truth." Here, however, witnesses should be most circumspect, lest, trusting too much to memory, they affirm for certain what they have not fully ascertained.
Solicitors and counsel, plaintiffs and defendants, remain still to be treated of. The former will not refuse to contribute their services and legal assistance, when the necessities of others call for their interposition. In such circumstances, humanity will prompt them to plead the cause of suffering innocence, and a love of justice will prevent them from engaging in the defence of an unjust cause. They will not protract by cavils, or encourage through avarice suits at law; and as to remuneration, in that they will be regulated by the principles of justice and of equity. [1] Plaintiffs and accusers are to be admonished, to avoid creating danger to any one by unjust charges, yielding to the influence of love, or hatred, or any other undue motive. Finally, to all conscientious persons is addressed the divine command, in all their intercourse with society, in every conversation, to speak the truth at all times from the sincerity of their hearts; to utter nothing injurious to the character of another, not even of those by whom they know they have been injured and persecuted; always recollecting, that so near is the relation that subsists between them, so close the social link that unites them, that they are all members of the same body.
In order that the faithful may be more disposed to avoid the degrading vice of lying, the pastor will place before them the extreme wretchedness and turpitude of the liar. In the Sacred Scriptures the devil is called " the father of lies;" " Because he stood not in the truth, he is a liar and the father thereof;" [2] and, to banish from amongst the faithful so great an enormity, the pastor will subjoin the mischievous consequences of which this vice is the impure source. These consequences are without number; and the pastor, therefore, must be content with pointing out their principal heads. In the first place, he will inform them how grievously lies offend God, how deeply a liar is hated by God: " Six things there are," says Solomon, " which the Lord hateth, and the seventh his soul detesteth; haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that deviseth wicked plots, feet that are swift to run into mischief, a deceitful witness that uttereth lies, &c." [3] The man, therefore, who is thus the object of God's sovereign wrath, who will shelter from the awful punishments which hang over his devoted head? Again, what more wicked, what more base than, as St. James says, " with the same tongue, by which we bless God and the Father, to curse men, who are made after the likeness of God, so that out of the same fountain flows sweet and bitter water." [4] The tongue, which was before employed in giving praise and glory to God, by lying treats the Author of truth, as far as on it depends, with ignominy and dishonour; and hence, liars are
