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."