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that life is again reviving, and the vital principle coming again into action; so with a Conscience which has not had its due supremacy, when it is roused to vigorous action from its insensibility; these scruples are at the first most frequent and most painful, and are signs of returning life. But to the man, when the Conscience is ruled by its laws, they vanish; or if they come up, are attended by no pain, for at once he can decide them.

However, to resume. The third rule of Conscience being that instead of being governed by itself, it is to be governed by a law; and that law being the Will of God, this leads us at once to two subjects of the deepest importance; the first the adaptedness of our "nature to religion," which in a different way might be expressed, as "the connectedness of natural and revealed religion;" and the second, the deficiencies of the natural Conscience, and the aid that it demands to supply them. These two subjects, with the help of the principles established in this chapter, we hope to expound in the next.

CHAPTER IV.

The facts of Conscience render Natural Religion possible-and the facts of Revealed Religion perfect Conscience.-In whom the Conscience is perfect. -Conscience cannot pardon.-It leads us towards the Atonement of Christ.

Note upon the Practical nature of Justification in its connection with the Conscience.

THE questions which in our last chapter we proposed, were the first with regard to what is called Natural Religion,-its extent and possibility. The second, with regard to the deficiencies of the Natural Conscience.

Now with regard to the first, he that shall look upon the principles we have established, shall have very little difficulty. If "man's nature be in itself good," and its state be that which is expressed by the words fallen, so that it is not the state of a beast, a state of brutal indifference, unconscious of Good and ignorant of God; if it be not a devilish state, a state of pure, unmixed hatred and abhorrence, and utter antagonism to light;

but a state in which all objects sought, are sought as good. If then, our natural deficiency be that of insubordination and of inability in our nature to obey God's Laws, and if Evil is not a positive existence in itself, but truly and really "the absence of Good," and sin is not some mysterious quality having a substantial reality* in nature, but is a trangression of the Law; if, moreover, the Law of God is revealed as a law to man by Society, and by the face of outward Nature, then it is manifest that Religion is a possible thing; nay, that naturally man is suited and adapted to it, and that it has a foundation for itself in his Nature and Position.

But when we come to the consideration of the nature of man, and look closely at the Conscience, then we find more clearly and more plainly the correspondency between man's Nature and Religion. We find, that as the earth, in its qualities, considered as fertile and capable of producing crops, answers to the heat, and the light, and the moisture, and the air, and the frost, and the snow; and all these influences are external to the earth, and yet these, with its qualities of nature, conspire unto fertility; so it is with our Human nature and Revealed Religion. Between the natural facts of a Conscience understood by all who follow it, and by none else, and the facts of the Gospel incapable of being known save by Revelation, there is precisely that relation.

The natural Conscience tells us that evil is supremely to be avoided. It even hints to us its own two-fold nature,-it gives us even naturally indistinct notions of its personality and its divinity. It feels the guilt, and evermore it leads us towards the idea that this guilt may be wiped away, though not by itself. It feels that the shame may be wiped off, so that the man may stand upright. It acknowledges also the responsibility. It connects the deeds done in Time with a result in Eternity,-a judgment before an Eternal and Almighty Judge, and the same one who has been to us here an Eternal Witness. Of these things, the heart of man speaks to him wherever man exists.

Not, I say, clearly as now, under the broad light of Christianity, but in that dim, instinctive way in which the root of the willow shall blindly, yet infallibly, direct its course, as I have seen,

"For sin is the transgression of the Law." 1 John, iii. Chap. 4 v. "The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin.” 1 John i. 7.

twenty and thirty feet towards a well; as the plant that has begun to germinate shall, on being removed to utter darkness, send forth an exploring root of many feet in the direction of the light; as the young shoot, planted in a cleft wherein there is only earth enough for itself at its present age, shall, in its aftergrowth, send out an exploring fibre towards the deeper earth, which shall root itself there, and ultimately become the main root. So it is with the relation of the natural Conscience to religion,it blindly and ignorantly yearns towards the facts of religion,-it does not know them. But it instinctively tends towards them, so that at once, upon their revelation, nature accepts them and confesses the facts to correspond to its feelings, and acknowledges. that these facts revealed and applied, then are that which brings itself to perfection.

I have now analyzed the Conscience as to its nature, its operations, its laws and sanctions. I have shown how it works, and that in such a way, that I have no doubt that each man who has thought upon his own nature and striven earnestly, however weakly and feebly, yet earnestly, to follow that light, has seen that the representation is a true and correct one of the faculty according to its workings.

And in the heathen world, antecedent to the coming of our Lord, when the only knowledge of facts they had was from the Tradition of a primitive revelation, I can show the same representation of facts as to the Conscience; nay, the same facts. I will not say that they were clearly and distinctly set forth in order, but in a confused way, as a stormy sea reflects the image of heaven,— in a dim or broken way, as a mirror in fragments shows the human face. But still, in such a way, that to us, to whom the facts of Revelation have been unveiled by Christ, it is manifest that the corresponding facts concerning the Conscience have been known to them by nature.*

This may be seen in the works of all the Greek Philosophers antecedent to Christ; chiefly in those of Plato and Aristotle. It may be seen, too, in the philosophy of the remotest Eastern na

* "For when the Heathen, (Gentiles,) which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, not having the law, are a law unto themselves: Which show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts in the meanwhile accusing or else excusing one another." Romans ii. 14 and 15.

tions, their leading doctrine of Pantheism, having for itself no other natural foundation than that of the God-head of the Internal Voice; and the same facts, in the same way, are witnessed by all Heathen nations of modern times, when as yet they have received no knowledge from Europeans, but are fresh from heathenism. Of this I could bring forward the proofs from the authors, but I deal not in the affectation of learning. It suffices me that these can easily be obtained by my readers that are ordinarily learned, and that those of them who are unlearned have sufficient confidence in me that it is so.

This being so, the facts of Conscience that come up to all men by nature as enigmas and deep mysteries, these in Revelation have revealed truths that are their solutions, corresponding unto them most accurately and exactly. Revelation tells us that to avoid sin must be our supreme endeavour-a motive that must ever and entirely reign in us. It tells us, too, that no ignorance is an excuse, no absence from the sources of knowledge, no hiddenness in the remotest depths of barbarism, but that there is a light that shines upon all wheresoever they may be, whose brilliancy and illuminating power is measured, not by rank, or riches, or station, or abilities, or knowledge, but by our actual zeal in following it. It tells us that the rò or (the divinity), which the philosopher* ascribed to it, and the dau (personal deity) of Socrates, and the personality which in universal speech all men give it, these are no chance dreams or vague illusions, but that it is the voice of the Holy Spirit, "God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God, of one Substance with the Father ;" and hence that he speaks to each man with the same voice, through a similar faculty and organ.

And thus the two discordant facts of Conscience infallible, authoritative, controlling with a voice requiring absolute submission, and Conscience fallible, and weak, and needing to be ruled, which otherwise could not be made to agree, are reconciled.

Hence, too, its insight into Eternity, its dumb speech regarding the Future, its prophecy of judgment, its connexion of Time with Eternity, all these are made clear.

And, finally, its feelings of Shame, and Stain, and Fear, and Guilt, and of Moral Restlessness, all these manifestly have in the

* Aristotle.

revealed facts of our Fall in Adam, our Redemption in Christ, their due and only explanation. The facts of the Natural Conscience are only to be explained by the facts of the Gospel.

Having thus shown how revealed religion is related to natural religion, in reference to that governing faculty that we have examined, we shall go on next to an examination of the deficiencies of Conscience which prevent its being a perfect guide naturally. He that shall look to the illustrations we have just given, will see that its natural perfection only is in this, that it leads the man who follows it onward, and gives him a feeling towards the facts that perfect it, so that if it is to be perfect, it is so only in connexion with these facts known and these facts applied,

So that the Heathen, or he who is left to the natural Conscience, feels the faculty to be a useful one, but very mysterious; he, again, who knows the facts of Revelation, can explain a great many things to the other deeply mysterious; but that man only to whom the facts are applied, "who is born of the Spirit," to him the Conscience has obtained its due perfection.

That is to say, the man "who is born of the Spirit," he who being so by God's grace then governs himself by his Conscience, always guiding his Conscience by God's law, this I count to be that man in whom alone of all men the Conscience is perfect; for he it is in whom alone the perfection of the three parts of the Conscience exists: and he who shall examine who that man is, or in whom these qualifications meet, shall find they do so only in the "Justified Christian.”*

Now, he that examines the faults of the natural Conscience, and compares it with the perfect Conscience, that is, the Conscience of the man unfallen, he shall find that the Conscience of the man unfallen must have been completely free from all error, and a perfect guide. The result of the fall, therefore, is that God the Holy Spirit remaining the same, the natural deficiencies of the Conscience, as a faculty, that it has now, it has from it. The first effect of the Fall upon the nature of man, is the inability of the Conscience adequately to transmit to us the voice of the Spirit.

Of this deficiency, and the means of correcting it by the restoration of its Supremacy, I have already treated; and there is no

* See note at the end of this chapter on the practical nature of justifying faith, page 126

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