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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10591 ***
+
+A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE
+
+A Study in Ethics
+
+BY
+
+H. CLAY TRUMBULL
+
+1856
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+That there was need of a book on the subject of which this treats,
+will be evidenced to those who examine its contents. Whether this book
+meets the need, it is for those to decide who are its readers.
+
+The circumstances of its writing are recited in its opening chapter. I
+was urged to the undertaking by valued friends. At every step in its
+progress I have been helped by those friends, and others. For much
+of that which is valuable in it, they deserve credit. For its
+imperfections and lack, I alone am at fault.
+
+Although I make no claim to exhaustiveness of treatment in this
+work, I do claim to have attempted a treatment that is exceptionally
+comprehensive and thorough. My researches have included extensive and
+varied fields of fact and of thought, even though very much in those
+fields has been left ungathered. What is here presented is at least
+suggestive of the abundance and richness of the matter available in
+this line.
+
+While not presuming to think that I have said the last word on this
+question of the ages, I do venture to hope that I have furnished fresh
+material for its more intelligent consideration. It may be that, in
+view of the data here presented, some will settle the question finally
+for themselves--by settling it right.
+
+If the work tends to bring any considerable number to this practical
+issue, I shall be more than repaid for the labor expended on it; for
+I have a profound conviction that it is the question of questions in
+ethics, now as always.
+
+H. CLAY TRUMBULL.
+
+PHILADELPHIA,
+
+August 14,1893
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+I.
+
+A QUESTION OF THE AGES.
+
+Is a Lie Ever Justifiable?--Two Proffered Answers.--Inducements
+and Temptations Influencing a Decision.--Incident in Army Prison
+Life.--Difference in Opinion.--Killing Enemy, or Lying to
+Him.--Killing, but not Lying, Possibility with God.--Beginning of this
+Discussion.--Its Continuance.--Origin of this Book.
+
+
+II.
+
+ETHNIC CONCEPTIONS.
+
+Standards and Practices of Primitive Peoples.--Sayings and Doings of
+Hindoos.--Teachings of the Mahabharata.--Harischandra and
+Viswamitra, the Job and Satan of Hindoo Passion-Play.--Scandinavian
+Legends.--Fridthjof and Ingeborg.--Persian Ideals.--Zoroastrian Heaven
+and Hell.--"Home of Song," and "Home of the Lie."--Truth the Main
+Cardinal Virtue with Egyptians.--No Hope for the Liar.--Ptah, "Lord
+of Truth."--Truth Fundamental to Deity.--Relatively Low Standard
+of Greeks.--Incidental Testimony of Herodotus.--Truthfulness of
+Achilles.--Plato.--Aristotle.--Theognis.--Pindar.--Tragedy of
+Philoctetes.--Roman Standard.--Cicero.--Marcus Aurelius.--German
+Ideal.--Veracity a Primitive Conception.--Lie Abhorrent among Hill
+Tribes of India.--Khonds.--Sonthals.--Todas.--Bheels.--Sowrahs.--
+Tipperahs.--Arabs.--American Indians.--Patagonians.--Hottentots.--
+East Africans.--Mandingoes.--Dyaks of Borneo,--"Lying Heaps."--Veddahs
+of Ceylon.--Javanese.--Lying Incident of Civilization.--Influence of
+Spirit of Barter.--"Punic Faith."--False Philosophy of Morals.
+
+
+III.
+
+BIBLE TEACHINGS.
+
+Principles, not Rules, the Bible Standard.--Two Pictures of
+Paradise.--Place of Liars.--God True, though Men Lie.--Hebrew
+Midwives.--Jacob and Esau.--Rahab the Lying Harlot.--Samuel at
+Bethlehem.--Micaiah before Jehoshaphat and Ahab.--Character
+and Conduct.--Abraham.--Isaac.--Jacob.--David.--Ananias and
+Sapphira.--Bible Injunctions and Warnings.
+
+
+IV.
+
+DEFINITIONS.
+
+Importance of a Definition.--Lie Positive, and Lie Negative.--Speech
+and Act.--Element of Intention.--Concealment Justifiable, and
+Concealment Unjustifiable.--Witness in Court.--Concealment that is
+Right.--Concealment that is Sinful.--First Duty of Fallen Man.--Brutal
+Frankness.--Indecent Exposure of Personal Opinion.--Lie Never
+Tolerable as Means of Concealing.--False Leg or Eye.--Duty of
+Disclosure Conditioned on Relations to Others.--Deception Purposed,
+and Resultant Deception.--Limits of Responsibility for Results of
+Action.--Surgeon Refusing to Leave Patient.--Father with Drowning
+Child.--Mother and Wife Choosing.--Others Self-Deceived concerning
+Us.--Facial Expression.--"A Blind Patch."--Broken Vase.--Closed
+Shutters in Midsummer.--Opened Shutters.--Absent Man's Hat in
+Front Hall.--When Concealment is Proper.--When Concealment is
+Wrong.--Contagious Diseases.--Selling a Horse or Cow.--Covering
+Pit.--Wearing Wig.--God's Method with Man.--Delicate Distinction.--
+Truthful Statements Resulting in False Impressions.--Concealing
+Family Trouble.--Physician and Inquiring Patient.--Illustrations
+Explain Principle, not Define it.
+
+
+V.
+
+THE PLEA OF "NECESSITY."
+
+Quaker and Dry-goods Salesman.--Supposed Profitableness of
+Lying.--Plea for "Lies of Necessity."--Lying not Justifiable between
+Enemies in War-time.--Rightfulness of Concealing Movements and Plans
+from Enemy.--Responsibility with Flag of Truce.--Difference
+between Scout and Spy.--Ethical Distinctions Recognized by
+Belligerents.--Illustration: Federal Prisoner Questioned by
+Confederate Captors.--Libby Prison Experiences.--Physicians and
+Patients.--Concealment not Necessarily Deception.--Loss of
+Reputation for Truthfulness by Lying Physicians.--Loss of
+Power Thereby.--Impolicy of Lying to Insane.--Dr. Kirkbride's
+Testimony.--Life not Worth Saving by Lie.--Concealing One's Condition
+from Robber in Bedroom.--Questions of Would-be Murderer.--"Do Right
+though the Heavens Fall."--Duty to God not to be Counted out of
+Problem.--Deserting God's Service by Lying.--Parting Prayer.
+
+
+VI.
+
+CENTURIES OF DISCUSSION.
+
+Wide Differences of Opinion.--Views of Talmudists.--Hamburger's
+Testimony.--Strictness in Principle.--Exceptions in Practice.--Isaac
+Abohab's Testimony.--Christian Fathers not Agreed.--Martyrdom Price
+of Truthtelling.--Justin Martyr's Testimony.--Temptations of
+Early Christians.--Words of Shepherd of Hermas.--Tertullian's
+Estimate.--Origen on False Speaking.--Peter and Paul at Antioch.--
+Gregory of Nyssa and Basil the Great.--Deceit in Interests of
+Harmony.--Chrysostom's Deception of Basil.--Chrysostom's Defense
+of Deceit.--Augustine's Firmness of Position.--Condemnation of
+Lying.--Examination of Excuses.--Jerome's Weakness and Error.--Final
+Agreement with Augustine.--Repetition of Arguments of Augustine and
+Chrysostom.--Representative Disputants.--Thomas Aquinas.--Masterly
+Discussion.--Errors of Duns Scotus.--John Calvin.--Martin Luther.--
+Ignatius Loyola.--Position of Jesuits.--Protestants Defending Lying.
+--Jeremy Taylor.--Errors and Inconsistencies.--Wrong Definitions.--
+Misapplication of Scripture.--Richard Rothe.--Character, Ability,
+and Influence. in Definition of Lie.--Failure to Recognize.--Error
+Love to God as Only Basis of Love to Man.--Exceptions in Favor of
+Lying.--Nitzsch's Claim of Wiser and Nobler Methods than Lying in
+Love.--Rothe's Claim of Responsibility of Loving Guardianship--No
+Countenance of Deception in Example of Jesus.--Prime Error of Rothe.
+--Opinions of Contemporary Critics.--Isaac Augustus Dorner.--
+Character and Principles.--Keen Definitions.--High Standards.--
+Clearness and Consistency.--Hans Lassen Martensen.--Logic Swayed by
+Feeling.--Right Premises and Wavering Reasonings.--Lofty Ideals.--
+Story of Jeanie Deans.--Correct Conclusions.--Influence of Personal
+Peculiarities on Ethical Convictions.--Contrast of Charles Hodge and
+James H. Thornwell.--Dr. Hodge's Correct Premises and Amiable
+Inconsistencies.--Truth the Substratum of Deity.--Misconceptions of
+Bible Teachings.--Suggestion of Deception by Jesus Christ.--Error as
+to General Opinion of Christians.--Dr. Hodge's Conclusions Crushed
+by his Premises.--Dr. Thornwell's Thorough Treatment of Subject.--
+Right Basis.--Sound Argument.--Correct Definitions.--Firmness for
+Truth.--Newman Smyth's Manual.--Good Beginning and Bad Ending.--
+Confusion of Terms.--Inconsistencies in Argument.--Loose Reasoning.
+--Dangerous Teachings.--James Martineau.--Fine Moral Sense.--Conflict
+between Feeling and Conviction.--Safe Instincts.--Thomas Fowler.--
+Higher Expediency of Veracity.--Importance to General Good.--Leslie
+Stephen.--Duty of Veracity Result of Moral Progress.--Kant and
+Fichte.--Jacobi Misrepresented.--False Assumptions by Advocates of Lie
+of Necessity.--Enemies in Warfare not Justified in Lying.--Testimony
+of Cicero.--Macaulay on Lord Clive's Treachery.--Woolsey on
+International Law.--No Place for Lying in Medical Ethics.--Opinions
+and Experiences of Physicians.--Pliny's Story of Roman Matron.--Victor
+Hugo's Sister Simplice.--Words of Abbé Sicard.--Tact and
+Principle.--Legal Ethics.--Whewell's View.--Opinion of Chief-Justice
+Sharswood.--Mistakes of Dr. Hodge.--Lord Brougham's Claim.--False
+Charge against Charles Phillips.--Chancellor Kent on Moral
+Obligations in Law and in Equity.--Clerical Profession Chiefly
+Involved.--Clergymen for and against Lying.--Temptation to Lies of
+Love.--Supreme Importance of Sound Principle.--Duty of Veracity to
+Lower Animals.--Dr. Dabney's View.--Views of Dr. Newman Smyth.--Duty
+of Truthfulness an Obligation toward God.--Lower Animals not Exempt
+from Principle of Universal Application.--Fishing.--Hunting.--Catching
+Horse.--Professor Bowne's Psychological View.--No Place for Lying
+in God's Universe.--Small Improvement on Chrysostom's Argument for
+Lying.--Limits of Consistency in Logical Plea.--God, or Satan.
+
+
+VII.
+
+THE GIST OF THE MATTER.
+
+One All-Dividing Line.--Primal and Eternal Difference.--Lie Inevitably
+Hostile to God.--Lying Separates from God.--Sin _per se_.--Perjury
+Justifiable if Lying be Justifiable.--Lying--Lying Defiles Liar,
+apart from Questions of Gain in Lying.--Social Evils Resultant from
+Lying.--Confidence Essential to Society.--Lying Destructive of
+Confidence.--Lie Never Harmless.
+
+
+INDEXES.
+
+TOPICAL INDEX. SCRIPTURAL INDEX.
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+A QUESTION OF THE AGES.
+
+
+Whether a lie is ever justifiable, is a question that has been in
+discussion, not only in all the Christian centuries, but ever since
+questions concerning human conduct were first a possibility. On
+the one hand, it has been claimed that a lie is by its very nature
+irreconcilable with the eternal principles of justice and right; and,
+on the other hand, it has been asserted that great emergencies may
+necessitate a departure from all ordinary rules of human conduct, and
+that therefore there may be, in an emergency, such a thing as the "lie
+of necessity."
+
+It is not so easy to consider fairly a question like this in the hour
+when vital personal interests pivot on the decision, as it is in a
+season of rest and safety; yet, if in a time of extremest peril the
+unvarying duty of truthfulness shines clearly through an atmosphere of
+sore temptation, that light may be accepted as diviner because of its
+very power to penetrate clouds and to dispel darkness. Being forced to
+consider, in an emergency, the possible justification of the so-called
+"lie of necessity," I was brought to a settlement of that question in
+my own mind, and have since been led to an honest endeavor to bring
+others to a like settlement of it. Hence this monograph.
+
+In the summer of 1863 I was a prisoner of war in Columbia, South
+Carolina. The Federal prisoners were confined in the common jail,
+under military guard, and with no parole binding them not to attempt
+an escape. They were subject to the ordinary laws of war. Their
+captors were responsible for their detention in imprisonment, and it
+was their duty to escape from captivity, and to return to the army of
+the government to which they owed allegiance, if they could do so by
+any right means. No obligations were on them toward their captors,
+save those which are binding at all times, even when a state of war
+suspends such social duties as are merely conventional.
+
+Only he who has been a prisoner of war in a Southern prison in
+midsummer, or in a Northern prison in the dead of winter, in time of
+active hostilities outside, can fully realize the heart-longings of a
+soldier prisoner to find release from his sufferings in confinement,
+and to be again at his post of duty at the front, or can understand
+how gladly such a man would find a way, consistent with the right, to
+escape, at any involved risk. But all can believe that plans of escape
+were in frequent discussion among the restless Federal prisoners in
+Columbia, of whom I was one.
+
+A plan proposed to me by a fellow-officer seemed to offer peculiar
+chances of success, and I gladly joined in it. But as its fuller
+details were considered, I found that a probable contingency would
+involve the telling of a lie to an enemy, or a failure of the
+whole plan. At this my moral sense recoiled; and I expressed my
+unwillingness to tell a lie, even to regain my personal liberty or
+to advantage my government by a return to its army. This opened an
+earnest discussion of the question whether there is such a thing as a
+"lie of necessity," or a justifiable lie. My friend was a pure-minded
+man of principle, ready to die for his convictions; and he looked at
+this question with a sincere desire to know the right, and to conform
+to it. He argued that a condition of war suspended ordinary social
+relations between the combatants, and that the obligation of
+truth-speaking was one of the duties thus suspended. I, on the other
+hand, felt that a lie was necessarily a sin against God, and therefore
+was never justifiable.
+
+My friend asked me whether I would hesitate to kill an enemy who was
+on guard over me, or whom I met outside, if it were essential to our
+escape. I replied that I would not hesitate to do so, any more than I
+would hesitate at it if we were over against each other in battle.
+In time of war the soldiers of both sides take the risks of a
+life-and-death struggle; and now that we were unparoled prisoners it
+was our duty to escape if we could do so, even at the risk of our
+lives or of the lives of our captors, and it was their duty to
+prevent our escape at a similar risk. My friend then asked me on what
+principle I could justify the taking of a man's life as an enemy, and
+yet not feel justified in telling him a lie in order to save his life
+and secure our liberty. How could it be claimed that it was more of a
+sin to tell a lie to a man who had forfeited his social rights, than
+to kill him. I confessed that I could not at that time see the reason
+for the distinction, which my moral sense assured me was a real one,
+and I asked time to think of it. Thus it was that I came first to face
+a question of the ages, Is a lie ever justifiable? under circumstances
+that involved more than life to me, and when I had a strong inducement
+to see the force of reasons in favor of a "lie of necessity."
+
+In my careful study, at that time, of the principles involved in this
+question, I came upon what seemed to me the conclusion of the whole
+matter. God is the author of life. He who gives life has the right to
+take it again. What God can do by himself, God can authorize another
+to do. Human governments derive their just powers from God. The powers
+that be are ordained of God. A human government acts for God in the
+administering of justice, even to the extent of taking life. If a
+war waged by a human government be righteous, the officers of that
+government take life, in the prosecution of the war, as God's agents.
+In the case then in question, we who were in prison as Federal
+officers were representatives of our government, and would be
+justified in taking the lives of enemies of our government who
+hindered us as God's agents in the doing of our duty to God and to our
+government.
+
+On the other hand, God, who can justly take life, cannot lie. A lie
+is contrary to the very nature of God. "It is impossible for God to
+lie."[1] And if God cannot lie, God cannot authorize another to lie.
+What is unjustifiable in God's sight, is without a possibility of
+justification in the universe. No personal or social emergency can
+justify a lie, whatever may be its apparent gain, or whatever harm may
+seem to be involved in a refusal to speak it. Therefore we who were
+Federal prisoners in war-time could not be justified in doing what
+was a sin _per se_, and what God was by his very nature debarred
+from authorizing or approving. I could see no way of evading
+this conclusion, and I determinedly refused to seek release from
+imprisonment at the cost of a sin against God.
+
+[Footnote 1: Heb. 6: 18]
+
+At this time I had no special familiarity with ethics as a study, and
+I was unacquainted with the prominence of the question of the "lie
+of necessity" in that realm of thought. But on my return from army
+service, with my newly awakened interest in the subject, I came to
+know how vigorous had been its discussion, and how varied had been the
+opinions with reference to it, among philosophic thinkers in all
+the centuries; and I sought to learn for myself what could be known
+concerning the principles involved in this question, and their
+practical application to the affairs of human life. And now, after all
+these years of study and thought, I venture to make my contribution
+to this phase of Christian ethics, in an exhibit of the facts and
+principles which have gone to confirm the conviction of my own
+moral sense, when first I was called to consider this question as a
+question.
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+ETHNIC CONCEPTIONS.
+
+
+The habit of lying is more or less common among primitive peoples, as
+it is among those of higher cultivation; but it is of interest to note
+that widely, even among them, the standard of truthfulness as a duty
+is recognized as the correct standard, and lying is, in theory at
+least, a sin. The highest conception of right observable among
+primitive peoples, and not the average conformity to that standard in
+practice, is the true measure of right in the minds of such peoples.
+If we were to look at the practices of such men in times of
+temptation, we might be ready to say sweepingly with the Psalmist, in
+his impulsiveness, "I said in my haste, All men are liars!"[1] But if
+we fixed our minds on the loftiest conception of truthfulness as an
+invariable duty, recognized by races of men who are notorious as
+liars, we should see how much easier it is to have a right standard
+than to conform to it.
+
+[Footnote 1: Psa. 116: II.]
+
+A careful observer of the people of India, who was long a resident
+among them,[1] says: "More systematic, more determined, liars, than
+the people of the East, cannot, in my opinion, be found in the world.
+They often utter falsehoods without any apparent reason; and even when
+truth would be an advantage, they will not tell it.... Yet, strange to
+say, some of their works and sayings represent a falsehood as almost
+the unpardonable sin. Take the following for an example: 'The sin of
+killing a Brahman is as great as that of killing a hundred cows; and
+the sin of killing a hundred cows is as great as that of killing a
+woman; the sin of killing a hundred women is as great as that of
+killing a child in the womb; and the sin of killing a hundred
+[children] in the womb is as great as that of telling a lie.'"
+
+[Footnote 1: Joseph Roberts, in his _Oriental Illustrations_, p. 580.]
+
+The Mahabharata is one of the great epics of ancient India. It
+contains a history of a war between two rival families, or peoples,
+and its text includes teachings with reference to "everything that it
+concerned a cultivated Hindoo to know." The heroes in this recorded
+war, between the Pandavas and the Kauravas, are in the habit of lying
+without stint; yet there is evidence that they recognized the sin of
+lying even to an enemy in time of war, and when a decisive advantage
+might be gained by it. At a point in the combat when Yudhishthira, a
+leader of the Pandavas, was in extremity in his battling with Drona, a
+leader of the Kauravas, the divine Krishna told Yudhishthira that, if
+he would tell Drona (for in these mythical contests the combatants
+were usually within speaking distance of each other) that his loved
+"son Aswatthanea was dead, the old warrior would immediately lay down
+his arms and become an easy prey." But Yudhishthira "had never been
+known to tell a falsehood," and in this instance he "utterly refused
+to tell a lie, even to secure the death of so powerful an enemy." [1]
+Although it came about that Drona was, as a matter of fact, defeated
+by treachery, the sin of lying, even in time of war, and to an enemy,
+is clearly brought out as a recognized principle of both theory and
+action among the ancient Hindoos.
+
+[Footnote 1: See Wheeler's _History of India_, I., 321.]
+
+There is a famous passion-play popular in Southern India and Ceylon,
+which illustrates the Hindoo ideal of truthfulness at every risk or
+cost. Viswamitra, the tempter and accuser as represented in the Vedas,
+appears in the council of the gods, face to face with Indra. The
+question is raised by Indra, who is the most virtuous sovereign on
+earth. He asks, "What chief of mortals is there, who has never told
+a lie?" Harischandra, king of Ayodiah (Oude) is named as such a
+man. Viswamitra denies it. It is agreed (as in the testing of Job,
+according to the Bible story) that Viswamitra may employ any means
+whatsoever for the inducing of Harischandra to lie, unhindered by
+Indra or any other god. If he succeeds in his effort, he shall secure
+to himself all the merit of the good deeds of Harischandra; but if
+Harischandra cannot be induced to lie, Viswamitra must add half his
+merit to that of Harischandra.[1]
+
+[Footnote 1: Arichandra, the Martyr of Truth: A Tamil Drama translated
+into English by Muta Coomâra Swâmy; cited in Conway's _Demonology and
+Devil Lore_, II., 35-43.]
+
+First, Viswamitra induces Harischandra to become the custodian of a
+fabulous treasure, with a promise to deliver it up when called
+for. Then he brings him into such a strait that he must give up to
+Viswamitra all his possessions, including that treasure and his
+kingdom, in order to retain his personal virtue. After this,
+Viswamitra demands the return by Harischandra of the gold which
+has been already surrendered, claiming that its surrender was not
+according to the contract. In this emergency Viswamitra suggests, that
+if Harischandra will only deny that he owes this amount to his enemy
+the debt shall at once be canceled. "Such a declaration I can never
+make," says Harischandra. "I owe thee the gold, and pay it I will."
+
+From this time forward the efforts of Viswamitra are directed to
+the inducing of Harischandra to say that he is not in debt to his
+adversary; but in every trial Harischandra refuses to tell a lie.
+His only son dies in the desert. He and his wife are in poverty
+and sorrow; while all the time he is told that his kingdom and his
+treasures shall be restored to him, if he will tell only one lie. At
+last his wife is condemned to death on a false accusation, and he is
+appointed, by the sovereign of the land where she and he have been
+sold as slaves, to be her executioner. She calls on him to do his
+duty, and strike off her head. Just then Viswamitra appears to him,
+saying: "Wicked man, spare her! Tell a lie even now, and be restored
+to your former state!"
+
+Harischandra's answer is: "Even though thou didst offer to me
+the throne of Indra, I would not tell a lie." And to his wife,
+Chandravati, he says encouragingly: "This keen saber will do its duty.
+Thou dead, thy husband dies too--this selfsame sword shall pierce my
+breast.... Yes, let all men perish, let all gods cease to exist, let
+the stars that shine above grow dim, let all seas be dried up, let
+all mountains be leveled to the ground, let wars rage, blood flow in
+streams, let millions of millions of Harischandras be thus persecuted;
+yet let truth be maintained, let truth ride victorious over all, let
+truth be the light,--truth alone the lasting solace of mortals and
+immortals."
+
+As Harischandra strikes at the neck of Chandravati, "the sword,
+instead of harming her, is transformed into a necklace of pearls,
+which winds itself around her. The gods of heaven, all sages, and all
+kings, appear suddenly to the view of Harischandra," and Siva, the
+first of the gods, commends him for his fidelity to truth, and tells
+him that his dead son shall be brought again to life, and his kingdom
+and treasures and honors shall be restored to him. And thus the story
+of Harischandra stands as a rebuke to the Christian philosopher who
+could suppose that God, or the gods, would co-work with a man who
+acted on the supposition that there is such an anomaly in the universe
+as "a lie of necessity."
+
+The old Scandinavian heroes were valiant in war, but they held that
+a lie was not justifiable under any pressure of an emergency. Their
+Valhalla heaven was the home of those who had fought bravely; but
+there was no place for liars in it. A fine illustration of their
+conception of the unvarying duty of truthfulness is given in the saga
+of Fridthjof. Fridthjof, heroic son of Thorstein, loved Ingeborg,
+daughter of his father's friend, King Bele. Ingeborg's brother Helge,
+successor to his father's throne, opposed the match, and shut her up
+within the sacred enclosure of the god Balder. Fridthjof ventured
+within the forbidden ground, in order to pledge to her his manly
+troth. The lovers were pure in purpose and in act, but, if their
+interview were known, they would both be permanently harmed in
+reputation and in standing. A rumor of their secret meeting was
+circulated, and Fridthjof was summoned before the council of heroes to
+answer to the charge. If ever a lie were justifiable, it would seem to
+be when a pure woman's honor was at stake, and when a hero's happiness
+and power for good pivoted on it. Fridthjof tells to Ingeborg the
+story of his sore temptation when, in the presence of the council,
+Helge challenges his course.
+
+    "'Say, Fridthjof, Balder's peace hast thou not broken, Not seen my
+    sister in his house while Day Concealed himself, abashed, before
+    your meeting? Speak! yea or nay!' Then echoed from the ring Of
+    crowded warriors, 'Say but nay, say nay! Thy simple word we'll
+    trust; we'll court for thee,--Thou, Thorstein's son, art good
+    as any king's. Say nay! say nay! and thine is Ingeborg!' 'The
+    happiness,' I answered, 'of my life On one word hangs; but fear
+    not therefore, Helge! I would not lie to gain the joys of Valhal,
+    Much less this earth's delights. I've seen thy sister, Have spoken
+    with her in the temple's night, But have not therefore broken
+    Balder's peace!' More none would hear. A murmur of deep horror The
+    diet traversed; they who nearest stood Drew back, as I had with
+    the plague been smitten."[1]
+
+[Footnote 1: Anderson's _Viking Tales of the North_, p. 223.]
+
+And so, because Fridthjof would not lie, he lost his bride and became
+a wanderer from his land, and Ingeborg became the wife of another;
+and this record is to this day told to the honor of Fridthjof,
+in accordance with the standard of the North in the matter of
+truth-telling.
+
+In ancient Persia, the same high standard prevailed. Herodotus says of
+the Persians: "The most disgraceful thing in the world, they think,
+is to tell a lie; the next worse, to owe a debt; because, among other
+reasons, the debtor is obliged to tell lies."[1] "Their sons are
+carefully instructed, from their fifth to their twentieth year, in
+three things alone,--to ride, to draw the bow, and to speak the
+truth."[2] Here the one duty in the realm of morals is truth-telling.
+In the famous inscription of Darius, the son of Hystaspes, on the Rock
+of Behistun,[3] there are repeated references to lying as the chief of
+sins, and to the evil time when lying was introduced into Persia, and
+"the lie grew in the provinces, in Persia as well as in Media and in
+the other provinces." Darius claims to have had the help of "Ormuzd
+and the other gods that may exist," because he "was not wicked, nor a
+liar;" and he enjoins it on his successor to "punish severely him who
+is a liar or a rebel."
+
+[Footnote 1: Rawlinson's _Herodotus_, Bk. I., § 139.]
+
+[Footnote 2: _Ibid_., Bk. I., § 136.]
+
+[Footnote 3: Sayce's _Introduction to Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther_, pp.
+120-137.]
+
+The Zoroastrian designation of heaven was the "Home of Song;"
+while hell was known as the "Home of the Lie."[1] There was in the
+Zoroastrian thought only two rival principles in the universe,
+represented by Ormuzd and Ahriman, as the God of truth, and the father
+of lies; and the lie was ever and always an offspring of Ahriman, the
+evil principle: it could not emanate from or be consistent with the
+God of truth. The same idea was manifest in the designation of the
+subordinate divinities of the Zoroastrian religion. Mithra was the god
+of light, and as there is no concealment in the light, Mithra was also
+god of truth. A liar was the enemy of righteousness.[2]
+
+[Footnote 1: Müller's _Sacred Books of the East_, XXXI., 184.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Müller's _Sacred Books of the East_, XXIII., 119 f.,
+124 f., 128, 139. See reference to Jackson's paper on "the ancient
+Persians' abhorrence of falsehood, illustrated from the Avesta," in
+_Journal of Am. Oriental Soc_., Vol. XIII., p. cii.]
+
+"Truth was the main cardinal virtue among the Egyptians," and
+"falsehood was considered disgraceful among them."[1] Ra and Ma were
+symbols of Light and Truth; and their representation was worn on the
+breastplate of priest and judge, like the Urim and Thummim of the
+Hebrews.[2] When the soul appeared in the Hall of Two Truths, for
+final judgment, it must be able to say, "I have not told a falsehood,"
+or fail of acquittal.[3] Ptah, the creator, a chief god of the
+Egyptians, was called "Lord of Truth."[4] The Egyptian conception of
+Deity was: "God is the truth, he lives by truth, he lives upon
+the truth, he is the king of truth."[5] The Egyptians, like the
+Zoroastrians, seemed to count the one all-dividing line in the
+universe the line between truth and falsehood, between light and
+darkness.
+
+[Footnote 1: Wilkinson's _Ancient Egyptians_, I., 299; III., 183-185.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Exod. 39: 8-21; Lev. 8: 8.]
+
+[Footnote 3: Bunsen's _Egypt's Place in Universal History_, V., 254.]
+
+[Footnote 4: Wilkinson's _Anc. Egyp_., III., 15-17.]
+
+[Footnote 5: Budge's _The Dwellers on the Nile_, p. 131.]
+
+Among the ancient Greeks the practice of lying was very general,
+so general that writers on the social life of the Greeks have been
+accustomed to give a low place relatively to that people in its
+estimate of truthfulness as a virtue. Professor Mahaffy says on this
+point: "At no period did the nation ever attain that high standard
+which is the great feature in Germanic civilization. Even the Romans,
+with all their coarseness, stood higher in this respect. But neither
+in Iliad nor in Odyssey is there, except in phrases, any reprobation
+of deceit as such." He points to the testimony of Cicero, concerning
+the Greeks, who "concedes to them all the high qualities they choose
+to claim save one--that of truthfulness."[1] Yet the very way in which
+Herodotus tells to the credit of the Persians that they allowed
+no place for the lie in their ethics[2] seems to indicate his
+apprehension of a higher standard of veracity than that which was
+generally observed among his own people. Moreover, in the Iliad,
+Achilles is represented as saying: "Him I hate as I do the gates of
+Hades, who hides one thing in his heart and utters another;" and it
+is the straightforward Achilles, rather than "the wily and shiftful
+Ulysses," who is the admired hero of the Greeks.[3] Plato asserts, and
+argues in proof of his assertion, that "the veritable lie ... is hated
+by all gods and men." He includes in the term "veritable lie," or
+"genuine lie," a lie in the soul as back of the spoken lie, and he
+is sure that "the divine nature is incapable of a lie," and that in
+proportion as the soul of a man is conformed to the divine image,
+the man "will speak, act, and live in accordance with the truth."[4]
+Aristotle, also, while recognizing different degrees of veracity,
+insists that the man who is in his soul a lover of truth will be
+truthful even when he is tempted to swerve from the truth. "For the
+lover of truth, who is truthful where nothing is at stake [or where it
+makes no difference], will yet more surely be truthful where there is
+a stake [or where it does make a difference]; for he will [then] shun
+the lie as shameful, since he shuns it simply because it is a lie."[5]
+And, again, "Falsehood abstractly is bad and blamable, and truth
+honorable and praiseworthy; and thus the truthful man being in
+the mean is praiseworthy, while the false [in either extreme,
+of overstating or of understating] are both blamable, but the
+exaggerating man more so than the other."[6]
+
+[Footnote 1: Mahaffy's _Social Life in Greece_, pp. 27, 123. See also
+Fowler's _Principles of Morals_, II., 219-221.]
+
+[Footnote 2: _Hist_., Bk. I., §139.]
+
+[Footnote 3: Professor Fowler seems to be quite forgetful of this
+fact. He speaks of Ulysses as if he had precedence of Achilles in the
+esteem of the Greeks. See his _Principles of Morals_, II., 219.]
+
+[Footnote 4: Plato's _Republic_, II., 382, a, b.]
+
+[Footnote 5: Aristotle's _Eth. Nic_., IV., 13, 1127, a, b.]
+
+[Footnote 6: _Ibid_., IV.]
+
+Theognis recognizes this high ideal of the duty and the beauty of
+truthfulness, when he says: "At first there is a small attractiveness
+about a lie, but in the end the gain it brings is both shameful and
+harmful. That man has no fair glory, in whose heart dwells a lie, and
+from whose mouth it has once issued."[1]
+
+[Footnote 1: Theognis, 607.]
+
+Pindar looks toward the same standard when he says to Hiero,
+"Forge thy tongue on the anvil of truth;"[1] and when he declares
+emphatically, "I will not stain speech with a lie."[2] So, again, when
+his appeal to a divinity is: "Thou that art the beginning of lofty
+virtue, Lady Truth, forbid thou that my poem [or composition] should
+stumble against a lie, harsh rock of offense."[3] In his tragedy of
+the Philoctetes, Sophocles makes the whole play pivot on the remorse
+of Neoptolemus, son of Achilles, over his having lied to Philoctetes
+(who is for the time being an enemy of the Greeks), in order to secure
+through him the killing of Paris and the overthrow of Troy. The lie
+was told at the instigation of Ulysses; but Neoptolemus repents its
+utterance, and refuses to take advantage of it, even though the fate
+of Troy and the triumph of Greek arms depend on the issue. The plain
+teaching of the tragedy is that "the purposes of heaven are not to
+be served by a lie; and that the simplicity of the young son of
+truth-loving Achilles is better in the sight of heaven, even when
+it seems to lead to failure, than all the cleverness of guileful
+Ulysses."[4]
+
+[Footnote 1: Pythian Ode, I, 86.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Olympian Ode, 4, 16.]
+
+[Footnote 3: Bergk's _Pindar_, 183 [221].]
+
+[Footnote 4: Professor Lamberton]
+
+It is admitted on all hands that the Romans and the Germans had a high
+ideal as to the duty of truthfulness and the sin of lying.[1] And so
+it was in fact with all peoples which had any considerable measure of
+civilization in former ages. It is a noteworthy fact that the duty of
+veracity is often more prominent among primitive peoples than among
+the more civilized, and that, correspondingly, lying is abhorred as a
+vice, or seems to be unknown as an expedient in social intercourse.
+This is not always admitted in the theories of writers on morals, but
+it would seem to be borne out by an examination into the facts of
+the case. Lecky, in his study of "the natural history of morals,"[2]
+claims that veracity "usually increases with civilization," and he
+seeks to show why it is so. But this view of Lecky's is an unfounded
+assumption, in support of which he proffers no evidence; while Herbert
+Spencer's exhibit of facts, in his "Cyclopaedia of Descriptive
+Sociology," seems to disprove the claim of Lecky; and he directly
+asserts that "surviving remnants of some primitive races in India have
+natures in which truthfulness seems to be organic; that not only to
+the surrounding Hindoos, higher intellectually and relatively advanced
+in culture, are they in this respect far superior, but they are
+superior to Europeans."[3]
+
+[Footnote 1: See Fowler's _Principles of Morals_, II., 220; also
+Mahaffy's _Social Life in Greece_, p. 27. Note, for instance, the high
+standard as to truthfulness indicated by Cicero, in his "Offices,"
+III., 12-17, 32. "Pretense and dissimulation ought to be banished
+from the whole of life." "Reason ... requires that nothing be done
+insidiously, nothing dissemblingly, nothing falsely." Note, also,
+Juvenal, Satire XIII., as to the sin of a lie purposed, even if not
+spoken; and Marcus Aurelius in his "Thoughts," Book IX.: "He ... who
+lies is guilty of impiety to the same [highest] divinity." "He, then,
+who lies intentionally is guilty of impiety, inasmuch as he acts
+unjustly by deceiving; and he also who lies unintentionally, inasmuch
+as he is at variance with the universal nature, and inasmuch as he
+disturbs the order by fighting against the nature of the world; for he
+fights against it, who is moved of himself to that which is contrary
+to truth, for he had received powers from nature through the neglect
+of which he is not able now to distinguish falsehood from truth."]
+
+[Footnote 2: _History of European Morals_, I., 143.]
+
+[Footnote 3: See Spencer's _Principles of Sociology_, II., 234 ff.;
+also his _Inductions of Ethics_, p. 405 f.]
+
+Among those Hill Tribes of India which have been most secluded, and
+which have retained the largest measure of primitive life and customs,
+fidelity to truth in speech and act is still the standard, and a lie
+is abhorrent to the normal instincts of the race. Of the Khonds of
+Central India it is said that they, "in common with many other wild
+races, bear a singular character for truthfulness and honesty;"[1] and
+that especially "the aborigine is the most truthful of beings."[2]
+"The Khonds believe that truthfulness is one of the most sacred of
+duties imposed by the gods."[3] "They are men of one word."[4] "The
+truth is by a Sonthals held sacred." [5] The Todas "call falsehood one
+of the worst of vices."[6] Although it is said by one traveler that
+the Todas "practice dissimulation toward Europeans, yet he recognizes
+this as a trait consequent on their intercourse with Europeans."[7]
+The Bheels, which were said to be "a race of unmitigated savages,
+without any sense of natural religion." [8] and "which have preserved
+their rude habits and manners to the present day," are "yet imbued
+with a sense of truth and honor strangely at contrast with their
+external character."[9] Bishop Heber says that "their word is more to
+be depended on than that of their conquerors."[10] Of the Sowrahs it
+is said: "A pleasing feature in their character is their complete
+truthfulness. They do not know how to tell a lie."[11] Indeed, as Mr.
+Spencer sums up the case on this point, there are Hill Tribes in India
+"originally distinguished by their veracity, but who are rendered less
+veracious by contact with the whites. 'So rare is lying among these
+aboriginal races when unvitiated by the 'civilized,' that of those in
+Bengal, Hunter singles out the Tipperahs as 'the only Hill Tribe in
+which this vice is met with.'"[12]
+
+[Footnote 1: Glasfurd, cited in _Cycl. of Descrip. Sociol_., V., 32.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Forsyth, _Ibid_.]
+
+[Footnote 3: Macpherson, cited in _Ibid_.]
+
+[Footnote 4: _Ibid_.]
+
+[Footnote 5: Sherwill, cited in _Ibid_.]
+
+[Footnote 6: Harkness, cited in _Cycl. of Descrip. Sociol_., V., 31.]
+
+[Footnote 7: Spencer's _Principles of Sociology_, II., 234.]
+
+[Footnote 8: Marshman, cited in _Cycl. of Descrip. Sociol_., V., 31.]
+
+[Footnote 9: Wheeler, cited in _Ibid_.]
+
+[Footnote 10: Cited in _Ibid_.]
+
+[Footnote 11: Shortt, cited in _Ibid_.]
+
+[Footnote 12: Spencer's _Principles of Sociology_, II., 234 ff.]
+
+The Arabs are more truthful in their more primitive state than where
+they are influenced by "civilization," or by dealings with those from
+civilized communities.[1] And the same would seem to be true of the
+American Indians.[2] Of the Patagonians it is said: "A lie with them
+is held in detestation." [3] "The word of a Hottentot is sacred;" and
+the good quality of "a rigid adherence to truth," "he is master of in
+an eminent degree."[4] Dr. Livingstone says that lying was known to
+be a sin by the East Africans "before they knew aught of Europeans or
+their teaching."[5] And Mungo Park says of the Mandingoes, among the
+inland Africans, that, while they seem to be thieves by nature,"
+one of the first lessons in which the Mandingo women instruct their
+children is _the practice of truth_." The only consolation of a mother
+whose son had been murdered, "was the reflection that the poor boy, in
+the course of his blameless life, _had never told a lie_."[6] Richard
+Burton is alone among modern travelers in considering lying natural to
+all primitive or savage peoples. Carl Bock, like other travelers,
+testifies to the unvarying truthfulness of the Dyaks in Borneo,[7] and
+another observant traveler tells of the disgrace that attaches to a lie
+in that land, as shown by the "lying heaps" of sticks or stones along
+the roadside here and there. "Each heap is in remembrance of some man
+who has told a stupendous lie, or failed in carrying out an engagement;
+and every passer-by takes a stick or a stone to add to the accumulation,
+saying at the time he does it, 'For So-and-so's lying heap.' It goes on
+for generations, until they sometimes forget who it was that told the
+lie, but, notwithstanding that, they continue throwing the stones."[8]
+What a blocking of the paths of civilization there would be if a "lying
+heap" were piled up wherever a lie had been told, or a promise had
+been broken, by a child of civilization!
+
+[Footnote 1: Denham, and Palgrave, cited in _Cycl. of Des. Social_.,
+V., 30,31.]
+
+[Footnote 2: See Morgan's _League of the Iroquois_, p. 335; also
+Schoolcraft, and Keating, on the Chippewas, cited in _Cycl. of
+Descrip. Sociol_., VI., 30.]
+
+[Footnote 3: Snow, cited in _Ibid_.]
+
+[Footnote 4: Kolben, and Barrow, cited in _Cycl. of Descrip. Sociol_.,
+IV., 25.]
+
+[Footnote 5: _Cycl. of Descrip. Sociol_., IV., 26.]
+
+[Footnote 6: _Cycl. of Descrip. Social_., IV., 27.]
+
+[Footnote 7: _Head Hunters of Borneo_, p. 209. See also Boyle, cited
+in Spencer's _Cycl. of Descrip. Social_., III., 35.]
+
+[Footnote 8: St. John's _Life in the Forests of the Far East_, I., 88
+f.]
+
+The Veddahs of Ceylon, one of the most primitive of peoples, "are
+proverbially truthful."[1] The natives of Java are peculiarly free
+from the vice of lying, except in those districts which have had most
+intercourse with Europeans.[2]
+
+[Footnote 1: Bailey, cited in Spencer's _Cycl. of Descrip. Social_.,
+III., 32.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Earl, and Raffles, cited in _Ibid_., p. 35.]
+
+It is found, in fact, that in all the ages, the world over, primitive
+man's highest ideal conception of deity has been that of a God who
+could not tolerate a lie; and his loftiest standard of human action
+has included the readiness to refuse to tell a lie under any
+inducement, or in any peril, whether it be to a friend or to an enemy.
+This is the teaching of ethnic conceptions on the subject. The lie
+would seem to be a product of civilization, or an outgrowth of the
+spirit of trade and barter, rather than a natural impulse of primitive
+man. It appeared in full flower and fruitage in olden time among the
+commercial Phoenicians, so prominently that "Punic faith" became a
+synonym of falsehood in social dealings.
+
+Yet it is in the face of facts like these that a writer like Professor
+Fowler baldly claims, in support of the same presupposed theory as
+that of Lecky, that "it is probably owing mainly to the development of
+commerce, and to the consequent necessity, in many cases, of absolute
+truthfulness, that veracity has come to take the prominent position
+which it now occupies among the virtues; though the keen sense of
+honor, engendered by chivalry, may have had something to do in
+bringing about the same result."[1]
+
+[Footnote 1: _Principles of Morality_, II., 220.]
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+BIBLE TEACHINGS.
+
+
+In looking at the Bible for light in such an investigation as this,
+it is important to bear in mind that the Bible is not a collection of
+specific rules of conduct, but rather a book of principles
+illustrated in historic facts, and in precepts based on those
+principles,--announced or presupposed. The question, therefore, is
+not, Does the Bible authoritatively draw a line separating the truth
+from a lie, and making the truth to be always right, and a lie to
+be always wrong? but it is, Does the Bible evidently recognize an
+unvarying and ever-existing distinction between a truth and a lie, and
+does the whole sweep of its teachings go to show that in God's sight
+a lie, as by its nature opposed to the truth and the right, is always
+wrong?
+
+The Bible opens with a picture of the first pair in Paradise, to whom
+God tells the simple truth, and to whom the enemy of man tells a lie;
+and it shows the ruin of mankind wrought by that lie, and the author
+of the lie punished because of its telling.[1] The Bible closes with a
+picture of Paradise, into which are gathered the lovers and doers of
+truth, and from which is excluded "every one that loveth and doeth a
+lie;"[2] while "all liars" are to have their part "in the lake that
+burneth with fire and brimstone; which is the second death."[3] In the
+Old Testament and in the New, God is represented as himself the Truth,
+to whom, by his very nature, the doing or the speaking of a lie is
+impossible,[4] while Satan is represented as a liar and as the "father
+of lies."[5]
+
+[Footnote 1: Gen. 2, 3.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Rev. 22.]
+
+[Footnote 3: Rev. 21: 5-8.]
+
+[Footnote 4: Psa. 31:5; 146:6; John 14:6; Num. 23:19; 1 Sam. 15:29;
+Titus 1:2; Heb. 6:18; 1 John 5:7.]
+
+[Footnote 5: John 8:44.]
+
+While the human servants of God, as represented in the Bible
+narrative, are in many instances guilty of lying, their lies are
+clearly contrary to the great principle, in the light of which the
+Bible itself is written, that a lie is always wrong, and that it
+cannot have justification in God's sight. The idea of the Bible record
+is that God is true, though every man were a liar.[1] God is uniformly
+represented as opposed to lies and to liars, and a lie in his sight is
+spoken of as a lie unto him, or as a lie against him. In the few cases
+where the Bible narrative has been thought by some to indicate an
+approval by the Lord of a lie, that was told, as it were, in his
+interest, an examination of the facts will show that they offer no
+exception to the rule that, by the Bible standard, a lie is never
+justifiable.
+
+[Footnote 1: Rom. 3:4.]
+
+Take, for example, the case of the Hebrew midwives, who lied to the
+officials of Pharaoh, when they were commanded to kill every Hebrew
+male child;[1] and of whom it is said that "God dealt well with the
+midwives;... and ... because the midwives feared God,... he made them
+houses."[2] Here it is plain that God commended their fear of him,
+not their lying in behalf of his people, and that it was "because
+the midwives feared God" not because they lied, "that he made them
+houses." It was their choice of the Lord above the gods and rulers of
+Egypt that won them the approval of the Lord, even though they were
+sinners in being liars; as in an earlier day it was the approval of
+Jacob's high estimate of the birthright, and not the deceits practiced
+by him on Esau and his father Isaac, that the Lord showed in
+confirming a blessing to Jacob.[3]
+
+[Footnote 1: Exod. 1: 15-19.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Exod. I: 20, 21.]
+
+[Footnote 3: Gen. 25: 27-34; 27; 1-40; 28: 1-22]
+
+So, also, in the narrative of Rahab, the Canaanitish young woman, who
+concealed the Israelitish spies sent into her land by Joshua, and lied
+about them to her countrymen, and who was commended by the Lord for
+her faith in this transaction.[1] Rahab was a harlot by profession and
+a liar by practice. When the Hebrew spies entered Jericho, they went
+to her house as a place of common resort. Rahab, on learning who they
+were, expressed her readiness, sinner as she was, to trust the God of
+Israel rather than the gods of Canaan; and because of her trust she
+put herself, with all her heathen habits of mind and conduct, at
+the disposal of the God of Israel, and she lied, as she had been
+accustomed to lie, to her own people, as a means of securing safety
+to her Hebrew visitors. Because of her faith, which was shown in this
+way, but not necessarily because of her way of showing her faith, the
+Lord approved of her spirit in choosing his service rather than the
+service of the gods of her people. The record of her approval is, "By
+faith Rahab the harlot perished not with them that were disobedient,
+having received the spies with peace."[2]
+
+[Footnote 1: Josh. 2: 1-21.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Heb. II: 31.]
+
+It would be quite as fair to claim that God approved of Rahab's
+harlotry, in this case, as to claim that he approved of her lying.
+Rahab was a harlot and a liar, and she was ready to practice in both
+these lines in the service of the spies. She was not to be commended
+for either of those vices; but she was to be commended in that, with
+all her vices, she was yet ready to give herself just as she was, and
+with her ways as they were, to Jehovah's side, in the crisis hour of
+conflict between him and the gods of her people. It was the faith that
+prompted her to this decision that God commended; and "by faith" she
+was preserved from destruction when her people perished.
+
+Another case that has been thought to imply a divine approval of an
+untrue statement, is that of Samuel, when he went to Bethlehem to
+anoint David as Saul's successor on the throne of Israel, and, at the
+Lord's command, said he had come to offer a sacrifice to God.[1] But
+here clearly the narrative shows no lie, nor false statement, made or
+approved. Samuel, as judge and prophet, was God's representative in
+Israel. He was accustomed to go from place to place in the line of his
+official ministry, including the offering at times of sacrifices of
+communion.[2] When, on this occasion, the Lord told Samuel of his
+purpose of designating a son of Jesse to succeed Saul on the throne,
+and desired him to go to Bethlehem for further instructions, Samuel
+was unnecessarily alarmed, and said, in his fear, "How can I go? if
+Saul hear it, he will kill me." The Lord's simple answer was, "Take
+an heifer with thee, and say, I am come to sacrifice to the Lord. And
+call Jesse to the sacrifice, and I will shew thee what thou shalt do:
+and thou shalt anoint unto me him whom I name unto thee."
+
+[Footnote 1: 1 Sam. 16: 1-3.]
+
+[Footnote 2: 1 Sam. 7: 15-17; 9: 22-24; 11: 14,15; 20:29.]
+
+In other words, the Lord said to Samuel, I want you to go to
+Bethlehem as my representative, and offer a sacrifice there. Say this
+fearlessly. In due time I will give you other directions; but do not
+borrow trouble on account of them. Do your duty step by step. Speak
+out the plain truth as to all that the authorities of Bethlehem have
+any right to know; and do not fear any harm through my subsequent
+private revelations to you. In these directions of the Lord there is
+no countenance of the slightest swerving from the truth by Samuel;
+nor is there an authorized concealment of any fact that those to whom
+Samuel was sent had any claim to know.
+
+Still another Bible incident that has been a cause of confusion to
+those who did not see how God could approve lying, and a cause of
+rejoicing to those who wanted to find evidence of his justification
+of that practice, is the story of the prophet Micaiah, saying before
+Jehoshaphat and Ahab that the Lord had put a lying spirit into the
+mouths of all the false prophets who were at that time before
+those kings.[1] Herbert Spencer actually cites this incident as an
+illustration of the example set before the people of Israel, by their
+God, of lying as a means of accomplishing a desired end.[2] But just
+look at the story as it stands!
+
+[Footnote 1: 1 Kings 22: 1-23; 2 Chron. 18: 1-34.]
+
+[Footnote 2: _The Inductions of Ethics_, p. 158.]
+
+Four hundred of Ahab's prophets were ready to tell him that a campaign
+which he wanted to enter upon would be successful. Micaiah, an honest
+prophet of the Lord, was sent for at Jehoshaphat's request, and was
+urged by the messenger to prophesy to the same effect as Ahab's
+prophets. Micaiah replied that he should give the Lord's message,
+whether it was agreeable or not to Ahab. He came, and at first he
+spoke satirically as if he agreed with the other prophets in deeming
+the campaign a hopeful one. It was as though he said to the king, You
+want me to aid you in your plans, not to give you counsel from the
+Lord; therefore I will say, as your prophets have said, Go ahead, and
+have success. It was evident, however, to Ahab, that the prophet's
+words were not to be taken literally, but were a rebuke to him in
+Oriental style, and therefore he told the prophet to give him the
+Lord's message plainly. Then the prophet gave a parable, or a message
+in Oriental guise, showing that these four hundred prophets of Ahab
+were speaking falsely, as if inspired by a lying spirit, and that, if
+Ahab followed their counsel, he would go to his ruin.
+
+To cite this parable as a proof of Jehovah's commendation of lying is
+an absurdity. Jehovah's prophet Micaiah was there before the
+king, telling the simple truth to the king. And, in order to meet
+effectively the claim of the false prophets that they were inspired,
+he related, as it were, a vision, or a parable, in which he declared
+that he had seen preparations making in heaven for their inspiring by
+a lying spirit. This was, as every Oriental would understand it, a
+parliamentary way of calling the four hundred prophets a pack of
+liars; and the event proved that all of them were liars, and that
+Micaiah alone, as Jehovah's prophet, was a truth-teller. What folly
+could be greater than the attempt to count this public charge against
+the lying prophets as an item of evidence in proof of the Lord's
+responsibility for their lying--which the Lord's prophet took this
+method of exposing and rebuking!
+
+There are, indeed, various instances in the Bible story of lies told
+by men who were in favor with God, where there is no ground for
+claiming that those lies had approval with God. The men of the Bible
+story are shown as men, with the sins and follies and weaknesses of
+men. Their conduct is to be judged by the principles enunciated in the
+Bible, and their character is to be estimated by the relation which
+they sustained toward God in spite of their human infirmities.
+
+Abraham is called the father of the faithful,[1] and he was known as
+the friend of God.[2] But he indulged in the vice of concubinage,[3]
+in accordance with the loose morals of his day and of his
+surroundings; and when he was down in Egypt he lied through his
+distrust of God, apparently thinking that there was such a thing as
+a "lie of necessity," and he brought upon himself the rebuke of an
+Egyptian king because of his lying.[4] But it would be folly to claim
+that God approved of concubinage or of lying, because a man whom he
+was saving was guilty of either of these vices. Isaac also lied,[5]
+and so did Jacob;[6] but it was not because of their lies that these
+men had favor with God. David was a man after God's own heart[7] in
+his fidelity of spirit to God as the only true God, in contrast with
+the gods of the nations round about Israel; but David lied,[8] as
+David committed adultery.[9] It would hardly be claimed, however, that
+either his adultery or his lying in itself made David a man after
+God's own heart. So all along the Bible narrative, down to the time
+when Ananias and Sapphira, prominent among the early Christians, lied
+unto God concerning their very gifts into his treasury, and were
+struck dead as a rebuke of their lying.[10]
+
+[Footnote 1: Josh. 24:3; Isa. 51: 2; Matt. 3: 9; Rom. 4:12; Gal. 3:9]
+
+[Footnote 2: 2 Chron. 20: 7; Isa. 41: 8; Jas. 2: 23.]
+
+[Footnote 3: Gen. 16: 1-6.]
+
+[Footnote 4: Gen. 12: 10-19.]
+
+[Footnote 5: Gen. 26: 6-10.]
+
+[Footnote 6: Gen. 27: 6-29.]
+
+[Footnote 7: 1 Sam. 11: 1-27]
+
+[Footnote 8: 1 Sam. 21: 1,2.]
+
+[Footnote 9: 2 Sam. 11: 1-27.]
+
+[Footnote 10: Acts 5: 1-11.]
+
+The whole sweep of Bible teaching is opposed to lying; and the
+specific injunctions against that sin, as well as the calls to the
+duty of truth-speaking, are illustrative of that sweep. "Ye shall not
+steal; neither shall ye deal falsely, nor lie one to another,"[1] says
+the Lord, in holding up the right standard before his children. "A
+lying tongue" is said to be "an abomination" before the Lord.[2] "A
+faithful witness will not lie: but a false witness breatheth out
+lies,"[3] says Solomon, in marking the one all-dividing line of
+character; and as to the results of lying he says, "He that breatheth
+out lies shall not escape,"[4] and "he that breatheth out lies shall
+perish."[5] And he adds the conclusion of wisdom, in view of the
+supposed profit of lying, "A poor man is better than a liar;"[6] that
+is, a truth-telling poor man is better than a rich liar.
+
+[Footnote 1: Lev. 19:11.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Prov. 6:16, 17.]
+
+[Footnote 3: Prov. 14:5.]
+
+[Footnote 4: Prov. 19:5.]
+
+[Footnote 5: Prov. 19:9.]
+
+[Footnote 6: Prov. 19:22.]
+
+The inspired Psalms are full of such teachings: "The wicked are
+estranged from the womb: they go astray as soon as they be born,
+speaking lies."[1] "They delight in lies."[2] "The mouth of them that
+speak lies shall be stopped."[3] "He that speaketh falsehood shall not
+be established before mine [the Psalmist's] eyes."[4] And the Psalmist
+prays, "Deliver my soul, O Lord, from lying lips."[5] In the New
+Testament it is much the same as in the Old. "Lie not one to another;
+seeing that ye have put off the old man with his doings,"[6] is the
+apostolic injunction; and again, "Speak ye truth each one with his
+neighbor: for we are members one of another."[7] There is no place for
+a lie in Bible ethics, under the earlier dispensation or the later.
+
+[Footnote 1: Psa. 58:3.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Psa. 62:4.]
+
+[Footnote 3: Psa. 63:11.]
+
+[Footnote 4: Psa. 101: 7.]
+
+[Footnote 5: Psa. 120: 2.]
+
+[Footnote 6: Col. 3: 9.]
+
+[Footnote 7: Eph. 4: 25.]
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+DEFINITIONS.
+
+
+It would seem to be clear that the Bible, and also the other sacred
+books of the world, and the best moral sense of mankind everywhere,
+are united in deeming a lie incompatible with the idea of a holy
+God, and consistent only with the spirit of man's arch-enemy--the
+embodiment of all evil. Therefore he who, admitting this, would find a
+place in God's providential plan for a "lie of necessity" must begin
+with claiming that there are lies which are not lies. Hence it is of
+prime importance to define a lie clearly, and to distinguish it from
+allowable and proper concealments of truth.
+
+A lie, in its stricter sense, is the affirming, by word or by action,
+of that which is not true, with a purpose of deceiving; or the
+denying, by word or by action, of that which is true, with a purpose
+of deceiving. But the suppressing or concealing of essential facts,
+from one who is entitled to know them, with a purpose of deceiving,
+may practically amount to a lie.
+
+Obviously a lie may be by act, as really as by word; as when a man
+is asked to tell the right road, and he silently points in the wrong
+direction. Obviously, also, the intention or purpose of deceiving is
+in the essence of the lie; for if a man says that which is not true,
+supposing it to be true, he makes a misstatement, but he does not lie;
+or, again, if he speaks an untruth playfully where no deception is
+wrought or intended, as by saying, when the mercury is below zero,
+that it is "good summer weather," there is no lie in the patent
+untruth.
+
+So far all are likely to be agreed; but when it comes to the question
+of that concealment which is in the realm of the lie, as distinct from
+right and proper concealment, there is more difficulty in making
+the lines of distinction clear to all minds. Yet those lines can be
+defined, and it is important that they should be.
+
+A witness on the stand in a court of law is bound by his oath, or his
+affirmation, to tell "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the
+truth," in the testimony that he gives in response to the questions
+asked of him. If, therefore, in the course of his testimony, he
+declares that he received five dollars for his share in a certain
+transaction, when in reality he received five hundred dollars, his
+concealment of the fact that he received a hundred times as much as he
+admits having received, is practically a lie, and is culpable as such.
+Any intentional concealment of essential facts in the matter at issue,
+in his answers to questions asked of him as a witness, is a lie in
+essence.
+
+But a person who is not before a court of justice is not necessarily
+bound to tell all the facts involved to every person whom he
+addresses, or who desires to have him do so; and therefore, while a
+concealment of facts which ought to be disclosed may be equivalent to
+a lie, there is such a thing as the concealment of facts which is not
+only allowable, but which is an unmistakable duty. And to know
+when concealment is right, and when it is wrong, is to know when
+concealment partakes of the nature of a lie, and when it is a totally
+different matter.
+
+Concealment, so far from being in itself a sin, is in itself right; it
+is only in its misuse that it becomes reprehensible in a given case.
+Concealment is a prime duty of man; as truly a duty as truth-speaking,
+or chastity, or honesty. God, who cannot lie to his creatures,
+conceals much from his creatures. "The secret things belong unto the
+Lord our God: but the things that are revealed belong unto us and to
+our children for ever,"[1] says the author of Deuteronomy; and the
+whole course of God's revelation to man is in accordance with this
+announced principle of God's concealment of that which ought to be
+concealed. He who is himself the revelation of God says to his chosen
+disciples, even when he is speaking his latest words to them before
+his death: "I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear
+them now;"[2] and he conceals what, as yet, it is better for them
+should remain concealed.
+
+[Footnote 1: Deut. 29: 29.]
+
+[Footnote 2: John 16:12.]
+
+There is a profound meaning in the suggestion, in the Bible story of
+man's "fall," that, when man had come to the knowledge of good and
+evil, the first practical duty which he recognized as incumbent upon
+himself, was the duty of concealment;[1] and from that day to this
+that duty has been incumbent on him. Man has a duty to conceal his
+besetting impurities of thought and inclinations to sin; to conceal
+such of his doubts and fears as would dishearten others and weaken
+himself by their expression; to conceal his unkindnesses of spirit and
+his unjust prejudices of feeling; to conceal, in fact, whatever of his
+innermost personality is liable to work harm by its disclosure, and to
+a knowledge of which his fellows have no just claim. In the world as
+it is, there is more to be concealed than to be disclosed in every
+individual life; and concealment rather than disclosure is the rule of
+personal action.
+
+[Footnote 1: Gen. 3:6, 7.]
+
+Absolute and unrestricted frankness in social intercourse would be
+brutal. The speaking of the whole truth at all times and to everybody
+could have neither justification nor excuse between man and man. We
+have no right to tell our fellows all that we think of them, or
+fear for them, or suspect them of. We have no right to betray the
+confidences of those who trust us, or to disclose to all the fact that
+we have such confidences to conceal. We have no right to let it be
+generally known that there are such peculiar struggles within us as
+make our lives a ceaseless battle with temptations and fears and
+doubts. There is such a thing as an indecent exposure of personal
+opinions, and as a criminal disclosure of the treasures of the inner
+life.[1] How to conceal aright that which ought to be concealed, is
+one of the vital questions of upright living.
+
+[Footnote 1: See 2 Kings 20: 12-19.]
+
+The duty of right concealment stands over against the sin of lying.
+Whatever ought to be concealed, should be concealed, if concealment
+is a possibility without sinning. But the strongest desire for
+concealment can never justify a lie as a means of concealment; and
+concealment at the cost of a lie becomes a sin through the means
+employed for its securing. On the other hand, when disclosure is a
+duty, concealment is sinful, because it is made to stand in the way of
+the performance of a duty. Concealment is not in itself wrong, but it
+may become wrong through its misuse. Lying is in itself wrong, and it
+cannot be made right through any seeming advantage to be gained by it.
+
+Concealment which is right in one instance may be wrong in another
+instance, the difference being in the relations of the two parties in
+the case. A man who has lost a leg or an eye may properly conceal
+from others generally the fact of his loss by any legitimate means of
+concealment. His defect is a purely personal matter. The public has
+no claim upon him for all the facts in the premises. He may have an
+artificial limb or an artificial eye, so constructed as to conceal his
+loss from the ordinary observer. There is nothing wrong in this. It
+is in the line of man's primal duty of concealment. But if a man
+thus disabled were applying for a life-insurance policy, or were an
+applicant for re-enlistment in the army, or were seeking employment
+where bodily wholeness is a requisite, it would be his duty to
+make known his defect; and the concealment of it from the parties
+interested would be in the realm of the lie.
+
+So, again, if a man were proposing marriage, or were entering into
+confidential relations with a partner in business, or were seeking
+financial aid from a bank, he would have no right to conceal from the
+party interested many a fact which he could properly conceal from the
+public.
+
+A man who would be justified in concealing from the general public
+his mental troubles, or his business embarrassments, or his spiritual
+perplexities, could not properly conceal the essential facts in the
+case from his chosen adviser in medicine, or in law, or in matters of
+religion. It is a man's duty to disclose the whole truth to him who
+has a right to know the whole truth. It is a man's right, and it may
+become his duty, to conceal a measure of the truth from one who is not
+entitled to know that portion of the truth, so far as he can properly
+make concealment. But as a lie is never justifiable, it is never a
+proper means of concealment; and if concealment be, in any case, a
+mode of lying, it is as bad as any other form of lying.
+
+But concealment, even when it is of facts that others have no right to
+know, may cause others to be deceived, and deliberate deceit is one
+form of a lie. How, then, can concealment that is sure to result in
+deception be free from the sin that invariably attaches to a lie in
+any form, or of any nature whatsoever?
+
+Concealment which is for the _purpose_ of deception, is one thing;
+concealment which is only for the purpose of concealment, but which is
+sure to _result_ in deception, is quite another thing. The one is not
+justifiable, the other may be. In the one case it is a man's purpose
+to deceive his fellow-man; in the other case it is simply his purpose
+to conceal what his fellow-man has no right to know, and that
+fellow-man receives a false impression, or deceives himself, in
+consequence.
+
+We may, or we may not, be responsible for the obvious results of our
+action; and the moral measure of any action depends on the measure of
+our responsibility in the premises. A surgeon, who is engaged in an
+important and critical operation, is told that he is wanted elsewhere
+in a case of life and death. If he sees it to be his duty to continue
+where he is because he cannot safely leave this case at this time, he
+obviously is not responsible for results which come because of his
+absence from the side of the other sufferer. A man is by a river bank
+when a boy is sinking before his eyes. If the man were to reach out
+his arms to him, the boy might be saved. But the man makes no movement
+in the boy's behalf, and the boy drowns. It might seem as though that
+man were responsible for that boy's death; but when it is known that
+the man is at that moment occupied in saving the life of his own son,
+who is also struggling in the water, it will have to be admitted that
+the father is not responsible for the results of his inaction in
+another sphere than that which is for the moment the sphere of his
+imperative duty.
+
+If a wife and mother has to choose between her loving ministry to her
+sick husband and to her sick child, and she chooses that which she
+sees to be the more important duty of the hour, she is not responsible
+for any results that follow from her inability to be in two places at
+the same time. A man with a limited income may know that ten families
+are in need of money, while he can give help to only two of them. Even
+though others starve while he is supplying food to all whom he can
+aid, he is not responsible for results that flow from his decision to
+limit his ministry to his means.
+
+In all our daily life, our decision to do the one duty of the hour
+involves our refusal to do what is not our duty, and we have no
+responsibility for the results which come from such a refusal. So in
+the matter of the duty of concealment, if a man simply purposes the
+concealment from another of that which the other has no right to know,
+and does not specifically affirm by word or act that which is not
+true, nor deny by act or word that which is true, he is in no degree
+responsible for the self-deception by another concerning a point which
+is no proper concern of that other person.
+
+Others are self-deceived with reference to us in many things, beyond
+our responsibility or knowledge. We may be considered weaker or
+stronger, wiser or more simple, younger or older, gladder or sadder,
+than we are; but for the self-deception on that point by the average
+observer we are not responsible. We may not even be aware of it. It
+is really no concern of ours--or of our neighbor's. It is merely an
+incident of human life as it is. We may have an aching tooth or
+an aching heart, and yet refrain from disclosing this fact in the
+expression of our face. In such a case we merely conceal what is our
+own possession from those who have no claim to know it. Even though
+they deceive themselves as to our condition in consequence of our
+looks, we are not responsible for their self-deception, because they
+are not possessed of all the facts, nor have they any right to them,
+nor yet to a fixed opinion in the case.
+
+If a man were to have a patch put on his coat, he might properly have
+it put on the under side of the coat instead of the outer side, thus
+making what is called "a blind patch," for the purpose of concealing
+the defect in his garment. Even though this course might result in a
+false impression on the mind of the casual observer, the man would not
+be blameworthy, as he would be if he had pursued the same course with
+a purpose of deceiving a purchaser of the coat. So, again, in the
+case of a mender of bric-a-brac: it would be right for him to
+cement carefully the parts of a broken vase for the mere purpose of
+concealing its damaged condition from the ordinary eye, but not for
+the purpose of deceiving one who would be a purchaser.
+
+A man whose city house is closed from the public in the summer season,
+because of his absence in the country, has a perfect right to come
+to that house for a single night, without opening the shutters and
+lighting up the rooms in intimation of his presence. He may even keep
+those shutters closed while his room is lighted, for the express
+purpose of concealing the fact of his presence there, and yet not be
+responsible for any false impression on the minds of passers-by, who
+think that the proprietor is still in the country, and that the city
+house is vacant. On the other hand, if the house be left lighted up
+all through the night, with the shutters open, while the inmates are
+asleep, for the very purpose of concealing from those outside the fact
+that no one in the house is awake and on guard, the proprietor is not
+responsible for any self-deception which results to those who have no
+right to know the facts in the case.
+
+And so, again, in the matter of having a man's hat or coat on the rack
+in the front hall, while there are only women in the house, the sole
+purpose of the action may be the concealment of the real condition of
+affairs from those who have no claim to know the truth, and not the
+deliberate deception of any party in interest. In so far as the
+purpose is merely the concealment from others of the defenseless
+condition of the house the action is obviously a proper one,
+notwithstanding its liability to result in false impressions on the
+minds of those who have no right to an opinion in the case.
+
+While a man would be justified in concealing, without falsehood, the
+fact of a bodily lack or infirmity on his part which concerned himself
+alone, he would not be justified in concealing the fact that he was
+sick of a contagious disease, or that his house was infected by
+a disease that might be given to a caller there. Nor would he be
+justified in concealing a defect in a horse or a cow in order to
+deceive a man into the purchase of that animal as a sound one, any
+more than he would be justified in slightly covering an opening in the
+ground before his house, so as to deceive a disagreeable visitor into
+stumbling into that hole.
+
+It would be altogether proper for a man with a bald head to conceal
+his baldness from the general public by a well-constructed wig. It
+would likewise be proper for him to wear a wig in order to guard his
+shining pate against flies while at church in July, or against danger
+from pneumonia in January, even though wide-awake children in the
+neighboring pews deceived themselves into thinking that he had a fine
+head of natural hair. But if that man were to wear that wig for the
+purpose of deceiving a young woman, whom he wished to marry, as to his
+age and as to his freedom from bodily defects, it would be quite a
+different matter. Concealment for the mere purpose of concealment may
+be, not only justifiable, but a duty. Concealment for the purpose of
+deception is never justifiable.
+
+It would seem that this is the principle on which God acts with
+reference to both the material and the moral universe. He conceals
+facts, with the result that many a man is self-deceived, in his
+ignorance, as to the size of the stars, and the cause of eclipses, and
+the processes of nature, and the consequences of conduct, in many an
+important particular. But man, and not God, is responsible for man's
+self-deception concerning points at which man can make no claim to a
+right to know all the truth.
+
+It is true that this distinction is a delicate one, but it is a
+distinction none the less real on that account. A moral line, like a
+mathematical line, has length, but neither breadth nor thickness.
+And the line that separates a justifiable concealment which causes
+self-deception on the part of those who are not entitled to know the
+whole truth in the matter, and the deliberate concealment of truth for
+the specific purpose of deception, is a line that runs all the way
+up from the foundations to the summit of the universe. This line of
+distinction is vital to an understanding of the question of the duty
+of truth-speaking, and of the sin of lying.
+
+An effort at right concealment may include truthful statements which
+are likely, or even sure, to result in false impressions on the mind
+of the one to whom they are addressed, and who in consequence deceives
+himself as to the facts, when the purpose of those statements is
+not the deception of the hearer. A husband may have had a serious
+misunderstanding with his wife that causes him pain of heart, so that
+his face gives sign of it as he comes out of the house in the morning.
+The difficulty which has given him such mental anxiety is one which he
+ought to conceal. He has no right to disclose it to others. Yet he has
+no right to speak an untruth for the purpose of concealing that which
+he ought to conceal.
+
+It may be that the mental trouble has already deprived him of sleep,
+and has intensified his anxiety over a special business matter that
+awaits his attention down town, and that all this shows in his face.
+If so, these facts are secondary but very real causes of his troubled
+look, as he meets a neighbor on leaving his house, who says to him:
+"You look very much troubled this morning. What's the matter with
+you?" Now, if he were to say in reply, "Then my looks belie me; for I
+have no special trouble," he would say what was not true. But he might
+properly say, "I think it is very likely. I didn't sleep well last
+night, and I am very tired this morning. And I have work before me
+to-day that I am not easy about." Those statements being literally
+true, and being made for the purpose of concealing facts which his
+questioner has no right to know, their utterance is justifiable,
+regardless of the workings of the mind of the one who hears them. They
+are made in order to conceal what is back of them, not in order to
+deceive one who is entitled to know those primary facts.
+
+If, again, a physician in attendance on a patient sees that there
+is cause for grave anxiety in the patient's condition, and deems
+it important to conceal his fears, so far as he can without
+untruthfulness, he may, in answer to direct questions from his
+patient, give truthful answers that are designed to conceal what he
+has a right to conceal, without his desiring to deceive his patient,
+and without his being responsible for any self-deception on his
+patient's part that results from their conversation. The patient may
+ask, "Doctor, am I very sick?" The doctor may answer truthfully, "Not
+so sick as you might be, by a good deal." He may give this answer with
+a cheerful look and tone, and it may result in calming the patient's
+fears.
+
+If, however, the patient goes on to ask, "But, doctor, do you think
+I'm going to die?" the doctor may respond lightly, "Well, most of us
+will die sooner or later, and I suppose you are not to be exempt from
+the ordinary lot of mortals." "But," continues the patient, "do you
+think I am going to die of this disease?" Then the doctor can say,
+seriously and truthfully, "I'm sure I don't know. The future is
+concealed from me. You may live longer than I do. I certainly hope
+you are not going to die yet awhile, and I'm going to do all I can to
+prevent it." All this would be justifiable, and be within the limits
+of truthfulness. Concealment of the opinions of the physician as to
+the patient's chances of life, and not the specific deception of the
+patient, is the object of these answers.
+
+In no event, however, would the physician be justified in telling a
+lie, any more than he would be in committing any other sin, as a means
+of good. He is necessarily limited by the limits of right, in the
+exercise of his professional skill, and in the choice of available
+means. He is in no wise responsible for the consequences of his
+refusal to go beyond those limits.
+
+Concealment may be, or may not be, of the nature of deception.
+Concealment is not right when disclosure is a duty. Concealment of
+that which may properly be concealed is not in itself wrong. Efforts
+at concealment must, in order to be right, be kept within the limits
+of strict truthfulness of statement. Concealment for the purpose of
+deception is in the realm of the lie. Concealment for the mere purpose
+of concealment may be in the realm of positive duty--in the sight of
+God and for the sake of our fellows.
+
+It is to be borne in mind that the definitions here given do not pivot
+on the specific illustrations proffered for their explanation. If, in
+any instance, the illustration seems inapt or imperfect, it may
+be thrown aside, and reference made to the definition itself. The
+definition represents the principle involved; the illustration is only
+a suggestion of the principle.
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+THE PLEA OF "NECESSITY."
+
+
+The story is told of an old Quaker, who, after listening for a time
+to the unstinted praises, by a dry-goods salesman, of the various
+articles he was trying to dispose of, said quietly: "Friend, it is a
+great pity that lying is a sin, since it seems so necessary in thy
+business." It has been generally supposed that this remark of the old
+Quaker was a satirical one, rather than a serious expression of regret
+over the clashing of the demands of God's nature with the practical
+necessities of men. Yet, as a matter of fact, there are moral
+philosophers, and writers on Christian ethics, who seem to take
+seriously the position assumed by this Quaker, and who argue
+deliberately that there are such material advantages to be secured
+by lying, in certain emergencies, that it would be a great pity to
+recognize any unvarying rule, with reference to lying, that would
+shut off all possibility of desired gain from this practice under
+conditions of greatest urgency.
+
+It is claimed that lying proffers such unmistakable advantages in time
+of war, and of sickness, and in dealings with would-be criminals
+and the insane, and other classes exempt from ordinary social
+consideration, that lying becomes a necessity when the gain from it is
+of sufficient magnitude. Looked at in this light, lying is not sinful
+_per se_, but simply becomes sinful by its misuse or untimeliness; for
+if it be sinful _per se_, no temporary or material advantage from its
+exercise could ever make it other than sinful.
+
+If, indeed, the rightfulness of lying is contingent on the results
+to be hoped for or to be feared from it, the prime question with
+reference to it, in a moral estimate of its propriety, is the limit of
+profit, or of gain, which will justify it as a necessity. But with all
+that has been written on this subject in the passing centuries, the
+advocates of the "lie of necessity" have had to contend with the moral
+sense of the world as to the sinfulness of lying, and with the fact
+that lying is not merely a violation of a social duty, but is contrary
+to the demands of the very nature of God, and of the nature of man
+as formed in the image of God. And it has been the practice of such
+advocates to ignore or to deny the testimony of this moral sense of
+the race, and to persist in looking at lying mainly in the light of
+its social aspects.
+
+That the moral sense of the race is against the admissibility of the
+rightfulness of lying, is shown by the estimate of this sin as a sin
+in the ethnic conceptions of it, even among peoples who indulge freely
+in its practice, as well as in the teachings of the sacred books of
+the ages. And, moreover, it is _not_ the fact, as is often claimed,
+that lying is generally admitted to be allowable between enemies in
+war time, or by a physician to his patient, or by a sane man to one
+who is insane, or in order to the prevention of crime, or for the
+purpose of securing some real or supposed advantage in any case.
+
+The right to conceal from the enemy one's weakness, or one's plans,
+by any exhibit of "quaker guns," or of mock fortifications, or of
+movements and counter-movements, or of feints of attack, or of surplus
+watchfires, in time of warfare, is recognized on all sides. But the
+right to lie to or to deceive the enemy by sending out a flag of
+truce, as if in desire for a peaceful conference, and following it up
+with an attack on his lines in an unsuspecting moment, is not admitted
+in any theory of "civilized warfare." And while a scout may creep
+within the enemy's lines, and make observations of the enemy's
+weakness and strength of position, without being open to any charge of
+dishonorable conduct,--if he comes disguised as a soldier of the
+other side than his own, or if he claims to be a mere civilian or
+non-combatant, he is held to be a "spy," and as such he is denied a
+soldier's death, and must yield his life on the gallows as a deceiver
+and a liar.
+
+The distinction between justifiable concealment for the mere purpose
+of concealment, and concealment for the express purpose of deceiving,
+is recognized as clearly in warfare as in peaceful civil life; and the
+writer on Christian ethics who appeals to the approved practices of
+warfare in support of the "lie of necessity" can have only the plea of
+ignorance as an excuse for his baseless argument.
+
+An enemy in warfare has no right to know the details of his opponent's
+plans for his overcoming; but his opponent has no right to lie to
+him, by word or action, as a means of concealment; for a lie is never
+justifiable, and therefore is never a necessity. And this is admitted
+in the customs of honorable warfare. Illustrations of this distinction
+are abundant. A Federal officer, taken prisoner in battle, was brought
+before a Confederate officer for examination. He was asked his name,
+his rank, his regiment, his brigade, his division, and his corps. To
+all these questions he gave truthful answers promptly; for the enemy
+had a right to information at these points concerning a prisoner of
+war. But when the question came, "What is the present strength of your
+corps?" he replied, "Two and a half millions." "That cannot be true,"
+said the Confederate officer. "Do you expect me to tell you the truth,
+Colonel, in such a matter?" he responded, in reminder of the fact that
+it was proper for him to conceal facts which the other had no right to
+know; and his method of concealment was by an answer that was intended
+to conceal, but not to deceive.
+
+In Libby Prison, during war time, the attempt to prevent written
+messages being carried out by released prisoners was at first made by
+the careful examination of the clothing and persons of such prisoners;
+but this proved to be ineffectual. Then it was decided to put every
+outgoing prisoner on his word of honor as a soldier in this matter;
+and that was effectual. A true soldier would require something more
+than the average treatise on Christian ethics to convince him that a
+lie to an enemy in war time is justifiable as a "lie of necessity," on
+the ground of its profitableness.
+
+In dealing with the sick, however desirable it may be, in any
+instance, to conceal from a patient his critical condition, the
+difference must always be observed between truthful statements that
+conceal that which the physician, or other speaker, has a right to
+conceal, and statements that are not strictly true, or that are made
+for the explicit purpose of deceiving the patient. It is a physician's
+duty to conceal from a patient his sense of the grave dangers
+disclosed to his professional eye, and which he is endeavoring to meet
+successfully. And, in wellnigh every case, it is possible for him to
+give truthful answers that will conceal from his patient what he ought
+to conceal; for the best physician does not know the future, and his
+professional guesses are not to be put forward as if they were assured
+certitudes.
+
+If, indeed, it were generally understood, as many ethical writers are
+disposed to claim, that physicians are ready to lie as a help to their
+patients' recovery, physicians, as a class, would thereby be deprived
+of the power of encouraging their patients by words of sincere and
+hearty confidence. There are physicians whose most hopeful assurances
+are of little or no service to their patients, because those
+physicians are known to be willing to lie to a patient in an
+emergency; and how can a timid patient be sure that his case does not
+present such an emergency? Therefore it is that a physician's habit of
+lying to his patients as a means of cure would cause him to lose the
+power of aiding by truthful assurances those patients who most needed
+help of this sort.
+
+It is poor policy, as policy, to venture a lie in behalf of a single
+patient, at the cost of losing the power to make the truth beneficial
+to a hundred patients whose lives may be dependent on wise words of
+encouragement. And the policy is still poorer as policy, when it is in
+the line of an unmistakable sin. And many a good physician like many
+a good soldier, repudiates the idea of a "lie of necessity" in his
+profession.
+
+Since lying is sinful because a lie is always a lie unto God, the fact
+that a lie is spoken to an insane person or to a would-be criminal
+does not make it any the less a sin in God's sight. And it is held by
+some of the most eminent physicians to the insane that lying to the
+insane is as poor policy as it is bad morals, and that it is never
+justifiable, and therefore is never a "necessity" in that sphere.[1]
+
+[Footnote 1: See, for example, the views of Dr. Thomas S. Kirkbride,
+physician-in-chief and superintendent of the Pennsylvania Hospital
+for the Insane, in the Report of that institution for 1883, at pages
+74-76. In speaking of the duty of avoiding deception in dealings with
+the insane, he said: "I never think it right to speak anything but the
+truth."]
+
+So also in dealing with the would-be criminal, a lie is not
+justifiable in order to save one's life, or one's possessions that are
+dearer than life, nor yet to prevent the commission of a crime or to
+guard the highest interests of those whom we love. Yet concealment of
+that which ought to be concealed is as truly a duty when disclosure
+would lead to crime, or would imperil the interests of ourselves or
+others, as it is in all the ordinary affairs of life; but lying as a
+means of concealment is not to be tolerated in such a case any more
+than in any other case.
+
+If a robber, with a pistol in his hand, were in a man's bedroom at
+night, it would not be wrong for the defenseless inmate to remain
+quiet in his bed, in concealment of the fact that he was awake, if
+thereby he could save his life, at the expense of his property. If a
+would-be murderer were seeking his victim, and a man who knew this
+fact were asked to tell of his whereabouts, it would be that man's
+duty to conceal his knowledge at this point by all legitimate means.
+He might refuse to speak, even though his own life were risked
+thereby; for it were better to die than to lie. And so in many another
+emergency.
+
+A lie being a sin _per se_, no price paid for it, nor any advantage to
+be gained from it, would make it other than a sin. The temptation to
+look at it as a "necessity" may, indeed, be increased by increasing
+the supposed cost of its refusal; but it is a temptation to
+wrong-doing to the last. It was a heathen maxim, "Do right though the
+heavens fall," and Christian ethics ought not to have a lower standard
+than that of the best heathen morality.
+
+Duty toward God cannot be counted out of this question. God himself
+cannot lie. God cannot justify or approve a lie. Hence it follows that
+he who deliberately lies in order to secure a gain to himself, or to
+one whom he loves, must by that very act leave the service of God, and
+put himself for the time being under the rule of the "father of
+lies." Thus in an emergency which seems to a man to justify a "lie of
+necessity" that man's attitude toward God might be indicated in this
+address to him: "Lord, I should prefer to continue in your service,
+and I would do so if you were able and willing to help me. But I find
+myself in an emergency where a lie is a 'necessity,' and so I must
+avail myself of the help of 'the father of lies.' If I am carried
+through this crisis by his help, I shall be glad to resume my position
+in your service." The man whose whole moral nature recoils from this
+position, will not be led into it by the best arguments of Christian
+philosophers in favor of the "lie of necessity."
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+CENTURIES OF DISCUSSION.
+
+
+Because of the obvious gain in lying in times of extremity, and
+because of the manifest peril or cost of truth-telling in an
+emergency, attempts have been made, by interested or prejudiced
+persons, all along the ages, to reconcile the general duty of adhering
+to an absolute standard of right, with the special inducements, or
+temptations, to depart from that standard for the time being. It has
+been claimed by many that the results of a lie would, under certain
+circumstances, justify the use of a lie,--the good end in this case
+justifying the bad means in this case. And the endeavor has also been
+made to show that what is called a lie is not always a lie. Yet there
+have ever been found stalwart champions of the right, ready to insist
+that a lie is a sin _per se_, and therefore not to be justified by any
+advantage or profit in its utterance.
+
+Prominent in the earlier recorded discussions of the centuries
+concerning the admissibility of the lie, are those of the Jewish
+Talmudists and of the Christian Fathers. As in the Bible story the
+standard of right is recognized as unvariable, even though such Bible
+characters as Abraham and Jacob and David, and Ananias and Sapphira,
+fail to conform to it in personal practice; so in the records of the
+Talmud and the Fathers there are not wanting instances of godly men
+who are ready to speak in favor of a departure from the strictest
+requirement of the law of truth, even while the great sweep of
+sentiment is seen to be in favor of the line that separates the lie
+from the truth eternally.
+
+Hamburger, a recognized Jewish authority in this sphere, represents
+the teachings of the Talmud as even more comprehensive and explicit
+than the Bible itself, in favor of the universal duty of truthfulness.
+He says: "Mosaism, with its fundamental law of holiness, has
+established the standard of truthfulness with incomparable
+definiteness and sharpness (see Lev. 19: 2, 12, 13, 34-37).
+Truthfulness is here presented as derived directly from the principle
+of holiness, and to be practiced without regard to resulting benefit
+or injury to foe or to friend, to foreigner or to countryman. In this
+moral loftiness these Mosaic teachings as to truthfulness pervade the
+whole Bible. In the Talmud they receive a profounder comprehension and
+a further development. Truthfulness toward men is represented as a
+duty toward God; and, on the other hand, any departure from it is a
+departure from God."[1]
+
+[Footnote 1: Hamburger's _Real-Encyclopadie für Bibel und Talmud_, I.,
+art. "Truthfulness" (_Wahrhaftigkeit_).]
+
+As specimen illustrations of the teachings of the Talmud on this
+theme, Hamburger quotes these utterances from its pages: "He who
+alters his word, at the same time commits idolatry." "Three are hated
+of God: he who speaks with his mouth otherwise than as he feels with
+his heart; he who knows of evidence against any one, and does not
+disclose it," etc. "Four cannot appear before God: the scorner, the
+hypocrite, the liar, and the slanderer." "'A just measure thou shalt
+keep;' that is, we should not think one thing in our heart, and speak
+another with our mouth." "Seven commit the offense of theft: he who
+steals [sneaks into] the good will of another; he who invites his
+friend to visit him, and does not mean it in his heart; he who offers
+his neighbor presents, knowing beforehand that he will not receive
+them," etc.
+
+And Hamburger adds: "Every lie, therefore, however excellent the
+motive, is decidedly forbidden.... In the tract Jebamoth, 63, Raba
+blames his son for employing a 'lie of necessity' _(nothlüge)_ to
+restore peace between his father and his mother.... It is clear that
+the Talmud decidedly rejects the principle that 'the end justifies the
+means.'"[1]
+
+[Footnote 1: Compare also art. "Falseness" _(Falscheit)_.]
+
+On the other hand, Hamburger cites Rabbi Ishmael, one of the
+Talmudists, as teaching that a Jew might transgress even the
+prohibition of idolatry (and lying is, according to Talmudic teaching,
+equivalent to idolatry) in order to save his life, provided the act
+was not done in public. In support of his position, Rabbi Ishmael
+cited the declaration concerning the statutes of Moses in Leviticus
+18: 5, "which if a man do he shall live in them," and added by way of
+explanation: "He [the Israelite] is to live through the law, but is
+not to die through it."[1]
+
+[Footnote 1: See Hamburger's _Real-Encyc_., II., art. "Ismael R."]
+
+And Isaac Abohab, an eminent Spanish rabbi, in his _Menorath
+Hammaor_[1] gives other illustrations from the Talmud of the advocacy
+of special exceptions to the strict law of truthfulness, with a good
+purpose in view, notwithstanding the sweeping claim to the contrary
+by Hamburger. He says: "Only when it is the intention to bring about
+peace between men, may anything be altered in discourse; as is taught
+in the tract Jebamoth. Rabbi Ilai says, in the name of Rabbi Jehuda,
+son of Rabbi Simeon: 'One may alter something in discourse for the
+sake of establishing harmony.'... Rabbi Nathan says: 'This indeed is a
+duty.'... Rabbi Ishmael taught: 'Peace is of such importance that for
+its sake God even alters facts.'" In each of these cases the rabbi
+cited misapplies a Bible passage in support of his position.
+
+[Footnote 1: See German translation by R.J. Fürstenthal, Discourse
+II., I.]
+
+Isaac Abohab adds: "In like manner the rabbis say that one may praise
+a bride in the presence of her bridegroom, and say that she
+is handsome and devout, when she is neither, if the intention
+predominates to make her attractive in the eyes of her bridegroom.
+Nevertheless a man is not to tell lies even in trifling matters, lest
+lying should come to be a habit with him, as is warned against in the
+tract Jebamoth."
+
+Thus it would appear that there were discussions on this subject
+among the rabbis of the Talmud, and that while there were those who
+advocated the "lie of necessity," as a matter of personal gain or as a
+means of good to others, there were those who stood firmly against any
+form of the lie, or any falsity, as in itself at variance with the
+very nature of God, and with the plain duty of God's children.
+
+Among the Christian Fathers it was much the same as among the Jewish
+rabbis, in discussions over this question. The one unvarying standard
+was recognized, by the clearest thinkers, as binding on all for
+always; yet there were individuals inclined to find a reason for
+exceptions in the practical application of this standard. The phase of
+the question that immediately presented itself to the early Christians
+was, whether it were allowable for a man to deny to a pagan enemy that
+he was a Christian, or that one whom he held dear was a Christian,
+when the speaking of the truth would cost him his life, or cost the
+life of one whom he loved.
+
+There were those who held that the duty to speak the truth was merely
+a social obligation, and that when a man showed himself as an enemy
+of God and of his fellows, he shut himself out from the pale of this
+social obligation; moreover, that when such a man could be deterred
+from crime, and at the same time a Christian's life could be
+preserved, by the telling of an untruth, a falsehood would be
+justifiable. If the lie were told in private under such circumstances,
+it was by such persons considered different from a public denial of
+one's faith. But, on the other hand, the great body of Christians,
+in the apostolic age, and in the age early following, acted on the
+conviction that a lie is a sin _per se_, and that no emergency could
+make a lie a necessity. And it was in fidelity to this conviction that
+the roll of Christian martyrs was so gloriously extended.
+
+Justin Martyr, whose Apologies in behalf of the Christians are the
+earliest extant, speaks for the best of the class he represents when
+he says: "It is in our power, when we are examined, to deny that we
+are Christians; but we would not live by telling a lie."[1] And again:
+"When we are examined, we make no denial, because we are not conscious
+of any evil, but count it impious not to speak the truth in all
+things, which also we know is pleasing to God."[2] There was no
+thought in such a mind as Justin Martyr's, or in the minds of his
+fellow-martyrs, that any life was worth saving at the cost of a lie in
+God's sight.
+
+[Footnote 1: First Apology, Chapter 8.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Second Apology, Chapter 4.]
+
+There were many temptations, and great ones, to the early Christians,
+to evade the consequences of being known as refusers to worship the
+gods of the Romans; and it is not to be wondered at that many poor
+mortals yielded to those temptations. Exemption from punishment could
+be purchased by saying that one had offered sacrifices to the gods,
+or by accepting a certificate that such sacrifice had been made, even
+when such was not the fact; or, again, by professing a readiness to
+sacrifice, without the intention of such compliance, or by permitting
+a friend to testify falsely as to the facts; and there were those who
+thought a lie of this sort justifiable, for the saving of their lives,
+when they would not have openly renounced their Christian faith.[1]
+There was much discussion over these practices in the writings of the
+Fathers; but while there was recognized a difference between open
+apostasy and the tolerance of a falsehood in one's behalf, it was held
+by the church authorities that a lie was always sinful, even though
+there were degrees in modes of sinning.
+
+[Footnote 1: See Smith and Cheetham's _Dictionary of Christian
+Antiquities_, art. "Libelli." See also Bingham's _Antiquities of the
+Christian Church_, Book XVI., Chap. 13, Section 5; also Book XVI.,
+Chap. 3, Section 14; with citations from Tertullian, Origen, and
+Cyprian.]
+
+Ringing words against all forms of lying were spoken by some of the
+Christian Fathers. Says the Shepherd of Hermas: "Love the truth, and
+let nothing but truth proceed from your mouth, that the spirit which
+God has placed in your flesh may be found truthful before all men; and
+the Lord, who dwelleth in you, will be glorified, because the Lord is
+truthful in every word, and in him is no falsehood. They, therefore,
+who lie, deny the Lord, and rob him, not giving back to him the
+deposit which they have received. For they received from him a spirit
+free from falsehood. If they give him back this spirit untruthful,
+they pollute the commandment of the Lord, and become robbers."[1]
+
+[Footnote 1: Book II., Commandment Third. _The Ante-Nicene Fathers_
+(Am. ed.), II., 21.]
+
+Tertullian names among "sins of daily committal, to which we all
+are liable," the "sin" of "lying, from bashfulness [or modesty], or
+'necessity.'"[1] Origen also speaks of the frequency of "lying, or of
+idle talking;"[2] as if possibly its frequency were in some sense an
+excuse for it. And Origen specifically claimed that the apostles
+Peter and Paul agreed together to deceive their hearers at Antioch by
+simulating a dissension between themselves, when in reality they were
+agreed.[3] Origen also seemed to approve of false speaking to those
+who were not entitled to know all the truth; as when he says of the
+cautious use of falsehood, "a man on whom necessity imposes the
+responsibility of lying is bound to use very great care, and to use
+falsehood as he would a stimulant or a medicine, and strictly to
+preserve its measure, and not go beyond the bounds observed by Judith
+in her dealings with Holofernes, whom she overcame by the wisdom with
+which she dissembled her words."[4]
+
+[Footnote 1: "On Modesty," Chap. 19. _The Ante-Nicene Fathers_, XIV.,
+97.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Origen's Commentaries on Matthew, Tract VI., p. 60; cited
+in Bingham's _Antiq. of Chr. Ch_., Book XVI., Chap. 3.]
+
+[Footnote 3: Gal. 2: 11-14. A concise statement of the influence
+of this teaching of Origen on the patristic interpretations of the
+passage in Galatians, is given by Lightfoot in his commentary on
+Galatians, sixth edition, pp. 128-132.]
+
+[Footnote 4: Quoted from the sixth book of Origen's Miscellanies by
+Jerome, in his Apology against Rufinus, Book I., § 18. See _The Nicene
+and Post-Nicene Fathers_, second series (Am. ed.), III., 492. See,
+also, Neander's _Geschichte der Christlichen Ethik_, pp. 160, 167.]
+
+There were Christian Fathers who found it convenient to lie, in their
+own behalf or in behalf of others; and it was quite natural for such
+mortals to seek to find an excuse for lies that "seemed so necessary"
+for their purposes. When Gregory of Nyssa, in his laudable effort to
+bring about a reconciliation between his elder brother Basil and their
+uncle, was "induced to practice a deceit which was as irreconcilable
+with Christian principles as with common sense,"[1] he was ready to
+argue in defense of such a course.
+
+[Footnote 1: Moore's _Life of S. Gregory of Nyssa. The Nicene and
+Post-Nicene Fathers_, second series (Am. ed.), V., 5.]
+
+So again, when his brother Basil was charged with falsehood in a
+comparatively "trivial" matter, (where, in fact, he had merely been
+in error unintentionally,) Gregory falls back upon the comforting
+suggestion, that as to lying, in one way or another everybody is at
+fault; "accordingly, we accept that general statement which the Holy
+Spirit uttered by the Prophet, 'Every man is a liar.'"[1] Gregory
+protests against the "solemn reflections on falsehood" by Eunomius, in
+this connection, and his seeing equal heinousness in it whether in
+great or very trivial matters. "Cease," he says, "to bid us think it
+of no account to measure the guilt of a falsehood by the slightness
+or importance of the circumstances." Basil, on the contrary, asserts
+without qualification, as his conviction, that it never is permissible
+to employ a falsehood even for a good purpose. He appeals to the words
+of Christ that all lies are of the Devil.[2]
+
+[Footnote 1: _Ibid_., p. 46.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Neander's _Geschichte der Christlichen Ethik_, p. 219.]
+
+Chrysostom, as a young man, evaded ordination for himself and secured
+it to his dearest friend Basil (who should not be confounded with
+Basil the Great, the brother of Gregory of Nyssa) by a course of
+deception, which he afterwards labored to justify by the claim that
+there were lies of necessity, and that God approved of deception as a
+means of good to others.[1] In the course of his exculpatory argument,
+he said to his much aggrieved friend Basil: "Great is the value of
+deceit, provided it be not introduced with a mischievous intention. In
+fact, action of this sort ought not to be called deceit, but rather a
+kind of good management, cleverness, and skill, capable of finding
+out ways where resources fail, and making up for the defects of the
+mind.... That man would fairly deserve to be called a deceiver who
+made an unrighteous use of the practice, not one who did so with a
+salutary purpose. And often it is necessary to deceive, and to do the
+greatest benefits by means of this device, whereas he who has gone by
+a straight course has done great mischief to the person whom he has
+not deceived."[2]
+
+[Footnote 1: See Smith and Wace's _Dictionary of Christian Biography_,
+I., 519 f.; art. "Chrysostom, John."]
+
+[Footnote 2: See Chrysostom's "Treatise on the Priesthood," in _The
+Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers_, first series (Am. ed.), IX., 34-38.]
+
+In fact, Chrysostom seems, in this argument, to recognize no absolute
+and unvarying standard of truthfulness as binding on all at all times;
+but to judge lies and deceptions as wrong only when they are wrongly
+used, or when they result in evil to others. He appears to act on the
+anti-Christian theory[1] that "the end justifies the means." Indeed,
+Dr. Schaff, in reprobating this "pious fraud" of Chrysostom, as
+"conduct which every sound Christian conscience must condemn," says
+of the whole matter: "The Jesuitical maxim, 'the end justifies the
+means,' is much older than Jesuitism, and runs through the whole
+apocryphal, pseudo-prophetic, pseudo-apostolic, pseudo-Clementine, and
+pseudo-Isidorian literature of the early centuries. Several of the
+best Fathers show a surprising want of a strict sense of veracity.
+They introduce a sort of cheat even into their strange theory of
+redemption, by supposing that the Devil caused the crucifixion under
+the delusion [intentionally produced by God] that Christ was a mere
+man, and thus lost his claim upon the fallen race." [2]
+
+[Footnote 1: Rom. 3: 7, 8.]
+
+[Footnote 2: See Dr. Schaff's "Prologemena to The Life and Works of
+St. Chrysostom," in _The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers_, first Series
+(Am. ed.), IX., 8.]
+
+Chrysostom, like Gregory of Nyssa, having done that which was wrong in
+itself, with a laudable end in view, naturally attempts its defense by
+the use of arguments based on a confusion in his own mind of things
+which are unjustifiable, with things which are allowable. He does not
+seem to distinguish between deliberate deception as a mode of lying,
+and concealment of that which one has a right to conceal. Like many
+another defender of the right to lie in behalf of a worthy cause, in
+all the centuries, Chrysostom essays no definition of the "lie," and
+indicates no distinction between culpable concealment, and concealment
+that is right and proper. Yet Chrysostom was a man of loving heart and
+of unwavering purpose of life. In an age of evil-doing, he stood firm
+for the right. And in spite of any lack of logical perceptions on his
+part in a matter like this, it can be said of him with truth that
+"perhaps few have ever exercised a more powerful influence over the
+hearts and affections of the most exalted natures."[1]
+
+[Footnote 1: Smith and Wace's _Dictionary of Christian Biography_, I.,
+532.]
+
+Augustine, on the other hand, looks at this question, in accordance
+with the qualities of his logical mind, in its relation to an absolute
+standard; and he is ready to accept the consequences of an adherence
+to that standard, whether they be in themselves desirable or
+deplorable. He is not afraid to define a lie, and to stand by his
+definition in his argument. He sees and notes the difference between
+justifiable concealment, and concealment that is for the purpose of
+deception. "It is lawful then," he says on this point, "to conceal at
+fitting time whatever seems fit to be concealed: but to tell a lie is
+never lawful, therefore neither to conceal by telling a lie."[1]
+In his treatise "On Lying" _(De Mendacid_),[2] and in his treatise
+"Against Lying" _(Contra Mendaciuni)[3]_ as well as in his treatise
+on "Faith, Hope, and Love" _(Enchiridion)_,[4] and again in his
+Letters to Jerome,[5] Augustine states the principle involved in this
+vexed question of the ages, and goes over all the arguments for and
+against the so-called "lie of necessity." He sees a lie to be a sin
+_per se_, and therefore never admissible for any purpose whatsoever.
+He sees truthfulness to be a duty growing out of man's primal relation
+to God, and therefore binding on man while man is in God's sight.
+He strikes through the specious arguments based on any temporary
+advantages to be secured through lying, and rejects utterly the
+suggestion that man may do evil that good may come.
+
+[Footnote 1: _The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers_, first series (Am.
+ed.), IX., 466.]
+
+[Footnote 2: _Ibid_., III., 455-477.]
+
+[Footnote 3: _Ibid_., pp. 479-500.]
+
+[Footnote 4: _Ibid_., pp. 230-276.]
+
+[Footnote 5: _Ibid_., I., "Letters of St. Augustine."]
+
+The sound words of Augustine on this question, as based on his sound
+arguments, come down to us with strength and freshness through the
+intervening centuries; and they are worthy of being emphasized as the
+expressions of unchanging truth concerning the duty of truthfulness
+and the sin of lying. "There is a great question about lying," he
+says at the start, "which often arises in the midst of our everyday
+business, and gives us much trouble, that we may not either rashly
+call that a lie which is not such, or decide that it is sometimes
+right to tell a lie; that is, a kind of honest, well-meant, charitable
+lie." This question he discusses with fulness, and in view of all that
+can be said on both sides. Even though life or salvation were to pivot
+on the telling of a lie, he is sure that no good to be gained could
+compensate for the committal of a sin.
+
+Arguing that a lie is essentially opposed to God's truth--by which
+alone man can have eternal life--Augustine insists that to attempt to
+save another's life through lying, is to set off one's eternal life
+against the mere bodily life of another. "Since then by lying eternal
+life is lost, never for any man's temporal life must a lie be told.
+And as to those who take it ill, and are indignant that one should
+refuse to tell a lie, and thereby slay his own soul in order that
+another may grow old in the flesh, what if by our committing adultery
+a person might be delivered from death: are we therefore to steal, to
+commit whoredom.... To ask whether a man ought to tell a lie for the
+safety of another, is just the same as asking whether for another's
+safety a man ought to commit iniquity."
+
+"Good men," he says, "should never tell lies." "To tell a lie is never
+lawful, therefore neither to conceal [when concealment is desirable]
+by telling a lie." Referring to the fact that some seek to find a
+justification in the Bible teachings for lying in a good cause,--"even
+in the midst of the very words of the divine testimonies seeking place
+for a lie,"--he insists, after a full examination of this claim, "that
+those [cited] testimonies of Scripture have none other meaning than
+that we must never at all tell a lie."
+
+"A lie is not allowable, even to save another from injury." "Every lie
+must be called a sin." "Nor are we to suppose that there is any lie
+that is not a sin, because it is sometimes possible, by telling a
+lie, to do service to another." "It cannot be denied that they have
+attained a very high standard of goodness who never lie except to
+save a man from injury; but in the case of men who have reached this
+standard, it is not the deceit, but their good intention, that is
+justly praised, and sometimes even rewarded,"--as in the case of Rahab
+in the Bible story. "There is no lie that is not contrary to truth.
+For as light and darkness, piety and impiety, justice and injustice,
+sin and righteousness, health and sickness, life and death, so are
+truth and a lie contrary the one to the other. Whence by how much we
+love the former, by so much ought we to hate the latter."
+
+"It does indeed make very much difference for what cause, with what
+end, with what intention, a thing be done: but those things which are
+clearly sins, are upon no plea of a good cause, with no seeming good
+end, no alleged good intention, to be done. Those works, namely,
+of men, which are not in themselves sins, are now good, now evil,
+according as their causes are good or evil.... When, however, the
+works in themselves are evil,... who is there that will say, that upon
+good causes, they may be done, so as either to be no sins, or, what is
+more absurd, to be just sins?" "He who says that some lies are just,
+must be judged to say no other than that some sins are just, and that
+therefore some things are just which are unjust: than which what can
+be more absurd?" "Either then we are to eschew lies by right doing,
+or to confess them [when guilty of them] by repenting: but not, while
+they unhappily abound in our living, to make them more by teaching
+also."
+
+In replying to the argument that it would be better to lie concerning
+an innocent man whose life was sought by an enemy, or by an unjust
+accuser, than to betray him to his death, Augustine said courageously:
+"How much braver,... how much more excellent, to say, 'I will neither
+betray nor lie.'" "This," he said, "did a former bishop of the Church
+of Tagaste, Firmus by name, and even more firm in will. For when he
+was asked by command of the emperor, through officers sent by him, for
+a man who was taking refuge with him, and whom he kept in hiding with
+all possible care, he made answer to their questions, that he could
+neither tell a lie nor betray a man; and when he had suffered so many
+torments of body (for as yet emperors were not Christians), he stood
+firm in his purpose. Thereupon, being brought before the emperor, his
+conduct appeared so admirable that he without any difficulty obtained
+a pardon for the man whom he was trying to save. What conduct could be
+more brave and constant?"[1]
+
+[Footnote 1: See _The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers_, first series
+(Am. ed.), III., 408.]
+
+The treatise "Against Lying" was written by Augustine with special
+reference to the practice and teaching of the sect of Priscillianists.
+These Christians "affirmed, with some other of the theosophic sects,
+that falsehood was allowable for a holy end. Absolute veracity was
+only binding between fellow-members of their sect."[1] Hence it was
+claimed by some other Christians that it would be fair to shut out
+Priscillianists from a right to have only truth spoken to them, since
+they would not admit that it is always binding between man and man.
+This view of truthfulness as merely a social obligation Augustine
+utterly repudiated; as, indeed, must be the case with every one who
+reckons lying a sin in and of itself. Augustine considered, in this
+treatise, various hypothetical cases, in which the telling of the
+truth might result in death to a sick man, while the telling of a
+falsehood might save his life. He said frankly: "And who can bear men
+casting up to him what a mischief it is to shun a lie that might save
+life, and to choose truth which might murder a man? I am moved by this
+objection exceedingly, but it were doubtful whether also wisely." Yet
+he sees that it were never safe to choose sin as a means to good, in
+preference to truth and right with all their consequences.
+
+[Footnote 1: See Smith and Wace's _Dict. of Chris. Biog_., IV., 478,
+art. "Priscillianus."]
+
+Jerome having, like many others, adopted Origen's explanation of the
+scene between Peter and Paul at Antioch, Augustine wrote to him in
+protest against such teaching, with its implied approval of deceit and
+falsehood.[1] A correspondence on this subject was continued between
+these two Fathers for years;[2] and finally Jerome was led to adopt
+Augustine's view of the matter,[3] and also to condemn Origen for his
+loose views as to the duty of veracity.[4] But however Jerome might
+vacillate in his theory, as in his practice, concerning the permanent
+obligations of truthfulness, Augustine stood firm from first to last
+in the position which is justified by the teachings of the Bible and
+by the moral sense of the human race as a whole,--that a lie is always
+a lie and always a sin, and that a lie can never be justified as a
+means to even the best of ends.
+
+[Footnote 1: See _The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers_, first series
+(Am. ed.), I., Letters XXVIII., XL.]
+
+[Footnote 2: _Ibid_., Letters LXVII., LXVIII., LXXII., LXXIII.,
+LXXIV., LXXV.]
+
+[Footnote 3: _Ibid_., Letter CLXXX.]
+
+[Footnote 4: _The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers_, second series (Am.
+ed.), III., 460 ff.; _Rufinus' Apology_, Book II.; _Jerome's Apology_,
+Book I., p. 492.]
+
+From the days of Chrysostom and Augustine to the present time, all
+discussions of this question have been but a repetition of the
+arguments and objections then brought forward and examined. There can
+be, in fact, only two positions maintained with any show of logical
+consistency. Either a lie is in its very nature antagonistic to
+the being of God, and therefore not to be used or approved by him,
+whatever immediate advantages might accrue from it, or whatever
+consequences might pivot on its rejection; or a lie is not in itself
+a sin, is not essentially at variance with the nature of God, but is
+good or evil according to the spirit of its use, and the end to be
+gained by it; and therefore on occasions God could lie, or could
+approve lying on the part of those who represent him.
+
+The first of these positions is that maintained by the Shepherd of
+Hermas, by Justin Martyr, by Basil the Great, and by Augustine;
+the second is practically that occupied by Gregory of Nyssa and
+Chrysostom, even though they do not explicitly define, or even seem to
+perceive, it as their position. There are, again, those like Origen
+and Jerome, who are now on one side of the dividing line, and now on
+the other; but they are not logically consistent with themselves in
+their opinions or practices. And those who are not consistent usually
+refrain from explicit definitions of the lie and of falsehood; they
+make no attempt at distinguishing between justifiable concealment, and
+concealment for the very purpose of deception.
+
+With all the arguments on this question, in all the centuries,
+comprised within these well-defined bounds, it were useless to name
+each prominent disputant, in order merely to classify him as on the
+one side or on the other, or as zigzagging along the line which he
+fails to perceive. It were sufficient to point out a few pre-eminent
+mountain peaks, in the centuries between the fifth and the nineteen of
+the Christian era, as indicative of the perspective history of this
+discussion.
+
+Towering above the greatest of the Schoolmen in the later middle ages
+stands Thomas Aquinas. As a man of massive intellect, of keenness
+of perception, of consistent logical instincts, and of unquestioned
+sincerity and great personal devoutness, we might expect him to be
+found, like Augustine, on the side of principle against policy, in
+unqualified condemnation of lying under any circumstances whatsoever,
+and in advocacy of truthfulness at all hazards. And that, as a matter
+of fact, is his position.
+
+In his _Summa Theologies_[1] Aquinas discusses this whole question
+with eminent fairness, and with great thoroughness. He first states
+the claims of those who, from the days of Chrysostom, had made excuses
+for lying with a good end in view, and then he meets those claims
+severally. He looks upon lies as evil in themselves, and as in no
+way to be deemed good and lawful, since a right concurrence of all
+elements is essential to a thing's being good. "Whence, every lie is a
+sin, as Augustine says in his book 'Against Lying.'" His conclusion,
+in view of all that is to be said on both sides of the question, is:
+"Lying is sinful not only as harmful to our neighbor, but because
+of its own disorderliness. It is no more permitted to do what is
+disorderly [that is, contrary to the divine order of the universe] in
+order to prevent harm, than it is to steal for the purpose of giving
+alms, except indeed in case of necessity when all things are common
+property [when, for instance, the taking of needful food in time of a
+great disaster, as on a wrecked ship, is not stealing]. And therefore
+it is not allowable to utter a lie with this view, that we may deliver
+one from some peril. It is allowable, however, to conceal the truth
+prudently, by a sort of dissimulation, as Augustine says." This
+recognizes the correctness of Augustine's position, that concealment
+of what one has a right to conceal may be right, provided no lie is
+involved in the concealment. As to the relative grades of sin in
+lying, Aquinas counts lying to another's hurt as a mortal sin, and
+lying to avert harm from another as a venial sin; but he sees that
+both are sins.
+
+[Footnote 1: _Secunda Secundae_, Quaestio CX., art. III.]
+
+It is natural to find Aquinas, as a representative of the keen-minded
+Dominicans, standing by truth as an eternal principle, regardless of
+consequences; as it is also natural to find, on the other side, Duns
+Scotus, as a representative of the easy-going Franciscans, with his
+denial of good absolute save as manifested in the arbitrary will of
+God. Duns Scotus accepted the "theory of a twofold truth," ascribed to
+Averroes, "that one and the same affirmation might be theologically
+true and philosophically false, and _vice versa_." In Duns Scotus's
+view, "God does not choose a thing because it is good, but the thing
+chosen is good because God chooses it;" "it is good simply and solely
+because God has willed it precisely so; but he might just as readily
+have willed the opposite thereof. Hence also God is not [eternally]
+bound by his commands, and he can in fact annul them."[1] According to
+this view, God could forbid lying to-day and justify it to-morrow. It
+is not surprising, therefore, that "falsehood and misrepresentation"
+are "under certain circumstances allowable," in the opinion of Duns
+Scotus.
+
+[Footnote 1: See Kurtz's _Church History_ (Macpherson's Translation),
+II., 101, 167-169; Ueberweg's _History of Philosophy_, I., 416, 456
+f.; Wuttke's _Christian Ethics_ (Am. ed.), I., 218, Sec. 34.]
+
+So, all along the centuries, the religious teacher who holds to the
+line between truth and falsehood as an eternal line must, if logically
+consistent, refuse to admit any possible justification of lying. Only
+he who denies an eternally absolute line between the true and the
+false could admit with consistency the justification by God of an act
+that is essentially hostile to the divine nature. Any exception to
+this rule is likely to be where a sympathetic nature inclines a
+teacher to seek for an excuse for that which seems desirable even
+though it be theoretically wrong.
+
+When it comes to the days of the Protestant Reformation, we find John
+Calvin, like his prototype Augustine, and like Augustine's follower
+Aquinas, standing firmly against a lie as antagonistic to the very
+nature of God, and therefore never justifiable. Martin Luther, also,
+is a fearless lover of the truth; but he is disposed to find excuses
+for a lie told with a good end in view, although he refrains from
+asserting that even the best disposed lie lacks the element of
+sinfulness.[1] On the other hand, Ignatius Loyola, and his associates
+in the founding of the Society of Jesus as a means of checking the
+Protestant Reformation, acted on the idea that was involved in the
+theology of Duns Scotus, that the only standard of truth and right is
+in the absolute and arbitrary will of God; and that, therefore, if
+God, speaking through his representative in the newly formed Society,
+commands the telling of a lie, a lie is justifiable, and its telling
+is a duty. Moreover, these Jesuit leaders in defining, or in
+explaining away, the lie, include, under the head of justifiable
+concealment, equivocations and falsifications that the ordinary mind
+would see to be forms of the lie.[2]
+
+[Footnote 1: See Martensen's _Christian Ethics_, p. 216. Compare, for
+example, Luther's comments on Exodus I: 15-21, with Calvin's comments
+on Genesis 12: 14-20.]
+
+[Footnote 2: See Symonds's _Renaissance in Italy_, I., 263-267;
+Cartwright's _The Jesuits_; Meyrick's _Moral Theology of the Church
+of Rome_; Pascal's _Provincial Letters_. See, also, Kurtz's _Church
+History_, II., 430.]
+
+It is common to point to the arguments of the Jesuits in favor of lies
+of expediency, in their work for the Church and for souls, as though
+their position were exceptional, and they stood all by themselves in
+including falsehood as a means to be employed rightfully for a good
+end.
+
+But in this they are simply logically consistent followers of those
+Christian Fathers, and their successors in every branch of the Church,
+who have held that a lie for righteous purposes was admissible when
+the results to be secured by it were of vital importance. All the
+refinements of casuistry have their value to those who admit that a
+lie may be right under certain conceivable circumstances; but to those
+who, like Augustine and Aquinas, insist that a lie is a sin _per se_,
+and therefore never admissible, casuistry itself has no interest as a
+means of showing when a sin is not sinful.[1]
+
+[Footnote 1: Hence the casuistry of the Schoolmen and of the Jesuits,
+and the question of Mental Reservations, and of "Probabilities," are
+not treated in detail here.]
+
+Some of the zealous defenders of the principles and methods of
+the Jesuits affirm that, in their advocacy of dissimulation and
+prevarication in the interests of a good cause, the Jesuits do not
+intend to justify lying, but are pointing out methods of proper
+concealment which are not within the realm of the lie. In this
+(waiving the question whether these defenders are right or not as to
+the fact) they seem even more desirous of being counted against lying
+than those teachers, in the Romish Church or among Protestants, who
+boldly affirm that a lie itself is sometimes justifiable. Thus it is
+_claimed_ by a Roman Catholic writer, in defense of the Jesuits, that
+Liguori, their favorite theologian, taught "that to speak falsely
+is immutably a sin against God. It may be permitted under no
+circumstances, not even to save life. Pope Innocent III. says, 'Not
+even to defend our life is it lawful to speak falsely;'" therefore,
+when Liguori approves any actions that seem opposed to truthfulness,
+"he allows the instances because they are not falsehood."[1] On the
+other hand, Jeremy Taylor squarely asserts: "It is lawful to tell
+a lie to children or to madmen, because they, having no powers of
+judging, have no right to the truth."[2]
+
+[Footnote 1: See Meyrick's _Moral Theology of the Church of Rome_,
+Appendix, p. 256 f.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Jeremy Taylor's _Ductor Dubitantium_, in his Works, X.,
+103.]
+
+But Jeremy Taylor's trouble is in his indefinite definition of "a
+lie," and in his consequent confusion of mind and of statement with
+reference to the limitations of the duty of veracity. He writes on
+this subject at considerable length,[1] and in alternation declares
+himself plainly first on one side, and then on the other, of the main
+question, without even an attempt at logical consistency. He starts
+out with the idea that "we are to endeavor to be like God, who is
+truth essentially;" that "God speaks truth because it is his nature;"
+that "the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament do indefinitely
+and severely forbid lying," and "our blessed Saviour condemns it by
+declaring every lie to be of the Devil;" and that "beyond these things
+nothing can [could] be said for the condemnation of lying." All that
+certainly is explicit and sound,--as sound as Basil the Great, as
+St. Augustine, or as Thomas Aquinas!
+
+[Footnote 1: Jeremy Taylor's _Ductor Dubitantium_, in his Works, X.,
+100-132.]
+
+When he attempts the definition of a lie, however, Jeremy Taylor would
+seem to claim that injustice toward others and an evil motive are of
+its very essence, and that, if these be lacking, a lie is not a lie.
+"Lying is to be understood to be something said or written to the hurt
+of a neighbor, which cannot be understood [by the hearer or reader]
+otherwise than to differ from the mind of him that speaks." As
+Melanchthon says, "To lie is to deceive our neighbor to his hurt." "If
+a lie be unjust, it can never become lawful; but if it can be separate
+from injustice, then it may be innocent."
+
+Jeremy Taylor naturally falls back on the Bible stories of the Hebrew
+midwives and Rahab the harlot, and assumes that God commended their
+lying, as lying, because they had a good end in view; and he asserts
+that "it is necessary sometimes by a lie to advantage charity by
+losing of a truth to save a life," and that "to tell a lie for
+charity, to save a man's life, the life of a friend, of a husband, of
+a prince, of an useful and a public person, hath not only been done in
+all times, but commended by great and wise and good men." From this it
+would appear that lying, which Jeremy Taylor sets out with denouncing
+as contrary to God's nature, and as declared by our Saviour to be
+always of the Devil, may, under certain circumstances, be a godly sin.
+Gregory of Nyssa and young Chrysostom could not have done better than
+this in showing the sinlessness of a sin in a good cause.
+
+Seeing that concealment of that which is true is often a duty, and
+seeing also that concealment of that which ought to be disclosed
+is often practically a lie, Jeremy Taylor apparently; jumps to the
+conclusion that concealment and equivocation and lying are practically
+the same thing, and that therefore lying is sometimes a duty, while
+again it is a sin. He holds that the right to be spoken to in
+truthfulness, "though it be regularly and commonly belonging to all
+men, yet it may be taken away by a superior right supervening; or it
+may be lost, or it may be hindered, or it may cease upon a greater
+reason." As "that which is but the half of a true proposition either
+signifies nothing or is directly a lie," it must be admitted that "in
+the same cases in which it is lawful to tell a lie, in the same cases
+it is lawful to use a mental reservation;" and "where it is lawful to
+lie, it is lawful to equivocate, which may be something less than a
+plain lie." Moreover, "it is lawful upon a just cause of great charity
+or necessity to use, in our answers and intercourses, words of divers
+signification, though it does deceive him that asks."
+
+Jeremy Taylor ingenuously confesses that, in certain cases where lying
+is allowable or is a duty, "the prejudice which the question is like
+to have is in the meaning and evil sound of the word lying; which,
+because it is so hateful to God and man, casts a cloud upon anything
+that it comes near." But, on the whole, Jeremy Taylor is willing to
+employ with commendation that very word "lying" which is "so hateful
+to God and man." And in various cases he insists that "it is lawful to
+tell a lie," although "the lie must be charitable and useful,"--a good
+lie, and not a wicked lie; for a good lie is good, and a wicked lie
+is wicked. He does not shrink from the consequences of his false
+position.
+
+Jeremy Taylor can therefore be cited as arguing that a lie is never
+admissible, but that it often is commendable. He does not seem to
+be quite sure of any real difference between lying and justifiable
+concealment, or to have in his mind an unvarying line between
+truthfulness and lying. He admits that God and man hate lying, but
+that a good lie, nevertheless, is a very good thing. And so he leaves
+the subject in more of a muddle than he found it.
+
+Coming down to the present century, perhaps the most prominent and
+influential defender of the "lie of necessity," or of limitations to
+the law of veracity, is Richard Rothe; therefore it is important to
+give special attention to his opinions and arguments on this subject.
+Rothe was a man of great ability, of lovely spirit, and of pervasive
+personal influence; and as a consequence his opinions carry special
+weight with his numerous pupils and followers.
+
+Kurtz[1] characterizes Rothe as "one of the most profound thinkers
+of the century, equaled by none of his contemporaries in the grasp,
+depth, and originality of his speculation," and his "Theological
+Ethics" as "a work which in depth, originality, and conclusiveness
+of reasoning, is almost unapproached." And in the opinion of
+Lichtenberger,[2] Rothe "is unquestionably the most distinguished
+theologian of the School of Conciliation, and the most original
+thinker since Schleiermacher," while "he also showed himself to be one
+of the humblest Christians and one of the finest formed characters of
+his age." It is not to be wondered at therefore, that, when such a
+leader in thought and in influence as Rothe declares himself in favor
+of a judicious use of falsehood as a means of good, many are inclined
+to feel that there must be some sound reason for his course. Yet, on
+the other hand, the arguments in favor of falsehood, put forward
+by even such a man, ought to be scrutinized with care, in order to
+ascertain if they are anything more than the familiar arguments on the
+same side repeated in varying phrase in all the former centuries from
+Chrysostom to Jeremy Taylor.
+
+[Footnote 1: _Church History_ (Macpherson's translation), III., 201.]
+
+[Footnote 2: _History of German Theology in the 19th Century_, p.
+492.]
+
+The trouble with Rothe in his treatment of this Matter[1] is, that he
+considers the duty of truthfulness merely in its personal and social
+aspects, without any direct reference to the nature, and the declared
+will, of God. Moreover, his peculiar definition of a lie is adapted
+to his view of the necessities of the case. He defines a lie as
+"the unloving misuse of speech (or of other recognized means of
+communication) to the intentional deception of our neighbor." In his
+mind, lovelessness toward one's fellow-man is of the very essence of
+the lie, and when one speaks falsely in expression of a spirit of love
+to others, it is not necessarily a lie.
+
+[Footnote 1: Rothe's _Theologische Ethik_, IVter Band, §§ 1064, 1065.]
+
+Rothe does not seem to recognize, in its application to this matter,
+the great principle that there is no true love for man except in
+conformity to and in expression of love for God; hence that nothing
+that is in direct violation of a primal law of God can be an
+exhibition of real love for one of God's creatures.
+
+It is true that Rothe assumes that the subject of Theological Ethics
+is an essential branch of Speculative Theology; but in his treatment
+of Special Duties he seems to assume that Society rather than God is
+their background, and therefore the idea of sin as sin does not enter
+into the discussion. His whole argument and his conclusions are an
+illustration of the folly of attempting to solve any problem in ethics
+without considering the relation to it of God's eternal laws, and of
+the eternal principles which are involved in the very conception of
+God. Ethics necessarily includes more than social duties, and must be
+considered in the light of duty to God as above all.
+
+"The intentional deception of our neighbor," says Rothe, "by saying
+what is untrue, is not invariably and unqualifiedly a lie. The
+question in this case is essentially one of the purpose.... It is only
+in the case where the untruth spoken with intent to deceive is at the
+same time an act of unlovingness toward our neighbor, that it is a
+violation of truthfulness as already defined, that is, a lie." In
+Rothe's view, "there are relations of men to each other in which
+[for the time being] avowedly the ethical fellowship does not exist,
+although the suspension of this fellowship must, of course, always
+be regarded as temporary, and this indeed as a matter of duty for at
+least one of the parties. Here there can be no mention of love, and
+therefore no more of the want of it." Social duties being in such
+cases suspended, and the idea of any special duty toward God not being
+in consideration, it is quite proper, as Rothe sees it, for enemies in
+war, or in private life, to speak falsely to each other. Such enemies
+"naturally have in speech simply a weapon which one may use against
+the other.... The duty of speaking the truth cannot even be thought of
+as existing between persons so arrayed against each other.... However
+they may try to deceive each other, even with the help of speech, they
+do not lie."
+
+But Rothe goes even farther than this in the advocacy of such
+violations, or abrogations, of the law of veracity, as would undermine
+the very foundations of social life, and as would render the law
+against falsehood little more than a variable personal rule for
+limited and selected applications,--after the fashion of the American
+humorist who "believed in universal salvation if he could pick his
+men." Rothe teaches that falsehood is a duty, not only when it is
+needful in dealing with public or personal enemies, but often, also,
+in dealing with "children, the sick, the insane, the drunken, the
+passionately excited, and the morally weak,"--and that takes in
+a large share of the human race. He gives many illustrations of
+falsehood supposed to be necessary (where, in fact, they would seem to
+the keen-minded reader to be quite superfluous[1]) and having affirmed
+the duty of false speaking in these cases, he takes it for granted
+(in a strange misconception of the moral sense of mankind) that the
+deceived parties would, if appealed to in their better senses, justify
+the falsehoods spoken by mothers in the nursery, by physicians in the
+sick-room, and by the clear-headed sober man in his intercourse with
+the angry or foolish or drunken individual.
+
+[Footnote 1: Nitzsch, the most eminent dogmatic theologian among
+Schleiermacher's immediate disciples, denies the possibility of
+conceiving of a case where loving consideration for others, or any
+other dutiful regard for them, will not attain its end otherwise and
+more truly and nobly than by lying to them, or where "the loving liar
+or falsifier might not have acted still more lovingly and wisely
+without any falsification.... The lie told from supposed necessity or
+to serve another is always, even in the most favorable circumstances,
+a sign either of a wisdom which is lacking in love and truth, or of a
+love which is lacking in wisdom."]
+
+"Of course," he says, "such a procedure presupposes a certain relation
+of guardianship, on the part of the one who speaks untruth, over him
+whom he deceives, and a relative irresponsibility on the part of the
+other,--an incapacity to make use of certain truths except to his
+actual moral injury. And in each case all depends on the accuracy of
+this assumption." It is appalling to find a man like Rothe announcing
+a principle like this as operative in social ethics! Every man to
+decide for himself (taking the responsibility, of course, for his
+personal decision) whether he is in any sense such a guardian of his
+fellow-man as shall make it his duty to speak falsely to him in love!
+
+Rothe frankly admits that there is no evidence that Jesus Christ,
+while setting an example here among men, ever spoke one of these
+dutiful untruths; although it certainly would seem that Jesus might
+have fairly claimed as good a right to a guardianship of his earthly
+fellows as the average man of nowadays.[1] But this does not restrain
+Rothe from deliberately advising his fellow-men to a different course.
+
+[Footnote 1: Rothe says on this point: "That the Saviour spoke untruth
+is a charge to whose support only a single passage, John 7:8, can be
+alleged with any show of plausibility. But even here there was no
+speaking of untruth, even if [Greek: ank][a disputed reading] be
+regarded as the right reading." See on this passage Meyer in his
+_Commentary_, and Westcott in _The Bible Commentary_.]
+
+Rothe names Marheineke, DeWette, von Ammon, Herbart, Hartenstein,
+Schwartz, Harless, and Reinhard, as agreeing in the main with his
+position; while as opposed to it he mentions Kant, Fichte, Krause,
+Schleiermacher, von Hirscher, Nitzsch, Flatt, and Baumgarten-Crusius.
+But this is by no means a question to be settled by votes; and not one
+of the writers cited by Rothe as of his mind, in this controversy,
+has anything new to offer in defense of a position in such radical
+disagreement with the teachings of the Bible, and with the moral sense
+of the race, on this point, as that taken by Rothe. In his ignoring
+of the nature and the will of God as the basis of an argument in this
+matter, and in his arbitrary and unauthorized definition of a lie
+(with its inclusion of the claim that the deliberate utterance of a
+statement known to be false, for the express purpose of deceiving the
+one to whom it is spoken, is not necessarily and inevitably a lie),
+Rothe stands quite pre-eminent. Wuttke says, indeed, of Rothe's
+treatment of ethics: "Morality [as he sees it] is an independent
+something alongside of piety, and rests by no means on piety,--is
+entirely co-ordinate to and independent of it."[1] Yet so great is the
+general influence of Rothe, that various echoes of his arguments for
+falsehoods in love are to be found in subsequent English and American
+utterances on Christian ethics.
+
+[Footnote 1: Wuttke's _Christian Ethics_ (Lacroix's transl.), § 48.]
+
+Contemporaneous with Richard Rothe, and fully his peer in intellectual
+force and Christ-likeness of spirit, stands Isaac August Dorner. Dr.
+Schaff says of him:[1] "Dr. Dorner was one of the profoundest and
+most learned theologians of the nineteenth century, and ranks with
+Schleiermacher, Neander, Nitzsch, Julius Müller, and Richard Rothe. He
+mastered the theology of Schleiermacher and the philosophy of Hegel,
+appropriated the best elements of both, infused into them a positive
+evangelical faith and a historic spirit;" and as a lecturer,
+especially "on dogmatics and ethics ... he excelled all his
+contemporaries." And to this estimate of him Professor Mead adds:[2]
+"Even one who knows Dorner merely as the theological writer, will in
+his writings easily detect the fine Christian tone which characterized
+the man; but no one who did not personally know him can get a true
+impression of the Johannean tenderness and childlike simplicity which
+distinguished him above almost any one of equal eminence whom the
+world has ever known."
+
+[Footnote 1: _Supplement to Schaff-Hertzog Encyc. of Relig. Knowl_.,
+p. 58.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Preface to Dorner's _System of Christian Ethics_ (Am.
+ed.), p. vii.]
+
+When, therefore, it is considered that, after Rothe had given his
+views on veracity to the world, Dorner wrote on the same subject, as
+the very last work of his maturest life, a special interest attaches
+to his views on this mooted question. And Dorner is diametrically
+opposed to Rothe in this thing. Dorner bases the duty of truthfulness
+on our common membership in Christ, and the love that grows out of
+such a relation.[1] "Truth does not," indeed, "demand that all that is
+in a man should be brought out, else it would be a moral duty for him
+to let also the evil that is in him come forth, whereas it is his
+duty to keep it down." But if an untrue statement be made with the
+intention to deceive, it is a lie.
+
+[Footnote 1: See Dorner's _System of Christian Ethics_ (Am. ed.), pp.
+487-492.]
+
+"Are there cases," he asks, "where lying is allowable? Can we make out
+the so-called 'white lie' to be morally permissible?" Then he takes up
+the cases of children and the insane, who are not entitled to know all
+the truth, and asks if it be right not only to conceal the truth but
+to falsify it, in talking with them. Concealment may be a duty, he
+admits, but he denies that falsifying is ever a duty. "How shall
+ethics ever be brought to lay down a duty of lying [of 'white lying'],
+to recommend evil that good may come? The test for us is, whether we
+could ever imagine Christ acting in this way, either for the sake of
+others, or--which would be quite as justifiable, since self-love is a
+moral duty--for his _own_ sake."
+
+As to falsifying to a sick or dying man, he says, "we overestimate the
+value of human life, and, besides, we in a measure usurp the place
+of Providence, when we believe we may save it by committing sin." In
+other words, Dorner counts falsifying with the intention of deceiving,
+even with the best of motives, a lie, and therefore a sin--never
+justifiable. Like Augustine, Dorner recognizes degrees of guilt in
+lies, according to the spirit and motive of their telling; but in any
+event, if there be falsehood with the purpose of deceiving, it is a
+sin--to be regretted and repented of.
+
+Dorner makes a fresh distinction between the stratagems of war and
+lying, which is worthy of note. He says that playful fictions, after
+the manner of riddles to be guessed out, are clearly allowable. So "in
+war, too, something like a game of this kind is carried on, when by
+way of stratagem some deceptive appearance is produced, and a riddle
+is thus given to the enemy. In such cases there is no falsehood;
+for from the conditions of the situation,--whether friendly or
+hostile,--the appearance that is given is confessedly nothing more
+than an appearance, and is therefore honest."
+
+The simplicity and clearness of Dorner, in his unsophistical treatment
+of this question, is in refreshing contrast with the course of
+Rothe,--who confuses the whole matter in discussion by his arbitrary
+claim that a lie is not a lie, if it be told with a good purpose and a
+loving spirit. And the two men are representative disputants in
+this controversy of the centuries, as truly as were Augustine and
+Chrysostom.
+
+A close friend of Dorner was Hans Lassen Martensen, "the greatest
+theologian of Denmark," and a thinker of the first class, "with high
+speculative endowments, and a considerable tincture of theosophical
+mysticism."[1] Martensen's "Christian Ethics" do not ignore God
+and the Bible as factors in any question of practical morals under
+discussion. He characterizes the result of such an omission as "a
+reckoning of an account whose balance has been struck elsewhere; if
+we bring out another figure, we have reckoned wrong." Martensen's
+treatment of the duty of veracity is a remarkable exhibit of the
+workings of a logical mind in full view of eternal principles, yet
+measurably hindered and retarded by the heart-drawings of an amiable
+sentiment. He sees the all-dividing line, and recognizes the primal
+duty of conforming to it; yet he feels that it is a pity that such
+conformity must be so expensive in certain imaginary cases, and he
+longs to find some allowance for desirable exceptions.[2]
+
+[Footnote 1: See Kurtz's _Church History_ (Macpherson's transl.),
+III., 201; _Supplement to Schaff-Hertzog Encyc. of Relig. Knowl_., p.
+57; _Johnson's Univ. Cycl._., art. "Martensen."]
+
+[Footnote 2: Martensen's _Christian Ethics (Individual)_, (Eng.
+trans.,) pp. 205-226.]
+
+Martensen gives as large prominence as Rothe to love for one's
+fellow-man; but he bases that love entirely, as Rothe does not, on
+love for Christ. "Only in Christ, and [in] the light which, proceeding
+from him, is poured over human nature and all human life, can we love
+men in the central sense, and only then does philanthropy receive its
+deepest religious and moral character, when it is rooted in the truth
+of Christ." And as Christ is Truth, those who are Christ's must never
+violate the truth. "'Thou shalt not bear false witness; thou shalt not
+lie, neither in word nor deed; thou shalt neither deny the truth, nor
+give out anything that is not truth for truth,'--this commandment must
+dominate and penetrate all our life's relations." "Truth does not
+exist for man's sake, but man for the sake of the truth, because the
+truth would reveal itself to man, would be owned and testified
+by him." This would seem to be explicit enough to shut out the
+possibility of a justifiable lie!
+
+"Yet it does not follow from this," says Martensen, "that our duty to
+communicate the truth to others is unlimited.... 'There is a time to
+be silent, and a time to speak.' No one is bound to say everything to
+everybody." Here he distinguishes between justifiable concealment and
+falsehood. Then he comes to the question "whether the so-called 'lie
+of exigency' can ever be justifiable." He runs over the arguments on
+both sides, and recalls the centuries of discussion on the subject.
+He thinks that adherence to the general principle which forbids lying
+would, in certain cases where love prompted to falsehood, cause in
+most minds an inward feeling that the letter killeth, and that to
+follow the promptings of love were better. Hence he argues that "as
+in other departments there are actions which, although from the
+standpoint of the ideal they are to be rejected, yet, from the
+hardness of men's hearts, must be approved and admitted, and under
+this restriction become relatively justifiable and dutiful actions,
+simply because greater evils are thereby averted; so there is also an
+untruth from exigency that must still be allowed for the sake of human
+weakness." And in his opinion "it comes to this, that the question of
+casuistry cannot be solved by general and abstract directions, but
+must be solved in an individual, personal way, especially according to
+the stage of moral and religious development and ripeness on which the
+person in question is found."
+
+Having made these concessions, in the realm of feeling, to the
+defenders of the "lie of exigency," which may be "either uttered from
+love to men, or as defense against men--a defense in which either a
+justifiable self-love or sympathy with others is operative," Martensen
+proceeds to show that every such falsehood is abnormal and immoral.
+"When we thus maintain," he says, "that in certain difficult cases an
+'untruth from necessity' may occur, which is to be allowed for the
+sake of human weakness, and under the given relations may be said to
+be justified and dutiful, we cannot but allow, on the other hand, that
+in every such untruth there is something of sin, nay something that
+needs excuse and forgiveness.... Certainly even the truth of the
+letter, the external, actual truth, even the formally correct, finds
+its right, the ground of its validity, in God's holy order of the
+world. But by every lie of exigency the command is broken, 'Thou shalt
+not bear false witness.'"
+
+Martensen protests against the claim of Rothe that a falsehood spoken
+in love "is not at all to be called a lie, but can be absolutely
+defended as morally _normal_, and so in no respect needs pardon."
+"However sharply we may distinguish between lie and untruth
+(_mendacium_ and _falsilo-quium_), the untruth in question can never
+be resolved into the morally normal." And he suggests that if one had
+more of wisdom and courage and faith, he might be true to the truth in
+an emergency without fear of the consequences.
+
+"Let us suppose, for instance," he says, "the ... case, where the
+husband deceives his sick spouse from fear that she could not survive
+the news of the death of her child; who dare maintain that if the man
+had been able in the right way, that is in the power of the gospel,
+with the wisdom and the comfort of faith, to announce the death of the
+child, a religious crisis might not have arisen in her soul, which
+might have a healing and quickening effect upon her bodily state? And
+supposing that it had even led to her death, who dare maintain that
+that death, if it was a Christian death, were an evil, whether for the
+mother herself, or for the survivors?
+
+"Or, let us take the woman who, to save her chastity, applies the
+defense of an untruth: who dare maintain that if she said the truth to
+her persecutors, but uttered it in womanly heroism, with a believing
+look to God, with the courage, the elevation of soul springing from
+a pure conscience, exhibiting to her persecutors the badness and
+unworthiness of their object, she might not have disarmed them by that
+might that lies in the good, the just cause, the cause whose defense
+and shield God himself will be? And even if she had to suffer what is
+unworthy, who dare maintain that she could not in suffering preserve
+her moral worth?"
+
+Martensen recalls the story of Jeanie Deans, in Scott's "Heart of
+Midlothian," who refuses to tell a lie of exigency in order to save
+her sister's life; yet who, having uttered the truth which led to her
+sister's sentence of death, set herself, in faith in God, to secure
+that sister's pardon, and by God's grace compassed it. "Most people
+would at least be disposed to excuse Jeanie Deans, and to forgive
+her, if she had here made a false oath, and thereby had afforded her
+protection to the higher truth." And if a loving lie of exigency be a
+duty before God, an appeal to his knowledge of the fact is, of course,
+equally a duty. To refuse to appeal to God in witness of the truth of
+a falsehood that is told from a loving sense of duty, is to show a
+lack of confidence in God's approval of such an untruth. "But she
+will, can, and dare, for her conscience' sake, not do this."
+
+"But the best thing in this tale," adds Martensen, "is that it is
+no mere fiction. The kernel of this celebrated romance is actual
+history." And Sir Walter Scott caused a monument to be erected in his
+garden, with the following inscription, in memory of this faithful
+truth-lover:
+
+"This stone was placed by the Author of 'Waverley' in memory of Helen
+Walker, who fell asleep in the year of our Lord 1791. This maiden
+practiced in humility all the virtues with which fancy had adorned the
+character that bears in fiction the name of Jeanie Deans. She would
+not depart a foot's breadth from the path of truth, not even to save
+her sister's life; and yet she obtained the liberation of her sister
+from the severity of the law by personal sacrifices whose greatness
+was not less than the purity of her aims. Honor to the grave where
+poverty rests in beautiful union with truthfulness and sisterly love."
+
+"Who will not readily obey this request," adds Martensen, "and hold
+such a memory in honor?... Who does not feel himself penetrated with
+involuntary, most hearty admiration?"
+
+In conclusion, in view of all that can be said on either side of the
+question, Martensen is sure that "the lie of exigency itself, which we
+call inevitable, leaves in us the feeling of something unworthy, and
+this unworthiness should, simply in following Christ, more and more
+disappear from our life. That is, the inevitableness of the lie
+of exigency will disappear in the same measure that an individual
+develops into a true personality, a true character.... A lie of
+exigency cannot occur with a personality that is found in possession
+of full courage, of perfect love and holiness, as of the enlightened,
+all-penetrating glance. Not even as against madmen and maniacs will a
+lie of exigency be required, for to the word of the truly sanctified
+personality there belongs an imposing commanding power that casts out
+demons. It is this that we see in Christ, in whose mouth no guile
+was found, in whom we find nothing that even remotely belongs to the
+category of the exigent lie."
+
+So it is evident that if one would seek excuse for the lie of
+exigency, in the concessions made by Martensen, he must do so only on
+the score of the hardness of his heart, and the softness of his head,
+as one lacking a proper measure of wisdom, of courage, and of faith,
+to enable him to conform to the proper ideal standard of human
+conduct. And even then he must recognize the fact that in his weakness
+he has done something to be ashamed of, and to demand repentance. Cold
+comfort that for a decent man!
+
+It would seem that personal temperament and individual peculiarities
+had their part in deciding a man's attitude toward the question of the
+unvarying duty of veracity, quite as surely as the man's recognition
+of great principles. An illustration of this truth is shown in the
+treatment of the subject by Dr. Charles Hodge on the one hand, and by
+Dr. James H. Thornwell on the other, as representatives, severally, of
+Calvinistic Augustinianism in the Presbyterian Church of the United
+States, in its Northern and Southern branches. Starting from the same
+point of view, and agreeing as to the principles involved, these two
+thinkers are by no means together in their conclusions; and this, not
+because of any real difference in their processes of reasoning, but
+apparently because of the larger place given by the former to the
+influence of personal feeling, as over against the imperative demands
+of truth.
+
+Dr. Hodge begins with the recognition and asseveration of eternal
+principles, that can know no change or variation in their application
+to this question; and then, as he proceeds with its discussion, he is
+amiably illogical and good-naturedly inconsistent, and he ends in a
+maze, without seeming quite sure as to his own view of the case,
+or giving his readers cause to know what should be their view. Dr.
+Thornwell, on the other hand, beginning in the same way, proceeds
+unwaveringly to the close, in logical consistency of reasoning;
+leaving his readers at the last as fully assured as he is as to the
+application of unchangeable principles to man's life and duties.
+
+No one could state the underlying principles involved in this question
+more clearly and explicitly than does Dr. Hodge at the outset;[1] and
+it would seem from this statement that he could not be in doubt as to
+the issue of the discussion of this question of the ages. "The command
+to keep truth inviolate belongs to a different class [of commands]
+from those relating to the sabbath, to marriage, or to property. These
+are founded on the permanent relations of men in the present state of
+existence. They are not in their own nature immutable. But truth is
+at all times sacred, because it is one of the essential attributes of
+God, so that whatever militates against or is hostile to truth is in
+opposition to the very nature of God."
+
+[Footnote 1: See Hodge's _Systematic Theology_, III., 437-463.]
+
+"Truth is, so to speak, the very substratum of Deity. It is in such a
+sense the foundation of all the moral perfections of God, that without
+it they cannot be conceived of as existing. Unless God really is what
+he declares himself to be; unless he means what he declares himself to
+mean; unless he will do what he promises,--the whole idea of God is
+lost. As there is no God but the true God, so without truth there is
+and can be no God. As this attribute is the foundation, so to speak,
+of the divine, so it is the foundation of the physical and moral order
+of the universe.... There is, therefore, something awfully sacred in
+the obligations of truth. A man who violates the truth, sins against
+the very foundation of his moral being. As a false god is no god, so a
+false man is no man; he can never be what man was designed to be; he
+can never answer the end of his being. There can be in him nothing
+that is stable, trustworthy, or good."
+
+Here is a platform that would seem to be the right standing-place for
+all and for always. Dr. Hodge apparently recognizes its well-defined
+limits and bounds; yet when he comes to discuss the question whether a
+certain person is, in a supposable case, on it, or off it, he does not
+seem so sure as to its precise boundary lines. He begins to waver
+when he cites Bible incidents. Recognizing the fact that fables
+and parables, and works of fiction, even though untrue, are not
+falsehoods, he strangely jumps to the conclusion that the "intention
+to deceive" is "not always culpable." He immediately follows this
+non-sequitur with a reference to the lying Hebrew midwives,[1] and he
+quotes the declaration of God's blessing on them, as if it were an
+approval of their lying, or their false speaking with an intention to
+deceive, instead of an approval of their spirit of devotion to God's
+people.[2]
+
+[Footnote 1: Exod. I: 19, 20.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Comp. p. 35 f., _supra_.]
+
+From the midwives he passes to Samuel, sent of God to Bethlehem; [1]
+and under cover of the expressed opinions of others, Dr. Hodge says
+vaguely: "Here, it is said, is a case of intentional deception
+commanded. Saul was to be deceived as to the object of Samuel's
+journey to Bethlehem." Yet, whoever "said" this was guilty of a
+gratuitous charge of intentional deception, against the Almighty.
+Samuel was directed of God to speak the truth, so far as he spoke at
+all, while he concealed from others that which others had no right to
+know.[2] It would appear, however, throughout this discussion, that
+Dr. Hodge does not perceive the clear and important distinction
+between justifiable concealment from those who have no right to a
+knowledge of the facts, and concealment, or even false speaking, with
+the deliberate intention of deceiving those interested. In fact, Dr.
+Hodge does not even mention "concealment," as apart from its use for
+the specific purpose of deception.
+
+[Footnote 1: I Sam. 16: i, 2.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Comp. pp. 38-40, _supra_.]
+
+Again Dr. Hodge cites the incident of Elisha at Dothan[1] as if
+in illustration of the rightfulness of deception under certain
+circumstances. But in this case it was concealment of facts that might
+properly be concealed, and not the deception of enemies as enemies,
+that Elisha compassed. The Syrians wanted to find Elisha. Their eyes
+were blinded, so that they did not recognize him when in his presence.
+In order to teach them a lesson, Elisha told the Syrians that they
+could not find him, or the city which was his home, by their own
+seeking; but if they would follow him he would bring them to the man
+whom they sought. They followed him, and he showed himself to them.
+When their eyes were opened in Samaria he would not suffer them to be
+harmed, but had them treated as guests, and sent back safely to their
+king.
+
+[Footnote 1: Kings 6: 14-20.]
+
+Having cited these three cases, no one of which can fairly be made to
+apply to the argument he is pursuing, Dr. Hodge complacently remarks:
+"Examples of this kind of deception are numerous in the Old Testament.
+Some of them are simply recorded facts, without anything to indicate
+how they were regarded in the sight of God; but others, as in the
+cases above cited, received either directly or by implication the
+divine sanction."
+
+But Dr. Hodge goes even farther than this. He ventures to suggest that
+Jesus Christ deceived his disciples by intimating what was not true
+as to his purpose, in more than one instance. "Of our blessed
+Lord himself it is said in Luke 24:28, 'He made as though [Greek:
+prosepoieito]--he made a show of: he would have gone further.' He so
+acted as to make the impression on the two disciples that it was
+his purpose to continue his journey. (Comp. Mark 6: 48.)"[1] This
+suggestion of Dr. Hodge's would have been rebuked by even Richard
+Rothe, and would have shocked August Dorner. Would Dr. Hodge deny that
+Jesus _could_ have had it in his mind to "go further," or to have
+"passed by" his disciples, if they would not ask him to stop? And if
+this were a possibility, is it fair to intimate that a purpose of
+deception was in his mind, when there is nothing in the text that
+makes that a necessary conclusion? Dr. Hodge, indeed, adds the
+suggestion that "many theologians do not admit that the fact recorded
+in Luke 24:28 [which he cites as an illustration of justifiable
+deception by our Lord] involved any intentional deception;" but this
+fact does not deter him from putting it forward in this light.
+
+[Footnote 1: When Jesus came walking on the sea, toward his disciples
+in their tempest-tossed boat, "he would have passed them by;" but
+their cry of fear drew him toward them.]
+
+In the discussion of the application to emergencies, in practical
+life, of the eternal principle which he points out at the beginning,
+Dr. Hodge is as far from consistency as in his treatment of Bible
+narratives. "It is generally admitted," he says, "that in criminal
+falsehoods there must be not only the enunciation or signification of
+what is false, and an intention to deceive, but also a violation of
+some obligation." What obligation can be stronger than the obligation
+to be true to God and true to one's self? If, as Dr. Hodge declares,
+"a man who violates the truth, sins against the very foundation of his
+moral being," a man would seem to be always under an obligation not to
+violate the truth by speaking that which is false with an intention to
+deceive. But Dr. Hodge seems to lose sight of his premises, in all his
+progress toward his conclusions on this subject.
+
+"There will always be cases," he continues, "in which the rule of duty
+is a matter of doubt. It is often said that the rule above stated
+applies when a robber demands your purse. It is said to be right to
+deny that you have anything of value about you. You are not bound to
+aid him in committing a crime; and he has no right to assume that
+you will facilitate the accomplishment of his object. This is not so
+clear. The obligation to speak the truth is a very solemn one; and
+when the choice is left a man to tell a lie or lose his money, he
+had better let his money go. On the other hand, if a mother sees a
+murderer in pursuit of her child, she has a perfect right to mislead
+him by any means in her power [including lying?]; because the general
+obligation to speak the truth is merged or lost, for the time
+being, in the higher obligation." Yet Dr. Hodge starts out with the
+declaration that the obligation "to keep truth inviolate," is highest
+of all; that "truth is at all times sacred, because it is one of the
+essential attributes of God;" that God himself cannot "suspend or
+modify" this obligation; and that man is always under its force. And
+now, strangely enough, he claims that in various emergencies "the
+general obligation to speak the truth is merged, or lost, for the time
+being, in the higher obligation." The completest and most crushing
+answer to the vicious conclusions of Dr. Hodge as to the varying
+claims of veracity, is to be found in the explicit terms of his
+unvaryingly correct premises in the discussion.
+
+Dr. Hodge appears to be conscious of his confusion of mind in this
+discussion, but not to be quite sure of the cause of it. As to his
+claim that the general obligation to speak the truth may be merged for
+the time being in a "higher obligation," he says: "This principle is
+not invalidated by its possible or actual abuse. It has been greatly
+abused." And he adds, farther on, in the course of the discussion:
+
+"The question now under consideration is not whether it is ever right
+to do wrong, which is a solecism; nor is the question whether it is
+ever right to lie; but rather what constitutes a lie."
+
+Having claimed that a lie necessarily includes falsity of statement,
+an intention to deceive, and "a violation of some obligation," Dr.
+Hodge goes on to show that "every lie is a violation of a promise,"
+as growing out of the nature of human society, where "every man is
+expected to speak the truth, and is under a tacit but binding promise
+not to deceive his neighbor by word or act." And, after all this, he
+is inclined to admit that there are cases in which falsehoods with
+the intention of deceiving are not lying, and are justifiable. "This,
+however," he goes on to say, "is not always admitted. Augustine, for
+example, makes every intentional deception, no matter what the object
+or what the circumstances, to be sinful." And then, in artless
+simplicity, Dr. Hodge concludes: "This would be the simplest ground
+for the moralist to take. But as shown above, and as generally
+admitted, there are cases of intentional deception which are not
+criminal."
+
+According to the principles laid down at the start by Dr. Hodge,
+there is no place for a lie in God's service; but according to the
+inferences of Dr. Hodge, in the discussion of this question, there are
+places where falsehoods spoken with intent to deceive are admissible
+in God's sight and service. His whole treatment of this subject
+reminds me of an incident in my army-prison life, where this question
+as a question was first forced upon my attention. The Union prisoners,
+in Columbia at that time, received their rations from the Confederate
+authorities, and had them cooked in their own way, and at their own
+expense, by an old colored woman whom they employed for the purpose.
+Two of us had a dislike for onions in our stew, while the others were
+well pleased with them. So we two agreed with old "Maggie," for a
+small consideration, to prepare us a separate mess without onions. The
+next day our mess came by itself. We took it, and began our meal with
+peculiar satisfaction; but the first taste showed us an unmistakable
+onion flavor in our stew. When old Maggie came again, we remonstrated
+with her on her breach of engagement. "Bless your hearts, honeys," she
+replied, "you must have _some_ onions in your stew!" She could not
+comprehend the possibility of a beef stew without onions, even though
+she had formally agreed to make it.
+
+Dr. Hodge's premises in the discussion of the duty of truthfulness
+rule out onions; but his inferences and conclusions have the odor and
+the taste of onions. He stands on a safe platform to begin with; but
+he is an unsafe guide when he walks away from it. His arguments in
+this case are an illustration of his own declaration: "An adept in
+logic may be a very poor reasoner."
+
+Dr. Thornwell's "Discourses on Truth"[1] are a thorough treatment of
+the obligation of veracity and the sin of lying. He is clear in his
+definitions, marking the distinction between rightful concealment as
+concealment, and concealment for the purpose of deception. "There are
+things which men have a right to keep secret," he says, "and if a
+prurient curiosity prompts others officiously to pry into them, there
+is nothing criminal or dishonest in refusing to minister to such
+a spirit. Our silence or evasive answers may have the effect of
+misleading. That is not our fault, as it was not our design. Our
+purpose was simply to leave the inquirer as nearly as possible in the
+state of ignorance in which we found him: it was not to misinform him,
+but not to inform him at all.
+
+[Footnote 1: In Thornwell's _Collected Writings_, II., 451-613.]
+
+"'Every man,' says Dr. Dick, 'has not a right to hear the truth when
+he chooses to demand it. We are not bound to answer every question
+which may be proposed to us. In such cases we may be silent, or we may
+give as much information as we please, and suppress the rest. If the
+person afterward discover that the information was partial, he has no
+title to complain, because he had no right even to what he obtained;
+and we are not guilty of a falsehood unless we made him believe, by
+something which we said, that the information was complete.'" "The
+_intention_ of the speaker, and the _effect_ consequent upon it, are
+very different things."
+
+Dr. Thornwell recognizes the fact that the moral sense of humanity
+discerns the invariable superiority of truth over falsehood. "If we
+place virtue in sentiment," he says, "there is nothing, according to
+the confession of all mankind, more beautiful and lovely than truth,
+more ugly and hateful than a lie. If we place it in calculations of
+expediency, nothing, on the one hand, is more conspicuously useful
+than truth and the confidence it inspires; nothing, on the other, more
+disastrous than falsehood, treachery, and distrust. If there be then a
+moral principle to which, in every form, humanity has given utterance,
+it is the obligation of veracity." "No man ever tells a lie without a
+certain degree of violence to his nature."
+
+Dr. Thornwell bases this obligation of veracity on the nature of God,
+and on the duty of man to conform to the image of God in which he was
+created. "Jesus Christ commends himself to our confidence and love,"
+he says, "on the ground of his being the truth;... and makes it the
+glory of the Father that he is the God of truth, and the shame and
+everlasting infamy of the prince of darkness that he is the father
+of lies;" and he adds: "The mind cannot move in charity, nor rest in
+Providence, unless it turn upon the poles of truth." "Every man is as
+distinctly organized in reference to truth, as in reference to any
+other purpose."
+
+In Dr. Thornwell's view, it is not, as Dr. Paley would have it, that
+"a lie is a breach of promise," because as between man and man "the
+truth is expected," according to a tacit understanding. As Dr.
+Thornwell sees it, "we are not bound by any other expectations of man
+but those which we have authorized;" and he deems it "surprising
+to what an extent this superficial theory of 'contract' has found
+advocates among divines and moralists," as, for example, Dr. Robert
+South, whom he quotes.[1] "If Dr. Paley had pushed his inquiries a
+little farther," adds Thornwell, "he might have accounted for this
+expectation [of truthfulness] which certainly exists, independently of
+a promise, upon principles firmer and surer than any he has admitted
+in the structure of his philosophy. He might have seen it in the
+language of our nature proclaiming the will of our nature's God." The
+moral sense of mankind demands veracity, and abhors falsehood.
+
+[Footnote 1: Smith's _Sermon, on Falsehood and Lying_.]
+
+Dr. Thornwell is clear as to the teachings of the Bible, in its
+principles, and in the illustration of those principles in the sacred
+narrative. The Bible as he sees it teaches the unvarying duty of
+veracity, and the essential sinfulness of falsehood and deception. He
+repudiates the idea that God, in any instance, approved deception, or
+that Jesus Christ practiced it. "When our Saviour 'made as though he
+would have gone farther,' he effectually questioned his disciples
+as to the condition of their hearts in relation to the duties of
+hospitality. The angels, in pretending that it was their purpose to
+abide in the street all night, made the same experiment on Lot. This
+species of simulation involves no falsehood; its design is not to
+deceive, but to catechize and instruct. The whole action is to be
+regarded as a sign by which a question is proposed, or the mind
+excited to such a degree of curiosity and attention that lessons of
+truth can be successfully imparted."
+
+And so on through other Bible incidents. Dr. Thornwell has no
+hesitation in distinguishing when concealment is right concealment,
+and when concealment is wrong because intended to deceive.
+
+Exposing the incorrectness of the claim, made by Dr. Paley, as by
+others, that certain specific falsehoods are not lies, Dr. Thornwell
+shows himself familiar with the discussion of this question of
+the ages in all the centuries; and he moves on with his eye fixed
+unerringly on the polar star of truth, in refreshing contrast with the
+amiable wavering of Dr. Hodge's footsteps.
+
+"Paley's law," he concludes, "would obviously be the destruction of
+all confidence. How much nobler and safer is the doctrine of the
+Scriptures, and of the unsophisticated language of man's moral
+constitution, that truth is obligatory on its own account, and that he
+who undertakes to signify to another, no matter in what form, and no
+matter what may be the right in the case to know the truth, is bound
+to signify according to the convictions of his own mind! He is not
+always bound to speak, but whenever he does speak he is solemnly bound
+to speak nothing but the truth. The universal application of this
+principle would be the diffusion of universal confidence. It would
+banish deceit and suspicion from the world, and restrict the use of
+signs to their legitimate offices."
+
+A later work on Christian Ethics, which acquires special prominence
+through its place in "The International Theological Library," edited
+by Drs. Briggs and Salmond, is by Dr. Newman Smyth. It shows signs of
+strength in the premises assumed by the writer, in accordance with the
+teachings of Scripture and of the best moral sense of mankind; and
+signs of weakness in his processes of reasoning, and in his final
+conclusion, according to the mental methods of those who have wavered
+on this subject, from John Chrysostom to Richard Rothe and Charles
+Hodge.
+
+Dr. Smyth rightly bases Christian ethics on the nature and will of
+God, as illustrated in the life and teachings of the divine-human Son
+of God. "A thoroughly scientific ethics must not only be adequate
+to the common moral sense of men, but prove true also to the moral
+consciousness of the Son of man. No ethics has right to claim to be
+thoroughly scientific, or to offer itself as the only science of
+ethics possible to us in our present experience, until it has sought
+to enter into the spirit of Christ, and has brought all its, analysis
+and theories of man's moral life to the light of the luminous ethical
+personality of Jesus Christ."[1]
+
+[Footnote 1: Smyth's _Christian Ethics_, p. 6.]
+
+In his general statement of "the duty of speaking the truth," Dr.
+Smyth is also clear, sound, and emphatic.[1] "The law of truthfulness
+is," he says, "a supreme inward law of thought." "The obligation of
+veracity ... is an obligation which every man owes to himself. It is a
+primal personal obligation. Kant was profoundly right when he regarded
+falsehood as a forfeiture of personal worth, a destruction of personal
+integrity.... Truthfulness is the self-consistency of character;
+falsehood is a breaking up of the moral integrity. Inward truthfulness
+is essential to moral growth and personal vigor, as it is necessary
+to the live oak that it should be of one fiber and grain from root to
+branch. What a flaw is in steel, what a foreign substance is in any
+texture, that a falsehood is to the character,--a source of weakness,
+a point where under strain it may break.... Truthfulness, then, is
+due, first by the individual to himself as the obligation of personal
+integrity. The unity of the personal life consists in it."
+
+[Footnote 1: _Ibid_., pp. 386-389.]
+
+And in addition to the obligation of veracity as a duty to one's self,
+Dr. Smyth recognizes it as a duty to others. He says: "Truthfulness is
+owed to society as essential to its integrity. It is the indispensable
+bond of social life. Men can be members, one of another in a social
+organism only as they live together in truth. Society would fall, to
+pieces without credit; but credit rests on the general social virtue
+of truthfulness.... The liar is rightly regarded as an enemy to
+mankind. A lie is not only an affront against the person to whom it is
+told, but it is an offense against humanity."
+
+If Dr. Smyth had been content to leave this matter with the explicit
+statement of the principles that are unvaryingly operative, he would
+have done good service to the world, and his work could have been
+commended as sound and trustworthy in this department of ethics; but
+as soon as he begins to question and reason on the subject, he
+begins to waver and grow confused; and in the end his inconclusive
+conclusions are pitiably defective and reprehensible.[1]
+
+[Footnote 1: Smyth's _Christian Ethics_, pp. 392-403]
+
+In considering "the so-called lies of necessity," Dr. Smyth declares
+with frankness: "Some moralists in their supreme regard for truth will
+not admit that under any conceivable circumstances a lie can be
+deemed necessary, not even to save life or to prevent a murderer from
+accomplishing his fiendish purpose." And then over against this he
+indicates his fatal confusion of mind and weakness of reasoning in
+the suggestion: "But the sound human understanding, in spite of the
+moralists, will prevaricate, and often with great vigor and success,
+in such cases. Who is right,--Kant, or the common moral sense? Which
+should be followed,--the philosophic morality, or the practice of
+otherwise most truthful men?"
+
+It is to be noted that, in these two declarations, Dr. Smyth puts
+lying as if it were synonymous with prevarication; else there is no
+reason for his giving the one as over against the other. And this
+indicates a peculiar difficulty in the whole course of Dr. Smyth's
+argument concerning the "so-called lie of necessity." He essays no
+definition of the "lie." He draws no clear line of distinction between
+a lie, a falsehood, a deceit, and a prevarication, or between a
+justifiable concealment and an unjustifiable concealment; and in
+his various illustrations of his position he uses these terms
+indiscriminately, in such a way as to indicate that he knows no
+essential difference between them, or that he does not care to
+emphasize any difference.
+
+If, in the instance given above, Dr. Smyth means that "the sound human
+understanding, in spite of the moralists," will approve lying, or
+falsifying with the intention to deceive, he ought to know that the
+sound human understanding will not justify such a course, and that it
+is unfair to intimate such a thing.[1] And when he asks, in connection
+with this suggestion, "Who is right,--Kant, or the common moral sense?
+Which should be followed, the philosophic morality, or the practice of
+otherwise most truthful men?" his own preliminary assertions are his
+conclusive answer. He says specifically, "Kant was profoundly right
+when he regarded falsehood as a forfeiture of personal worth, a
+destruction of personal integrity;" and the "common moral sense" of
+humanity is with Kant in this thing, in accordance with Dr. Smyth's
+primary view of the case, as over against the intimation of Dr.
+Smyth's question. As to the suggested "practice of otherwise most
+truthful men" in this thing,--if men who generally tell the truth,
+lie, or speak falsely, or deceive, under certain circumstances, they
+are much like men who are generally decent, but who occasionally,
+under temptation, are unchaste or dishonest; they are better examples
+in their uprightness than in their sinning.
+
+[Footnote 1: See pp. 9-32, _supra_.]
+
+It would seem, indeed, that, notwithstanding his sound basis of
+principles, which recognizes the incompatibility of falsehood with
+true manhood and with man's duty to his fellows, Dr. Smyth does not
+carry with him in his argument the idea of the essential sinfulness of
+a lie, and therefore he is continually inconsistent with himself. He
+says, for example, in speaking of the suspension of social duties in
+war time: "If the war is justifiable, the ethics of warfare come at
+once into play. It would be absurd to say that it is right to kill
+an enemy, but not to deceive him. Falsehood, it may be admitted, as
+military strategy, is justifiable, if the war is righteous."
+
+Here, again, is the interchange of the terms "deception" and
+"falsehood." But unless this is an intentional jugglery of words,
+which is not to be supposed, this means that it would be absurd to
+say that it is right to kill an enemy, but not right to tell him a
+falsehood. And nothing could more clearly show Dr. Smyth's error of
+mind on this whole subject than this declaration. "Absurd" to claim
+that while it is right to take a man's life in open warfare, in a just
+cause, it would not be right to forfeit one's personal worth, and to
+destroy one's personal integrity, which Dr. Smyth says are involved
+in a falsehood! "Absurd" to claim that while God who is the author
+of life can justify the taking of life, he cannot justify the sin of
+lying! No, no, the absurdity of the case is not on _that_ side of the
+line.
+
+There is no consistency of argument on this subject in Dr. Smyth's
+work. His premises are sound. His reasoning is confused and
+inconsistent. "Not only in some cases of necessity is falsehood
+permissible, but we may recognize a positive obligation of love to
+the concealment of the truth," he says. Here again is that apparent
+confounding of unjustifiable "falsehood" with perfectly proper
+"concealment of truth." He continues: "Other duties which under such
+circumstances have become paramount, may require the preservation of
+one's own or another's life through a falsehood. Not only ought one
+not to tell the truth under the supposed conditions, but, if the
+principle assumed be sound, a good conscience may proceed to enforce a
+positive obligation of untruthfulness.... There are occasions when the
+interests of society and the highest motives of Christian love may
+render it much more preferable to discharge the duty of self-defense
+through the humanity of a successful falsehood, than by the barbarity
+of a stunning blow or a pistol-shot. General benevolence demands that
+the lesser evil, if possible, rather than the greater, should be
+inflicted on another."
+
+Just compare these conclusions of Dr. Smyth with his own premises.
+"Truthfulness ... is an obligation which every man owes to himself.
+It is a primal personal obligation.... Truthfulness is the
+self-consistency of character; falsehood is a breaking up of the moral
+integrity." "The liar is rightly regarded as an enemy to mankind. A
+lie is not only an affront against the person to whom it is told, but
+it is an offense against humanity." But what of all that? "There are
+occasions when the interests of society and the highest motives of
+Christian love may render it much more preferable to discharge the
+duty of self-defense through the humanity of a successful falsehood,
+than by the barbarity of a stunning blow or a pistol-shot. General
+benevolence demands that the lesser evil, if possible, rather than the
+greater, should be inflicted on another." Better break up one's
+moral integrity, and fail in one's primal personal obligation to
+himself,--better become an enemy of mankind, and commit an offense
+against humanity,--than defend one's self against an outlaw by the
+barbarity of a stunning blow or a bullet!
+
+Would any one suppose from his premises that Dr. Smyth looked upon
+personal truthfulness as a minor virtue, and upon falsehood as a
+lesser vice? Does he seem in those premises to put veracity below
+chastity, and falsehood below personal impurity? Yet is he to be
+understood as intimating, in this phase of his argument, that
+unchastity, or dishonesty, or any other vice than falsehood, is to be
+preferred, in practice, over a stunning blow or a fatal bullet against
+a would-be murderer?[1] The looseness of Dr. Smyth's logic, as
+indicated in this reasoning on the subject of veracity, would in its
+tendency be destructive to the safeguards of personal virtue and of
+social purity; and his arguments for the lie of exigency are similar
+to those which are put forward in excuse for common sins against
+chastity, by the free-and-easy defenders of a lax standard in such
+matters. "Some moralists," says the average young man of the world,
+"in their extreme regard for personal purity, will not admit that any
+act of unchastity is necessary, even to protect one's health, or as an
+act of love. But the men of virility and strong feeling will let down
+occasionally at this point, in spite of the moralists. Which should be
+followed,--the philosophic morality, or the practice of many otherwise
+decent and very respectable men?"
+
+[Footnote 1: See Augustine's words on this point, quoted at p. 100,
+_supra_.]
+
+Confounding, as always, a wise and right concealment of truth with
+actual falsehood, Dr. Smyth says of the duty of a teacher in the
+matter of imparting truth to a pupil according to the measure of the
+pupil's ability to receive it: "An occasional friendly use of truth
+as a crash towel may be wholesome; but ordinarily there is a more
+excellent way." _That_ is a counting of truth precious, with a
+vengeance!
+
+Dr. Smyth seems inclined to accept in the main the conclusions,
+on this whole subject, of Rothe, but without Rothe's measure of
+consistency in the argument. Rothe starts wrong, and of course ends
+wrong. Dr. Smyth, like Dr. Hodge, starts right and ends wrong. No
+sorer condemnation of Dr. Smyth's position can be made, than by the
+simple presentation of his own review of his own argument, when he
+says: "To sum up, then, what has been said concerning the so-called
+lies of necessity, the principle to be applied with wisdom is simply
+this: give the truth always to those who in the bonds of humanity
+have the right to the truth; conceal it or falsify it only when it is
+unmistakably evident that the human right to the truth from others
+has been forfeited, or temporarily is held in abeyance by sickness,
+weakness, or some criminal intent: do not in any case prevaricate,
+unless you can tell the necessary falsehood deliberately and
+positively, from principle, with a good conscience void of offense
+toward men, and sincere in the sight of God." What says the moral
+sense of humanity to such a position as that?
+
+As over against the erroneous claim, made by Richard Rothe, and Newman
+Smyth, and others, that the "moral sense" of mankind is at
+variance with the demands of "rigid moralists," in regard to the
+unjustifiableness of falsehood, it is of interest to note the
+testimony of strong thinkers, who have written on this subject with
+the fullest freedom, from the standpoint of speculative philosophy,
+rather than of exclusively Christian ethics. For example, James
+Martineau, while a Christian philosopher, discusses the question of
+veracity as a philosopher, rather than as a Christian, in his "Types
+of Ethical Theory;"[1] and he insists that "veracity is strictly
+natural, that is, it is implied in the very nature which leads us to
+intercommunion in speech."
+
+[Footnote 1: Martineau's _Types of Ethical Theory_, II., 255-265.]
+
+As he sees it, a man is treacherous to himself who speaks falsely at
+any time to any one, and the man's moral sense recoils from his
+action accordingly. Dr. Martineau says: "It is perhaps, the peculiar
+_treachery_ of this process which fixes upon falsehood a stamp of
+_meanness_ quite exceptional; and renders it impossible, I think, to
+yield to its inducements, even in cases supposed to be venial, without
+a disgust little distinguishable from compunction. This must have been
+Kant's feeling when he said: 'A lie is the abandonment, or, as it
+were, the annihilation of the dignity of man.'"
+
+Dr. Martineau is not so rigid a moralist but that he is ready to agree
+with those easy-going theologians who find a place for exceptional
+falsehoods in their reasoning; yet he is so true a man in his moral
+instincts that his nature recoils from the results of such reasoning.
+"After all," he says, "there is something in this problem which
+refuses to be thus laid to rest; and in treating it, it is hardly
+possible to escape the uneasiness of a certain moral inconsequence. If
+we consult the casuist of Common Sense he usually tells us that, in
+theory, Veracity can have no exceptions; but that, in practice, he is
+brought face to face with at least a few; and he cheerfully accepts a
+dispensation, when required, at the hands of Necessity.
+
+"I confess rather to an inverse experience. The theoretic reasons for
+certain limits to the rule of veracity appear to me unanswerable; nor
+can I condemn any one who acts in accordance with them. Yet when I
+place myself in a like position, at one of the crises demanding a
+deliberate lie, an unutterable repugnance returns upon me, and makes
+the theory seem shameful. If brought to the test, I should probably
+act rather as I think than as I feel,[1] without, however, being able
+to escape the stab of an instant compunction and the secret wound of a
+long humiliation. Is this the mere weakness of superstition? It may be
+so. But may it not also spring from an ineradicable sense of a common
+humanity, still leaving social ties to even social aliens, and, in
+the presence of an imperishable fraternal unity, forbidding to the
+individual of the moment the proud right of spiritual ostracism?..."
+
+[Footnote 1: No, a man who feels like that would be true in the hour
+of temptation. His doubt of himself is only the tremulousness of true
+courage.]
+
+"How could I ever face the soul I had deceived, when perhaps our
+relations are reversed, and he meets my sins, not with self-protective
+repulse, but with winning love? And if with thoughts like these there
+also blends that inward reverence for reality which clings to the very
+essence of human reason, and renders it incredible, _à priori_,
+that falsehood should become an implement of good, it is perhaps
+intelligible how there may be an irremediable discrepancy between the
+dioptric certainty of the understanding and the immediate insight of
+the conscience: not all the rays of spiritual truth are refrangible;
+some there are beyond the intellectual spectrum, that wake invisible
+response, and tremble in the dark."
+
+Dr. Martineau's definition of right and wrong is this:[1] "Every
+action is right, which, in presence of a lower principle, follows
+a higher: every action is wrong, which, in presence of a higher
+principle, follows a lower;" and his moral sense will not admit the
+possibility of falsehood being at any time higher than truth, or of
+veracity ever being lower than a lie.
+
+[Footnote 1: _Types of Ethical Theory_, II., 270.]
+
+Professor Thomas Fowler, of the University of Oxford, writing as a
+believer in the gradual evolution of morals, and basing his philosophy
+on experience without any recognition of _à priori_ principles, is
+much more nearly in accord, at this point,[1] with Martineau, than
+with Rothe, Hodge, and Smyth. Although he is ready to concede that
+a lie may, theoretically, be justifiable, he is sure that the moral
+sense of mankind is, at the present state of average development,
+against its propriety. Hence, he asserts that, even when justice
+might deny an answer to an improper question, "outside the limits of
+justice, and irrespectively of their duty to others, many persons are
+often restrained, and quite rightly so, from returning an untruthful
+or ambiguous answer by purely self-regarding feelings. They feel that
+to give an untruthful answer, even under such circumstances as I
+have supposed, would be to burden themselves with the subsequent
+consciousness of cowardice or lack of self-respect. And hence,
+whatever inconvenience or annoyance it may cost them, they tell the
+naked truth, rather than stand convicted to themselves of a want of
+courage or dignity."
+
+[Footnote 1: _Principles of Morals_, II., 159-161.]
+
+"Veracity, though this was by no means always the case," Professor
+Fowler continues, "has become the point of honor in the upper ranks of
+modern civilized societies, and hence it is invested with a sanctity
+which seems to attach to no other virtue; and to the uninstructed
+conscience of the unreflective man, the duty of telling the truth
+appears, of all duties, to be the only duty which never admits of
+any exceptions, from the unavoidable conflict with other duties."
+He ranges the moral sense of the "upper ranks of modern civilized
+societies," and "the uninstructed conscience of the unreflective man,"
+against any tolerance of the "lie of necessity," leaving only the
+locality of Muhammad's coffin for those who are arrayed against the
+rigid moralists on this question.
+
+While he admits the theoretical possibility of the "lie of necessity,"
+Professor Fowler concludes as to its practical expediency: "Without
+maintaining that there are no conceivable circumstances under which a
+man will be justified in committing a breach of veracity, it may at
+least be said that, in the lives of most men, there is no case likely
+to occur in which the greater social good would not be attained by the
+observation of the general rule to tell the truth, rather than by the
+recognition of an exception in favor of a lie, even though that lie
+were told for purely benevolent reasons." That is nearer right than
+the conclusions of many an inconsistent intuitionist!
+
+Leslie Stephen, a consistent agnostic, and a believer in the slow
+evolution of morals, in his "Science of Ethics,"[1] naturally holds,
+like Herbert Spencer, to the gradual development of the custom of
+truthfulness, as a necessity of society.[2] The moral sense of
+primitive man, as he sees it, might seem to justify falsehood to an
+_enemy_, rather than, as Rothe and Smyth would claim, to those who are
+_wards of love_. In illustration of this he says: "The obligation to
+truthfulness is [primarily] limited to relations with members of the
+same tribe or state; and, more generally, it is curious to observe how
+a kind of local or special morality is often developed in regard to
+this virtue. The schoolboy thinks it a duty to his fellows to lie
+to his master, the merchant to his customer, and the servant to his
+employer; and, inversely, the duty is often recognized as between
+members of some little clique or profession, as soon as it is seen to
+be important for their corporate interest, even at the expense of the
+wider social organization. There is honor among thieves, both of the
+respectable and other varieties."
+
+[Footnote 1: Leslie Stephen's _Science of Ethics_, pp. 202-209.]
+
+[Footnote 2: See pp. 26-32, _supra_.]
+
+But Leslie Stephen sees that, in the progress of the race, the
+importance of veracity has come to a recognition, "in which it differs
+from the other virtues." While the law of marriage may vary at
+different periods, "the rule of truthfulness, on the other hand, seems
+to possess the _a priori_ quality of a mathematical axiom.... Truth,
+in short, being always the same, truthfulness must be unvarying. Thus,
+'Be truthful' means, 'Speak the truth whatever the consequences,
+whether the teller or the hearer receives benefit or injury.' And
+hence, it is inferred, truthfulness implies a quality independent of
+the organization of the agent or of society." While Mr. Stephen would
+himself find a place for the "lie of necessity" under conceivable
+circumstances, he is clear-minded enough to perceive that the moral
+sense of the civilized world is opposed to this view; and in this he
+is nearer correct than those who claim the opposite.
+
+It is true that those who seek an approbation of their defense of
+falsehoods which they deem a necessity, assume, without proof, their
+agreement with the moral sense of the race. But it is also true that
+there stands opposed to their theory the best moral sense of primitive
+man, as shown in a wide area of investigation, and also of thinkers
+all the way up from the lowest moral grade to the most rigorous
+moralists, including intuitionists, utilitarians, and agnostics.
+However deficient may be the practice of erring mortals, the ideal
+standard in theory, is veracity, and not falsehood.
+
+As to the opinions of purely speculative philosophers, concerning the
+admissibility of the "lie of necessity," they have little value except
+as personal opinions. This question is one that cannot be discussed
+fairly without relation to the nature and law of God. It is of
+interest, however, to note that a keen mind like Kant's insists that
+"the highest violation of the duty owed by man to himself, considered
+as a moral being singly (owed to the humanity subsisting in his
+person), is a departure from truth, or lying."[1] And when a man
+like Fichte,[2] whom Carlyle characterizes as "that cold, colossal,
+adamantine spirit, standing erect like a Cato Major among degenerate
+men; fit to have been the teacher of the Stoa, and to have discoursed
+of beauty and virtue in the groves of Academe," declares that no
+measure of evil results from truth-speaking would induce him to tell a
+lie, a certain moral weight attaches to his testimony. And so with
+all the other philosophers. No attempt at exhaustiveness in their
+treatment is made in this work. But the fullest force of any fresh
+argument made by them in favor of occasional lying is recognized so
+far as it is known.
+
+[Footnote 1: See Semple's _Kant's Metaphysic of Ethics_, p. 267.]
+
+[Footnote 2: See Martensen's _Christian Ethics (Individual)_, § 97.]
+
+One common misquotation from a well-known philosopher, in this line,
+is, however, sufficiently noteworthy for special mention here. Jacobi,
+in his intense theism, protests against the unqualified idealism of
+Fichte, and the indefinite naturalism of Schelling; and, in his famous
+Letter to Fichte,[1] he says vehemently: "But the Good what is it?
+I have no answer if there be no God. As to me, this world of
+phenomena--if it have all its truth in these phenomena, and no more
+profound significance, if it have nothing beyond itself to reveal
+to me--becomes a repulsive phantom, in whose presence I curse the
+consciousness which has called it into existence, and I invoke against
+it annihilation as a deity. Even so, also, everything that I call
+good, beautiful, and sacred, turns to a chimera, disturbing my spirit,
+and rending the heart out of my bosom, as soon as I assume that it
+stands not in me as a relation to a higher, real Being,--not a mere
+resemblance or copy of it in me;--when, in fine, I have within me an
+empty and fictitious consciousness only. I admit also that I know
+nothing of 'the Good _per se_,' or 'the True _per se_,' that I even
+have nothing but a vague notion of what such terms stand for. I
+declare that it revolts me when people seek to obtrude upon me the
+Will which wills nothing, this empty nut of independence and freedom
+in absolute indifference, and accuse me of atheism, the true and
+proper godlessness, because I show reluctance to accept it."
+
+[Footnote 1: F.H. Jacobi's _Werke_, IIIter Band, pp. 36-38.]
+
+Insisting thus that he must have the will of a personal God as a
+source of obligation to conform to the law of truth and virtue, and
+that without such a source no assumed law can be binding on him,
+Jacobi adds: "Yes I am the atheist, and the godless man who, in
+opposition to the Will that wills nothing, will lie as the lying
+Desdemona lied; will lie and deceive as did Pylades in passing himself
+off as Orestes; will commit murder as did Timoleon; break law and oath
+as did Epaminondas, as did John De Witt; will commit suicide as did
+Otho; will undertake sacrilege with David; yes and rub ears of corn on
+the Sabbath merely because I am an hungered, and because the law is
+made for man and not man for the law."
+
+Jacobi's reference, in this statement, to lying and other sins, was
+taken by itself as the motto to one of Coleridge's essays;[1] and this
+seems to have given currency to the idea that Jacobi was in favor of
+lying. Hence he is unfairly cited by ethical writers[2] as having
+declared himself for the lie of expediency; whereas the context shows
+that that is not his position. He is simply stating the logical
+consequences of a philosophy which he repudiates.
+
+[Footnote 1: Coleridge's Works: _The Friend_, Essay XV.]
+
+[Footnote 2: See, for instance, Martensen's _Christian Ethics
+(Individual)_, §97.]
+
+Among the false assumptions that are made by many of the advocates of
+the "lie of necessity" is the claim that in war, in medical practice,
+and in the legal profession, the propriety of falsehood and deceit,
+in certain cases, is recognized and admitted on all sides. While the
+baselessness of this claim has been pointed out, incidentally, in the
+progress of the foregoing discussion,[1] it would seem desirable to
+give particular attention to the matter in a fuller treatment of it,
+before closing this record of centuries of discussion.
+
+[Footnote 1: See pp. 71-75, _supra_.]
+
+It is not true that in civilized warfare there is an entire
+abrogation, or suspension, of the duty of truthfulness toward an
+enemy. There is no material difference between war and peace in this
+respect. Enemies, on both sides, understand that in warfare they are
+to kill each other if they can, by the use of means that are allowable
+as means; but this does not give them the privilege of doing what is
+utterly inconsistent with true manhood.
+
+Enemies are not bound to disclose their plans to each other. They have
+a duty of concealing those plans from each other. Hence, as Dorner has
+suggested, they proffer to each other's sight only appearances, not
+assurances; and it is for each to guess out, if he can, the real
+purpose of the other, below the appearance. An enemy can protect his
+borders by pitfalls, or torpedoes, or ambushes, carefully concealed
+from sight, in order to guard the life of his own people by destroying
+the life of his opponents, or may make demonstrations, before the
+enemy, of possible movements, in order to conceal his purposed
+movements; but in doing this he does only what is allowable, in
+effect, in time of peace.[1]
+
+[Footnote 1: Several of the illustrations of Oriental warfare in the
+Bible record are to be explained in accordance with this principle.
+Thus with the ambush set by Joshua before Ai (Josh. 8: 1-26):
+the Canaanites did not read aright the riddle of the Israelitish
+commander, and they suffered accordingly. Yet Dr. Dabney (_Theology_,
+p. 424) cites this as an instance of an intentional deception which
+was innocent in God's sight. And again, in the case recorded at 2
+Kings 7: 6, where the Lord "made the host of the Syrians to hear a
+noise of chariots, and a noise of horses, even the noise of a great
+host,... and they arose and ... fled for their life," thinking that
+Hittite and Egyptian forces were approaching, it is evident that God
+simply caused the Syrians, who were contending with his people, to
+feel that they were fighting hopelessly against God's cause. The
+impression God made on their minds was a correct one. He could bring
+chariots and horses as a great host against them. They did well to
+realize this fact. But the Syrians' explanation of this impression was
+incorrect in its details.]
+
+A similar method of mystifying his opponent is adopted by the
+base-ball pitcher in his demonstrations with the ball before letting
+it drive at the batsman. The batsman holds himself responsible for
+reading the riddle of the pitcher's motions. Yet the pitcher is
+forbidden to deceive the batsman by a feint of delivering the ball
+without delivering it.
+
+If an enemy attempts any communication with his opponent, he has no
+right to lie to, or to deceive him. He must not draw him into an
+ambuscade, or over concealed torpedoes, on the plea of desiring an
+amicable interview with him; and his every word given to an enemy must
+be observed sacredly as an obligation of truth.
+
+Even before the Christian era, and centuries prior to the time when
+Chrysostom was confused in his mind on this point, Cicero wrote as
+to the obligations of veracity upon enemies in time of war, and in
+repudiation of the idea that warfare included a suspension of all
+moral relations between belligerents during active hostilities.[1]
+
+[Footnote 1: Cicero's _De Officiis_, I., 12, 13.]
+
+He said: "The equities of war are prescribed most carefully by the
+heralds' law (_lex fetialis_) of the Roman people," and he went on to
+give illustrations of the recognized duty of combatants to keep within
+the bounds of mutual social obligations. "Even where private persons,
+under stress of circumstances, have made any promise to the enemy," he
+said, "they should observe the exactest good faith, as did Regulus, in
+the first Punic war, when taken prisoner and sent to Rome to treat of
+the exchange of prisoners, having sworn that he would return. First,
+when he had arrived, he did not vote in the Senate for the return of
+the prisoners. Then, when his friends and kinsmen would have detained
+him, he preferred to go back to punishment rather than evade his faith
+plighted to the enemy.
+
+"In the second Punic war also, after the battle of Cannae, of the ten
+Romans whom Hannibal sent to Rome bound by an oath that they would
+return unless they obtained an agreement for the redemption of
+prisoners, the censors kept disfranchised those who perjured
+themselves, making no exception in favor of him who had devised a
+fraudulent evasion of his oath. For when by leave of Hannibal he had
+departed from the camp, he went back a little later, on pretense
+of having forgotten something. Then departing again from the camp
+[without renewing his oath], he counted himself set free from the
+obligation of his oath. And so he was free _so_ far as the words went,
+but not so in reality; for always in a promise we must have regard to
+the meaning of our words, rather than to the words themselves."
+
+In modern times, when Lord Clive, in India, acted on the theory that
+an utter lack of veracity and good faith on the part of an enemy
+justified a suspension of all moral obligations toward him, and
+practiced deceit on a Bengalee by the name of Omichund, in order to
+gain an advantage over the Nabob of Bengal, he was condemned by the
+moral sense of the nation for which he thus acted deceitfully; and, in
+spite of the specious arguments put forth by his partisan defenders,
+his name is infamous because of this transaction.
+
+"English valor and English intelligence have done less to extend
+and preserve our Oriental empire than English veracity," says Lord
+Macaulay. "All that we could have gained by imitating the doublings,
+the evasions, the fictions, the perjuries, which have been employed
+against us, is as nothing when compared with what we have gained by
+being the one power in India on whose word reliance can be placed.
+No oath which superstition can devise, no hostage however precious,
+inspires a hundredth part of the confidence which is produced by the
+'yea, yea,' and the 'nay, nay,' of a British envoy." Therefore it is
+that Lord Macaulay is sure that "looking at the question of expediency
+in the lowest sense of the word, and using no arguments but such as
+Machiavelli might have employed in his conferences with Borgia, we
+are convinced that Clive was altogether in the wrong, and that he
+committed, not merely a crime but a blunder."[1]
+
+[Footnote 1: Macaulay's _Essay on Lord Clive_.]
+
+So again when an English vessel of war made signals of distress,
+off the coast of France, during the war with Napoleon, and thereby
+deceived men from the enemy into coming to its relief, and then held
+them as prisoners, the act was condemned by the moral sense of the
+world. As Woolsey says, in his "International Law:"[1] "Breach of
+faith between enemies has always been strongly condemned, and that
+vindication of it is worthless which maintains that, without an
+express or tacit promise to our enemy, we are not bound to keep faith
+with him."
+
+[Footnote 1: Sect. 133, p. 213.]
+
+The theologian who assumes that the duty of veracity is suspended
+between enemies in war time is ignorant of the very theory of
+civilized warfare; or else he fails to distinguish between justifiable
+concealment, by the aid of methods of mystifying, and falsehood which
+is never justifiable. And that commander who should attempt to justify
+falsehood and bad faith in warfare on the ground that it is held
+justifiable in certain works on Christian ethics, would incur the
+scorn of the civilized world for his credulity; and he would be told
+that it is absurd to claim that because he is entitled to kill a man
+in warfare it must be fair to lie to him.
+
+In the treatment of the medical profession, many writers on ethics
+have been as unfair, as in their misrepresentation of the general
+moral sense with reference to warfare. They have spoken as if "the
+ethics of the medical profession" had a recognized place for falsehood
+in the treatment of the sick. But this assumption is only an
+assumption. There are physicians who will lie, and there are
+physicians who will not lie; and in each case the individual physician
+acts in this matter on his own responsibility: he has no code of
+professional ethics justifying a lie on his part as a physician, when
+it would not be justifiable in a layman.
+
+Concealment of that which he has a right to conceal, is as clearly a
+duty, in many a case, on the part of a physician, as it is on the
+part of any other person; but falsehood is never a legitimate, or an
+allowable, means of concealment by physician or layman. As has been
+already stated[1] if it be once known that a physician is ever ready
+to speak words of cheer to a patient falsely, that physician is
+measurably deprived of the possibility of encouraging a patient by
+truthful words of cheer when he would gladly do so. And physicians
+would probably be surprised to know how generally they are estimated
+in the community according to their reputation in this matter. One is
+known as a man who will speak falsely to his patients as a means of
+encouragement, while another is known as a man who will be cautious
+about giving his opinion concerning chances of recovery, but who will
+never tell an untruth to a patient or to any other person. But in no
+case can a physician claim that the ethics of his profession as a
+profession justify him in a falsehood to any person--patient or no
+patient.
+
+[Footnote 1: See p. 75 f., _supra_.]
+
+A distinguished professor in one of the prominent medical colleges of
+this country, in denying the claim of a writer on ethics that it may
+become the duty of a physician to deceive his patient as a means of
+curing him, declares that a physician acting on this theory "will not
+be found in accord with the best and the highest medical teaching of
+the present day;" and he goes on to say:[1] "In my profession to-day,
+the truth properly presented, we have found, carries with it a
+convincing and adjusting element which does not fail to bring the
+afflicted person to that condition of mind that is most conducive
+to his physical well-being, and let me add also, I believe, to his
+spiritual welfare." This statement was made in connection with the
+declaration that in the hospital which was in his charge it is not
+deemed right or wise to deceive a patient as to any operation to be
+performed upon him. And there are other well-known physicians who
+testify similarly as to the ethics of their profession.
+
+[Footnote 1: In a personal communication to the author.]
+
+An illustration of the possible good results of concealing an
+unpleasant fact from a sick person, that has been a favorite citation
+all along the centuries with writers on ethics who would justify
+emergency falsehoods, is one which is given in his correspondence by
+Pliny the younger, eighteen centuries ago.[1]
+
+[Footnote 1: _Epistles of Pliny the Younger_, Book III., Epis. 16.
+Pliny to Nepos.]
+
+Caecinna Paetus and his son "were both at the same time attacked with
+what seemed a mortal illness, of which the son died.... His mother
+[Arria] managed his funeral so privately that Paetus did not know of
+his death. Whenever she came into his bedchamber, she pretended that
+her son was better, and, as often as he inquired after his health,
+would answer that he had rested well, or had eaten with an appetite.
+When she found she could no longer restrain her grief, but her tears
+were gushing out, she would leave the room, and, having given vent to
+her passion, return again with dry eyes and a serene countenance, as
+if she had dismissed every sentiment of sorrow."
+
+This Roman matron also committed suicide, as an encouragement to her
+husband whom she desired to have put an end to his own life, when he
+was likely to have it taken from him by the executioner; and Pliny
+commends her nobleness of conduct in both cases. It is common among
+ethical writers, in citing this instance in favor of lying, to say
+nothing about the suicide, and to omit mention of the fact that the
+mother squarely lied, by saying that her dead boy had eaten a good
+breakfast, instead of employing language that might have been the
+truth as far as it went, while it concealed that portion of the truth
+which she thought it best to conceal. It is common to quote her as
+simply saying of her son" He is better;"[1] quite a different version
+from Pliny's, and presenting a different issue.
+
+[Footnote 1: See Newman Smyth's _Christian Ethics_, p. 395, where
+this case is stated with vagueness of phrase, and as thus stated is
+approved.]
+
+It was perfectly proper for that mother to conceal the signs of her
+sorrow from her sick husband, who had no right to know the truth
+concerning matters outside of his sick-room at such a time. And if,
+indeed, she could say in all sincerity, as expressive of her feelings
+in the death of her son, by the will of the gods, "He is better," it
+would have been possible for her to feel that she was entitled to say
+that as the truth, and not as a falsehood; and in that case she would
+not have intended a deceit, but only a concealment. But when, on the
+other hand, she told a deliberate lie--spoke falsely in order to
+deceive--she committed a sin in so doing, and her sin was none the
+less a sin because it resulted in apparent good to her husband. An
+illustration does not overturn a principle, but it may misrepresent
+it.
+
+Another illustration, on the other side of the case, is worth citing
+here. Victor Hugo pictures, in his _Les Miserables_,[1] a sister of
+charity adroitly concealing facts from a sick person in a hospital,
+while refusing to tell a falsehood even for the patient's good. "Never
+to have told a falsehood, never to have said for any advantage, or
+even indifferently, a thing which was not the truth, the holy truth,
+was the characteristic feature of Sister Simplice." She had taken the
+name of Simplice through special choice. "Simplice, of Sicily, our
+readers will remember, is the saint who sooner let her bosom be
+plucked out than say she was a native of Segeste, as she was born at
+Syracuse, though the falsehood would have saved her. Such a patron
+saint suited this soul." And in speaking of Sister Simplice, as never
+having told even "a white lie," Victor Hugo quotes a letter from the
+Abbé Sicard, to his deaf-mute pupil Massieu, on this point: "Can there
+be such a thing as a white lie, an innocent lie? Lying is the absolute
+of evil. Lying a little is not possible. The man who lies tells
+the whole lie. Lying is the face of the fiend; and Satan has two
+names,--he is called Satan and Lying." Victor Hugo the romancer would
+seem to be a safer guide, so far, for the physician or the nurse in
+the sick-room, than Pliny the rhetorician, or Rothe the theologian.[2]
+
+[Footnote 1: Book VII.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Yet Victor Hugo afterwards represents even Sister
+Simplice as lying unqualifiedly, when sorely tempted--although not in
+the sick-room.]
+
+A well-known physician, in speaking to me of this subject, said:
+"It is not so difficult to avoid falsehood in dealing with anxious
+patients as many seem to suppose. _Tact_, as well as _principle_, will
+do a good deal to help a physician out, in an emergency. I have never
+seen any need of lying, in my practice." And yet another physician,
+who had been in a widely varied practice for forty years, said that he
+had never found it necessary to tell a lie to a patient; although he
+thought he might have done so if he had deemed it necessary to save
+a patient's life. In other words, while he admitted the possible
+justification of an "emergency lie," he had never found a first-class
+opening for one in his practice. And he added, that he knew very well
+that if he had been known to lie to his patients, his professional
+efficiency, as well as his good name, would have suffered. Medical
+men do not always see, in their practice, the supposed advantages of
+lying, which have so large prominence in the minds of ethical writers.
+
+Another profession, which is popularly and wrongly accused of having
+a place for the lie in its system of ethics, is the legal profession.
+Whewell refers to this charge in his "Elements of Morality" (citing
+Paley in its support). He says: "Some moralists have ranked with the
+cases in which convention supersedes the general rule of truth, an
+advocate asserting the justice, or his belief in the justice, of his
+client's cause." But as to an advocate's right in this matter, Whewell
+says explicitly: "If, in pleading, he assert his belief that his cause
+is just, when he believes it unjust, he offends against truth; as any
+other man would do who, in like manner, made a like assertion."[1]
+
+[Footnote 1: Whewell's _Elements of Morality_, § 400.]
+
+Chief-Justice Sharswood, of Pennsylvania, in his standard work on
+"Legal Ethics," cites this opinion of Whewell with unqualified
+approval; and, in speaking for the legal profession, he says: "No
+counsel can with propriety and good conscience express to court or
+jury his belief in the justice of his client's cause, contrary to the
+fact. Indeed, the occasions are very rare in which he ought to throw
+the weight of his private opinion into the scales in favor of the side
+he has espoused." Calling attention to the fact that the official
+oath of an attorney, on his admission to the bar, in the state of
+Pennsylvania, includes the specific promise to "use no falsehood," he
+says: "Truth in all its simplicity--truth to the court, client,
+and adversary--should be indeed the polar star of the lawyer. The
+influence of only slight deviations from truth upon professional
+character is very observable. A man may as well be detected in a great
+as a little lie. A single discovery, among professional brethren, of a
+failure of truthfulness, makes a man the object of distrust, subjects
+him to constant mortification, and soon this want of confidence
+extends itself beyond the Bar to those who employ the Bar. That
+lawyer's case is truly pitiable, upon the escutcheon of whose honesty
+or truth rests the slightest tarnish."[1]
+
+[Footnote 1: Sharswood's _Essay on Professional Ethics_, pp. 57,
+99,102,167 f.]
+
+As illustrative of the carelessness with which popular charges against
+an entire profession are made the basis of reflections upon the
+ethical standard of that profession, the comments of Dr. Hodge on
+this matter are worthy of particular notice. In connection with his
+assertion that "the principles of professional men allow of many
+things which are clearly inconsistent with the requirements of the
+ninth commandment," he says: "Lord Brougham is reported to have said,
+in the House of Lords, that an advocate knows no one but his client.
+He is bound _per fas et nefas_, if possible, to clear him. If
+necessary for the accomplishment of that object, he is at liberty to
+accuse and defame the innocent, and even (as the report stated) to
+ruin his country. It is not unusual, especially in trials for murder,
+for the advocates of the accused to charge the crime on innocent
+parties and to exert all their ingenuity to convince the jury of their
+guilt." And Dr. Hodge adds the note that "Lord Brougham, according
+to the public papers, uttered these sentiments in vindication of the
+conduct of the famous Irish advocate Phillips, who on the trial of
+Courvoisier for the murder of Lord Russell, endeavored to fasten the
+guilt on the butler and housemaid, whom he knew to be innocent, as his
+client had confessed to him that he had committed the murder."[1]
+
+[Footnote 1: Hodge's _Systematic Theology_, III., 439.]
+
+Now the facts, in the two very different cases thus erroneously
+intermingled by Dr. Hodge, as given by Justice Sharswood,[1] present
+quite another aspect from that in which Dr. Hodge sees them, as
+bearing on the accepted ethics of the legal profession. It would
+appear that Lord Brougham was not speaking in defense of another
+attorney's action, but in defense of his own course as attorney of
+Queen Caroline, thirty years before the Courvoisier murder trial. As
+Justice Sharswood remarks of Lord Brougham's "extravagant" claims: "No
+doubt he was led by the excitement of so great an occasion to say what
+cool reflection and sober reason certainly never can approve." Yet
+Lord Brougham does not appear to have suggested, in his claim, that
+a lawyer had a right to falsify the facts involved, or to utter an
+untruth. He was speaking of his supposed duty to defend his client,
+the Queen, against the charges of the King, regardless of the
+consequences to himself or to his country through his advocacy of her
+cause, which he deemed a just one.
+
+[Footnote 1: Sharswood's _Legal Ethics_, p. 86 f.]
+
+And as to the charge against the eminent advocate, Charles Phillips,
+of seeking to fasten the crime on the innocent, when he knew that his
+client was guilty, in the trial of Courvoisier for the murder of Lord
+Russell, that charge was overwhelmingly refuted by the testimony of
+lawyers and judges present at that trial. Mr. Phillips supposed his
+client an innocent man until the trial was nearly concluded. Then came
+the unexpected confession from the guilty man, accompanied by the
+demand that his counsel continue in his case to the end. At first Mr.
+Phillips proposed to retire at once from the case; but, on advising
+with eminent counsel, he was told that it would be wrong for him to
+betray the prisoner's confidence, and practically to testify against
+him, by deserting him at that hour. He then continued in the case,
+but, as is shown conclusively in his statement of the facts, with its
+accompanying proofs, without saying a word or doing a thing that might
+properly be deemed in the realm of false assertion or intimations.[1]
+
+[Footnote 1: See Sharswood's _Legal Ethics_, pp. 103-107, 183-196.]
+
+The very prominence given in the public press to the charges against
+Mr. Phillips, and to their refutation, are added proof that the moral
+sense of the community is against falsehood under any circumstances or
+in any profession.
+
+Members of the legal profession are bound by the same ethical
+obligations as other men; yet the civil law, in connection with which
+they practice their profession, is not in all points identical
+with the moral law; although it is not in conflict with any of its
+particulars. As Chancellor Kent says: "Human laws are not so perfect
+as the dictates of conscience, and the sphere of morality is more
+enlarged than the limits of civil jurisdiction. There are many duties
+that belong to the class of imperfect obligations, which are binding
+on conscience, but which human laws do not and cannot undertake
+directly to enforce. But when the aid of a Court of Equity is sought
+to carry into execution ... a contract, then the principles of ethics
+have a more extensive sway."[1]
+
+[Footnote 1: Kent's _Commentaries_, Lect. 39, p. 490 f. (4th ed.);
+cited in Story's _Equity Jurisprudence_, VI., p. 229 (13th ed.).]
+
+In the decisions of Equity courts, while the duty of absolute
+truthfulness between parties in interest is insisted on as vital, and
+a suppression of the truth from one who had a right to its knowledge,
+or a suggestion of that which is untrue in a similar case("_suggestio
+falsi aut suppressio veri_"), is deemed an element of fraud, the
+distinction between mere silence when one is entitled to be silent,
+and concealment with the purpose of deception, is distinctly
+recognized, as it is not in all manuals on ethics.[1] This is
+indicated, on the one hand, in the legal maxim _Aliud est celare,
+aliud tacere_,--"It is one thing to conceal, another to be silent;"
+silence is not necessarily deceptive concealment;[2] and on the other
+hand in such a statement as this, in Benjamin's great work on Sales:
+"The nondisclosure of hidden facts [to a party in interest] is the
+more objectionable when any artifice is employed to throw the buyer
+off his guard; as by telling half the truth."[3] It is not in any
+principles which are recognized by the legal profession as binding on
+the conscience, that loose ethics are to find defense or support.
+
+[Footnote 1: See Bispham's _Principles of Equity_, p. 261, (3d ed.);
+Broom's _Legal Maxims_, p. 781 f. (7th Am. ed.); Merrill's _American
+and English Encyclopedia of Law_, art. "Fraud."]
+
+[Footnote 2: See Anderson's _Dictionary of Law_, p. 220; Abbott's _Law
+Dictionary_, I., 53.]
+
+[Footnote 3: _Treatise on the Law of Sale of Personal Property_, p.
+451 f.]
+
+But the profession that has most at stake in this discussion, and
+that, indeed, is most involved in its issue, is the ministerial, or
+clerical, profession. While it was Jewish rabbis who affirmed most
+positively, in olden time, the unwavering obligations of truthfulness,
+it was Jewish rabbis, also, who sought to find extenuation or excuse
+for falsehoods uttered with a good intention. And while it was
+Christian Fathers, like the Shepherd of Hermas, and Justin Martyr, and
+Basil the Great, and Augustine, who insisted that no tolerance should
+be allowed to falsehood or deceit, it was also Christian Fathers, like
+Gregory of Nyssa, and Chrysostom, who having practiced deceit for
+what they deemed a good end, first attempted a special plea for such
+falsities as they had found convenient in their professional labors.
+And it was other Christian Fathers, like Origen and Jerome, who sought
+to find arguments for laxity of practice, at this point, in the course
+of the Apostles themselves.
+
+All the way along the centuries, while the strongest defenders of the
+law of truthfulness have been found among clergymen, more has been
+written in favor of the lie of necessity by clergymen than by men of
+any other class or profession. And if it be true, as many of these
+have claimed, that deceit and falsehood are a duty, on the part of a
+God-loving teacher, toward those persons who, through weakness, or
+mental incapacity, or moral obliquity, are in the relation to him of
+wards of love, or of subjects of guardianship, there is no profession
+in which there is more of a call for godly deception, and for holy
+falsehood, than the Christian ministry. If it be true that a lie, or a
+falsehood, is justifiable in order to the saving of the physical life
+of another, how much better were it to tell such a lie in the loving
+desire to save a soul.
+
+If the lie of necessity be allowable for any purpose, it would seem
+to be more important as a means of good in the exercise of the
+ministerial profession, than of any other profession or occupation.
+And if it be understood that this is the case, what dependence can be
+put, by the average hearer, on the most earnest words of a preacher,
+who may be declaring a truth from God, and who, on the other hand, may
+be uttering falsehoods in love? And if it be true, also, as some of
+these clergymen have claimed, that God specifically approved falsehood
+and deception, according to the Bible record, and that Jesus Christ
+practiced in this line, while here on earth, what measure of
+confidence can fallible man place in the sacred text as it has come to
+him? The statement of this view of the case, is the best refutation
+of the claim of a possible justification for the most loving lie
+imaginable.
+
+The only other point remaining untouched, in this review of the
+centuries of discussion concerning the possible justifiableness of a
+lie under conceivable circumstances, is in its relation to the lower
+animals. It has been claimed that "all admit" that there is no
+impropriety in using any available means for the decoying of fish or
+of beasts to their death, or in saving one's self from an enraged
+animal; hence that a lie is not to be counted as a sin _per se_, but
+depends for its moral value on the relation subsisting between its
+utterer and the one toward whom it is uttered.
+
+Dr. Dabney, who is far less clear and sound than Dr. Thornwell in his
+reasoning on this ethical question, says: "I presume that no man
+would feel himself guilty for deceiving a mad dog in order to destroy
+him;"[1] and he argues from this assumption that when a man, through
+insanity or malice, "is not a rational man, but a brute," he may
+fairly be deemed as outside of the pale of humanity, so far as
+the obligations of veracity, viewed only as a social virtue, are
+concerned.
+
+[Footnote 1: Dabney's _Theology_ (second edition), p. 425 f.]
+
+Dr. Newman Smyth expands this idea.[1] He says: "We may say that
+animals, strictly speaking, can have no immediate right to our words
+of truth, since they belong below the line of existence which marks
+the beginning of any functions of speech." He adds that animals "may
+have direct claims upon our humanity, and so indirectly put us under
+obligations to give them straightforward and fair treatment," and that
+"truthfulness to the domestic animal, to the horse or the dog, is
+to be included as a part of our general obligation of kindness to
+creatures that are entirely dependent upon our fidelity to them and
+their wants." But he cites the driving of horses with blinders,[2] and
+the fishing for trout with artificial flies, as evidence of the fact
+that man recognizes no sinfulness in the deceiving of the lower
+animals, and hence that the duty of veracity is not one of universal
+obligation.
+
+[Footnote 1: Smyth's _Christian Ethics_, p. 398.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Here is another illustration of Dr. Smyth's strange
+confusion of concealment with deception. It would seem as though a man
+must have blinders before his own eyes, to render him incapable of
+perceiving the difference between concealing a possible cause of
+fright from an animal, and intentionally deceiving that animal.]
+
+If, indeed, the duty of truthfulness were only a social obligation,
+there might be a force in this reasoning that is lacking when we see
+that falsehood and deceit are against the very nature of God, and
+are a violation of man's primal nature. A lie is a sin, whenever and
+however and to whomsoever spoken or acted. It is a sin against God
+when uttered in his sight.
+
+Man is given authority from God over all the lower animals;[1] and he
+is empowered to take their lives, if necessary for his protection or
+for his sustenance. In the exercise of this right, man is entitled to
+conceal from the animals he would kill or capture the means employed
+for the purpose; as he is entitled to conceal similarly from his
+fellow-man, when he is authorized to kill him as an enemy, in time of
+war waged for God. Thus it is quite proper for a man to conceal the
+hook or the net from the fish, or the trap or the pitfall from the
+beast; but it is not proper to deceive an animal by an imitation of
+the cry of the animal's offspring in order to lure that animal to
+its destruction; and the moral sense of the human race makes this
+distinction.
+
+[Footnote 1: Gen. 1:28; 9:1-3.]
+
+An illustration that has been put forward, as involving a nice
+question in the treatment of an animal, is that of going toward a
+loose horse with a proffered tuft of grass in one hand, and a halter
+for his capture concealed behind the back in the other hand. It is
+right to conceal the halter, and to proffer the grass, provided they
+are used severally in their proper relations. If the grass be held
+forth as an assurance of the readiness of the man to provide for the
+needs of the horse, and it be given to him when he comes for it, there
+is no deception practiced so far; and if, when horse and man are
+thus on good terms, the man brings out the halter for its use in the
+relation of master and servitor between the two, that also is proper,
+and the horse would so understand it. But if the man were to refuse
+the grass to the horse, when the two had come together, and were to
+substitute for it the halter, the man would do wrong, and the horse
+would recognize the fact, and not be caught again in that way.
+
+Even a writer like Professor Bowne, who is not quite sure as to the
+right in all phases of the lying question, sees this point in its
+psychological aspects to better advantage than those ethical writers
+who would look at the duty of truthfulness as mainly a social virtue:
+"Even in cases where we regard truth as in our own power," he says,
+"there are considerations of expediency which are by no means to be
+disregarded. There is first the psychological fact that inexactness of
+statement, exaggeration, unreality in speech, are sure to react upon
+the mental habit of the person himself, and upon the estimate in which
+his statements are held by others. In dealing with children, also,
+however convenient a romancing statement might momentarily be, it is
+unquestionable that exact truthfulness is the only way which does not
+lead to mischief. Even in dealing with animals, it pays in the long
+run to be truthful. The horse that is caught once by false pretenses
+will not be long in finding out the trick. The physician also who
+dissembles, quickly comes to lose the confidence of his patient, and
+has thereafter no way of getting himself believed."[1]
+
+[Footnote 1: Bowne's _Principles of Ethics_, p. 224.]
+
+The main question is not whether it is fair toward an animal for a man
+to lie to him, but whether it is fair toward a man's self, or toward
+God the maker of animals and of men, for a man to lie to an animal. A
+lie has no place, even theoretically, in the universe, unless it be in
+some sphere where God has no cognizance and man has no individuality.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It were useless to follow farther the ever-varying changes of the
+never-varying reasonings for the justification of the unjustifiable
+"lie of necessity" in the course of the passing centuries. It is
+evident that the specious arguments put forth by young Chrysostom, in
+defense of his inexcusable lie of love fifteen centuries ago, have
+neither been added to nor improved on by any subsequent apologist
+of lying and deception. The action of Chrysostom is declared by his
+biographers to be "utterly at variance with the principles of truth
+and honor," one which "every sound Christian conscience must condemn;"
+yet those modern ethical writers who find force and reasonableness in
+his now venerable though often-refuted fallacies, are sure that the
+moral sense of the race is with Chrysostom.
+
+Every man who recognizes the binding force of intuitions of a primal
+law of truthfulness, and who gives weight to _à priori_ arguments for
+the unchanging opposition of truth and falsehood, either admits, in
+his discussion of this question, that a lie is never justifiable,
+or he is obviously illogical and inconsistent in his processes of
+reasoning, and in his conclusions. Even those who deny any _à priori_
+argument for the superiority of truthfulness over falsehood, and whose
+philosophy rests on the experimental evidence of the good or evil of
+a given course, are generally inclined to condemn any departure from
+strict truthfulness as in its tendencies detrimental to the interests
+of society, aside from any question of its sinfulness. The only
+men who are thoroughly consistent in their arguments in favor of
+occasional lying, are those who start with the false premise that
+there is no higher law of ethics than that of such a love for one's
+neighbor as will make one ready to do whatever seems likely to
+advantage him in the present life.
+
+Centuries of discussion have only brought out with added clearness the
+essential fact that a lie is eternally opposed to the truth; and that
+he who would be a worthy child of the Father of truth must refuse to
+employ, under any circumstances, modes of speech and action which
+belong exclusively to the "father of lies."
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+THE GIST OF THE MATTER.
+
+
+It would seem that the one all-dividing line in the universe, which
+never changes or varies, is the line between the true and the false,
+between the truth and a lie. All other lines of distinction, such even
+as those which separate good from evil, light from darkness, purity
+from impurity, love from hate, are in a sense relative and variable
+lines, taking their decisive measure from this one primal and eternal
+dividing line.
+
+This is the one line which goes back of our very conception of a
+personal God, or which is inherent in that conception. We cannot
+conceive of God as God, unless we conceive of him as the true God, and
+the God of truth. If there be any falsity in him, he is not the true
+God. Truth is of God's very nature. To admit in our thought that a lie
+is of God, is to admit that falsity is in him, or, in other words,
+that he is a false god.
+
+A lie is the opposite of truth, and a being who will lie stands
+opposed to God, who by his very nature cannot lie. Hence he who lies
+takes a stand, by that very act, in opposition to God. Therefore if it
+be necessary at any time to lie, it is necessary to desert God and be
+in hostility to him so long as the necessity for lying continues.
+
+If there be such a thing as a sin _per se_, a lie is that thing; as
+a lie is, in its very nature, in hostility to the being of God.
+Whatever, therefore, be the temptation to lie, it is a temptation to
+sin by lying. Whatever be the seeming gain to result from a lie, it
+is the seeming gain from a sin. Whatever be the apparent cost or loss
+from refusing to lie, it is the apparent cost or loss from refusing to
+sin.
+
+Man, formed in the moral image of God, is so far a representative of
+God. If a man lies, he misrepresents and dishonors God, and must incur
+God's disapproval because of his course. This fact is recognized in
+the universal habit of appealing to God in witness of the truthfulness
+of a statement, when there is room for doubt as to its correctness.
+The feeling is general that a man who believes in God will not lie
+unto God under the solemnity of an oath. If, however, it were possible
+for God to approve a lie on the part of one of his children, then that
+child of God might confidently make solemn oath to the truth of his
+lie, appealing to God to bear witness to the lie--which in God's mind
+is, in this case, better than the truth. In God's sight an oath is no
+more sacred than a yea, yea; and every child of God speaks always as
+in the sight of God. Perjury is no more of an immorality than ordinary
+lying; nor is ordinary lying any less a sin than formal perjury.
+
+The sin of lying consists primarily and chiefly in its inconsistency
+with the nature of God and with the nature of God's image in man. It
+is not mainly as a sin against one's neighbor, but it is as a sin
+against God and one's self, that a lie is ever and always a sin. If it
+were possible to lie without harming or offending one's neighbor, or
+even if it were possible to benefit one's fellow-man by a lie, no man
+could ever tell a lie, under any circumstances or for any purpose
+whatsoever, without doing harm to his own nature, and offending
+against God's very being. If a lie comes out of a man on any
+inducement or provocation, or for any purpose of good, that man is
+the worse for it. The lie is evil, and its coming out of the man is
+harmful to him. "The things which proceed out of the man are those
+that defile the man,"[1] said our Lord; and the experience of mankind
+bears witness to the correctness of this asseveration.
+
+[Footnote 1: Mark 7:15.]
+
+Yet, although the main sin and guilt and curse of a lie are ever on
+him who utters that lie, whatever be his motive in so doing, the
+evil consequences of lying are immeasurable in the community as a
+community; and whoever is guilty of a new lie adds to the burden of
+evil that weighs down society, and that tends to its disintegration
+and ruin. The bond of society is confidence. A lie is inconsistent
+with confidence; and the knowledge that a lie is, under certain
+circumstances, deemed proper by a man, throws doubt on all that that
+man says or does under any circumstances. No matter why or where the
+one opening for an allowable lie be made in the reservoir of public
+confidence, if it be made at all, the final emptying of that reservoir
+is merely a question of time.
+
+To-day, as in all the days, the chief need of men, for themselves and
+for their fellows, is a likeness to God in the impossibility of lying;
+and the chief longing of the community is for such confidence of men
+in one another as will give them assurance that they will not lie one
+to another. There was never yet a lie uttered which did not bring more
+of harm than of good; nor will there ever be a harmless lie, while God
+is Truth, and Satan is the father of lies.
+
+
+
+
+TOPICAL INDEX.
+
+
+  Abbé Sicard: cited
+  Abbott, Benjamin V.; cited
+  Abohab, Isaac: quotation from
+  Abraham: his deceiving
+  Achilles, truthfulness of
+  Act and speech, lying in
+  Advantages of lying, supposed
+  Africans, truthfulness among
+  Ahab's false prophets
+  Ahriman, father of lies
+  American Indians, habits of
+  Ananias and Sapphira
+  Anderson, Rasmus B.: cited
+  Animals, deception of
+  Aquinas, Thomas: cited
+  Arabs, influence of civilization on
+  Aristotle: cited
+  Army prison life, incidents in
+  Augustine: cited
+  Aurelius, Marcus: cited
+
+  Bailey: cited
+  Barrow, Sir John: cited
+  Base-ball, concealment in
+  Basil, friend of Chrysostom
+  Basil the Great: cited
+  Baumgarten-Crusius: cited
+  Benjamin, Judah P.: cited
+  Bergk, Theodor: cited
+  Bethlehem, Samuel at
+  Bheels, estimate of truth by
+  Bible: principles, not rules, in
+    first record of lie in
+    story of man's "fall" in
+    standard of right
+    forbids lying
+  Bible teachings on lying
+  Bingham, Joseph: cited
+  Bispham, George T.: cited
+  Bock, Carl: cited
+  Bowne, B.P., quotation from
+  Boyle, F.: cited
+  Brahmans, estimate of truth by
+  Briggs and Salmond: cited
+  Broom, Dr. Herbert: cited
+  Brougham, Lord: cited
+  Budge, E.A.: cited
+  Bunsen, C.K.J,; cited
+  Burton, Richard: cited, 30.
+
+  Caecinna Paetus: cited
+  Calvin, John: cited
+  Carlyle, Thomas: cited
+  Cartwright, William C.: cited
+  Chastity, lying to save
+  Children's right to truth
+  Choosing between duties
+  Christ, example of
+  Christian ethics, basis of
+  Christian Fathers, discussion by
+  Christians, early, discussion by
+  Chrysostom: cited
+  Cicero: cited
+  Clergymen, position of
+  Clive, Lord: cited
+  Coleridge, S.T.: cited
+  Concealment, justifiable
+  Concealment, unjustifiable
+  Confidence essential to society
+  Contract, overpressing theory of
+  Conway, Moncure D.: cited
+  Court, oath in
+  Courvoisier, trial of
+  Crime, lying to prevent
+  Cyprian: cited
+
+  Dabney, Dr. R.L.: cited
+  Darius, inscription of
+  David: his deceiving
+  "Deans, Jeanie," story of
+  Deception: antagonistic to nature of God
+    among Phoenicians
+    by Hebrew midwives
+    by Rahab
+    by Jacob
+    Samuel charged with
+  Micah charged with
+    by Abraham
+    by Isaac
+    by David
+    by Ananias and Sapphira
+    in speech and in act
+    concealment not necessarily
+    purposed and resultant
+    of lower animals
+    in medical profession
+    of insane
+    in flag of truce
+    teaching of Talmudists as to
+    Peter and Paul charged with
+    teaching of Jesuits
+    of the intoxicated
+    Elisha charged with
+    Joshua charged with
+    in legal profession
+    in ministerial profession,
+  Definitions of lie
+  Denham: cited
+  De Wette: cited
+  Dick, Dr., quotation from
+  Dorner, Dr. Isaac A.: cited
+  Drona, story of Yudhishthira and
+  Duns Scotus: cited
+  Duty: of truthfulness;
+    of disclosure, conditional;
+    choosing of more important;
+    of right concealment;
+    to God not to be counted out.
+  Dyaks; their truthfulness
+
+  Earl, G.W.: cited
+  Early Christians, temptations of
+  East Africans, estimate of truth by
+  Egyptian idea of deity synonymous with truth
+  Elisha and Syrians
+  Enemy, duty of truthfulness to
+  Esau, deceit practiced on
+  Eunomius: cited
+  Evil as a means of good
+  Exigency, lie of (see _Lie of Necessity_)
+
+  False impressions, limit of responsibility for
+  Falsehood: estimate of, in India;
+    in Ceylon;
+    in Persia;
+    in Egypt;
+    "Punic faith," synonym of;
+    in medical profession;
+    its use as means of good;
+    spoken in love;
+    in legal profession.
+  Family troubles, concealment of
+  Fichte: cited
+  Firmus, Bishop: cited
+  Flag of truce, sending of
+  Flatt: cited
+  Forsyth, Capt. J.: cited
+  Fowler, Professor: cited
+  Frankness, brutal
+  Fridthjof and Ingeborg, story of
+  Fürstenthal, R.J.: cited
+
+  German ideal of truth
+  Glasfurd: cited
+  God: killing, but not lying, a possibility with;
+    cannot lie;
+    his concealments from man;
+    is truth;
+    called to witness lie;
+  Greeks, ancient: their estimate of truth
+  Gregory of Nyssa: cited
+  "Hall of two truths"
+  Hamburger, Dr. I.: cited
+  Hannibal: cited
+  Harischandra, story of
+  Harkness, Capt. Henry: cited
+  Harless: cited
+  Hartenstein: cited
+  Heber, Bishop: cited
+  Hebrew midwives
+  Hebrew spies
+  Hegel: cited
+  Heralds' law
+  Herbart: cited
+  Hennas, Shepherd of: cited
+  Herodotus: cited
+  Hill Tribes of India: their estimate of truth
+  Hindoo; estimate of truth;
+    passion-play.
+  Hodge, Dr. Charles; cited
+  "Home of Song"
+  "Home of the Lie"
+  Hottentot, estimate of truth
+  Hugo, Victor: cited
+  Hunter, W.W.: cited
+
+  Ilai, Rabbi: cited
+  Iliad, estimate of truth in
+  Indians, American, influence of civilization on
+  Ingeborg and Fridthjof of, story of
+  Innocent III.: cited
+  Insane: lying to
+    their right to truth
+  Inscription of Darius
+  Intoxicated, the: their right to truth
+  Isaac: his deceiving
+  Isaac, Jacob, and Esau
+  Ishmael, Rabbi: cited
+
+  Jackson, Prof. A.V.W.: cited
+  Jacob: his deceiving
+    his lie to Isaac
+  Jacobi, F.H.: cited
+  Javanese: their truthfulness
+  Jehoshaphat and Ahab
+  Jehuda, Rabbi: cited
+  Jerome: cited
+  Jesuits, teaching of
+  Jewish Talmudists, discussions of
+  Johnson's Cyclopaedia: cited
+  Judith and Holofernes
+  Justin Martyr: cited
+  Juvenal: cited
+
+  Kant, Immanuel: cited
+  Keating, W.H.: cited
+  Kent, Chancellor: cited
+  Khonds of Central India, truthfulness among
+  Killing an enemy or lying to him
+  Kirkbride, Dr. Thomas S., testimony of
+  Kolben, P.: cited
+  Krause: cited
+  Kurtz, Prof. J.H.: cited
+
+  Lamberton, Prof. W.A.: cited
+  Lecky, W.E.H.: cited
+  Legal profession, ethics of
+  Legends, Scandinavian
+  Liar: an enemy of righteousness
+    form of prayer for
+  Liars, place of
+  Libby Prison, incident of
+  Lichtenberger, F.: cited
+  Life, losing of truth to save
+  Life insurance, truthfulness in
+  Lightfoot, Bishop: cited
+  Liguori: cited
+  Livingstone, David: cited
+  Logic swayed by feeling
+  Loyola, Ignatius: cited
+  Luther, Martin: cited
+
+  MA, symbol of Truth
+  Macaulay, Lord, on Lord Clive's treachery
+  Macpherson, Lieutenant: cited
+  Mahabharata on lying
+  Mahaffy, Prof. J.P.: cited
+  Mandingoes: their estimate of truth
+  Marcus Aurelius, quotation from
+  Marheineke: cited
+  Marriage, duty of truthfulness in connection with
+  Marshman, Joshua: cited
+  Martensen, Hans Lassen: cited
+  Martineau, Dr. James, quotations from
+  Martyrdom price of truth-telling
+  Mead, Professor: cited
+  Medical profession, no justifiable falsehood in
+  Melanchthon: cited
+  _Menorath Hammaor_, reference to
+  Merrill, J.H.: cited
+  Meyer, Dr. H.A.W.: cited
+  Meyrick, Rev. F.: cited
+  Micaiah, story of
+  Midwives, Hebrew, lies of
+  Mithra, god of truth
+  Moore, William: cited
+  Moral sense of man against lying
+  Morgan: cited
+  Müller, Julius: cited
+  Müller, Prof. Max: cited Murderer, concealment from would-be
+  Nathan, Rabbi: cited
+  Neander: cited
+  Nitzsch: cited
+
+  Oath of witness in court
+  Omichund, deceit practiced on
+  One all-dividing line
+  Origen: cited
+  Ormuzd, Zoroastrian god of truth
+
+  Paley, Dr.: definition of lie
+  Palgrave, W.G.: cited
+  Paradise, two pictures of
+  Park, Mungo: cited
+  Pascal: cited
+  Passion-play, Hindoo
+  Patagonians: their view of lying
+  Patient, deception of, by physician
+  Paul and Peter: suggestion of their deceiving
+  Perjury justifiable, if lying be
+  Persian ideals
+  Peter and Paul: suggestion of their deceiving
+  Phillips, Charles, misrepresented
+  Philoctetes, tragedy of
+  Phoenicians: their untruthfulness
+  Physician, lying by
+  Pindar: cited
+  Place of liars
+  Plato: cited
+  Pliny the younger: cited
+  Pope Innocent III.: cited
+  Prayer, form of, for liar
+  Principles, not rules, Bible standard
+  Priscillianists, sect of
+  Prophets, lying
+  Plan, lord of truth
+  "Punic faith," synonym of falsehood
+  Pylades and Orestes
+
+  Quaker and salesman
+  "Quaker guns," concealment by means of
+
+  Ra, symbol of light
+  Raba: cited
+  Raffles, Sir T.S.: cited
+  Rahab the harlot, lying of
+  Rawlinson, Prof. George: cited
+  Reinhard: cited
+  Responsibility, limit of
+  Robber: concealment from
+    lying to
+  Roberts, Joseph, quotation from
+  Rock of Behistun, inscription on
+  Roman Catholic writers, views of
+  Roman matron, story of: cited by Pliny
+  Roman standard of truthfulness
+  Rothe, Richard: cited
+
+  St. John, Sir Spencer: cited
+  Samuel at Bethlehem
+  Sapphira: her deceiving
+  Satan, "father of lies"
+  Sayce, Prof. A.H.: cited
+  Scandinavian legends
+  Schaff, Dr. Philip: cited
+  Schaff-Hertzog: cited
+  Schleiermacher: cited
+  Schoolcraft, H.R.: cited
+  Schwartz: cited
+  Scott Sir Walter: cited
+  Self-deception in others, limit of responsibility for
+  Semple, J.W.: cited
+  Sharswood, Chief-Justice: cited
+  Shepherd of Hermas, quotation from
+  Sherwill: cited
+  Shorn, Dr. J.: cited
+  Sick: their right to truth
+  Simplice, Sister, story of
+  Sin _per se_, lying
+  Smith and Cheetham: cited
+  Smith and Wace: cited
+  Smyth, Dr. Newman: cited
+  Sonthals, truthfulness among
+  South, Dr. Robert: cited
+  Sowrahs, truthfulness among
+  Speech and act, lying in
+  Spencer, Herbert: cited
+  Spies, Hebrew, Rahab and
+  Spy denied soldier's death
+  Stephen, Leslie: cited
+  Story, Justice: cited
+  Surgeon's responsibility for his action
+    testimony as to deceiving patient
+  Symonds J.A.: cited
+  Syrians, Elisha and
+
+  Talmud, teachings of
+  Talmudists, discussion among
+  Taylor, Jeremy; cited
+  Teaching of Jesuits
+  Temptations influencing decision
+  Tertullian: cited
+  Theognis: cited
+  Thornwell, Dr. James H.: cited
+  Tipperahs: their habit of lying
+  Todas, truthfulness among
+  Tragedy of Philoctetes
+  Truce, flag of, use of
+  Truth: universal duty of telling
+    God is
+    not every one entitled to full
+    dearer than life
+    justifiable concealment of
+    unjustifiable concealment of
+  Truth, estimate of: among Hindoos
+    among Scandinavians
+    in ancient Persia
+    in ancient Egypt
+    among Romans
+    among ancient Greeks
+    among ancient Germans
+    among Hill Tribes of India
+    among Arabs
+    among American Indians
+    among Patagonians
+    among Africans
+    among Dyaks
+    among Veddahs
+    among Javanese
+
+  Ueberweg, F.: cited
+  Ulysses, reference to
+  Urim and Thummim
+
+  Veddahs of Ceylon: their truthfulness
+  Veracity: duty of
+    of Greeks
+    of Persians
+    of primitive and civilized peoples compared
+    of Hill Tribes of India
+    of Arabs
+    of American Indians
+    of Africans
+    of Dyaks
+    of Veddahs
+    of Javanese
+  Viswamitra and Indra, story of
+  Von Ammon: cited
+  Von Hirscher: cited
+
+  Walker, Helen, example of
+  War: justifiable concealment in
+    duty of veracity in
+  Westcott, Bishop: cited
+  Wheeler, J. Talboys; cited
+  Whewell, Dr. William: cited
+  "White lie"
+  Wig, concealment by
+  Wilkinson, Sir J.G.: cited
+  Witness, oath of, in court
+  Woolsey, President: cited
+  Wuttke, Dr. Adolf: cited
+
+  Yudhishthira and Drona, mythical story of
+
+  Zoroastrian designation of heaven and hell
+
+
+
+
+  _SCRIPTURAL INDEX_.
+
+
+  GENESIS.
+    1: 28
+    2 and 3
+    3: 6, 7
+    9: 1-3
+   12: 10-19
+   12: 14-20
+   16: 1-6
+   25: 27-34
+   26: 6-10
+   27: 1-40
+   27: 6-29
+   28: 1-22
+   39: 8-21
+
+  EXODUS.
+    1: 15-19
+    1: 15-21
+    1: 19, 20
+    1: 20, 21
+
+  LEVITICUS.
+    8: 8
+   18: 5
+   19: 2, 12, 13, 34-37
+   19: 11
+
+  NUMBERS.
+   23: 19
+
+  DEUTERONOMY.
+   29: 29
+
+  JOSHUA.
+    2: 1-21
+    8: 1-26
+   24: 3
+
+  1 SAMUEL.
+    7: 15-17
+    9: 22-24
+   11: 14, 15
+   13: 14
+   15: 29
+   16: 1, 2
+   16: 1-3
+   20: 29
+   21: 1, 2
+
+  2 SAMUEL.
+   11: 1-27
+
+  1 KINGS.
+   22: 1-23
+
+  2 KINGS.
+    6: 14-20
+    7: 6
+   20: 12-19
+
+  2 CHRONICLES.
+   18: 1-34
+   20: 7
+
+  PSALMS.
+   31: 5
+   58: 3
+   62: 4
+   63: 11
+  101: 7
+  116: 11
+  120: 2
+  146: 6
+
+  PROVERBS.
+    6: 16, 17
+   14: 5
+   19: 5, 9, 22
+
+  ISAIAH.
+   41: 8
+   51: 2
+
+  MATTHEW.
+    3: 9
+
+  MARK.
+    6: 48
+    7: 15
+
+  LUKE.
+   24: 28
+
+  JOHN.
+    7: 8
+    8: 44
+   14: 6
+   16: 12
+
+  ACTS.
+    5: 1-11
+   13: 22
+
+  ROMANS.
+    3: 4
+    3: 7, 8
+    4: 12
+
+  GALATIANS.
+    2: 11-14
+    3: 9
+
+  EPHESIANS.
+    4: 25
+
+  COLOSSIANS.
+    3: 9
+
+  TITUS.
+    1: 2
+
+  HEBREWS.
+    6: 18
+   11: 31
+
+  JAMES.
+    2: 23
+
+  1 JOHN.
+    5: 7
+
+  REVELATION.
+   21: 5-8
+   22
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10591 ***