The Mosaic law taught, "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour;" and in the book of the prophet Isaiah it is written, "Ye are my witnesses, saith the Lord." To bear false witness is to voice a lie; or, to go back farther, it is to think a lie, to allow a false belief to enter our consciousness. It is evident, therefore, that the surest way to avoid falling into the snare of thinking or uttering a lie is to bear witness to God, Truth—to be a true witness. How can we do this? To be a reliable and true witness is a very important undertaking. Many a person unjustly accused of wrongdoing has obtained his freedom through the testimony of a true witness.
On page 83 of "Miscellaneous Writings" Mary Baker Eddy writes of man "as a living witness to and perpetual idea of inexhaustible good." To be a true witness in the highest sense is to know only God, good, as reality. To witness truly for our neighbor is to see him at all times as made in God's image, as a spiritual idea; it is to obey spiritual sense, and to deny material sense, which can only speak falsely, because it is itself false.
Material sense, the false witness, may tell us that our neighbor is sick, lame, poor, old, angry. None of these things are true. Man, made in God's image, cannot be changed from perfection and completeness to imperfection and incompleteness; that which is permanent has always been, is now, and always will be the same. That which material sense sees as sick, lame, poor, old, angry, is a false mortal concept, and is not God's man, His spiritual idea.
