as an enemy, and
yet not feel justified in telling him a lie in order to save his life
and secure our liberty. How could it be claimed that it was more of a
sin to tell a lie to a man who had forfeited his social rights, than
to kill him. I confessed that I could not at that time see the reason
for the distinction, which my moral sense assured me was a real one,
and I asked time to think of it. Thus it was that I came first to face
a question of the ages, Is a lie ever justifiable? under circumstances
that involved more than life to me, and when I had a strong inducement
to see the force of reasons in favor of a "lie of necessity."

In my careful study, at that time, of the principles involved in this
question, I came upon what seemed to me the conclusion of the whole
matter. God is the author of life. He who gives life has the right to
take it again. What God can do by himself, God can authorize another
to do. Human governments derive their just powers from God. The powers
that be are ordained of God. A human government acts for God in the
administering of justice, even to the extent of taking life. If a
war waged by a human government be righteous, the officers of that
government take life, in the prosecution of the war, as God's agents.
In the case then in question, we who were in prison as Federal
officers were representatives of our government, and would be
justified in taking the lives of enemies of our government who
hindered us as God's agents in the doing of our duty to God and to our
government.

On the other hand, God, who can justly take life, cannot lie. A lie
is contrary to the very nature of God. "It is impossible for God to
lie."[1] And if God cannot lie, God cannot authorize another to lie.
What is unjustifiable in God's sight, is without a possibility of
justification in the universe. No personal or social emergency can
justify a lie, whatever may be its apparent gain, or whatever harm may
seem to be involved in a refusal to speak it. Therefore we who were
Federal prisoners in war-time could not be justified in doing what
was a sin _per se_, and what God was by his very nature debarred
from authorizing or approving. I could see no way of evading
this conclusion, and I determinedly refused to seek release from
imprisonment at the cost of a sin against God.

[Footnote 1: Heb. 6: 18]

At this time I had no special familiarity with ethics as a study, and
I was unacquainted with the prominence of the