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knows to be best, and then you will bear your burden with a light heart, and sometimes look up into heaven so joyously as to forget that the earth must be dug into, even to make a grave. It is not real good intent but hypocrisy that paves the pit of darkness, while sincere, love-born purpose lays the golden pavement of the city of God.

Every individual should feel that he has some business that must be blessed, if he use his means for the best, since the God of providence calls for exertion only because He grants the ability and intends a happy result, which must arrive. We should therefore act as integral members of a whole company, where God is overseer, and then we shall find also a time for rest as well as for labor, and the soul will indeed enjoy a perpetual sabbath of its own, in the peace of that faith which animates it with Divine energy, and with hopes that terminate only in the eternal happiness to which they point.

CHAPTER XV.

CONSCIENCE.

HOWEVER diversified may be the estimates which men in general form of virtue, and however widely they deviate in their conduct from the line they deem right, they are always so far self-complacent, as very adroitly to supply excuses to satisfy their own consciences. They measure themselves one by another and see so many faults in their neighbors, that they feel entitled to be lenient to their own. This kind of

conscience is uncharitableness, and belongs to those who are most scrupulous in demanding license for themselves, while most punctiliously rigid in refusing all liberty to others. Nevertheless, even these men of most unconscionable consciences are open to some sort of conviction: for when the law of God is manifested to their understandings, they at once acknowledge its goodness, justness, holiness, and thus they bear witness against themselves and in favor of Divine purity; but then they are very apt to infer that this holy, just, and good law has nothing to do in regulating the duties of their own lives, not because it ought not, but rather, perhaps, because they see not how it They can not endure their own legal condemnation, and therefore imagine they are to be saved by a faith that does not work by rule, but trusts in a righteousness that it will not adopt, forgetful that though man is saved by God, yet it is not in spite of himself. Happy indeed is it to have a soul freed from terror by a vision of grace reigning through righteousness unto

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life; but this is not seen in its heavenly manner until we love the Father, because he first loved us. Then, indeed, a sublimer motive penetrates the spirit, like the angels' strain stirring the hearts of the shepherds on the plains at Bethlehem-"Glory to God in the highest, peace on earth, good will to man." But this glory, peace, and love are most visible to man when the Lawgiver illustrates the beauty of holiness, in human submission to the Divine will, for then we see how the agony that breaks the heart is triumphantly endured by love, and then the bowing down of the head, in obedience unto death, shows us how the God-life of humanity enlightens Hades, and enters into Heaven. Conscience lies dark and dormant until the light of the Divine character shines into man's understanding. We can not be conscientious until we believe in Love. The testimony of moral perception is never clearly elicited from our hearts until reason is illuminated by a manifestation of truth as the will of God. Until then we only speculate on ethics, like the heathen who knew not God, and therefore could not see the ground of moral excellence. As Dr. Thaer pertinently says:"The ancient philosophers have much disputed whether there be one virtue only, or many; one vice, or many. It depends, as it appears to me, on what our notion of virtue or vice is; for him who strives after a steady perfection in soul, there is but one virtue. He who, on the contrary, looks upon virtue, in relation to civil society, and calls that virtue which advances pub. lic and private happiness, and that vice which disturbs it, he may have many virtues and many vices. I believe that these opinions are not merely speculative, but have a real influence on practice. He who adopts the first notion, not in word merely, but embraces it as warmly and sincerely as I did he, if he sinks in one respect, sinks in all. Christ says, Whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point,

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he is guilty of all.' I feel, Lord, thy truth!"* A consciousness of sin is an experimental and personal

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We may perceive that many things are really good or really evil, but we do not discern truth in its nature until we perceive that every truth involves the idea of perfect righteousness, and implies the entire intolerance of all injustice by the Author of all truth, and that therefore every evil disposition must be essentially hateful to any mind that is in accordance with perfect love. Truth and love are united, as the necessary expression of the divinity to all intelligences, and they that separate them, in their thoughts and actions, have an evil and unhappy state of spirit and a growing tendency to darkness and doubt. If they follow truth without love, in the divine sense, it is also without moral feeling, and therefore merely to gratify some proud or debased passion; for if they possess any kind of love, without the love of truth it can only be either sensually or diabolically. When they believe they must also tremble; since, in either case, the revelation of Deity must be surprising, hateful, and condemning to them. In the light their consciences may and must awake, but only like a wounded man that has slumbered dreamily with opiates, to be roused to the realities of agony. When truth, as a ray of the Sun of Righteousness, shines into the secret depths of a man's soul, he must acknowledge the Holy One. Then he ceases to speculate about sin; he feels it, not merely as an evil, because it is apt to produce inconvenient effects, but as essentially iniquitous and horrible, because against the will and ordinances of pure love. The heart of Him who lamented over Jerusalem, and was pierced on Calvary, is the place in which to see sin in its hatefulness; since there we see how a man that

*From a biographical notice of Albert Thaer, in the Moral Aspects of Medical Life, by Dr. Mackness.

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could not sin must suffer, in sympathizing both with God, as the Father, and with man, as the prodigal.

Many writers have learnedly and elaborately discoursed to prove that it is the natural right and office of conscience to condemn the wrong-doer. If it be meant, as it appears to be, that conscience thus acts, although no divine enlightenment reach it extraneously -then, surely, more is asserted than either experience or revelation will warrant. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. It is the office of the Holy Spirit to convince of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment to come. How could a man like St. Paul have persecuted the early Christians with so ready a spirit, and think all the while that he was doing God good service, if his natural conscience had been a sufficient guide and governance for his conduct, in the difficult affair of choosing to resign all his old prejudices, while obstinately bent upon proving his zeal, by imprisoning and stoning those who preached against them?" Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do," was the Saviour's dying prayer. The evil conscience of unbelief is blind as well as impious. The law of God must be felt as God's charity in the soul before it can conscientiously do its duty; and we may as well look for a world of beauty without the sun, as for any right discernment or moral excellence in man, without the light which flows into his mind from revealed truth and the revealing Spirit. Whatever be man's discernment, he is not in a state prepared to do unto others as he would be done by, until the law of love enters into all his desires and actions like a new life; for, without this how can he avoid thrusting his own selfish claims in the way of his neighbors, instead of making his neighbors' interest one with his own?

It is true that certain heathens eloquently discourse concerning the vera lex and the recta ratio, naturá congruens, diffusa in omnes, sempiterna et immortalibus; but

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