BIBLE TEACHINGS.


In looking at the Bible for light in such an investigation as this,
it is important to bear in mind that the Bible is not a collection of
specific rules of conduct, but rather a book of principles
illustrated in historic facts, and in precepts based on those
principles,--announced or presupposed. The question, therefore, is
not, Does the Bible authoritatively draw a line separating the truth
from a lie, and making the truth to be always right, and a lie to
be always wrong? but it is, Does the Bible evidently recognize an
unvarying and ever-existing distinction between a truth and a lie, and
does the whole sweep of its teachings go to show that in God's sight
a lie, as by its nature opposed to the truth and the right, is always
wrong?

The Bible opens with a picture of the first pair in Paradise, to whom
God tells the simple truth, and to whom the enemy of man tells a lie;
and it shows the ruin of mankind wrought by that lie, and the author
of the lie punished because of its telling.[1] The Bible closes with a
picture of Paradise, into which are gathered the lovers and doers of
truth, and from which is excluded "every one that loveth and doeth a
lie;"[2] while "all liars" are to have their part "in the lake that
burneth with fire and brimstone; which is the second death."[3] In the
Old Testament and in the New, God is represented as himself the Truth,
to whom, by his very nature, the doing or the speaking of a lie is
impossible,[4] while Satan is represented as a liar and as the "father
of lies."[5]