Truth Spoken in Childhood Plants Seeds for Life

The illustrious Joseph Priestley recounted in his Memoir how his mother shaped his conscience before her death when he was seven years old. Returning from his cousins' home, young Joseph carried a pin. His mother asked, "Where did you get that pin?" When he admitted bringing it from his cousins', she replied firmly yet lovingly: "Then it is not ours—take it back." This single act inscribed itself so deeply upon his mind that throughout his life, no detail of wrongdoing could enter his thoughts without recalling her gentle admonition. The young heart is tabula rasa—a blank slate upon which parents write their words and thoughts through deeds yet to come.

Aristotle observed that a man who tells falsehood gains one thing: never to be credited when he tells the truth. In a Kent chapel, Mr. Waters recounted how a Sunday School pupil named John Rolfe broke his shop window. When Waters called out asking who was responsible, silence answered. But the boy stepped forward: "I am very sorry, sir, but I did it." When asked why he confessed, John replied, "Sir, I go to the Sunday School, and I can't tell a lie." Waters rewarded not the broken window, but the spoken truth—a shilling for practicing what he had heard taught.

Henry Ward Beecher reminds us that a lie always requires truth as its handle; otherwise the hand wielding it would cut itself. The worst lies wear false blades upon true handles.