Alexandria Gazette & Daily Advertiser

From Poulsons Advertiser.

CHRISTIAN HONESTY.

Mr. Sampson, the apt remarker of our times, thus exemplifies true Christian honesty:--

The truly honest man would be just as honest without the law as with it. Guided by the paramount authority of conscience, he neither withholds aught or exacts aught on the plea that civil law is on his side.

The truly honest is he who makes it a cardinal point to do to others as he would be done unto: and who decides with justice when self interest and justice are in opposite scales.

The truly honest man is never ostentatious of his honesty. Ostentation of it is always an ill sign: it looks like putting on a patch to hide a pimple.

But enough of definition. One good example is worth a score of definitions; and the following example all will allow to be a good one. The anecdote is given in St. Pierre's Studies of Nature.

In the last war in Germany, a captain of the cavalry was ordered out on a foraging party. He put himself at the head of his troops, and marched to the quarter assigned him. It was a solitary valley in which hardly any thing but woods could be seen. In the midst stood a little cottage; on perceiving it he went up and knocked at the door--out comes an ancient Hermit, with a beard silvered by age. "Father (says the officer) show me a field where I can set my troops a foraging." "Presently," replied the Hermit.

The good old man walked before, and conducted them out of the valley. After a quarter of an hour's march, they found a fine field of barley:--"there is the very thing we want," says the captain. "Have patience for a few minutes," replied his guide, "and you shall be satisfied." They went on, and at the distance of about a quarter of a league farther they arrived at another field of barley. The troops immediately dismounted, cut down the grain, trussed it up, and remounted. The officer, upon this, says to his conductor, "Father, you have given yourself and us unnecessary trouble--the first field was much better than this." "Very true, sir," replied the good old man, "but it is not mine."

Such an example of honesty, I repeat, is worth a score of definitions. Here we have not an abstract notion of honesty, but we see it as it were embodied. Here we behold the express form and visage of genuine Christian honesty, acting on the principle of loving one's neighbor as one's self. And what though the exemplar was an obscure and lowly man, distinguished neither for parts nor learning? In the moral frame of his mind there was a nobleness far superior to eminent natural parts, which belong alike to the best and the worst of human beings.