Psalm 116:11 I said in my haste, All men are liars. It has been left to a pitiful cynicism and to a threadbare wit to remind us, especially of late, that if David had lived in our days the words which he once uttered in haste he might now have spoken with utmost deliberation. Is it true? Is falsehood the invariable characteristic of the dealings and the speech of men? I will not trifle with your intelligence by seriously discussing the question. We may not blink or belittle the crimes that are done in high places or in low ones — least; of all may we deny the essential evils from which those crimes have sprung; but to own the power of evil in the world, to be afraid of it, to hate it, to frown upon its exhibitions when they flower into personal transgression — that is one thing. It is quite another to be precipitated by these things into that blunder of hasty generalization which David no sooner detected in himself than he so simply and manfully disowned and repented of it. Have we ever realized that, if we seriously believed as some of us are willing to affirm, that all men are liars, life would be simply unendurable? After all, the foundations of human society are laid in the cement of mutual trust, not of mutual suspicion. It paralyzes effort, it deadens aspiration, it destroys hope when we find that our own confidence in others evokes no answering trust in them. We do not realize, I think, how readily distrust begets its echo in those who are distrusted. To be doubted and suspected, — this with the young is often a short road to ultimate recklessness. "What is the good of it," cries the young and sensitive nature, which has not yet learned to appeal from the judgment of its fellows, to the verdict of its unseen Master — "what is the good of any effort after right, if one is met at the threshold with a sneer and a suspicion? Is there no such thing as truth, after all? is all life hollow and false and unreal? Well, then, why should I try to be true and to hate what is false? Why should I revere what is good, and despise what is base and mean? No one believes in goodness any more. It must all be a game — this life that I am living, and cleverness, not righteousness, the aim of it." And thus is born the cynic and the sceptic — the unbeliever in truth and the scoffer at faith. And if there is any life more wretched and any character more unlovable, the world has yet to reveal it. In the phraseology of science, there is what is known as a good working hypothesis. It is a probability assumed for the time to be true, as a means of reaching conclusions which lie beyond. Now, in our dealings with our fellow-men, which is the better working hypothesis: to assume with David in his haste, that all men are liars, or to prefer to believe that on the whole all men are not liars? Which will best serve to redeem the fallen, and steady the tempted, and inspire the timid? Give your brother man your confidence. Provoke him to love and to good works by the good which you look to see in him. And you that are fathers and mothers, ennoble the child whom you are training by appealing to that which is noble in him. Amid all his faults and waywardness, strive to love him with an unextinguishable hope and trust. Believe me, what your suspicions, your scorn, your lurking distrust of him can never do, your loving confidence will far oftener and far more surely accomplish. (Bishop H. C. Potter.) Parallel Verses KJV: I said in my haste, All men are liars. |
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