The Christian oath is an ecclesiastical device, framed in the interest of the Church, to enforce, under penalty, the recognition and perpetuation of its tenets. He who takes the oath professes to believe that if he breaks it "God will blast his soul in hell for ever." This is the old brutal, terrifying form in which the consequence was expressed. It is softened now, to suit the secular humanity of the age, to a statement that God will hold the oath-taker responsible for its fulfilment. But God's method of holding any one responsible, is by sentencing him to "outer darkness," where there will be "wailing and gnashing of teeth." A very unpleasant region to dwell in. There is no good ground to suppose that such a sentence for such an offence would be passed, but the intimidation is retained. Mr. Cluer, a London magistrate, said lately that "if the fate of Ananias befel all who swore falsely in his court, the floor would be strewn with dead bodies." But the courts fall back upon the pristine meaning of the oath. The magistrate asks a little child, tendered as a witness, "whether she knows, if she does not tell the truth, where she will go to?" and whether she "has never heard of a place called hell or of its keeper, the devil?" If not, he publicly deplores the neglect of the child's education, and declares her to be incapable of telling the truth. Every one who took the oath, whether rich or poor, a philosopher or a fool, each professed to believe that the Great God of all the worlds, notwithstanding the infinite business He has on hand, was personally present in any dingy court when the oath-taker calls upon Him "to witness" that he speaks the truth, and if not, God, who never forgets, burdens His celestial memory with that fact, with a view to eternal retaliation, in case the oath is false. He who takes the oath and does not believe this, lies to begin with, whatever may be the character of his testimony. To take the oath in any other sense than that in which it is administered to you, is to deceive the court. "He who imposes the oath, makes it. Not he, who for convenience takes it." The reliance on the part of those who impose the oath, is that he who takes it believes the terms of it. If the taker takes it in a private sense of his own, the virtue has gone out of the oath, and the court is deceived. If the Unitarian takes the oath, not believing in an avenging God, he creates a new oath for himself, in which the compelling power of an eternal terror is absent. He, therefore, does not take the oath of the court, but another of his own invention; and if he made known to the court what he was doing, the court would not receive his testimony. Philosophers, who have less belief than Unitarians, take the oath. But in the eye of morality it is not less discreditable--perhaps more so, for the philosopher stands for absolute truth, while the Unitarian stands only for theological truth.