Page:Sermons on the Ten Commandments.djvu/145

 persons, therefore, do commit those crimes, in thought and in heart, though not in act. Wherefore, they are, in heart, and before the Divine eye that sees the heart, already guilty of them; and after death, if not in this world, they will be punished accordingly: for every evil fixed in the heart, brings its own punishment. It behoves every man, therefore, to look well to his motives; to look well to his heart, and ask himself why it is, that he avoids such and such criminal acts: whether it is from fear of God or from fear of men? If he shuns that evil, from any other motive than because it is a sin against God, then he is always committing it in spirit. In regard, then, to this crime, of testifying falsely against another before a court of justice, let us ask ourselves, why we should disdain to commit it: is it from fear of the law, and because it is disreputable, or is it because we should feel it to be a sin against God? If the last be our true motive, then the same motive will prevent us from testifying falsely, out of a court of justice, as well as in it,—when we are not under oath, as well as when we are; as, for instance, in cases brought before arbitrators, in cases of appraisement and valuation of property, either our own or that of others, and in the numerous other cases that occur daily in the business world; in all such instances, even to the smallest, the man of principle, the spiritual man, acts in the remembrance that he is under the Divine eye.

But this Commandment has a still wider signification. It forbids falsehood and lying, and also every species of hypocrisy, pretence, and wrong concealment.