from furnishing the public another of his lucrative stories. That is, a pack of lies in the form of novels, romances, silly love-tales to curse the rising age, pushed into public favor by religious editors, and some professed Gospel ministers!
These dealers in intellectual poisons, that intoxicate the mind, corrupt the heart, pollute the soul, will sink lower than the grave! “He that soweth to the flesh, shall of the flesh reap corruption.” “They have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.” Hosea viii, 7.
“Can we peruse a book like this, And seek a Father’s blessing here? Forsake the path that leads to bliss, To shed o’er fiction’s page a tear?”
Such writers, in the pulpit or out of it, are considered smart. They wake up our imaginations, rouse our sympathies, play charmingly upon our passions, and we pay them well for it.
The public hankering for something extraordinary, startling, highly-colored, and exaggerated, has crept into our churches, invaded the pews, and to some extent given laws to the pulpit. There is now a great demand for smart preachers. The question is not whether a preacher is pious, prayerful, faithful, sound in faith, and a winner of souls—one who rightly divides the word of truth, and gives to every man his portion in due season—all this is behind the times, and old fogy. Is he smart? That’s the question. Does he stretch the india-rubber to its utmost tension, and hammer out the precious grain of gold so thin, that it has but one side? Can he do a splendid business on a small capital? Does he sparkle well? Oh, then he is an angel standing in the sun! We must have him at any price. What’s the use of going to the theatre, when we can have what we want at church? But will he also, as occasion may require, let off good round whoppers, thumping stories, and rouse us all up? Then he is the man for us. He will fill the house, sell the pews, youthfulize the congregation, and make us a good speculation.
D. F. NEWTON. New York.