[Footnote 1:  See, for example, the views of Dr. Thomas S. Kirkbride, physician-in-chief and superintendent of the Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane, in the Report of that institution for 1883, at pages 74-76.  In speaking of the duty of avoiding deception in dealings with the insane, he said:  “I never think it right to speak anything but the truth.”]

So also in dealing with the would-be criminal, a lie is not justifiable in order to save one’s life, or one’s possessions that are dearer than life, nor yet to prevent the commission of a crime or to guard the highest interests of those whom we love.  Yet concealment of that which ought to be concealed is as truly a duty when disclosure would lead to crime, or would imperil the interests of ourselves or others, as it is in all the ordinary affairs of life; but lying as a means of concealment is not to be tolerated in such a case any more than in any other case.

If a robber, with a pistol in his hand, were in a man’s bedroom at night, it would not be wrong for the defenseless inmate to remain quiet in his bed, in concealment of the fact that he was awake, if thereby he could save his life, at the expense of his property.  If a would-be murderer were seeking his victim, and a man who knew this fact were asked to tell of his whereabouts, it would be that man’s duty to conceal his knowledge at this point by all legitimate means.  He might refuse to speak, even though his own life were risked thereby; for it were better to die than to lie.  And so in many another emergency.

A lie being a sin per se, no price paid for it, nor any advantage to be gained from it, would make it other than a sin.  The temptation to look at it as a “necessity” may, indeed, be increased by increasing the supposed cost of its refusal; but it is a temptation to wrong-doing to the last.  It was a heathen maxim, “Do right though the heavens fall,” and Christian ethics ought not to have a lower standard than that of the best heathen morality.

Duty toward God cannot be counted out of this question.  God himself cannot lie.  God cannot justify or approve a lie.  Hence it follows that he who deliberately lies in order to secure a gain to himself, or to one whom he loves, must by that very act leave the service of God, and put himself for the time being under the rule of the “father of lies.”  Thus in an emergency which seems to a man to justify a “lie of necessity” that man’s attitude toward God might be indicated in this address to him:  “Lord, I should prefer to continue in your service, and I would do so if you were able and willing to help me.  But I find myself in an emergency where a lie is a ‘necessity,’ and so I must avail myself of the help of ‘the father of lies.’  If I am carried through this crisis by his help, I shall be glad to resume my position in your service.”  The man whose whole moral nature recoils from this position, will not be led into it by the best arguments of Christian philosophers in favor of the “lie of necessity.”