The Sincere Man | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 28, 1872

The Sincere Man.

A sincere man, like a sincere work, bears the stamp of nobility upon his countenance, no matter how rugged and uncouth the features may be. Sincerity classifies the whole soul, so that the light of Heaven can shine plainly into it. It includes earnestness, not so much because it is itself a peculiar active virtue, as because it enables us to see, and therefore urges us to obey, the human need for activity. Of all things, sincerity is the most antagonistic to falsehood, because falsehood is the meanest and most ignoble of the vices—the vice indeed which seems to envelop all other vices, for even cowardice is but falsehood to human instinct, and sin in all guises but falsehood to nature, and cowardice in the face of moral austerity.