The Trustful and the Truthful
“The simple believeth every word; but the prudent man looketh well to his going.” — xiv. 15.
THE simple believeth every word;” and why not? If it were the universal rule, it would make a happy world. Trust is a lovely thing; but it cannot stand, unless it get Truth to lean upon. When its tender hand has been often pierced by a broken reed of falsehood, it pines away, and dies of grief. A man would find it easier to be trustful, if his neighbours were trust-worthy.
It is a well-known characteristic of little children to believe implicitly whatever you tell them. This is one, and not the least, of those features which make up their beauty, and draw forth our love. It remains a feature of the child until it is worn off by hard experience of the world. Perhaps we should recognise in it a remnant of our unfallen state. It is an obvious fact in nature, that the infant expects truth, until that expectation is burned out of him by many disappointments: suspicion does not appear until it has been generated by falsehood.
A great responsibility is attached to all our intercourse with children. Offences will come; but woe to him by whom the offence cometh. The child expects truth; let him have it. Be not the first to wring his simplicity out of him by double dealing. A lie told by seniors for their amusement threw a dark shadow over my childhood, and took much of the sunshine out of it. Some person in a military dress, interested in the child for his father’s sake, took me fondly in his arms, when I was between four and five years of age, and slipped a shilling into- my hand. I either never knew, or have long since forgotten, what his name was, and wrhat relation he sustained to the family; but the instant he passed, older children and grown-up people told me, with an air of seriousness, that I was enlisted, and that whenever 1 should be old enough, the officer would return, and take me off to the wars. This intimation sank into me, and lay at my heart like lead, all the period of my childhood. I was afraid to speak of it, and suffered in silence. The terror was never taken off by a serious explanation, for no one knew how great it was. I obtained no relief until my understanding gradually outgrew it. That lie wrought grievous harm to me. Besides overclouding life at its very dawn, it left within me, when it departed, a general grudge against mankind for wantonly wounding the helpless. When the boy was big enough to shake off the phantom, he was full of indignation against the world for amusing itself by torturing a child. The Almighty has constituted himself the Helper or Avenger of the weak, whatever the form of their weakness may be j beware of hurting a little child by any untruth. The guilt is great when older children or servants torment the little ones by inventing false terrors. Stand in awe, and speak only sacred truth to the timid confiding infant, for the Almighty Friend of the feeble is looking on. Even in little things He will carry through the principle, “Inasmuch as ye have done it to one of these little ones, ye have done it unto me.” God has made the infant trustful, and then cast him upon you: if you take advantage of that trustfulness to deceive, whether in great things or small, you are mocking its Author. The child is poor, and lying threats oppress it: “He that oppresseth the poor, reproacheth his Maker.” “Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.” As the young of birds instinctively open their mouths for food, and their mothers never — not even once since the creation of the world — have thrown in chaff to mock their hunger; so the trustfulness of children is the opening of their mouth for truth: if we fling falsehood in, and laugh at their disappointment, the Lord will require it. It is not amusement; it is sin. It is both a crime and a blunder. They are called Goths and Vandals who deface the precious remnants of Greek statuary that have descended to our times; what name would fitly designate the barbarian who, in sheer wantonness, spoils the beauty of a finer, fairer form — who rubs off by vulgar lies the lovely trustfulness of a little child?
“The prudent looketh well to his going;” and good cause he has so to do. In this world a man is obliged to be suspicious.
Man suffers more from man than from the elements of nature or the beasts of the field. A time is coming when this species of prudence will be no longer needed. When the people shall be all righteous, there will be no deception on one side, and no distrust on the other. How sweet even this life would be, if there were no falsehood and no distrust. If every speaker were true, and every hearer trustful, already the new world would have begun. As yet, we must walk circumspectly at every step, lest a neighbour deceive us. In the new heavens and new earth, truth will pervade all like air. “They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain, saith the Lord.” Oh, that will be joyful, joyful, when there shall be no lie to generate suspicion, and no suspicion generated by a lie!
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