The same man may break both commandments, or one group of men may be tempted to break one and another group of men the other. In our civic life the worst offenders against the law of honesty owe no small part of their immunity to those who sin against the law by bearing false witness against their honest neighbors. The sin is, of course, peculiarly revolting when coupled with hypocrisy, when it is committed in the name of morality. Few politicians do as much harm as the newspaper editor, the clergyman, or the lay reformer who, day in and day out, by virulent and untruthful invective aimed at the upholders of honesty, weakens them for the benefit of the frankly vicious. We need fearless criticism of dishonest men, and of honest men on any point where they go wrong; but even more do we need criticism which shall be truthful both in what it says and in what it leaves unsaid—truthful in words and truthful in the impression it designs to leave upon the readers’ or hearers’ minds. We need absolute honesty in public life; and we shall not get it until we remember that truth-telling must go hand in hand with it, and that it is quite as important not to tell an untruth about a decent man as it is to tell the truth about one who is not decent. THE BEST AND THE GOOD PUBLISHED IN THE “CHURCHMAN,” MARCH 17, 1900 Among the people to whom we are all under a very real debt of obligation for the help they give to those seeking for good government at Albany is Bishop Doane. All of us who at the State capital have been painfully striving to wrest, often from adverse conditions, the best results obtainable, are strengthened and heartened in every way by the active interest the bishop takes in every good cause, the keen intelligence with which he sees “the instant need of things,” and the sane and wholesome spirit, as remote from fanaticism as from cynicism, in which he approaches all public questions. Quite unconsciously the bishop the other day gave an admirable summing up of his own attitude in quoting an extract from the “Life” of Archbishop Benson. In a letter which the archbishop wrote to his chancellor in regard to a bill regulating patronage in the Church of England occurs the following passage: “The bill does not, of course, represent my ideal, but it is a careful collection of points which could be claimed, which it would be indecent to refuse, and which would make a considerable difference about our powers of dealing rightly with cases. Gain that platform, and it would be a footing for more ideal measures. I do not want the best to be any more the deadly enemy of the good. We climb through degrees of comparison.”