The True Man | AdventAI

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Michigan · Aug 29, 1865

The True Man.

READER, let us weigh ourselves in this balance, and see if we are entitled to this label:

He is above a mean thing. He can not stoop to mean fraud. He invades no secrets in the keeping of another. He betrays no secrets confided to his own keeping. He never struts in borrowed plumage. He never takes selfish advantage of our mistakes. He uses no ignoble weapons in controversy. He never stabs in the dark. He is ashamed of innuendos. He is not one thing to a man's face and another behind his back. If by accident he comes in possession of his neighbor's counsels, he passes upon them an act of instant oblivion. He bears sealed packages without tampering with the wax. Papers not meant for his eye, whether they flutter at his window or lie open before him in unguarded exposure, are sacred to him. He professes no privacy of others, however the sentry sleeps. Bolts and bars, locks and keys, hedges and pickets, bonds and securities, notices to trespassers, are none of them for him. He may be trusted himself out of sight—near the thinnest partition—anywhere. He buys no office, he sells none, he intrigues for none. He would rather fail of his rights, than win them through dishonor. He will eat honest bread. He insults no man. He tramples on no sensitive feelings. If he have rebuke for another, he is straightforward, open, manly. In short, whatever he judges honorable, he practices toward every man.—Repository.