It would be altogether proper for a man with a bald head to conceal his baldness from the general public by a well-constructed wig.  It would likewise be proper for him to wear a wig in order to guard his shining pate against flies while at church in July, or against danger from pneumonia in January, even though wide-awake children in the neighboring pews deceived themselves into thinking that he had a fine head of natural hair.  But if that man were to wear that wig for the purpose of deceiving a young woman, whom he wished to marry, as to his age and as to his freedom from bodily defects, it would be quite a different matter.  Concealment for the mere purpose of concealment may be, not only justifiable, but a duty.  Concealment for the purpose of deception is never justifiable.

It would seem that this is the principle on which God acts with reference to both the material and the moral universe.  He conceals facts, with the result that many a man is self-deceived, in his ignorance, as to the size of the stars, and the cause of eclipses, and the processes of nature, and the consequences of conduct, in many an important particular.  But man, and not God, is responsible for man’s self-deception concerning points at which man can make no claim to a right to know all the truth.

It is true that this distinction is a delicate one, but it is a distinction none the less real on that account.  A moral line, like a mathematical line, has length, but neither breadth nor thickness.  And the line that separates a justifiable concealment which causes self-deception on the part of those who are not entitled to know the whole truth in the matter, and the deliberate concealment of truth for the specific purpose of deception, is a line that runs all the way up from the foundations to the summit of the universe.  This line of distinction is vital to an understanding of the question of the duty of truth-speaking, and of the sin of lying.

An effort at right concealment may include truthful statements which are likely, or even sure, to result in false impressions on the mind of the one to whom they are addressed, and who in consequence deceives himself as to the facts, when the purpose of those statements is not the deception of the hearer.  A husband may have had a serious misunderstanding with his wife that causes him pain of heart, so that his face gives sign of it as he comes out of the house in the morning.  The difficulty which has given him such mental anxiety is one which he ought to conceal.  He has no right to disclose it to others.  Yet he has no right to speak an untruth for the purpose of concealing that which he ought to conceal.