limited otherwise, there is no
limit to his religious folly.

CHAPTER XXXVI.
SWEARING.

"THOU shalt not take the name of the Lord, thy God in vain."

A name is a sign, and respect for God Himself, as prescribed by the
First Commandment through faith, hope, charity, prayer and religion,
naturally implies respect for the name that stands for and signifies
God. Your name may, of itself, be nothing more than mere sound; but
used in relation to what it represents, it is as sacred, and means as
much to you, as your very person, for whatever is addressed to your
name, whether of praise or blame, is intended to reach, and does
effectively reach, yourself, to your honor or dishonor. You exact
therefore of men, as a right, the same respect for your name as for
your person; and that is what God does in the Second Commandment.

The name of God represents all that He is. He who profanes that name
profanes a sacred thing, and is guilty of what is, in reality, a
sacrilege. To use it with respect and piety is an act of religion which
honors God. Men use and abuse this holy name, and first of all, by
swearing, that is, by taking oaths.

In the early history of mankind, we are told, swearing was unknown. Men
were honest, could trust each other and take each other's word. But
when duplicity, fraud and deception rose out of the corrupt heart of
man, when sincerity disappeared, then confidence disappeared also, no
man's word was any longer good. Then it was that, in order to put an
end to their differences, they called upon God by name to witness the
truth of what they affirmed. They substituted God's unquestioned
veracity for their own questioned veracity, and incidentally paid
homage to His truth; God went security for man. Necessity therefore
made man swear; oaths became a substitute for honesty.

A reverent use of the name of God, for a lawful purpose, cannot be
wrong; on the contrary, it is good, being a public recognition of the
greatest of God's attributes--truth. But like all good things it is
liable to be abused. A too frequent use of the oath will easily lead to
irreverence, and thence to perjury. It is against this danger, rather
than against the fact itself of swearing, that Christ warns us in a
text that seems at first blush to condemn the oath as evil. The common
sense of mankind has always given this interpretation to the words of
Christ.

An oath, therefore, is a calling upon God to witness the truth of what
w