ency? Therefore it is that a physician's habit of
lying to his patients as a means of cure would cause him to lose the
power of aiding by truthful assurances those patients who most needed
help of this sort.

It is poor policy, as policy, to venture a lie in behalf of a single
patient, at the cost of losing the power to make the truth beneficial
to a hundred patients whose lives may be dependent on wise words of
encouragement. And the policy is still poorer as policy, when it is in
the line of an unmistakable sin. And many a good physician like many
a good soldier, repudiates the idea of a "lie of necessity" in his
profession.

Since lying is sinful because a lie is always a lie unto God, the fact
that a lie is spoken to an insane person or to a would-be criminal
does not make it any the less a sin in God's sight. And it is held by
some of the most eminent physicians to the insane that lying to the
insane is as poor policy as it is bad morals, and that it is never
justifiable, and therefore is never a "necessity" in that sphere.[1]

[Footnote 1: See, for example, the views of Dr. Thomas S. Kirkbride,
physician-in-chief and superintendent of the Pennsylvania Hospital
for the Insane, in the Report of that institution for 1883, at pages
74-76. In speaking of the duty of avoiding deception in dealings with
the insane, he said: "I never think it right to speak anything but the
truth."]

So also in dealing with the would-be criminal, a lie is not
justifiable in order to save one's life, or one's possessions that are
dearer than life, nor yet to prevent the commission of a crime or to
guard the highest interests of those whom we love. Yet concealment of
that which ought to be concealed is as truly a duty when disclosure
would lead to crime, or would imperil the interests of ourselves or
others, as it is in all the ordinary affairs of life; but lying as a
means of concealment is not to be tolerated in such a case any more
than in any other case.

If a robber, with a pistol in his hand, were in a man's bedroom at
night, it would not be wrong for the defenseless inmate to remain
quiet in his bed, in concealment of the fact that he was awake, if
thereby he could save his life, at the expense of his property. If a
would-be murderer were seeking his victim, and a man who knew this
fact were asked to tell of his whereabouts, it would be that man's
duty to conceal his knowledge at this point by all legitimate means.
He might re