CERTAIN LIES

According to my way of thinking, one of the most engaging charms I had as a child was the simplicity with which I lied. I was totally deficient in the arts of deceit, but the slightest moral pressure from mother sent me flying to cover behind a perfectly transparent falsehood. I have known many a man to practice prevarication in his pacifying relations to a woman. They choose this method of childish fiction in dealing with women through some simplicity of their own psychology. And it is the secret which nearly every woman keeps that her experience with her youngest child and her husband are very similar in this matter. But no such thing is characteristic of the pussyfooting feminine mind. We are much smarter in merely twisting the truth than in lying. Maybe I was too young then to have developed the gender of my faculties. My peculiarity was that once I had committed myself to a falsehood I would not confess the truth, nor any part of the truth. Neither prayers nor punishment could move me. My own notion is that this was due to some kind of misdirected self-respect. To this day I have a well-bred horror of confessing.

But mother believed that it was innate depravity and took measures accordingly. One day when I had told a fib and stuck to it, much evidence to the contrary, she took the Bible and read from it that passage which says, ‘All liars have their portion in hell.’

I was not the same after that. I had a conscience which humbled me, and a very real fear of the place lurid with flames where the worm dieth not and liars inherit a certain portion. I was the wicked. My sins accompanied me like a still, small tune. I began the hectic life of indulging in sprees of goodness. I would be very industrious or very thoughtful for a day, but I never could hold any high moral note in living. To this day I hate objective righteousness as every true artist hates drudgery. I am not denying that faith without works is dead; but good deeds, even the very virtues by which you are recognized and praised, frequently adorn a Pharisee.

I have often wondered if all children pass through a period of joyfully achieving innocence. They are not good, but what freedom there must be in not being able to think evil! Maybe Shakespeare was right: ‘’Tis thinking makes it so.’ Certainly it is written of children in the Scriptures, ‘Of such is the kingdom of heaven.’ Which suggests an idea of Heaven I have never seen advanced by a theologian--that it is a place of infinite relief where one may be as unscrupulously busy as a child without doing anything wrong. But we could not risk living in this present world with a generation of such Kingdom-of-Heaven saints. A man with that much innocence in him would be an outlaw. So it may have been all for the best, the mill and anguish I passed through getting my mind and virtues to fit me and that sum of human heinousness so essential to surviving here.

Guilt must be the parent of the moral sense. We are not born with it. We are born innocent and very dangerous. Then slowly, or quite unexpectedly, we receive that first spiritual perception of ourselves; a guilty feeling that weighs us down, never again to be so free, never again to be the same assured heir of all the stars and half brothers to the angels of God. We call it the voice of conscience, but I am telling you it is the sense of guilt, a ticker in your breast warning you of the change in the value of your virtues, recording the loss of one. It is a good thing, but very painful. I think most of the activities we engage in are due to the effort to escape it. One of the salvation promises is that we shall be delivered from it in the world to come. I do not know about that. I have prayed so often to be delivered from my sins and trespasses, it is inconceivable to me that I could develop very virtuously anywhere without them to brace me morally. I believe in eternal life, but I should feel queer, finished and laid aside, without my temptations to worry me onward and upward from within.

Far be it from me to question the goodness of God because evil is present with us! We should never have the honor of choosing righteousness for ourselves without it. Who would be charitable if no one was in need of charity? Who would know how to practice mercy, forgiveness, and long-suffering if there were no faults or weakness in others to forgive? And how in heaven shall we be able to use all these virtues so hardly acquired here if there is no occasion to exercise them in heaven? How can we possibly enjoy ourselves where all the other saints are as good as we are and no distinctions made?

We derive more satisfaction than we realize from successful competition with our fellow men in righteousness. I offer no solution; I merely ask these questions of those people who look forward with joy to eternal life without one single familiar thing in prospect to occupy their minds during this infinite stretch of time. As for me, I trust the Lord to make my everlasting life even more interesting than this short one, which has certainly been a feverishly exciting experience. I cannot help hoping there will be a few of the dearer sinners in heaven upon whom one may practice a little encouragement. And I hope there will be tremendous saints also whose attainments far outshine mine, so that I may have the honor of associating with them, as we are proud to be recognized here by great men who have surpassed us in the victories and laurels they have won.