It is found, in fact, that in all the ages, the world over, primitive man's highest ideal conception of deity has been that of a God who could not tolerate a lie; and his loftiest standard of human action has included the readiness to refuse to tell a lie under any inducement, or in any peril, whether it be to a friend or to an enemy. This is the teaching of ethnic conceptions on the subject. The lie would seem to be a product of civilization, or an outgrowth of the spirit of trade and barter, rather than a natural impulse of primitive man. It appeared in full flower and fruitage in olden time among the commercial Phoenicians, so prominently that "Punic faith" became a synonym of falsehood in social dealings. Yet it is in the face of facts like these that a writer like Professor Fowler baldly claims, in support of the same presupposed theory as that of Lecky, that "it is probably owing mainly to the development of commerce, and to the consequent necessity, in many cases, of absolute truthfulness, that veracity has come to take the prominent position which it now occupies among the virtues; though the keen sense of honor, engendered by chivalry, may have had something to do in bringing about the same result."[1] [Footnote 1: _Principles of Morality_, II., 220.] III. BIBLE TEACHINGS. In looking at the Bible for light in such an investigation as this, it is important to bear in mind that the Bible is not a collection of specific rules of conduct, but rather a book of principles illustrated in historic facts, and in precepts based on those principles,--announced or presupposed. The question, therefore, is not, Does the Bible authoritatively draw a line separating the truth from a lie, and making the truth to be always right, and a lie to be always wrong? but it is, Does the Bible evidently recognize an unvarying and ever-existing distinction between a truth and a lie, and does the whole sweep of its teachings go to show that in God's sight a lie, as by its nature opposed to the truth and the right, is always wrong? The Bible opens with a picture of the first pair in Paradise, to whom God tells the simple truth, and to whom the enemy of man tells a lie; and it shows the ruin of mankind wrought by that lie, and the author of the lie punished because of its telling.[1] The Bible closes with a picture of Paradise, into which are gathered the lovers and doers of truth, and from which is excluded "every one that loveth and doeth a lie;"[2] while "all liars" are to have their part "in the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone; which is the second death."[3] In the Old Testament and in the New, God is represented as himself the Truth, to whom, by his very nature, the doing or the speaking of a lie is impossible,[4] while Satan is represented as a liar and as the "father of lies."[5] [Footnote 1: Gen. 2, 3.] [Footnote 2: Rev. 22.] [Footnote 3: Rev. 21: 5-8.]