ing the life of the soul we cannot know, for it is transcendent. The motive and purpose of it are to be learned from revelation. There, also, we must seek our further knowledge of the nature of the soul, of the character of its final choice, of its eternal life, and of ever dominant sin in the human heart. It is possible that considerations altogether beyond our ken may determine both the entrance and the departure of the soul from this temporal sphere. But a consideration of the truths we have passed in review, according to which death is always determined by extra-temporal power is alone sufficient, as a mere hypothesis, if you will, to prove the impropriety of the term "accident of death," and to free the doctrine of eternal punishment from any show of unreason, if it is made to depend on a probation limited for all men to this life.

As a deduction of human wisdom when applied to the things of God, this may not properly claim to be more than a hypothesis, but as applied to the soul and its earthly relations, it rests upon facts, than which none are more indisputable, and if the reasoning is correct, is a demonstration.

ARTICLE VIII.-THE CONSCIENCE.

AN accurate definition of conscience, and a clear apprehension of its functions will afford us, I think, a pretty satisfactory solution of most of the problems connected with the subject.

1. The theory that there is no such faculty, that what is termed conscience is the "creature of education," or a mere opinion that some actions are right and others wrong, is evidently erroneous, as it takes no account of the idea of right and wrong which makes such judgments possible. To pronounce an action right or wrong, there must be in our minds some standard of right, with which we compare it; for all we mean by the assertions "this is right," "that is wrong," is this accords, and that discords with such a standard. A definition which leaves out this primary idea is plainly superficial.

2. A popular but loose definition of conscience makes it the faculty which decides upon the rightness and wrongness of external actions. This definition is manifestly incorrect, and is the source of most of the misapprehensions pertaining to the subject. If any truth is established it is that external actions have no character of their own, that they simply reflect that of choices, and consequently they do not come within the purview of the conscience. The conscience is the arbiter only of intentions or motives. It approves of right intentions and of nothing else, and disapproves of wrong intentions and of nothing else, the question whether this or that action is right is a mere matter of classification, made by the understanding, the faculty of all others the most fallible. Here lies the error of Robert South, Pascal, John Foster, and others, who regard conscience as fallible, erring, and educable. They ascribe to it judgments and imperfections which belong to an entirely different faculty.

3. A more discriminating definition makes conscience the soul's sense of right and wrong, in the sphere of its own intentions. Yet this definition is, I think, too narrow. Conscience certainly perceives the quality of choices not our own. are as sure that a benevolent purpose is right, and a malevolent

We

purpose is wrong, in our neighbor as in ourselves. The sphere of conscience reaches beyond the limits of our own choices, its domain is the whole field of morals.

4. The definition of Joseph Cook, which makes conscience the faculty which perceives and feels rightness and obligatoriness in choices, also strikes me as defective, in that it makes conscience a complex faculty, including a function of both the intelligence and sensibility. In the interests of clear thinking, I am compelled to protest against yoking under one name faculties so dissimilar. I, by far, prefer making conscience purely intellectual, and the feelings which come from obeying or disobeying its behests, simply effects-the one the faculty which inflicts the blow, the other the one which feels the smart.

The definition which thus limits conscience strikes me as the more simple, the one in best accord with the literal meaning of the word, and the one sanctioned by common usage. We often speak, I am aware, of a tender, a peaceful, and of an aching conscience, as though it were the faculty itself that feels; but we just as often use the word where there is nothing present but the pure intellection. We call that conscience which advises us of the quality of other men's choices, and of the quality of our own before they are made, where no feeling exists. We are constantly applying the name to the pure percep tive faculty, and I can see no reason for complicating the subject by including in our definition any thing more.

Another objection to this unnatural union is the diverse. effects of wrong doing on these two faculties. Persistence in sin benumbs and cauterizes the one, but produces no such effect upon the other. The man who could commit murder with as little remorse as once he could steal a pin, had as undimmed a perception of right and wrong as ever he had. He was as keenly alive to any injustice done to himself as when a child. That sensibility benumbed and diseased under painful and protracted condemnation, and that clear perceptive eye in his soul, which no repetition of crime could cloud and no deep of depravity could obscure, are certainly different things, and should be designated by different names.

No practical error is concealed in such phrases as “seared conscience," "perverted conscience," etc. In common parlance

they are admissible, but strictly there is no such thing as a seared or a perverted conscience. Conscience is a sentinel in the soul, whose eye nothing can blur, and whose testimony nothing can pervert. All the other strugglings of the world are as nothing to the abortive efforts men are making to stifle its voice, or bribe it into an alliance with sin-a consummation, which, could it be effected, would eliminate hell, and sin, and nearly all suffering from the universe.

Again, all the functions usually ascribed to the conscience may readily be resolved into the one simple exercise of perceiving. (1) It gives us the idea of right, or obligation. (2) Like a king it seems to command and forbid, to praise and blame, to promise reward and threaten punishment. (3) It dif fuses through the soul, as its behests are obeyed or disobeyed, the tenderest joy or the most poignant suffering men ever experience; but what more is all this than the vivid idea of duty, guilt, danger, merit and demerit, and their natural results, involved in that dread idea of obligation! Then if all the functions of conscience may be resolved into the one exercise of perceiving, as I think they may, why not define it as the perceptive faculty?

I make conscience the faculty which perceives moral distinctions, or as the reader has already inferred, I identify the conscience with the reason. The faculty, in my view, which gives us necessary absolute and self-evident truths, those fundamental postulates of the mind which lie at the basis of all knowledge, and make thinking and reasoning possible, and the conscience are the same. It is the faculty which gives us the mathematical axioms, and in this particular we call it the mathematical reason; it gives us the ideal of beauty, and in this we call it the aesthetical reason; it gives us also the idea of right and obligation, and in this we term it the ethical reason, or the conscience.

I define conscience then as the ethical reason, or reason in the sphere of morals. I put the idea of right into the same category with that of space, and time, and cause, and God, as one of those intuitional verities, which challenge the soul's assent, and can not be doubted. It possesses all the characteristics of these intuitional truths:

1. It is unique and absolute, nothing resembles it, nothing can represent it. It can neither be simplified, defined, analyzed, or conveyed to a mind not already in possession of it. Whence comes it? How does the child know with such certainty that intentional cruelty is wrong? It must have come from within, it must be the soul's own spontaneity.

2. This idea is universal. There is not a rational being who does not understand such words as "right" and "wrong," "ought" and "ought not," or who for a moment, averts his eye from their dread import. Empirical truths may be forgotten, but who ever forgets that injustice and falsehood are wrong? Make the most bewildered drunkard understand that some one has defrauded you, or abused a child, and so soon as he can articulate the word, he will pronounce the deed wrong. The man whose hands are reddest in murder, lives in spite of himself, in the awful presence of this idea. No flight can escape it, no exorcism can cast it out. It will remain forever, a part of himself, either as a singing angel, or as the worm that dieth

not.

3. This idea in all minds, and wherever found, is the same. Our differences about right and wrong are only seeming, never real. They relate not to the idea of right itself, but to its applications. The heathen mother, in justifying the immolation. of her child, refers it to a principle we all recognize as binding. The Great Spirit, she says, or the highest good requires the sacrifice, making it evident that it is not a question of right, but of mere classification, about which we differ from that benighted mother. The same is true in all our disputes about right and wrong. No two rational beings ever did, or ever can differ about them. We all consciously or unconsciously assume the same standard, and bow before the same umpire. We are not here in this universe afloat; there are landmarks which no sophistry or depravity can alter or remove.

4. This idea of right is the Moral Law revealed in the Old and New Testament Scriptures, not in its details and applications, but in its essence and principle. The law proclaimed on Mount Sinai, and epitomized fifteen hundred years later, by the Son of God, is a transcript of this wondrous idea found in all minds. That divine law is but the demands and meaning