is the basis of the obligation, and upon which its binding force rests? When Herod, pleased wilh the dancing of the daughter of Ilerodias, ' promised with an oath to give her whatsoever she would,' and when she requested the head of John the Baptist iu a charger, was he thereby bound to give it to her ?
"Mohammed says, when you swear to do a thing, and afterwards find it better to do otherwise, do that which is better, aud make void your oath. The very definitions of an oath show that, by reason aud in consequence of an oath, the Deity becomes bound to i)unish a perjured per- son irremissibly. History, too, shows that obligatinus upon man, and so, too, upon the Deiiy, arising from the oath, varied, or were supposed to vary, in intensity, ac- cording to the changing forms and circumstances attend- ant upon its administration. When Kobert, the pious king of France, abstracted the holy relics from the cases upon which the oath was taken, and substituted therefor the egg of an ostrich, as being an innocent object, and iucapableof taking vengeance on those who should swear falsely, he might have been correct as to the incapacity of the egg ; but did he thereby save his subject from perjury, or avert the punishment of the Deity? When llamld, shuddering, saw the hemes and relics of saints and mar- tyrs, real or fictitious, upon which he had unconscicuisly sworn, were the obligaticms he had assumed increased by their unknown presence? Or was it the unreasoning fear of abject superstition which led him to believe that he had thus immeasurably increased the dangers of super- human punishment? Indeed, when men consider they are under obligation to utter the truth or not, as they stand upon a tiger's skin or hold in their hand the tail of a cow; as they have their hat on or off; as certain spu- rious relics of fictitious saints are closed in the pyx or not ; as the lips touch the thumb or the book ; as the book has, or not, a cross upon it — who is there so wise as to af- firm that the person so swearing does not believe that the virtue resides, or is considered by those believing, to re- side in the ceremony, and in that alone ? that the thing sworn to be done or not done, and its propriety, are not even matters deemed worthy of thought ? Or, as Mr. Junkin has aptly said, 'No one pretends that the mate- rial of a book— the leather, the paper, the cord, the ink-- is God, and yet many, when the book (Bible) is used, lift their thoughts no higher.' (This position has, however, been questioned by the editor of the Princeton Review, Jan. 1846, p. 170 sq.) Now, can it be possible that by acts of idolatry the obligation to utter truth is increased? Is not truth eternal and immulable? Is not the duty to ut- ter the truth, aud nothing but the truth, paramount and prior to all oaths? The oath may be the same, so far as the ceremony is concerned, either to utter the truth or a falsehood, but is the obligatimi the same ? If the obliga- tion rests on the oath, each alike must be performed as sworn. If it rests on the rightfulness of the thing to be done, then why add the oath ?
"The oath is not without its accompanying evils. By imposing punishment only when it has been administer- ed, it lessens the importance of and the respect due to truth, in statements uttered extra-judicially, and gives an implied license to falsehood out of court. The truth seems only to be specially requisite in the case of an oath, otherwise it is comparatively immaterial. Charles Lamb, in his quaint aud quiet way, and with great humor and truth, says, 'The custom of resorting to an oath iu extreme cases is apt to introduce into the laxer sort of minds the notion of two kinds of truth: the one applica- ble to the solemn affairs of justice, and the other to the common proceedings of daily intercourse. As truth, bound upon the conscience by an oath, can be but truth, so, in the common affirmations of the shop and the mar- ket, a latitude is expected and conceded upon questions wanting this solemn covenant. Something less than the truth satisfies. It is common for a person to say. You do not expect me to speak as if I were upon my oath. Hence, a kind of secondary or laic truth is tolerated when clerical truth, oath truth, is not required. A (Jiiaker knows none of these distinctions.' Not very dissimilar was the idea of St, Basil, that ' it is a very fmil and silly thing for a man to accuse himself as unworthy of belief, aud to proffer an oath for security.' The oath, too, is a disturbing force in giving the just "degree of weight to testimony. It tends to place all testimony upon the same level, to cause equal credence to be given to all, because all have passed tiirough the same ceremony. The attention of the court or the judge is withdrawn fiom the just appreciation of the grounds of belief or disbelief in the evidence. The same ceremony for all, the tendency is to believe that its force is the same upon all, and thus the bad receive undue cre- dence, while the good are reduced to the standard of the bad.