If you Are only Honest

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 11, 1871

If you Are only Honest.

SINCERITY and good, old-fashioned honesty are of inestimable value to the Christian. Would God there were more of these blessed characteristics in the professing church. These fill a place of vast importance. Without them the Christian profession is simply a hypocritical farce. It is a duty to be honest. God demands honesty of all his servants.

But there are other great and important duties for the Christian. Christian obedience cannot all be summed up in our efforts to be honest men and women before God. We would not attempt to here mention all that God calls upon us to do and to be. We call attention to one point. Says Christ, “Search the Scriptures.” The noble Bereans were highly complimented by the apostle for their daily searching of the Scriptures. Again, Christ prayed that his disciples might be sanctified through the truth. And the beloved John, the very man that might, from his lovely temper, be expected in danger of compromising revealed truth for a broad platform, has said, “I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth.” 3 John 4. God help us to search for wisdom and truth as for hid treasures.

The following may be read with interest. It well illustrates the course of those who shut their eyes to the great Sabbath truth, and move on in the old, beaten path of human custom, trying to still conscience with the popular maxim, “If you are only honest, that is all.” We give it the more readily, as it comes from the Child’s Paper:

NOT RIGHT BECAUSE WE THINK SO.

The mill was doing a great business that day, when Jack and David Jamieson rode up with their bag of corn to be ground. They lived on a small farm five miles off the main roads, and were therefore not sorry at the prospect of waiting several hours for their grist. It gave them a chance of seeing something of the liveliness and bustle of “The Corner,” as that part of the village was called where the tavern, store, and mill, stood. They ran about here and there, and saw and heard a great deal.

At last, a heavy shower coming on, they went back to the mill to eat their lunch, and see when their turn came. The miller’s son and the squire’s son were engaged in a brisk talk, which soon took Jack’s attention. David went to look after the corn. The miller’s son was urging with the squire’s son the importance of finding what truth the Bible enjoined, which the squire’s son parried by saying, it “was no matter what a man believed, provided he’s sincere.”

The rattling, off-hand tone of the young man pleased Jack, and he wished he could talk so. Wouldn’t he shut up his grandfather? Yes, that he would. “No matter what a man believes, provided he’s sincere,” said Jack to himself, bridling up, and bracing up his conscience against the godly conversation of his relations. “He’d fix ’em now,” he said, with a slight cant of the head.

It was not until late in the afternoon that the boys’ grist was ready, when the old mare was brought out of the shed, the bag hoisted on her back, and Jack and David both mounted her—bag, boys, and mare, homeward bound.

“You’ve got a longer ride ahead than I wish you had, boys,” said the miller, casting his eyes toward a black cloud which was rising and darkening the western sky. “There’s plenty of water up there for my mill.”

The mare set briskly off, and was soon lost to sight among the windings of the forest road. But the gloom gathered faster than the horse trotted, and it was quite dark when they reached a fork in the road where it might make considerable difference which road they took home. One was the traveled road. This way, there was a good bridge over Bounding Brook, a mountain stream, which was often dangerously swelled by the spring rains. It was the safest, though the longest way home. The other was a wood path through the pines, often taken by farmers living on the east side of the town, to shorten the distance to the Corner. In this road Bounding Brook was crossed by fording.

“Father told us to be sure and take the traveled road, if ’t was late,” said David.

“Going to,” said Jack; and the mare stopped at the fork, as if to let the boys be sure which road to take.

In fact, Jack was a little confused. The windings of the road with nothing but woods on each side, and, of course, no distinct landmarks to govern him; the gloom of night hiding what objects might serve to direct him, together with his small acquaintance with the road, did puzzle the boys, although Jack, being the older of the two, with a dash of pride about him, would not own it. As the mare stopped, he came to a conclusion, and whipped up. “All right!” he cried.

“Are you sure?” asked David.

“This way, I know,” answered Jack.

“I don’t know,” said David; “let me jump off and run down to that light yonder, and ask; there must be a cabin there, and folks.”

“Oh! we can’t stop for all that,” said Jack. “I honestly believe this is the traveled road, David, and that’s enough; can’t you trust me?”

“But your honestly believing it don’t make it so,” muttered David.

“I haven’t a doubt of it, Dave; you be still,” cried Jack, angrily.

“I think we ought to ask, so as to be sure,” persisted David.

But Jack whipped up, and poor David’s fears and words went to the winds, as gust after gust of the coming shower roared through the forest, and Jack urged the horse to all the speed which her heavy load would allow, on and on through the dark woods. Jack was well pleased with the correctness of his hasty decision about the way; and the farther he went, the more and more confirmed was he that it was the right way.

Presently the roaring of Bounding Brook arose above the rattlings of the woods. “A switch over the mare’s haunches, and we shall be over the bridge in a jiffy!” cried Jack; “and then, old fellow, what’ll you say?”

David privately muttered, “I’d like to feel myself over,” when, a few more canters, and—Jack, David, meal, and mare went floundering in the raging waters of the swollen stream, pitch dark, the storm on them, and miles from human help.

The first few moments of horrible suspense it were in vain to paint. Jack at last found himself anchored on a log of drift wood, the icy waters breaking over him, and the bridle still fast in his hand. “David!” he shouted at the top of his voice, “David!”

“The Lord have mercy!” cried David, “I’m somewhere.”

The meal? ah! that was making a pudding in some wild eddy of the Bounding Brook, far below.

“No matter what a man believes, provided he’s sincere,” cried poor Jack, thoroughly drenched and humbled. “It’s the biggest lie the devil ever got up. It is matter. Being right is the main thing. Sincerity don’t save a fellow from the tremendous consequences of being wrong—that it don’t. Then what’s the use of all a fellow’s sincerity? It can’t get him out of a scrape; he’s got to take it. Lord help us! Didn’t I honestly believe I was on the bridge of the traveled road, when I was like going to perdition in the ford of the wood path?”

And the woeful disaster of that night completely and forever cured poor Jack of a popular error which has pitched many a poor soul into the wilder surges of unbelief and irreligion.