ess 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,