In our society, honesty is a good thing, but is it a principle beyond what the law and social mores claim? In other words, can you get away with dishonesty if you are not caught and convicted, or if your conscience does not restrain you? It might appear so, but this is the limited human perspective.
In the higher order of things, as though thundering from Mt Sinai, “Honesty is spiritual power; dishonesty is human weakness which forfeits divine help.” *
The honesty referred to here is beyond the personal view. It is a law of the universe.
To illustrate, there have been times in my own experience, when, despite my own presumption of honesty, I have traced a lack of peace within to some dishonesty I was indulging. The awful, gnawing anxiety indicated I had forfeited divine help! Only after facing and relinquishing the dishonesty had my peace returned. Note that the premise here is that the loss of peace is never God-given, as stated in the Bible: “God has not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.” It would follow that dishonesty interferes with our receptivity to what God is naturally giving us and honesty restores that receptivity.
So now we find that spiritual power which includes love and a sound mind is not something we manufacture for ourselves as is beautifully described in the Bible:
“Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.”
* from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy