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need you be disturbed by the geology or astronomy or history of the Old Testament.—

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TRUTH FATAL

Of the great caution with which truth must often be handled, I can not give you a better illustration than the following from my own experience. A young man, accompanied by his young wife, came from a distant place, and sent for me to see him at his hotel. He wanted his chest examined, he told me. Did he wish to be informed of what I might discover? He did. I made the ante mortem autopsy desired. Tubercles; cavities; disease in full blast; death waiting at the door. I did not say this, of course, but waited for his question. "Are there any tubercles?" he asked presently. "Yes, there are." There was silence for a brief space, and then like Esau, he lifted up his voice and wept; he cried with a great and exceedingly bitter cry, and then the twain, husband and wife, with loud ululation and passionate wringing of hands, shrieked in wild chorus like the keeners of an Irish funeral, and would not be soothed or comforted. The fool! He had brought a letter from his physician, warning me not to give an opinion to the patient himself, but to write it to him, the medical adviser, and this letter the patient had kept back, determined to have my opinion from my own lips, not doubting that it would be favorable. In six weeks he was dead, and I never questioned that his own folly and my telling him the naked truth killed him before his time.

Truth is the breath of life to human society. It is the food of the immortal spirit. Yet a single word of it may kill a man as suddenly as a drop of prussic acid. An old gentleman was sitting at a table when the news that Napoleon had returned from Elba was told him. He started up, repeated a line from a French play, which may be thus Englished:

"The fatal secret is at length revealed," and fell senseless in apoplexy. You remember the story of the old man who expired on hearing that his sons were crowned at the Olympic games. A worthy inhabitant of a village in New Hampshire fell dead on hearing that he was chosen town clerk.—

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TRUTH, GIRDLE OF

It is the universal custom among the Parsees of the Far East to wear a girdle around their waists, which is twisted into three knots in a most complicated fashion. In performing their daily ablutions this girdle must be removed, and in replacing it certain prayers are repeated for each knot. The three knots represent good thoughts, good words, and good deeds, all constituting a threefold cord that is to be not easily broken.

A good companion to the "girdle of truth" which the Christian may wear. (Text.)

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Truth in Men—See.

Truth not Static—See.

Truth, Standing for—See.

Truth-telling—See.

Truth Withheld—See.

TRUTHFULNESS REWARDED

I remember once hearing of a boy who was very, very poor. He lived in a foreign country, and his mother said to him one day that he must go into the great city and start in business, and she took his coat and cut it open and sewed between the lining and the coat forty golden dinars, which she had saved up for many years to start him in life. She told him to take care of robbers as he went across the desert; and as he was going out of the door she said: "My boy, I have only two words for you, 'Fear God, and never tell a lie.'" The boy started off, and toward evening he saw glittering in the distance the minarets of the great city, but between the city and himself he saw a cloud of dust; it came nearer; presently he saw that it was a band of robbers. One of the robbers left the rest and rode toward him, and said: "Boy, what have you got?" And the boy looked him in the face and said: "I have forty golden dinars sewed up in my coat." And the robber laughed and wheeled round his horse and went away back. He would not believe the boy. Presently another robber came, and he said: "Boy, what have you got?" "Forty golden dinars sewed up in my coat." The robber said: "The boy is a fool," and wheeled his horse and rode away back. By and by the robber captain came, and he said: "Boy, what have you got?" "I have forty golden dinars sewed up in my coat." And the robber dismounted and put his hand over the boy's breast, felt something round, counted one, two, three,