VI.

CENTURIES OF DISCUSSION.

Because of the obvious gain in lying in times of extremity, and because of the manifest peril or cost of truth-telling in an emergency, attempts have been made, by interested or prejudiced persons, all along the ages, to reconcile the general duty of adhering to an absolute standard of right, with the special inducements, or temptations, to depart from that standard for the time being.  It has been claimed by many that the results of a lie would, under certain circumstances, justify the use of a lie,—­the good end in this case justifying the bad means in this case.  And the endeavor has also been made to show that what is called a lie is not always a lie.  Yet there have ever been found stalwart champions of the right, ready to insist that a lie is a sin per se, and therefore not to be justified by any advantage or profit in its utterance.

Prominent in the earlier recorded discussions of the centuries concerning the admissibility of the lie, are those of the Jewish Talmudists and of the Christian Fathers.  As in the Bible story the standard of right is recognized as unvariable, even though such Bible characters as Abraham and Jacob and David, and Ananias and Sapphira, fail to conform to it in personal practice; so in the records of the Talmud and the Fathers there are not wanting instances of godly men who are ready to speak in favor of a departure from the strictest requirement of the law of truth, even while the great sweep of sentiment is seen to be in favor of the line that separates the lie from the truth eternally.

Hamburger, a recognized Jewish authority in this sphere, represents the teachings of the Talmud as even more comprehensive and explicit than the Bible itself, in favor of the universal duty of truthfulness.  He says:  “Mosaism, with its fundamental law of holiness, has established the standard of truthfulness with incomparable definiteness and sharpness (see Lev. 19:  2, 12, 13, 34-37).  Truthfulness is here presented as derived directly from the principle of holiness, and to be practiced without regard to resulting benefit or injury to foe or to friend, to foreigner or to countryman.  In this moral loftiness these Mosaic teachings as to truthfulness pervade the whole Bible.  In the Talmud they receive a profounder comprehension and a further development.  Truthfulness toward men is represented as a duty toward God; and, on the other hand, any departure from it is a departure from God."[1]

[Footnote 1:  Hamburger’s Real-Encyclopadie fuer Bibel und Talmud, I., art.  “Truthfulness” (Wahrhaftigkeit).]