LYING IN COURT.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—I have just read the article on " Lying in Court " in the current number of the Spectator, and cannot refrain from writing to thank you for it. Not that my attention has been specially drawn to the lies uttered by witnesses, but when I read your suggestion that lying in court should be made a criminal offence, to be summarily dealt with, it struck me that that would do a great deal towards making lying generally less common. It would at once raise the tone of public opinion upon this subject. The untruthfulness to be met with, not only among the avowedly irreligious, but even among Church and Chapel-going communities is something horrible. There are times when it has a most depressing influence upon my mind, and I frequently refer to this subject in the pulpit in no measured terms. The other Sunday, the morning lesson happening to contain the narrative of Gehazi's lying, I made untruthfulness the subject of my sermon. It is not much to the credit of the Pulpit that I was afterwards good-naturedly twitted with having been specially victimized and taking my revenge in my sermon. 1 am sure a great part of the blame attaches to the pulpit. We— preachers, I mean—discourse glibly and comfortably upon old- world affairs, or metaphysical subtleties, or perhaps we denounce some arch-Rationalist or some extreme Ritualist, and rest satis- fied with an occasional and unemphatic allusion to the vices which are destroying the manliness of half the people, and compelling the other half to disbelieve everything until it is proved to be true. This state of things seems to me to show that both preachers and people are far from being what Christians ought to be. Were my brother or my friend to tell a lie such as I am compelled so fre- quently to hear from the men and women and children of the outer world, it would break my rest and wound me to the quick ; and dare I so far forget that the men of the outer world are in a Christian sense my brethren and my friends, as to be indifferent to their lies ?
Again thanking you for the article which has called forth these remarks, and hoping that you will as frequently as possible bring your influence to bear upon all the measures that can be devised for saving our people from the sin of lying, I remain, Sir, &c., A. R.
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