FALSEHOODS

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Apr 24, 1879

The habit of false speaking is easily formed, and, when formed, does incalculable mischief. Who can tell the mischief done to individual families and communities by fraud? But to a great extent frauds are perpetuated by false speaking. Who can repair the injury done to character by slander? But slander is one form of false speaking. As a general thing, this pernicious habit of lying grows out of slight deviations from the truth, especially in the form of prevarication; and no watchful parents should fail to check such a propensity on the part of their children, whether in the shape of embellishment and exaggeration, or in the more serious form of prevarication, to say nothing of direct and palpable falsehood, calling for the rod of correction. So important is truth, strict truth, that Dr. Johnson, the great moralist, says: “If a child says a thing happened at one window, when it happened at another, do not let it pass, but instantly correct him; you do not know where deviation from the truth will end. Without truth, there can be no friendship among men, no mutual co-operation, no transactions of any kind. Truth is the very corner-stone of society, and by all persons should be valued.”—New Age.