or 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 amon