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ON THE DIFFERENT KINDS OF CONSCIENCE.

I.—The Direct Conscience.

1. The various causes enumerated have been the occasion of Consciences becoming very various in quality. Of these varieties there are the following:

(a) The Direct, or Sound Conscience. (b) The False Conscience. (c) The Scrupulous Conscience. (d) The Relaxed Conscience. (e) The Doubtful Conscience.

2. In the first place let us consider that vigorous and healthy Conscience which we call a Direct Conscience.

Now God intended all Consciences to be direct, and the object of all moral instruction is to bring crooked Consciences right, and to bring ignorant Consciences to a knowledge of what is right.

The direct, sound Conscience is that which we should aim all our lives to obtain. And as it is the interior manifestation of the Will of God, and an obligation is laid on us to obey it, we must observe what it commands, abstain from what it forbids, and respect what it counsels.

We must (a) use our utmost endeavour to learn our duties aright, both towards God, our neighbours, and ourselves. We owe to God the obligations of love, reverence, worship, and obedience. Our duties to our neighbours are tolerably plain—the State enforces most of them. We must respect the persons, the property, and the good name of our neighbours. Our duties to ourselves are to educate and develop all those faculties, physical, mental, and spiritual, God has put in us, to keep our bodies in temperance, soberness, and chastity; to cultivate our reason and our intelligence—the reason so as to be able to form just judgments, and the intelligence so as to be able and eager to acquire knowledge; to nourish and discipline our souls so that our spiritual faculties may be alive to divine things, able to pray, to meditate on God, and be conscious of His Everpresence.

(b) We must endeavour to bring under our self-love, which is disposed to confuse and lead astray the Conscience by advising such things as are convenient and flattering to self, and making them appear right, or, at all events, admissible.

(c) We must seek to be serious in determining our conduct, to avoid all waywardness and caprice, remembering that for whatever we do we shall have to give account.

3. We must now consider what are the means whereby we may obtain a Direct or sound Conscience. These are many, but a few of those that are principal and fundamental must suffice.

(a) The study of God’s Word, especially of the words of our Saviour Jesus Christ, and of His Apostles. Nothing is more calculated to give a healthy and straightforward Conscience than this.

(b) Experience. We must bring our intelligence to bear on our acts; Conscience was never meant to be blind instinct, but a bright, fresh, enlightened faculty, assisted at every step by the intelligence, and the intelligence will work on the facts of experience, and shew us where we have been doing what is right, and where we have been going wrong.

(c) Hold to first principles. Self-love is very much disposed to lead us into a maze of lines of conduct, and to encourage us to adopt that most easy, most flattering, most profitable to take. It brings up side duties, and exaggerates them to obscure broad principles. As a man when travelling, on coming to cross lanes, ascends a height to get a clear idea as to the main line, the direction in which he is going, so must we ever go up to the broad first principles to obtain a general survey, and follow the direction thus indicated.