Listen to proverbs such as these; surely they are penetrated with the assurance that one who, Himself being The Truth, will make truth in small and in great to triumph at the last, is ruling over all: and first, hear a proverb of our own: _A lie has no legs_; it is one true alike in its humblest application and its highest; be the lie the miserable petty falsehood which disturbs a family or a neighbourhood for a day; or one of the larger frauds, the falsehoods not in word only but in act, to which a longer date and a far larger sphere are assigned, which for a time seem to fill the world, and to carry everything in triumph before them. Still the lie, in that it is a lie, always carries within itself the germs of its own dissolution. It is sure to destroy itself at last. Its priests may prop it up from without, may set it on its feet again, after it has once fallen before the presence of the truth, yet this all will be labour in vain; it will only be, like Dagon, again to fall, and more shamefully and more irretrievably than before.[182] On the other hand, the vivacity of the truth, as contrasted with this short-lived character of the lie, is well expressed in a Swiss proverb: _It takes a good many shovelfuls of earth to bury the truth_. For, bury it as deep as men may, it will have a resurrection notwithstanding. They may roll a great stone, and seal the sepulchre in which it is laid, and set a watch upon it, yet still, like its Lord, it comes forth again at its appointed hour. It cannot die, being of an immortal race; for, as the Spanish proverb nobly declares, _The truth is daughter of God_.[183]