he desire to act agreeably to its dictates, it will be a most kind and faithful monitor on all occasions. It will say to us what no fellow-creature could venture to say ; and it will take the same freedom in the bosom of a king as in the meanest of his subjects. It is rarely very clamorous, except after some enormous transgression : its testimony is, for the most part, delivered in a still small voice, which none but the person himself can hear. Yet, on some occasions, it will betray its operation in the mind, especially when it reproves for some- thing amiss, and for something which the man himself would be ashamed to have known : it will then suffuse his cheek with a blush, or perhaps cast over his countenance a pallid hue, which a wise observer cannot easily misinterpret.]
2. As an authoritative judge —
[But it is not as a monitor only that conscience acts, but as a judge also : and in this respect it is God's vicegerent in the soul. It erects a tribunal there ; and summons a man to appear before it, and to give an account of his conduct : and then it passes judgment, " either excusing or accusing himc," as the occasion warrants ; and acquitting or condemning him, as God himself will do at the future judgment. Sometimes it exercises its authority immediately ; as when it declared to Adam, in Paradise, that he was despoiled of the divine image in which he had been created*1 : or, as when it caused David's heart to smite him for numbering the people e : or, as when it caused the acccusers of an adulteress to go out from the pre- sence of our Lordf. At other times, it delays till some occa- sion arise to draw forth its judgment : thus it did in the case of Joseph's brethren, whom it made to feel the injustice and the cruelty which, some years before, they had exercised towards him8. Sometimes it delivers its sentence in a way to produce becoming humiliation, as in the case of Peter : and sometimes in a way to drive to utter despondency, as in the case of Judas ; whom it impelled to suicide, as the only refuge from its poignant reproaches.]
Let us now contemplate, II. Our duty in reference to it —
Men have a duty towards their minds generally, to cultivate them and improve them in knowledge, and to fit them for the better discharge of all the functions of life. But towards their conscience they have obligations of the highest order, on account of
c Rom. ii. 15, d Gen. iii. 10. e 2 Sam. xxiv. 10.
f John viii. 9. s Gen. xlii. 21.