Page:TheYoungMansGuide.djvu/237

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enthusiasm! Let your motto always be; Truth above all!

4. An honest, upright, straightforward man is a universal favorite. No one can tolerate a liar and a deceiver; he is despised and avoided. Even when he speaks the truth he is not believed.

How often one hears it said: "Such and such a one is not to be trusted; he is one mass of lies and falsehood." Would you like to have a character such as this? And the words of Holy Scripture are, and will remain true: "A lie is a foul blot in a man." Therefore truth above all I Avoid every kind of lie!

5. Nor allow yourself to be ever persuaded into any kind of dissimulation. Remember the aged Eleazar, who was urged to deny his faith by eating pork. "His friends desired that flesh might be brought which it was lawful for him to eat, that he might pretend that he had eaten, as the king had commanded." But the noble old man replied: "It doth not become our age to dissemble." Indeed it does not become the old man to dissemble, nor the young man either, nor even a child.

If a young man behaves in a friendly manner to any one's face, but in his heart hates and despises this person, and ridicules him in secret, he plays the part of a hypocrite. In a similar manner did Judas salute and kiss the divine Redeemer on the Mount of