“Again, ye have heard that it was said to them of old time, Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths: but I say unto you, Swear not at all; neither by the heaven, for it is the throne of God; nor by the earth, for it is the footstool of his feet; nor by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. Neither shalt thou swear by thy head, for thou canst not make one hair white or black. But let your speech be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: and whatsoever is more than these is of the evil one.” The third commandment, taken with other passages of the Old Testament,[45] enjoined upon the Israelite to swear only by the name of Jehovah; and so swearing, to be diligent to perform his oath. And our Lord both restores the injunction[46] and deepens it. What, we ask, is the nature of an oath? It is for a man to put himself solemnly in God’s presence, and assert that, as surely as God is God, and as he hopes for His blessing on his life, what he is saying is the truth. The essence of the oath is the solemnly putting oneself _on special occasions_ in the presence of God. But is not God everywhere present? Are we ever out of His presence? Does not everything live simply with His life and depend on His will? Is there then any meaning in selecting set occasions to put ourselves in God’s presence, when God is always present and all that exists exists in Him? It is to this truth of the omnipresence and omnipotence of God that our Lord calls men’s attention; and He deals with the Jewish commandment by lifting all conversation, all use of language, in His new kingdom to the level which had previously been held by declarations on oath. To the Jew it had been a great thing to forswear himself, but little or nothing to speak in ordinary talk what was not true. Our Lord says: God is everywhere and all words are uttered in His presence; therefore truth is of universal obligation; your yea is always to be yea, and your nay, nay. Not only have we in St. James’ Epistle[47] a repetition of this injunction of our Lord, when it was much needed, but we have an instructive comment upon it in the distress which it occasioned St. Paul to be accused unjustly of prevarication and untruth to his promise.[48] Truth to his word is to be always and everywhere the characteristic of a Christian. It is not to be at one time “yea, yea,” and at another time “nay, nay.” How fundamentally the absence of this characteristic of mutual trustworthiness can hinder social progress among Christians is, I fear, apparent at the present day in the case of those whom (by a limitation of the term equally unfortunate for those who are included in it, and for those who are not) we call the working-classes. In this connexion we may notice three points.