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."

Having made these concessions, in the realm of feeling, to the
d