[Footnote 1:  See Kurtz’s Church History (Macpherson’s transl.), III., 201; Supplement to Schaff-Hertzog Encyc. of Relig.  Knowl., p. 57; Johnson’s Univ.  Cycl.., art.  “Martensen.”]

[Footnote 2:  Martensen’s Christian Ethics (Individual), (Eng. trans.,) pp. 205-226.]

Martensen gives as large prominence as Rothe to love for one’s fellow-man; but he bases that love entirely, as Rothe does not, on love for Christ.  “Only in Christ, and [in] the light which, proceeding from him, is poured over human nature and all human life, can we love men in the central sense, and only then does philanthropy receive its deepest religious and moral character, when it is rooted in the truth of Christ.”  And as Christ is Truth, those who are Christ’s must never violate the truth. “’Thou shalt not bear false witness; thou shalt not lie, neither in word nor deed; thou shalt neither deny the truth, nor give out anything that is not truth for truth,’—­this commandment must dominate and penetrate all our life’s relations.”  “Truth does not exist for man’s sake, but man for the sake of the truth, because the truth would reveal itself to man, would be owned and testified by him.”  This would seem to be explicit enough to shut out the possibility of a justifiable lie!

“Yet it does not follow from this,” says Martensen, “that our duty to communicate the truth to others is unlimited....  ’There is a time to be silent, and a time to speak.’  No one is bound to say everything to everybody.”  Here he distinguishes between justifiable concealment and falsehood.  Then he comes to the question “whether the so-called ’lie of exigency’ can ever be justifiable.”  He runs over the arguments on both sides, and recalls the centuries of discussion on the subject.  He thinks that adherence to the general principle which forbids lying would, in certain cases where love prompted to falsehood, cause in most minds an inward feeling that the letter killeth, and that to follow the promptings of love were better.  Hence he argues that “as in other departments there are actions which, although from the standpoint of the ideal they are to be rejected, yet, from the hardness of men’s hearts, must be approved and admitted, and under this restriction become relatively justifiable and dutiful actions, simply because greater evils are thereby averted; so there is also an untruth from exigency that must still be allowed for the sake of human weakness.”  And in his opinion “it comes to this, that the question of casuistry cannot be solved by general and abstract directions, but must be solved in an individual, personal way, especially according to the stage of moral and religious development and ripeness on which the person in question is found.”