Because a lie is a respectable lie, believed and patronized by respectable people, shall you respect it? Because some venerable sham has imposed its emptiness on a score of generations, shall we go on reverencing it, and pass the scarecrow and its trumpery trappings on for the reverence of our children? Shall we, for any cause, that is, turn liars ourselves, and use the tongues God gave us to speak honest truth and simple meaning with, to deceive, in small matter or great, one human brother of ours, and make him think Satan's black lie as good as the Lord's white truth?
It may be strong preaching, but how can one help it? Never yet did a true-hearted, clear-headed reformer set to work to clear away some old cankering sore of falsehood from a people's life that he did not meet with opposition. And never yet did that opposition come from those who loved the lie for the lie's sake or the bad for the bad's sake. It came from those who love Truth, but who could not trust her, who loved Good, but had no faith in its success, who wanted to see the right side triumph, but had no confidence in the right—who really believed, that is to say, that Satan was almighty and the Lord's cause could not prosper, in this world at least, without his help! The opposition came from those who would deal gently with respectable lies, not because they are lies, but because they are respectable; who trembled before powerful lies, not because they were lies, but because they were powerful; who, seeing shams and cheats so prosperous, so venerable, so strong, got the notion into their poor cowardly hearts that they are strongest, and wanted the reformer to come humbly, cap in hand, and ask them to let a little truth live, a little modest, humble, unaggressive truth—it will be very orderly, very quiet, very deferential, if they, the powerful, the venerable, the respectable lies will let it stay here, in some corner, out of charity!
These are the men who, in all ages, have built barriers against heaven, the cowards, the faithless, the unbelieving. They dare not trust truth because it is truth, and good because it is good, leaving consequences with Him whose special business it is to take care of consequences. No, it is not love for the lie, but want of faith in the truth, that blocks the chariot wheels of the golden year.
For men do not love the lie after all. There's comfort in that. They do not like being cheated. They never get quite used to it, as, they say, eels do to skinning. They sometimes turn on the man, or the system, that tries it on them, in a very terrible and savage manner, with fury as of a mad lion, and take swift, fearful vengeance. The big, dumb heart of humanity, in the long, run, can be trusted. It is often imposed upon, its blind trust shamefully abused. Scoundrels exist and prosper on its patience and credulity. But only for a time. There is a reckoning for all such deceptions, if need be, in blood and fire. The dull heart throbs, the dull eyes open, the great brain stirs in its sleep, and humanity, true to its origin, rises to crush the lie with its million arms of power. And earth-born Briareus, when his thousand hands turn to right his wrongs, is not delicate in their handling. The echoes of a French Revolution will ring for some generations yet.
The man who turns to combat error needs the assurance of the true instincts of his race, for he enters on a task that must seem hopeless often.
'Truth crushed to earth will rise again;'
so Mr. Bryant tells him, and he is much obliged to Mr. Bryant. But will not error do just the same? He killed a lie yesterday, and buried it decently. He finds it alive again and prosperous to-day. Cut a man's head off, and he dies. There's no help for it, unless he is a St. Denis, and then he can only take a walk with his head in his hand. But, if he is not a St. Denis, he dies. That is the law. Cut the head off a lie, it does not die at all. It rather seems to enjoy the operation. You will meet it, like fifty St. Denises, on every morning walk, during your lifetime. They have a marvellous vitality. I meet lies every day that, to my certain knowledge, were put to death a hundred years ago, by master hands at the business, too. They ought, in decency at least, to look like pale ghosts 'revisiting the glimpses of the moon,' but they don't. They are smug, comfortable, and somewhat portly, as from good, solid living.
Now this is discouraging somewhat. But there is no good in shutting one's eyes to the fact. That is what I am going against. It is best to know that lies die hard. They will bear at least as many killings as a cat, and that's nine. Still, much depends upon the manner of the operation. How is it best performed? Knowledge is needed in all pursuits. There is a science undoubtedly in killing lies. If you wish to go into the business, and I trust most honest men do, you need to study it somewhat. Otherwise you will waste much effort, and get few results. It is not easy to kill one wolf with a stick, but, call science to your aid, and an ounce of strychnine, well administered, will do the business for a pack. Instead of going into a rough-and-tumble fight with some coarse, rude, vile lie, and mauling it to death by sheer force of muscle, it is better to use science and put it to death neatly, cleanly, and delicately, with unsoiled hands. Let us see if we can find the science of killing lies.
'The greater the lie the greater the truth.' Take that with you. A lie must, somewhere, have a truth to prop it. In the heart of every big successful lie you will find some reality. Of course you cannot build a house on nothing. A pyramid cannot be constructed in the air. Now a lie is nothing, the very definition of nothing. It is what is not. So, of course, no pure and simple lie exists. It always builds itself on some truth. It always roots itself into some fact. And there is the secret of its vitality. You batter the lie with your logic, but the blows rebound from the iron truth beneath. You assail it with the flashing darts of your rhetoric, the points fly harmless from the marble reality below. There is truth there somewhere. That is why your rhetoric and your logic fail. That, too, is why one so often sees that most bewildering and despairing sight, men clinging to a lie, honoring it, trusting it, defending it, in all sincerity, against all assailants. It is not the lie they defend, but the truth in the lie. What a relief it was when I first made that discovery! I was ready to think meanly of my kind, to distrust humanity's instincts for truth. The lookout was on despair. But, when I understood the nature of the lie, I learned to think better of my brethren, I learned to have more hope in their Maker. No, there is no building on nothing. Every lie has a substratum of truth. In fact, look closer, and is not a lie only a distorted truth?—a truth torn from its connections, its features twisted out of all symmetry, its outlines battered out of all shape?
A man tells a true story to-day, in the hearing of one who has this distorting power, an essentially untrue soul. He hears the same story to-morrow, the very same, but so deformed, so mangled, so patched, that it is, now, every inch a lie—the truth gone crazy. That is, a truth half told is a lie, a truth added to is a lie, a truth distorted is a lie, a truth with its due proportions changed is a lie. And a lie may always be defined as a lame, deformed, or crazy truth.