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

can.

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; oñe 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 public 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,

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

matter.

We e 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

alas! he who wrote these words said, also, that he was entirely faultless. Thus, amidst their prevalent superstitions, and their worshipings of deified lusts, how obscure were their notions of the Divine law. Their conscience never condemned their creed, nor does any man's. The lex vera of their minds was not divine, and did not reach the thoughts and intents of the heart. If it condemned the man who willfully injured his neighbor, or broke the laws of his country, retaliation or retribution could expiate the offense, for guilt was not understood to be, as it is, a pollution cleaving to the spirit, to be removed only by that repentance which accompanies an entire change in the state of the will and conscience. There was no forgiveness in their law, because there was no charity; and if their fabled gods were ever to be appeased, it was by cruelty and vengeance.

The atonement made by love attracting men to God, by subduing their hearts, was God's own method, which men untaught could never have discovered; and not knowing and feeling this, their consciences could not recognize either the law of life or of liberty. Even the slight glimmering of the recta ratio, which the heathen recognized as from` Heaven, was probably conveyed to them through tradition from a period when the only God was worshiped, or else they derived it directly from the Hebrew bards and prophets, for the chosen people were a testimony to all nations. But truth did not suit man's disposition; he did not like to retain God in his knowledge, and eternal life had no abidence in him-nor has it ever, but by the inhabiting of the Holy Spirit imparted to all believers in the redemption. Hence it is that, among the ignorant and faithless, the law of God has no felt authority, and charity is at best but a family virtue. A law that could regard every human being as equally entitled to be loved with a man's own self, is altogether beyond