“But, Mr. Moody,” you say, “how can I check myself? how can I overcome the habit of lying and gossip?” A lady once said to me that she had got so into the habit of exaggerating that her friends said they could never understand her.

The cure is simple, but not very pleasant. Treat it as a sin, and confess it to God and the man whom you have wronged. As soon as you catch yourself lying, go straight to the person and confess you have lied. Let your confession be as wide as your transgression. If you have slandered or lied about any one in public, let your confession be public. Many a person says some mean, false thing about another in the presence of others, and then tries to patch it up by going to that person alone. That is not making restitution. I need not go to God with confession until I have made it right with that person, if it is in my power to do so; He will not hear me.

Hannah Moore’s method was a sure cure for scandal. Whenever she was told anything derogatory of another, her invariable reply was:

“Come, we will go and ask if it be true.”

The effect was sometimes ludicrously painful. The talebearer was taken aback, stammered out a qualification, or begged that no notice might be taken of the statement. But the good lady was inexorable. Off she took the scandal-monger to the scandalized to make inquiry and compare accounts.

It is not likely that anybody ventured a second time to repeat a gossipy story to Hannah Moore.

My friend, how is it? If God should weigh you against this commandment, would you be found wanting? “Thou shalt not bear false witness.” Are you innocent or guilty?

“Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbor’s.”

In the twelfth chapter of Luke our Saviour lifted two danger signals. “Beware ye of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. . . . Take heed and beware of covetousness.”

The greatest dupe the devil has in the world is the hypocrite; but the next greatest is the covetous man, “for a man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth.”

I believe this sin is much stronger now than ever before in the world’s history. We are not in the habit of condemning it as a sin. In his epistle to the Thessalonians Paul speaks of “the cloke of covetousness.” Covetous men use it as a cloke, and call it prudence, and foresight. Who ever heard it confessed as a sin? I have heard many confessions, in public and private, during the past forty years, but never have I heard a man confess that he was guilty of this sin. The Bible does not tell of one man who ever recovered from it, and in all my experience I do not recall many who have been able to shake it off after it had fastened on them. A covetous man or woman generally remains covetous to the very end.

We may say that covetous desire plunged the human race into sin. We can trace the river back from age to age until we get to its rise in Eden. When Eve saw that the forbidden fruit was good for food and that it was desirable to the eyes, she partook of it, and Adam with her. They were not satisfied with all that God had showered upon them, but coveted the wisdom of gods which Satan deceitfully told them might be obtained by eating the fruit. She saw,—she desired—then she took! Three steps from innocence into sin.