For this is, after all, a very solemn sort of life. It has a very serious ending. A great universe whirls away with its ebon-faced mysteries piled from central caves to highest heavens—a universe, with all its mysteries, of hardest reality and baldest truth. A man, looking up to the cold, clear, unswerving stars, out yonder in the wintry night, or down at the grave that lies, somewhere, for the digging across his path, must feel that a lie for him, knowing his place, knowing himself, that a lie for him is accursed.
We want the truth always—clear-eyed, sharp-cut, marble-faced truth. We want to know the facts and realities of our position, just as they are. The mariner sails away into the lonely sea. The mystery of the unfathomed deep sways miles down beneath his passing keel. The mystery of the overarching heavens swims far above with mazy constellation and revolving sphere. Between the mystery of the sky and the mystery of the sea he steers right on, in calm and tempest confident, in night and noonday secure. For he there, on the trackless wastes that girdle in the great wide world, alone with the silence of Nature and God, knows the facts of his position, the realities of his place. The charts lie spread before him. Island, continent, lone sea-rock, hidden shoal, they are all mapped to his eye. The faithful needle points due north. The true sun rises where he always has. The faithful, changeless stars look down at midnight. The truth saves him, rocked in the arms of the wild sea. The reality holds him secure. Ask him, looking out, in the night watch, over the black sea and up to the inky deeps, and down to the dim-lighted compass before him, ask him his opinion of a lie! What his honest notion may be about a false light on yonder headland, a false latitude on his chart for this island or that shoal, a mistaken measurement of depth across this bay or through yonder straits! Ask him the nature and effects of a lie in the chart he sails by!
And we are all sailors. We want true charts. The false chart is our ruin. The false beacon on the headland is kindled by the fiends. It leads to death—a wreck-strewn sea, dashing white up the black cliffs, and bubbling cries, rising above the tempest's roar and the surges' boom, as, one by one, the swimmers sink to darkness through the foam!
Nay, for us, sailors over life's seas, sailors into eternity's dimness, the lie wears its Father's likeness. And the liar, the man who makes a lie, or helps a lie to success, a lie of word or deed, a lying boast merely, or a bad, vile, lying system, is my enemy, your enemy, humanity's enemy. He has deserted God's army, has denied his human brotherhood so far, has gone over, soul and body, to Satan. He is God's enemy and man's thenceforward.
That, I say, is, I trust, our creed about lies and liars too. We know where the lie comes from. We know whither it tends. We have made up our minds that it, and all its belonging, were best swept clean away and pitched into the Big Fire. Blessed be the man, we say, who successfully kills lies! He is a man to be honored and loved, no matter how rough he is in the process. It is never very smooth business. It is not a thing that can be well done in gloves. Let us not quarrel with how the champion does it. The main end is to get the lies well choked somehow.
But the one great difficulty in the way of such a man is, that so many people believe in lies. My eager young friend, Philalethes, supposes that, if he can only expose this falsehood, show up this sham, or sound the emptiness of this piece of cant or pretence, he will do the state some service, that men will thank him and call him benefactor. He does the work, and lo! to his amazement, many excellent men count him their deadly enemy.
These good souls see what he sees, that lies, and shams, and cheats in business, in science, in politics, in religion, in social life, are often very successful and very powerful, and they come to their conclusion, which is not his by a great deal. He thinks the lie ought to be hated, with a hatred the more intense because of its success. They conclude that lies, in this world at least, are necessary. They have seen, with their own eyes, how powerful, venerable, or respectable lies are, and they act on their knowledge. They take the lie into sleeping partnership—Quirk and Co.
There are men who do not believe plain truth can walk alone in this world. She needs a pair of lies for crutches! Men will actually write and print lies for the truth's sake. Men have piously written down and copyrighted lies (I have their books on my shelves) for the sake of religion! They have so little faith in God, they think they must wheedle Satan over on His side, or the truth and the right will fail. It is very easy to believe in God for the other world, but very hard to believe in Him for this. He will be omnipotent lord and master there, but here, now, in this bewildering world, in this confused and wretched time, where wrong seems so prosperous and lies so strong, is He omnipotent here? Hereaway, is not the Devil mightier? Can we get along without a little of his help?
Now lies can never end till this ends. While men think them necessary to truth, in business, in politics, in social order, even in religion, they will stand. People must be got to see that they are evil, that under no circumstances can they be anything else, that there can be no alliance between truth and falsehood, that the false thing must, in the end, be the corrupting thing, Satanic and vile utterly. They must know that, just so far as anything is incorporate with a lie, so far is it foul to the nostrils of all angels, and ought to be to the nostrils of all men.
Weave a lie into your social polity. It may prosper for a while, but soon or late your social polity runs mad. Take a lie into your business, as sleeping partner, try to live and prosper in that connection, and, some time, you and your business will go to the dogs together. Adopt a lie in your religion, make up your mind, piously as you think, to believe what you do not believe and cannot believe, attempt to sanctify falsehood and lie yourself into a faith, and your sham creed and your lying religion will do you no good in this world or in the other.