question is proposed, or the mind
excited to such a degree of curiosity and attention that lessons of
truth can be successfully imparted."

And so on through other Bible incidents. Dr. Thornwell has no
hesitation in distinguishing when concealment is right concealment,
and when concealment is wrong because intended to deceive.

Exposing the incorrectness of the claim, made by Dr. Paley, as by
others, that certain specific falsehoods are not lies, Dr. Thornwell
shows himself familiar with the discussion of this question of
the ages in all the centuries; and he moves on with his eye fixed
unerringly on the polar star of truth, in refreshing contrast with the
amiable wavering of Dr. Hodge's footsteps.

"Paley's law," he concludes, "would obviously be the destruction of
all confidence. How much nobler and safer is the doctrine of the
Scriptures, and of the unsophisticated language of man's moral
constitution, that truth is obligatory on its own account, and that he
who undertakes to signify to another, no matter in what form, and no
matter what may be the right in the case to know the truth, is bound
to signify according to the convictions of his own mind! He is not
always bound to speak, but whenever he does speak he is solemnly bound
to speak nothing but the truth. The universal application of this
principle would be the diffusion of universal confidence. It would
banish deceit and suspicion from the world, and restrict the use of
signs to their legitimate offices."

A later work on Christian Ethics, which acquires special prominence
through its place in "The International Theological Library," edited
by Drs. Briggs and Salmond, is by Dr. Newman Smyth. It shows signs of
strength in the premises assumed by the writer, in accordance with the
teachings of Scripture and of the best moral sense of mankind; and
signs of weakness in his processes of reasoning, and in his final
conclusion, according to the mental methods of those who have wavered
on this subject, from John Chrysostom to Richard Rothe and Charles
Hodge.

Dr. Smyth rightly bases Christian ethics on the nature and will of
God, as illustrated in the life and teachings of the divine-human Son
of God. "A thoroughly scientific ethics must not only be adequate
to the common moral sense of men, but prove true also to the moral
consciousness of the Son of man. No ethics has right to claim to be
thoroughly scientific, or to offer itself as the only science of
ethics