DISCOURSE IV. The Guilt of Dishonesty not to be estimated by the Gain of it. "He that is faithful in that which is least, is faithful also in much; and he that is unjust in the least, is unjust also in much."-Luke xvi. 10. It is the fine poetical conception of a late poetical country man, whose fancy too often grovelled among the despicable of human character-but who, at the same time, was capable of exhibiting, either in pleasing or in proud array, both the tender and the noble of human character-when he says of the man who carried a native, unborrowed, self-sustained rectitude in his bosom, that "his eye, even turned on empty space, beamed keen with honour." It was affirmed, in the last discourse, that much of the honourable practice of the world rested on the substratum of selfishness; that society was held together in the exercise of its relative virtues, mainly, by the tie of reciprocal advantage; that a man's own interest bound him to all those average equities which obtained in the neighbourhood around him; and in which, if he proved himself to be glaringly deficient, he would be abandoned by the respect, and the confidence, and the good will of the people with whom he had to do. It is a melancholy thought, how little the semblance of virtue upon earth betokens the real and substantial presence of virtuous principle among men. But on the other hand, though it be a rare, there cannot be a more dignified attitude of the soul, than when of itself it kindles with a sense of justice, and the holy flame is fed, as it were, by its own energies; than when man moves onwards in an unchanging course of moral magnanimity, and disdains the aid of those inferior principles, by which gross and sordid humanity is kept from all the grosser violations; than when he rejoices in truth as his kindred and congenial element;-so, that though unpeopled of all its terrestrial accompaniments; though he saw no interest whatever to be associated with its fulfilment ; though without one prospect either of fame or of emolument before him, would his eye, even when turned on emptiness itself, still retain the living lustre that had been lighted up in it, by a feeling of inward and independent reverence. It has already been observed, and that fully and frequently enough, that a great part of the homage which is rendered to integrity in the world, is due to the operation of selfishness. And this substantially is the reason, why the principle of the text has so very slender a hold upon the human conscience. Man is ever prone to estimate the enormity of injustice, by the degree in which he suffers from it. He brings this moral question to the standard of his own interest. A master will bear with all the lesser liberties of his servants, so long as he feels them to be harmless; and it is not till he is awakened to the apprehension of personal injury, from the amount or frequency of the embezzlements, that his moral indignation is at all sensibly awakened. And thus it is, that the maxim of our great teacher of righteousness seems to be very much unfelt, or forgotten, in society. Unfaithfulness in that which is little, and unfaithfulness in that which is much, are very far from being regarded, as they were by him, under the same aspect of criminality. If there be no great hurt, it is felt that there is no great harm. The innocence of a dishonest freedom in respect of morality, is rated by its insignificance in respect of matter. The margin which separates the right from the wrong, is remorselessly trodden under foot, so long as each makes only a minute and gentle encroachment beyond the landmark of his neighbour's territory. On this subject there is a loose and popular estimate, which is not at one with the deliverance of the New Testament; a habit of petty invasion on the side of aggressors, which is scarcely felt by them to be at all iniquitous-and even on the part of those who are thus made free with, there is a habit of loose and careless toleration. There is, in fact, a negligence or a dormancy of principle among men, which causes this sort of injustice to be easily practised on the one side, and as easily pat up with on the other; and, in a general slackness of observation, is this virtue, its strictness and in its delicacy, completely overborne. It is the taint of selfishness, then, which has so marred and corrupted the moral sensibility of our world; and the man, if such a man can be, whose “eye, even turned on empty space, beams keen with honour;" and whose homage, therefore, to the virtue of justice, is altogether freed from the mixture of unworthy and interested feelings, will long to render to her, in every instance, a faultless and a completed offering. Whatever his forbearance to others, he could not suffer the slightest blot of corruption upon any doings of his own. He cannot be satisfied with any thing short of the very last jot and tittle of the requirements of equity being fulfilled. He not merely shares in ought not to be measured by the former; but that he who is unfaithful in the least. shall be dealt with in respect of the offence he has given to God, in the same way as if he had been unfaithful in much. The first reason, which we would assign in vindication of this is, that by a small act of injustice, the line which separates the right from the wrong is just as effectually broken over as by a great act of injustice. There is a tendency in gross and corporeal man to rate the criminality of injustice by the amount of its appropriations-to reduce the revolt of the general world against such outrageous departures from the rule of right, as would carry in their train the ruin of acquaintances or the distress of families. Such is the delicacy of the principle within him, that he could not have peace under the consciousness even of the minutest and least discoverable violation. He looks fully and fearlessly at the whole account which justice has against him; and he cannot rest, so long as there is a single article unmet, or a single demand unsatisfied. If, in any transaction of his there was so much as a farthing of secret and injurious reser-it to a computation of weight and measurevation on his side, this would be to him to count the man who has gained a double like an accursed thing, which marred the sum by his dishonesty, to be doubly more character of the whole proceeding, and dishonest than his neighbour-to make it spread over it such an aspect of evil, as to an affair of product rather than of princioffend and to disturb him. He could not ple; and thus to weigh the morality of a bear the whisperings of his own heart, if it character in the same arithmetical balance told him, that, in so much as by one iota with number or with magnitude. Now, of defect, he had balanced the matter un- this is not the rule of calculation on which fairly between himself and the unconscious our Saviour has proceeded in the text. He individual with whom he deals. It would speaks to the man who is only half an inch lie a burden upon his mind to hurt and to within the limit of forbidden ground, in the make him unhappy, till the opportunity of | very same terms by which he addresses the explanation had come round, and he had man who has made the furthest and the obtained ease to his conscience, by acquit-largest incursions upon it. It is true, that ting himself to the full of all his obligations. he is only a little way upon the wrong side It is justice in the uprightness of her atti- of the line of demarcation. But why is he tude: it is justice in the onwardness of her upon it at all? It was in the act of crosspath; it is justice disdaining every advan- ing that line, and not in the act of going tage that would tempt her, by ever so little onwards after he had crossed it-it was to the right or to the left; it is justice spurn- then that the contest between right and ing the littleness of each paltry enticement wrong was entered upon, and then it was away from her, and maintaining herself, decided. That was the instant of time at without deviation, in a track so purely rec- which principle struck her surrender. The tilinear, that even the most jealous and mi- great pull which the man had to make, was croscopic eye could not find in it the slight- in the act of overleaping the fence of sepaest aberration: this is the justice set forth ration; and after that was done, justice had by our great moral Teacher in the passage no other barrier by which to obstruct his now submitted to you; and by which we progress over the whole extent of the field are told, that this virtue refuses fellowship which she had interdicted. There might with every degree of iniquity that is per- be barriers of a different description. There ceptible; and that, were the very least act of might be still a revolting of humanity unfaithfulness admitted, she would feel as if against the sufferings that would be inflicted In her sanctity she had been violated, as if by an act of larger fraud or depredation. in her character she had sustained an over- There might be a dread of exposure, if the throw. dishonesty should so swell, in point of amount, as to become more noticeable. There might, after the absolute limit between justice and injustice is broken, be another limit against the extending of a man's encroachments, in a terror of discovery, or in a sense of interest, or even in the relentings of a kindly or a compunctious feeling towards him who is the victim of injustice. But this is not the limit with which the question of a man's truth, or a man's honesty, has to do. These have already been given up. He may only be a little way within the margin of the unlawful territory, but still he is upon it; and the God who finds him there will reckon with him, and deal with him accordingly. Other principles and other considerations, may In the further prosecution of this discourse, let us first attempt to elucidate the principle of our text, and then urge onward to its practical consequences-both as it respects our general relation to God, and as it respects the particular lesson of faithfulness that may be educed from it. I. The great principle of the text is, that he who has sinned though to a small amount in respect of the fruit of his transgressionprovided he has done so, by passing over a forbidden limit which was distinctly known to him, has in the act of doing so, incurred a full condemnation in respect of the principle of his transgression. In one word, that the gain of it may be small, while the guilt of it may be great; that the latter IV] ESTIMATION OF THE GUILT OF DISHONESTY. restrain his progress to the very heart of heaven must be stormed ere one inch of the territory, but justice is not one of them. entrance can be made into the region of This he deliberately flung away from him, iniquity. The morality of the Saviour never at that moment when he passed the line of leads him to gloss over the beginnings of circumvallation; and, though in the neigh-crime. His object ever is, as in the text bebourhood of that line, he may hover all his fore us, to fortify the limit, to cast a ramdays at the petty work of picking and pur- part of exclusion around the whole territory laining such fragments as he meets with, of guilt, and to rear it before the eye of though he may never venture himself to a man in such characters of strength and saplace of more daring or distinguished atro-credness, as should make them feel that it city, God sees of him, that, in respect of the is impregnable. principle of justice, at least, there is an utter unhingement. And thus it is that the Saviour, who knew what was in man, and who, therefore, knew all the springs of that moral machinery by which he is actuated, pronounces of him who was unfaithful in the least, that he was unfaithful also in much. The second reason, why he who is unfaithful in the least has incurred the condemnation of him who is unfaithful in much, is, that the littleness of the gain, so far from giving a littleness to the guilt, is in fact a circumstance of aggravation. There is just this difference. He who has committed injustice for the sake of a less advantage, has done it on the impulse of a less temptation. He has parted with his honesty at an inferior price; and this circumstance may go so to equalize the estimate, as to bring it very much to one with the deliverance, in the text, of our great Teacher of righteousness. After the transition is accomplished, the progress will follow of course, just as opportunity invites, and just as circumstances make it safe and practicable. For it is not with justice as it is with generosity, and some of the other virtues. There is not The limitation between good and the same graduation in the former as there is in the latter. The man who, other cir- evil stood as distinctly before the notice of cumstances being equal, gives away a dou- the small as of the great depredator; and ble sum in charity, may, with more pro- he has just made as direct a contravention priety be reckoned doubly more generous to the first reason, when he passed over than his neighbour; than the man who, upon the wrong side of it. And he may with the same equality of circumstances, have made little of gain by the enterprise, only ventures on half the extent of fraudu- but this does not allay the guilt of it. Nay, lency, can be reckoned only one half as by the second reason, this may serve to agunjust as his neighbour. Each has broken gravate the wrath of the Divinity against a clear line of demarcation. Each has trans- him. It proves how small the price is which gressed a distinct and visible limit which he he sets upon his eternity, and how cheaply knew to be forbidden. Each has knowingly he can bargain the favour of God away from forced a passage beyond his neighbour's him, and how low he rates the good of an land-mark-and that is the place where inheritance with him, and for what a trifle justice has laid the main force of her inter- he can dispose of all interest in his kingdom dict. As it respects the materiel of injus-and in his promises. The very circumtice, the question revolves itself into a mere stance which gives to his character a milder computation of quantity. As it respects transgression in the eyes of the world, the morale of injustice, the computation is makes it more odious in the judgment of upon other principles. It is upon the latter the sanctuary. The more paltry it is in that our Saviour pronounces himself. And respect of profit, the more profane it may he gives us to understand, that a very hum- be in respect of principle. It likens him ble degree of the former may indicate the the more to profane Esau, who sold his latter in all its atrocity. He stands on the birthright for a mess of pottage. And thus breach between the lawful and the unlaw-it is, indeed, most woful to think of such ful; and he tells us, that the man who en-a senseless and alienated world; and how ters by a single footstep on the forbidden heedlessly the men of it are posting their ground, immediately gathers upon his person the full hue and character of guiltiness. He admits no extenuation of the lesser acts of dishonesty. He does not make right pass into wrong, by a gradual melting of the one into the other. He does not thus obliterate the distinctions of morality. There is no shading off at the margin of It is with argument such as this that we guilt, but a clear and vigorous delineation. It is not by a gentle transition that a man would try to strike conviction among a steps over from honesty to dishonesty. very numerous class of offenders in society There is between them a wall rising up-those who, in the various departments into heaven; and the high authority of of trust, or service, or agency, are ever prac infatuated way to destruction; and how, for as little gain as might serve them a day, they are contracting as much guilt as will ruin them for ever; and are profoundly asleep in the midst of such designs and such doings, as will form the valid materials of their entire and everlasting condemnation. tising, in littles, at the work of secret appro- | which ought to warn and to scare away, are priation-those whose hands are in a state planted along the barrier; and when, in deof constant defilement, by the putting of fiance to them, the barrier is broken, man them forth to that which they ought to will not be checked by any sense of honesty, touch not, and taste not, and handle not at least, from expatiating over the whole those who silently number such pilferments of the forbidden territory. And thus may as can pass unnoticed among the perqui- we gather from the countless peccadilloes sites of their office; and who, by an excess which are so current in the various departin their charges, just so slight as to escape ments of trade, and service, and agencydetection-or by a habit of purloining, just from the secret freedoms in which many do so restrained as to elude discovery, have indulge, without one remonstrance from both a conscience very much at ease in their own heart-from the petty inroads their own bosoms, and a credit very fair, that are daily practised on the confines of and very entire, among their acquaintances justice, by which its line of demarcation is around them. They grossly count upon trodden under foot, and it has lost the mothe smallness of their transgression. But ral distinctness, and the moral charm, that they are just going in a small way to hell. should have kept it unviolate-from the exThey would recoil with violent dislike from ceeding multitude of such offences as are the act of a midnight depredator. It is just frivolous in respect of the matter of them, because terrors, and trials, and executions, but most fearfully important in respect of have thrown around it the pomp and the the principle in which they originatecircumstance of guilt. But at another bar, from the woful amount of that unseen and and on a day of more dreadful solemnity, unrecorded guilt which escapes the cognitheir guilt will be made to stand out in its zance of the human law, but on the appliessential characters, and their condemna- cation of the touchstone in our text, may tion will be pronounced from the lips of be made to stand out in characters of se Him who judgeth righteously. They feel verest condemnation-from instances, too that they have incurred no outrageous for- numerous to repeat, but certainly too obfeiture of character among men, and this vious to be missed, even by the observation instils a treacherous complacency into of charity, may we gather the frailty of their own hearts. But the piercing eye of human principle, and the virulence of that Him who looketh down from heaven is moral poison, which is now in such full upon the reality of the question; and He circulation to taint and to adulterate the who ponders the secrets of every bosom, character of our species. can perceive, that the man who recoils only Before finishing this branch of our subfrom such a degree of injustice as is noto-ject, we may observe, that it is with this, as rious, may have no justice whatever in his character. He may have a sense of reputation. He may have the fear of detection and disgrace. He may feel a revolt in his constitution against the magnitude of a gross and glaring violation. He may even share in all the feelings and principles of that conventional kind of morality which obtains in his neighbourhood. But, of that principle which is surrendered by the least act of unfaithfulness, he has no share whatever. He perceives no overawing sacredness in that boundary which separates the right from the wrong. If he only keep decently near, it is a matter of indifference to him whether he be on this or on that side of it. He can be unfaithful in that which is least. There may be other principles, and other considerations to restrain him; but certain it is, that it is not now the principle of justice which restrains him from being unfaithful in much.-This is given up; and, through a blindness to the great and important principle of our text, this virtue may, in its essential character, be as good as banished from the world. All its protections may be utterly overthrown. The line of defence is effaced by which it ought to have been firmly and scrupulously guarded. The sign-posts of intimation, with many other phenomena of the human character, that we are not long in contemplation upon it, without coming in sight of that great characteristic of fallen man, which meets and forces itself upon us in every view that we take of him-even the great moral disease of ungodliness. It is at the precise limit between the right and the wrong that the flaming sword of God's law is placed. It is there that "Thus saith the Lord" presents itself, in legible charaeters, to our view. It is there where the operation of his commandment begins; and not at any of those higher gradations, where a man's dishonesty first appals himself by the chance of its detection, or appals others by the mischief and insecurity which it brings upon social life. An extensive fraud upon the revenue, for example, unpopular as this branch of justice is, would bring a man down from his place of eminence and credit in mercantile society. That petty fraud which is associated with so many of those smaller payments, where a lie in the written acknowledgment is both given and accepted, as a way of escape from the legal imposition, circulates at large among the members of the great trading community. In the former, and in all the greater cases of injustice, there is a human restraint, and a human terror, in operation. | events, his attribute of truth stood commitThere is disgrace and civil punishment, to ted to the fulfilment of the threatening; and scare away. There are all the sanctions the very insignificancy of the deed, which of that conventional morality which is sus- provoked the execution of it, gives a subpended on the fear of man, and the opinion limer character to the certainty of the fulfilof man; and which, without so much as ment. We know how much this trait, in the recognition of a God, would naturally the dealings of God with man, has been the point its armour against every outrage that jeer of infidelity. But in all this ridicule, could sensibly disturb the securities and the there is truly nothing else than the grossrights of human society. But so long as ness of materialism. Had Adam, instead of the disturbance is not sensible--so long as plucking one single apple from the forbidthe injustice keeps within the limits of den tree, been armed with the power of a smallness and secrecy-so long as it is safe malignant spirit, and spread a wanton havoc for the individual to practise it, and, borne over the face of paradise, and spoiled the along on the tide of general example and garden of its loveliness, and been able to mar connivance, he has nothing to restrain and to deform the whole of that terrestrial him but that distinct and inflexible word of creation over which God had so recently reGod, which proscribes all unfaithfulness, joiced-the punishment he sustained would and admits of it in no degrees, and no modi- have looked to these arithmetical moralists, fications-then, let the almost universal a more adequate return for the offence of sleep of conscience attest, how little of God which he had been guilty. They cannot there is in the virtue of this world; and see how the moral lesson rises in greatness, how much the peace and the protection of just in proportion to the humility of the masociety are owing to such moralities, as terial accompaniments-and how it wraps a the mere selfishness of man would lead sublimer glory around the holiness of the him to ordain, even in a community of Godhead-and how from the transaction, atheists. such as it is, the conclusion cometh forth II. Let us now attempt to unfold a few more nakedly, and, therefore, more impresof the practical consequences that may be sively, that it is an evil and a bitter thing to drawn from the principle of the text, both sin against the Lawgiver. God said, "Let in respect to our general relation with God, there be light, and it was light;" and it has and in respect to the particular lesson of ever been regarded as a sublime token of faithfulness which may be educed from it. the Deity, that, from an utterance so simple, 1. There cannot be a stronger possible an accomplishment so quick and so magillustration of our argument, than the very nificent should have followed. God said, first act of retribution that occurred in the "That he who eateth of the tree in the history of cur species. "And God said unto midst of the garden should die." It appears Adam, Of the tree of the knowledge of good indeed, but a little thing, that one should and evil, thou shalt not eat of it. For in put forth his hand to an apple and taste of the day thou eatest thereof, thou shalt it. But a saying of God was involved in surely die. But the woman took, of the the matter-and heaven and earth must pass fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto away, ere a saying of his can pass away; her husband with her, and he did eat." and so the apple became decisive of the fate of a world; and, out of the very scantiness of the occasion, did there emerge a sublimer display of truth and of holiness. The beginning of the world was, indeed, the period of great manifestations of the Godhead; and they all seem to accord, in style and character, with each other; and in that very history, which has called forth the profane and unthinking levity of many a scorner, may we behold as much of the majesty of principle, as in the creation of light, we behold of the majesty of power. What is it that invests the eating of a solitary apple with a grandeur so momentous? How came an action in itself so minute, to be the germ of such mighty consequences? How are we to understand that our first parents, by the doing of a single instant, not only brought death upon themselves, but shed this big and baleful disaster over all their posterity? We may not be able to answer all these questions, but we may at least learn, what a thing of danger it is, under the government of a holy and inflexible God, to tamper with the limits of obe- But this history furnishes the materials dience. By the eating of that apple, a clear of a contemplation still more practical. If, requirement was broken, and a distinct for this one offence, Adam and his posterity transition was made from loyalty to rebel- have been so visited-if so rigorously and lion, and an entrance was effected into the so inflexibly precise be the spirit of God's region of sin-and thus did this one act administration-if, under the economy of serve like the opening of a gate for a torrent heaven, sin, even in the very humblest of of mighty mischief; and if the act itself was its exhibitions, be the object of an intolera trifle, it just went to aggravate its guilt-ance so jealous and so unrelenting-if the that, for such a trifle, the authority of God Deity be such as this transaction manifests could be despised and trampled on. At all him to be, disdainful of fellowship even with |