If the lie of necessity be allowable for any purpose, it would seem to be more important as a means of good in the exercise of the ministerial profession, than of any other profession or occupation.  And if it be understood that this is the case, what dependence can be put, by the average hearer, on the most earnest words of a preacher, who may be declaring a truth from God, and who, on the other hand, may be uttering falsehoods in love?  And if it be true, also, as some of these clergymen have claimed, that God specifically approved falsehood and deception, according to the Bible record, and that Jesus Christ practiced in this line, while here on earth, what measure of confidence can fallible man place in the sacred text as it has come to him?  The statement of this view of the case, is the best refutation of the claim of a possible justification for the most loving lie imaginable.

The only other point remaining untouched, in this review of the centuries of discussion concerning the possible justifiableness of a lie under conceivable circumstances, is in its relation to the lower animals.  It has been claimed that “all admit” that there is no impropriety in using any available means for the decoying of fish or of beasts to their death, or in saving one’s self from an enraged animal; hence that a lie is not to be counted as a sin per se, but depends for its moral value on the relation subsisting between its utterer and the one toward whom it is uttered.

Dr. Dabney, who is far less clear and sound than Dr. Thornwell in his reasoning on this ethical question, says:  “I presume that no man would feel himself guilty for deceiving a mad dog in order to destroy him;"[1] and he argues from this assumption that when a man, through insanity or malice, “is not a rational man, but a brute,” he may fairly be deemed as outside of the pale of humanity, so far as the obligations of veracity, viewed only as a social virtue, are concerned.

[Footnote 1:  Dabney’s Theology (second edition), p. 425 f.]

Dr. Newman Smyth expands this idea.[1] He says:  “We may say that animals, strictly speaking, can have no immediate right to our words of truth, since they belong below the line of existence which marks the beginning of any functions of speech.”  He adds that animals “may have direct claims upon our humanity, and so indirectly put us under obligations to give them straightforward and fair treatment,” and that “truthfulness to the domestic animal, to the horse or the dog, is to be included as a part of our general obligation of kindness to creatures that are entirely dependent upon our fidelity to them and their wants.”  But he cites the driving of horses with blinders,[2] and the fishing for trout with artificial flies, as evidence of the fact that man recognizes no sinfulness in the deceiving of the lower animals, and hence that the duty of veracity is not one of universal obligation.

[Footnote 1:  Smyth’s Christian Ethics, p. 398.]