We have now gone through the characters of this that we call Conscience, according as they appear to the natural man, or what may be called the natural ethics of the Conscience; and now we come unto that which completes them.

Let the reader consider the first office of the Conscience, and he will see some things in reference to it that strangely correspond to the facts of revelation. We attribute to this faculty a personal power, as if it were the influence upon us of an individual who is not ourselves. We say "Our Conscience checks us," "We must obey our Conscience," "It is wrong for a man to go against his Conscience." What is this but to say, that this influence is a personal agency, separate and distinct from that of the individual, and operating as such upon him. Again, what is this but to say, that this personal influence has an authority over the man in all his powers and faculties, which authority, without any reason save its expression, the man is bound to obey, and is therefore that of an entire and complete supremacy, a complete and unqualified veto upon actions of every kind. Moreover, we can see more plainly this notion of a personal being, in the fact of its Recording, in the fact that those things that, with reference to the responsible being, man, are enrolled in the Omniscient Knowledge of God his judge, these things all are known by that Recording Spirit, and at any time may be brought up by it. Herein, since it is the same Spirit that waits upon all, we see Omnipresence and Omniscience manifested.

Again, in reference to the Prophetic office of the Conscience, in the forethought it has of the Future Judgment, in the fact that it ever attaches the idea of endless pain or happiness in a future eternity, to things that are done in Space and Time in this fact we behold again the attribute of Omniscience.

These are things that all men see. We do not say that all men are brought to this conclusion, so plainly as we have brought it out; but this we say, that the facts of the action of Conscience are plain to all, and that these facts are most easily and most naturally classed as we have classed them, when we have separated that which really ought to be separate the Reason and the Affections from Conscience.

And then, when we come to Natural Religion, we find that if there be an Almighty and Omniscient Being, not only Maker and Creator, but Father also, and Teacher, there ought, upon the very

idea of Responsibility, of filial relation, of pupilage, to be a Personal Influence proceeding from God, and dwelling in God-one attached to each individual in the world, and therefore Omnipresent; knowing the hearts of all men and the will of God, past and present and future, and therefore Omniscient; and commanding all men without reasons assigned, yet infallibly true, and therefore Omnipotent. This influence, thus invested with the attributes of the Deity, ought therefore to exist if we follow up the facts of Natural Ethics, with the reasonings of Natural Religion, and build upon them the edifice which the considerations of Responsibility and of Natural Justice require of us to build.

And so stringent and imperative are these, that the most ancient philosophy of the east has ever attributed to the influence that produces these actions, the attributes, and all the attributes of divinity. And they in modern times, who have begun by denying Christianity, have almost invariably been driven by these motives into making our own personal being to be God; and that against the very first fact of the Natural Conscience, which clearly distinguishes between our personal being, that which ought to submit, and that other person that acts upon ours, which has the right to command with an unlimited supremacy.

But we say, that in Revelation alone is to be found the fact that explains all this enigma; in the doctrine of the Holy Ghost. Revelation teaches us that each son of man, from birth to death, is attended by the influences of the Third Person of the Trinity, the Holy Ghost; that He is "God of one Substance with the Father;" that he "Proceedeth from the Father and the Son," and "is Jehovah and the Giver of light and life." And the plain doctrine of the Holy Scriptures in regard to the Spirit is, that His operation with regard to all men is to warn them against evil, or that which is not good, and to do this with an influence that carries authority and power with it, and admits of no dispute. That being a personal being, and Omniscient, He knows and records all the actions of the individual man; and at the same time He knows all the will of God and the things of God, as being of "one substance with the Father," and "one with Him."

"The Spirit searcheth all things; yea, the deep things of God," "which no man knoweth but the Spirit of God."

And thus the actions of Conscience, as Checking, Recording, Prophesying, are explained. Thus is man witnessed against with

out possibility of mistake; thus, at the moment he is warned and the moment passed, his act recorded, so that he cannot deny, and then ultimately before the bar of God, he is convicted; "his spirit bearing witness with the Spirit," as to evil done in a full sight of his responsibility. And thus the Omniscience of the Holy Spirit, the forethought which He who is one with the Father has of the Future Judgment, the authority with which He enforces his injunctions, and the absolute certainty with which He can warn of the future; all these attributes of the Holy Ghost, as the great agent of prophecy, both to the Church universal as also to the individual; explain the influences of the Conscience, and show the reason of its prophetic power.

Thus do the whole of the Facts of Conscience manifest to us the agency of a Personal being who has the knowledge of God, an infinite knowledge that concerns the future as well as the past,— an Authoritative Power, to which, without reason assigned, the man must bow, a Recording Power, which has reference to eternity solely, and a future judgment, and a Prophetic power, that connects time with eternity, this life with a future existence, and the actions herein done, with the high throne of God.

We have said that Revelation alone affords a solution for the facts of nature. And we say, in conclusion, that he that shall look at the facts of the natural Conscience in all its influences upon man, he shall see that no other solution completely and entirely accounts for the facts of Conscienee, except this fact of Faith, the doctrine of the being and influences of the Holy Spirit. And this leads us onward to another question, which is most important in all matters of Conscience. "Is not our Conscience

then, the Spirit of God?"

How important this is, may be seen by supposing it to be answered in the affirmative; for if it be, then the sole judge is Conscience; then a man has in himself the only rule; then he is the judge of all things; then he needs no learning, no knowledge, no education; but only to go according to his Conscience, and he shall go right, infallibly right. Nay, more than this, he shall need no Bible, no Church, no Religion; for if his Conscience be God, then being Omniscient, it must overrule all external things; and all he has to do is, go by that rule; and, with regard to his fellows, he has only to require that they all should submit to him without questioning. These are conclusions which naturally should

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follow from the notion that "Conscience is the Holy Spirit," and which are its legitimate results. And he that shall look to men, shall find that a great many hold these conclusions. A great many consider Conscience as infallible, and make it the sole and ultimate test, who have never thought of the premises upon which the conclusion depends.

Now this leads us onward unto one of the most important principles of Ethics; we will say a fundamental one. That is, the distinction between Conscience, the natural faculty in us, and the voice of the Holy Ghost without us; Conscience, the eye existing in our nature and being, whereby we see the light, and that Light which we see; Conscience, the ear wherewith we listen to the voice from heaven, and the Voice from Heaven, the voice of the Holy Spirit that is audible to us through that part of our nature.

We say, then, that so far as Conscience is considered under the one aspect of a natural faculty, so far it is liable to the same infirmities as the other natural faculties. For the light may be as the sun, and yet the eye which is blind by nature, or blinded by accident, never see it. The voice may be that of many waters, and yet the deaf ear not hear it. So it is with regard to the Conscience, the faculty in us and in our nature, wherewith we listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit, is a different thing altogether from the Spirit Himself. And yet in the consideration of Conscience, both the Natural Faculty and the Divine Energy to which it answers, are to be considered.

Now, he that shall look at this last principle carefully and considerately, in the full light of his own experience, will see many conclusions to follow of the most important and the most interesting kind.

In the first place, the eye and power of sight in man proves to him the existence of things visible, at the same time that it is the means of bringing him to the knowledge of them. And no argument will disprove their existence, simply because he has a natural faculty whose business it is to show and manifest them. So of a Future Eternity, no argument whatsoever can disprove the existence, no absence from sense or sight annul it, because of it the Conscience is our sense, and because, corresponding to the Conscience, there is a power that manifests the Future Eternity to us as far as concerns the actual duties of the present life. This is an inference of great practical importance, binding and connect

ing, as we have said, finite acts with infinite consequences, Time with Eternity, the limited being of man with the Infinite God, and that through the Eternal Spirit.

But the most important conclusion that follows from it is this: "So far as the dictates of our Conscience are the dictates of the Holy Spirit of God, so far Conscience is infallible." This is the rule of the governing power, Conscience, which follows from its own nature as twofold, a natural ear or a natural eye, with a heavenly voice or a heavenly light; and this combined with the other laws of it as a governing power;* shall give us completely and entirely, as a result of Ethical Science,. the doctrines and rules of Conscience as applied unto life. This shall be the subject of the next chapter.

I

CHAPTER II.

The value of Conscience.-Our position in consequence of it.—An examination of it in action, as, 1st, Withholding; 2d, Recording; 3d, Prophesying. -The emotions that are sanctions to it, 1st, Moral Restlessness; 2d, Shame; 3d, Fear. The mark upon the Nature, 1st, the Stain; 2d, the Guilt-Conscience is not properly a "judge," nor the pain from it properly "punishment."

FROM our examination of the nature of Conscience in the previous chapter, it is manifest what an exceedingly precious endowment this is to man. A secret adviser, so secret that although inaudible to all others, it shall yet speak to the man himself, clearly, distinctly, perpetually, upon all emergencies wherein it is necessary, and upon all occasions.† One too whose advice is not to be measured by the man's own degree of knowledge or his station, 7 but that gives to the ignorant, the poor and the weak the proper and suitable guidance for the circumstances in which they are. And that with such an accurately proportionate action, that it has, with no small degree of plausibility, been maintained that

* See the three laws of the "Governing Powers"-Book I. Chap. 3. † Of course here is to be made the exception-except he have neglected it, and therefore it have become "dull" or "insensible," or "seared, or “dead.” For this part of the subject, see an ensuing chapter of this book.