Speak the truth, but let your life be true as well as your words. Live so that you need not be afraid to have the shutters taken down, that men may look right through your actions. You are not true if you have any sinister motive, or anything to conceal. Speak in your life the truth, and let it be the whole truth too. Tell out for God all the truth as it is in Jesus, and let your life proclaim the whole teaching of truth. Let it be nothing but the truth. I am afraid many Christians tell a great deal which is not true: their life is contrary to their words; and though they speak truth with their lips, they speak falsehoods with their hands.
Suppose, for instance, I draw a miserable face, and I say, “God’s people are a blessed people,” nobody believes me, because my face tells falsehood while my mouth utters a truth; and if I say, “Yes, religion has a sanctifying influence upon its professors and possessors,” and put my hand into my neighbour’s pocket in any sort of way, who will believe my testimony? I may have spoken the truth, but I am also speaking something that is not the truth, and I am thus rendering my witness of very small effect.
From a sermon entitled "God's Witnesses," delivered August 13, 1865. Image by Calum Davidson under Creative Commons License.
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