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CONSCIENCE
CONSCIENCE
be brou^lit within the sweep of conscience, and every element in it is to be made subject to that great and just arbitrament.
It may be true that in a society so largely Chris- tianized as ours, tlie man who acta from conscience will not behave in a manner markedly distinct from the behaviour of those who simply tollow the con- ventions of society. There will, however, be very distinct differences on a closer scrutiny. He will dis- cover new meaning's in actions prescribed by con- vention, and will perform them the better that he does them with conscience. He will be on t lie outlook for new duties and new means of realizing the gooil which he apprehends, not as a code, but as an inner spiritual inijjulse. Apart from specific differences of action, there is a dill'erence in spring of action, which cannot but tell in the long run. Perceiving the disparity between his own attainments and that good of which conscience is the witness, and to which it summons him, he has within him a divine discontent which drives him to further efforts, and secures for him greater excellences. The morality of a code is rigid, self-satisfied, pharisaic. The morality of conscience is ever aspiring, humble, dissatisfied with self. A conscience thus kept in its supremacy is described as ' good ' (Ac 23',
1 Ti P- ^, He 13", I P 3"*- ^), not in the sense that he who has it has never sinned, but because he has yielded himself to the will of God, and is living in the spirit and aim of his career for the glory of God, while he never permits unforgiven sin to lie upon his heart : 'void of offence toward God and toward man ' (Ac 24'^), because the pleas- ing of God in all things, and his neighbour in all things for his good unto edification, is the man's constant aim and exercise: 'inire' (1 Ti 3',
2 Ti 1"), bevause there is no doubleness of mind, or secret nlicnation from the will of God, but a sincere desire, an unwavering resolution to live so that He may approve.
It is, of course, always open to man as a free agent to disobey conscience, reject its supremacy, disiegard its witness, and defy its authority. (3n an intuitionist theory, which regards conscience as a part of man, separable from other parts, it would be dillicult to ^'indicate the terrible conse- quences of such conduct. It is because the con- science is the man himself in his consciousness of the divine will, that the ccnseiiuences are so injurious, penetrate so deeply, and extend so widely. Conscience disobeyed is: (1) Defiled; and this defilement may be either (a) occasional (1 Co 8'), or (/3) permanent and pervasive (Tit 1"). (2) Branded or seared (1 Ti 4*), where the figure is either the branding of a slave with a stamp, or the extinction of faculty by the use of hot iron, in any case expressing the reduction of conscience to a state of moral incapacity. (3) Perverted (Mt O'-*), so that conscience, the light of the soul, gives, not merely no deliverance, but a deliverance on the wrong side, the man being now, not a servant of the good, but of the evil, hai-ing sinned against the Holy Spirit.
That conscience is disobeyed in countless in- stances is patent fact ; and these consequences may be traced in the history of indiNaduals. It is more ditlicult to see the fact and to trace the con- sequence in the records of the race. Yet it is certain that sin is not merely an incident in the career of an individual, but a quality inherent in the conduct of man universally, and that tlie effects of sin are traceable, to what extent it is impossible to define, in the general conscience of mankind.
ii.THE COMPETENCK ofConscience.— In all that is said of the supremacy of conscience its competence i8,of course, presupposed. This, however, is precisely what is denied by those who desire to explain the
phenomena of conscience on the hypothesis of evolution, and facts are urged in disproof of the claim of original authority. It must be remem- bered, however, what it is that is claimed bj- the Christian doctrine on behalf of conscience. It is not the infallible authority of an independent faculty, but the ability on the part of a being made in God's image to recognize God's will as it is pro- gressively revealed to him.
Much of the sensationalist and evolutionary attack on conscience really applies only to the intuitionist theoiy of conscience, and does not touch the Christian doctrine or the idealist philosophy, whose criticism of sensationalist psychology we have noticed above. The special ditliculties which call for consideration are these —
1. The diversity of moral judgments, as among different nations now, or at aifferent stages of the world's history. The heathen conscience enjoins what the Christian conscience condemns. Jewish feeling rejoiced in deeds at which Christian senti- ment shudders. Amid such divergences, is not the supremacy of conscience lost? The answer to this puzzle lies in our general %new of man and his con- science of good. If man be a personal being in constant communication with the infinite Person, God, we can understand how his moral history is an education or development, each step in advance being gained through obedience to conscience, which proclaims as absolute the will of God. The stages of the revelation of good are marked by advance up to the full realization of good in Christ. Con science at each stage is supreme, though its deliverances, compared together, vary according to the stage reached. Combined with this view is the fact of deterioration through disobedience, so that the conscience of a nation or religious community may become perverted, and proclaim as duty a bloody crime or an unnatural offence. Even among races which have formed the most mistaken standard of duty, it is found, as missionary records amply show, that the revela- tion of higher excellence meets with ready response, and conscience, revivified by the light, calls upon man to follow it. In order to prove the supremacy of conscience, we do not need to prove uniformity amid the deliverances of conscience, from age to age. The very divergences set its per- sistent authority in more vivid light.