You have to listen as closely as you can, if you do not wish to do me the injustice of misrepresenting me. I have traveled extensively in the Orient, and have conversed with and read the works of eminent scholars who have enjoyed a first-hand acquaintance with eastern people, and the unanimous testimony is that one of the besetting sins of Oriental races, is lying. It is not because the Asiatics are wickeder than European nations, for in other respects they are as good, if not better, than ourselves. The average of morality is perhaps about the same in all countries. But the notorious vice of all Asiatic peoples is lying. They lie with a freedom and a fluency,—with such plausibility and so straight a face,—that one can hardly distinguish their lie from their truth. Curious though it may seem, people who are given to lying are often the first to be deceived by their own lies. They
"Keep on till their own lies deceive them.
And oft' repeating, at length believed 'em."
Now, then, I am going to look this audience in the face, and then I am going to say just this:
The Bible is an Oriental book.
When, in reading the Bible, I find in it exaggeration, invention, and even unscrupulous misrepresentation, I am not astonished, because I know that it is an Oriental book. But the orthodox believer, in order to excuse or explain away, for instance, these violations of the law of veracity, resorts frequently to sophistry, subterfuge, and even, alas, to lies more unscrupulous than any found in the Bible. This is as sad as it is true. But to defend one lie, or to make it look like the truth, more lying becomes necessary.
There are numerous instances of the Oriental practice of lying in the Bible. Abraham suppressed the truth about his wife, and declared she was his sister. Jacob deceived his father, Isaac, and made him believe he was Esau, and stole his blessing. The same patriarch deceived his father-in-law, and stole his gods. God himself instructs Samuel to tell a falsehood to Saul, to whom he is sent on a mission. "I will send them a lying spirit," threatens Jehovah, when he is out of temper. And, in the New Testament, the Apostle Paul is Oriental enough, though in many respects a great soul, to resort to "craft and guile," and to be "all things to all men," and even to lie for the glory of God. Aside from this being his own policy, he imagined that it was also the policy of God. "And for this cause," he says in his Epistle to the Thessalonians, "God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe in a lie." Reflect upon that. To send a delusion to people means to trip or trap them,—to catch them in a snare. People tell a falsehood, either to protect themselves, or to hurt others. God needed not to resort to this means to protect himself. Paul tells us he does this to hurt others. "God shall send them strong delusion, that they might believe a lie that they all might be damned." How could Paul, an exceptionally intelligent man, be guilty of such blasphemy? How could he so damage the character of the God he loved? My answer is that he was an Asiatic, and he did not look upon lying in the same light that Europeans do. The Asiatic conscience for veracity has never enjoyed a very high reputation. The Apostle Paul even boasts that, "being crafty, I caught you with guile."
A very curious controversy took place some years ago, between Herbert Spencer and a religious Weekly. Quoting the words of Paul to the Romans, where he says, "For if the truth of God hath more abounded through my lie unto his glory, etc.," Spencer condemned Paul for this; the religious Weekly objected that Paul was only speaking ironically. And Mr. Spencer generously admitted that such a supposition was quite possible. We are ourselves willing to give Paul every opportunity to exonerate himself, and will not press the charge too vehemently against him. But whatever Paul may have meant in his argument with the Romans, what shall we say about his defense of "guile and craft," in his Epistle to the Thessalonians? And what about his general policy, to be all things to all men,—that is to say, to trim and compromise?
Moreover, the practice of the Church during the early centuries, confirms the criticism of such representative writers as Mosheim, Ellicott, Warburton, Lecky, Gibbon, Jortin, Gieseler, and other equally reliable authorities, that "The pernicious maxim that those who make it their business to deceive with a view of promoting the cause of truth, were deserving rather of commendation than of censure."
"History forces upon us," writes Bishop Ellicott, "the recognition of pious fraud as a principle which was by no means inoperative in the earliest ages of Christianity." It reflects credit upon this Bishop,—this European,—to admit that the early Christians cultivated the Oriental practice of "lying for the glory of God." Eusebius, the saint who invented Constantine's vision of the cross, boasted that "he had written what redounded to the glory and suppressed whatever tended to the disgrace of religion."