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ON CONSCIENCE.

God has created man for a purpose, and that purpose is, that he should attain to everlasting blessedness.

God is good and loving unto all His works. He made the plants and the beasts, and set them ends to accomplish here on earth, but the ends for which man was made are not to be attained in this life.

Through the Fall man’s mind is darkened, his connexion with God is broken, his sight of the aim to which he should tend is obscured. God has given to him His law as the rule of his actions, that man, hearkening to the revealed Will of God, may be guided aright, and so accomplish that end for which he was made, and attain finally to everlasting blessedness.

Every act of man that is in conformity with the revealed law of God is good.

Every act of man that is contrary to this revealed law of God is bad.

Every act that is in conformity with the law of God is not only actually good, but it is relatively good—that is to say, it tends to our individual advantage. It is not only good in the sight of God, but it is profitable to our own selves.

So also is the converse true, that every act done against the law of God is actually and relatively bad; it is bad in the sight of God, and it does injury to our own selves.

Now, in order that we may be able to judge whether our acts are in conformity with the law of God, He has set in us a faculty which has the office of applying the law of God to our own circumstances; and this faculty tells us whether our acts are in conformity with or contrary to the external law of God. Thus we have the exterior law, and the interior faculty, which we may almost term a law, and this inner law is called Conscience.

II. The revealed law of God, considered in itself and in relation to God, its Author, is holy, inviolable, and inalterable. “The law of the Lord is perfect, converting (or restoring) the soul; the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring for ever; the judgments of the Lord are true, and righteous altogether. … In them is Thy servant warned: and in keeping them there is great reward.” (Ps. xix. 7–11.)

But though the revealed law of God is fixed and immutable, yet when applied to the human Conscience it takes different forms, according to the state of the Conscience.

Hence it follows that the divine law ill-applied, so far from being a sure rule, may become perverted into a sanction whereby we evade the obligations laid on us, and authorize ourselves to commit that which is wrong.

We shall therefore have to consider:—

1. The nature of Conscience.

2. The obligation of obeying Conscience.

3. The different kinds of Conscience.

4. The rules of conduct relative to each sort of Conscience.