HONESTY by John Nevins Andrews

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 18, 1877

HONESTY

By John Nevins Andrews

This simple and modest virtue is one of the essential elements of the Christian character. It is this principle which renders man just in everything toward everybody. It requires one to always tell the truth and refrain from lying and deceit. It demands that we be just in everything, and absolutely excludes all fraud and duplicity. It makes the possessor careful to guard the interests of those with whom he deals. It never passes the limits of propriety to appropriate to itself that which belongs to another. It would rather deprive itself of goods than to take advantage by some fraudulent act. It believes God, and since it believes God it hates iniquity.

Honesty makes a man strict to pay his debts and faithful to fill his obligations to all men. It renders the word of a man as sure as his engagements, and demands that he keep his promises, even when it is in his power to change them and seemingly for his interest to do so, and when only God and himself will know of the change. A truly honest man will never take advantage of his neighbor’s ignorance to sell him a bad article under the name of a good one. He will never sell water in his milk, sand in sugar, or mix that which is injurious with that which is useful, in order to sell the whole as good. He will give just weight and good measure. He will not put the poorer quality of merchandise in the bottom of the measure and the good above it when he measures it to his neighbor in trade. He knows that he is always exposed to the temptations of Satan and to the feebleness of his own heart. And he not only holds himself upon his guard for fear of losing his integrity, but he often examines his own

conduct in order to discover if he has in anything whatever deviated from uprightness, and if he finds such an act he hastens to make it right, as did Zaccheus. Luke 19 : 1-10. His anxiety is not that men think of him that which is honest or creditable, but that he be recognized as such before the face of God. He knows that there will be a day of Judgment, in which all his conduct and his intentions will be examined; and he would not only repent of all his past wrongs, but he would, by the grace of God, keep himself henceforth without fault before men.

To be honest before God and man, we must have the grand promise of the new covenant accomplished in us by having the law of God written upon our hearts. Jer. 31 : 33 ; Heb. 8 : 10. In particular the three great precepts which forbid theft, lying, and covetousness, must be be written upon the table of the heart, if honesty manifests itself in the life of man. The thief, the liar, and the covetous, will have no place in the kingdom of God. Each of these three classes of persons will have a part in the lake of fire. Let no one deceive himself.

J. N. A.

[Translated from LES SIGNES DE TEMPS by B. H. Welch.]