THE LAW OF TAKING AN OATH
“Again, ye have heard that it was said to them of old time, Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths: but I say unto you, Swear not at all; neither by the heaven, for it is the throne of God; nor by the earth, for it is the footstool of his feet; nor by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. Neither shalt thou swear by thy head, for thou canst notmake one hair white or black. But let your speech be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: and whatsoever is more than these is of the evil one.”
The third commandment, taken with other passages of the Old Testament,[45] enjoined upon the Israelite to swear only by the name of Jehovah; and so swearing, to be diligent to perform his oath.And our Lord both restores the injunction[46] and deepens it.
What, we ask, is the nature of an oath? It is for a man to put himself solemnly in God’s presence, and assert that, as surely as God is God, and as he hopes for His blessing on his life, what he is saying is the truth. The essence of the oath is the solemnly putting oneself on special occasions in the presence of God. But is not God everywhere present? Are we ever out of His presence? Does not everything live simply with His life and depend on His will? Is there then any meaning in selecting set occasions to put ourselves in God’s presence, when God is always present and all that exists exists in Him? It is to this truth of the omnipresence and omnipotence ofGod that our Lord calls men’s attention; and He deals with the Jewish commandment by lifting all conversation, all use of language, in His new kingdom to the level which had previously been held by declarations on oath. To the Jew it had been a great thing to forswear himself, but little or nothing to speak in ordinary talk what was not true. Our Lord says: God is everywhere and all words are uttered in His presence; therefore truth is of universal obligation; your yea is always to be yea, and your nay, nay.
Not only have we in St. James’ Epistle[47] a repetition of this injunction of our Lord, when it was much needed,but we have an instructive comment upon it in the distress which it occasioned St. Paul to be accused unjustly of prevarication and untruth to his promise.[48] Truth to his word is to be always and everywhere the characteristic of a Christian. It is not to be at one time “yea, yea,” and at another time “nay, nay.” How fundamentally the absence of this characteristic of mutual trustworthiness can hinder social progress among Christians is, I fear, apparent at the present dayin the case of those whom (by a limitation of the term equally unfortunate for those who are included in it, and for those who are not) we call the working-classes.
In this connexion we may notice three points.
1. The duty of truthfulness comes under the third commandment as deepened by our Lord. In questions for self-examination on the Ten Commandments, as interpreted for Christians, one almost always sees the duty of truthfulness brought under the ninth. But that, in view of our Lord’s words, is certainly wrong, and is due originally to a tendency to depreciate the sinfulness of lying, except where wrong appears to be done by it to the reputation or interests of another. Our Lord brings untruthfulness of all kinds under the prohibition of the third commandment simply by deepening its fundamental principle.
2. Though our Lord teaches God’s omnipresence, yet He none the less recognizes degrees of His presence. We very often hear objections made, if we allege a special presence of God in the church, or at the altar in the Holy Communion. Is not God, it is asked, present everywhere?Yes; “heaven is God’s throne; the earth is His footstool; Jerusalem is His city.”[49] Just because God’s presence is not physical, but spiritual, therefore it admits degrees of intensity. God is everywhere present; but He is present in a special way and for a special purpose where two or three are gathered together; and, again, in a special way and for a special purpose in the ordinances of His sacramental grace. Similarly He is, we may say, more present in rational beings than in irrational; and in good men more than in bad.
3. We must answer the question—Are all oaths prohibited to the Christian? is it always wrong for a Christian to go into a court of justice and be sworn?Our Lord Himself, we notice, consented to be put on oath by the high priest—“I adjure thee by God,”—and to that adjuration He answered.[50] And on three or four occasions St. Paul takes God to witness, and says, in effect, As God is my witness, this is true. With these precedents, I do not think it is possible to say a Christian may not take an oath in a court of justice, or difficult to explainwhy he may. It is for this reason. When a Christian goes to take an oath in a court of law he should only go to profess openly that motive to truthfulness which rules all his speech. Even so, the need that he should take an oath comes of the habitual neglect of truth in ordinary conversation: in this sense any taking of an oath “is of the evil one.” And a man is quite below the Christian standard who thinks himself bound to truth by his oath, but not by his word in common speech. What are we to say then of the universally attested fact that even perjury, or false swearing, is in the law-courts of our Christian country a quite ordinary occurrence?
CHAPTER V
THE REVISION OF THE OLD LAW (continued)
AFTER dealing thus with three of the Ten Commandments our Lord proceeds to deal with two other prescriptions or ideas of the old covenant. As He had done to the commandments, He deepens and intensifies them till they reach that standard which commends itself to His holy and perfect mind. In both cases our Lord’s treatment of the older moral standard is both profoundly interesting and at the same time the cause of no little difficulty and scruple to Christian consciences.