er in the wintry night,
or down at the grave that lies, somewhere, for the digging across his
path, must feel that a lie for him, knowing his place, knowing himself,
that a lie for him is accursed.

We want the truth always--clear-eyed, sharp-cut, marble-faced truth. We
want to know the facts and realities of our position, just as they are.
The mariner sails away into the lonely sea. The mystery of the
unfathomed deep sways miles down beneath his passing keel. The mystery
of the overarching heavens swims far above with mazy constellation and
revolving sphere. Between the mystery of the sky and the mystery of the
sea he steers right on, in calm and tempest confident, in night and
noonday secure. For he there, on the trackless wastes that girdle in the
great wide world, alone with the silence of Nature and God, _knows_ the
facts of his position, the realities of his place. The charts lie spread
before him. Island, continent, lone sea-rock, hidden shoal, they are all
mapped to his eye. The faithful needle points due north. The true sun
rises where he always has. The faithful, changeless stars look down at
midnight. The truth saves him, rocked in the arms of the wild sea. The
reality holds him secure. Ask him, looking out, in the night watch, over
the black sea and up to the inky deeps, and down to the dim-lighted
compass before him, ask him his opinion of _a lie_! What his honest
notion may be about a false light on yonder headland, a false latitude
on his chart for this island or that shoal, a mistaken measurement of
depth across this bay or through yonder straits! Ask him the nature and
effects of _a lie_ in the chart he sails by!

And we are all sailors. We want true charts. The false chart is our
ruin. The false beacon on the headland is kindled by the fiends. It
leads to death--a wreck-strewn sea, dashing white up the black cliffs,
and bubbling cries, rising above the tempest's roar and the surges'
boom, as, one by one, the swimmers sink to darkness through the foam!

Nay, for us, sailors over life's seas, sailors into eternity's dimness,
the lie wears its Father's likeness. And the liar, the man who makes a
lie, or helps a lie to success, a lie of word or deed, a lying boast
merely, or a bad, vile, lying system, is my enemy, your enemy,
humanity's enemy. He has deserted God's army, has denied his human
brotherhood so far, has gone over, soul and body, to Satan. He is God's
enemy and man's thenceforward.

That, I