Hi. Recognition of Right and Wrong.
The great distinction between right and wrong belongs to man alone. An animal may be taught that it is not to do certain things, but it is because these things are contrary to its master's wish, not because they are wrong. Some persons have en- deavoured to make out that the distinction between right and wrong on the part of ourselves is quite arbitrary, that we call that right which we find on the whole to be advantageous, and that wrong which on the whole tends to mischief; but the conscience of mankind is against this scheme of philosophy. That the wickedness of mankind has made fearful confusion between right and wrong, and that men very often by their conduct appear to approve of that which they ought not to approve, is very true ; and that men may fall, by a course of vice,
1 0. M. Cobe^^.
56 IN THE IMAGE OF GOD
into such a condition that their moral sense is fearfully blunted, is also true : but this does not prove the absence of a sense of right and wrong from a healthy mind, any more than the case of ever so many blind men would prove that there is no such thing as sight. No — the general conscience of mankind admits the truth which is assumed in Scripture, namely, that man, however far gone from original righteousness, does nevertheless recognize the excellence of what is good, that he delights in the law of God after the inward man, even though he may find another law in his members bringing him into captivity. This sense of what is right and good, which existed in man in his state of purity, and which has survived the fall and forms the very foundation upon which we can build hopes of his restoration to the favour of God, is a considerable portion of that which is described as God's image in which man was created.
IF Darwin opens his chapter on the moral sense with this acknowledgment: "I fully subscribe to the judgment of those writers who maintain that, of all the differences between man and the lower animals, the moral sense or conscience is by far the most important. This sense is summed up in that short but imperious word, 'ought,' so full of high significance. It is the most noble of all the attributes of man." ^
T What ! will I ca' a man my superior, because he's cleverer than mysel' ? Will I boo down to a bit o' brains, ony mair than to a stock or a stane ? Let a man prove himsel' better than me — honester, humbler, kinder, wi' mair sense o' the duty o' man, an' the weakness o' man — an' that man I'll acknowledge — that man's my king, my leader, though he war as stupid as Eppe Dalgleish, that couldna count five on her fingers, and yet keepit her drucken father by her ain hands' labour for twenty-three yeers.2
IT Devoid of the very taint of ambition, Dean Church obtained a singular authority, which was accepted without cavil or debate. Such an authority was a witness to the force and beauty of high moral character. It testified to the supremacy which belongs, of right and of necessity, to conscience. His special gifts would, under all conditions, have played a marked pf\rt ; but they do not account for the impressive sway exercised over such multitudes by his personality.^
1 G. E. Weeks. ' Charles Kingsley, Alton Locke,
* Life and Letters of Dean Church, 233.
GENESIS I. 26, 27 57
God hath no shape, nor can the artist's hands His figure frame in shining gold or wood,
God's holy image — God-sent — only stands Within the bosoms of the wise and good.^
iv. Communion with God.
The sense of right and wrong may be regarded as part of that nature originally imparted to man, by which he was fitted to hold communion with God. God called other creatures into existence by His word, and so made them live; but man He inspired with His own breath, and so gave him a portion of His own Divine life. And corresponding to this difference of beginning was the after history. God blessed the living creatures which He had made, pronounced them very good, and bade them increase and multiply; but with man He held communion. " They heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day " (Gen. iii. 8).
IT To me, the verse has, and can have, no other signification than this — that the soul of man is a mirror of the mind of God. A mirror, dark, distorted, broken — use what blameful names you please of its state — yet in the main, a true mirror, out of which alone, and by which alone, we can know anything of God at all.
" How ? " the reader, perhaps, answers indignantly. " I know the nature of God by revelation, not by looking into myself."
Eevelation to what? To a nature incapable of receiving truth ? That cannot be ; for only to a nature capable of truth, desirous of it, distinguishing it, feeding upon it, revelation is possible. To a being undesirous of it, and hating it, revelation is impossible. There can be none to a brute, or fiend. In so far, therefore, as you love truth, and live therein, in so far revelation can exist for you ; — and in so far, your mind is the image of God's.