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stand in your way of becoming as you ought to be henceforth, the disciples of the Lord, given up to his service, and rejoicing in his favor. Oh! my brethren, heaven is opened to you, and your course on earth may be both honorable and useful; you may yet glorify God more than you have dishonored him, and admiring angels may yet adore him for the redeeming love that has saved another soul. Christians, pray for those around you. Perhaps, this day will either hear the knell of their ruin, or the admiring songs of angels over their salvation. Christians, pray for them. They have still some solemn hours to spend; they have consciences not wholly dead to previous convictions, now rising in their minds, not to be easily repressed. This may be God's call to them to everlasting happiness. Or if not, there is not an unconverted man in this congregation who will not probably be more steeped in guilt. And therefore, additional guilt, or emancipation from guilt altogetherto become a child of God, or a yet more criminal slave of sin-to be abandoned by him who is waiting to bless you, or to be folded in his parental embrace for ever,-this is before every unconverted person in this congregation.

Christians, pray for them; and perhaps this day may see not a few taking that road to life, in the prosecution of which, with a heartfelt gratitude, they will every day bless God, while rising to a higher state of existence, and preparing for the bliss of heaven.

SERMON LXV.

BY REV. ALBERT A. COOK,

PASTOR OF THE METHODIST E. CHURCH, PRINCETON, MASSACHUSETTS. Delivered before an Association of Clergymen, at Oxford, Mass., February 9th, 1847, and published by their request.

CONSCIENCE.

Holding faith and a good conscience. 1 Timothy ì., 19.

THERE are certain primordial elements entering into our mental and moral natures, which cannot be fully explained by any verbal definition that may be given, without an appeal to human consciousness. In explaining human love or hate, we might say that the former is the excitant of practical good will towards the objective cause, attended with the most pleasureable emotions in the subject of such passion; while hate has the counter will and opposite emotions. But this, or any other verbal definition, fails to convey the knowledge of the one or the other. Our own experience comes in here, and helps to an understanding that words could never convey to the mind.

These remarks are applicable to Conscience. There have been just about as many verbal definitions of it as there have been writers upon the subject. Milton has called it" God's umpire in man." Young-"A God in man." Saurin says "This ap pears to me at once the most general and the most exact definition : Conscience is that faculty of our minds by which we are enabled to distinguish right from wrong, and to know whether we neglect our duties or discharge them." South calls it, "God's vicegerent or deputy, doing all things by immediate commission from him." Again, South calls it, "the eye of the soul;" in which he is fol lowed by John Wesley. Wesley says farther,"It is the faculty by which we discern moral good and evil, and the difference between them, by an approbation of one, and a disapprobation of the other, excusing or accusing our thoughts and actions." Upham

treats of it as "the moral sense," and seems to give about the same verbal definition as Wesley. Webster says "Internal or self-knowledge; or judgment of right and wrong; or the faculty, power or principle within us, which decides on the lawfulness or unlawfulness of our own actions and affections, and instantly approves or condemns."

The word itself is Latin, with an English termination. The Latin-conscientia-included both consciousness and conscience. But there is a difference between the two.. "Consciousness is confined to the actions of the mind, being nothing else but that knowledge of itself which is inseparable from every thought and voluntary emotion of the soul. Conscience extends to all human actions, bodily as well as mental. Consciousness is the knowledge of the existence; conscience of the morality of actions."

From all that has been said, the best verbal definition we are able to give, is-Conscience is that faculty of the moral man which discerns the moral good or evil in emotion, thought or action, by the light which reaches it through the understanding or otherwise, and which pronounces moral approval or disapproval in view of such light.

As thus defined, conscience is not light in itself. The natural eye, though of wonderful construction, displaying the most astonishing mechanism and beautiful adaptation to the external world, is dark in itself, and emits not one ray of light. To be sure, its adaptation to the light demonstrates its design on the part of the all-wise Architect to impart to man, through the medium of light, emotions of the beautiful, grand and sublime in external nature. But then till light fall upon the retina, there can be no vision, and one might as well be without eyes. So in relation to the "moral sense" of which we speak. Its primary work is to discern between moral good and evil. To this end it is adapted-perfectly adapted. But then till light reach it, though the adaptation reach the acme of perfection, it cannot discern. In itself, the mind, including all its powers, is superlatively dark. In God, and in the nature of things, there is undoubtedly an immutable distinction between right and wrong or good and evil. But no such abstract ideas exist in the human mind, in its purely native state. The human mind is now, in its fallen state, in the expressive language of Paul, under "the power of darkness." The understanding must be enlightened, or else it may pronounce "good, evil, and

evil, good." At least, without light, conscience cannot discern the immutable distinction-the impassable gulf between them.

It may be said that a conscience of right and wrong has obtained among all nations, throughout all generations of the past. And this must be admitted. But then this universal conscience is not a product of nature, homogeneous to nature's own soil. So far as a moral distinction has obtained, it is attributable to "the true light which enlighteneth every man that cometh into the world"— which is "a measure of grace given to all men to profit withal." This universal light is the foundation of all moral distinction in action, that has ever existed in the heathen world. The most enlightened among the heathen, it is thought, never carried such distinction into their emotions or thoughts. Moral distinction in action, is as far as their light carried them.

Now, human accountability is proportionate to the light that may be in any case within the reach of the understanding. Mark, it is not said to light actually received. There are some who will not come to the light: and this is their condemnation. Our moral nature demands light, and a refusal of the same is from the love of sin. He who, embracing all the light his circumstances allow, acts up to the decisions of his conscience, shall be saved, God requiring impossibilities of no man.

Allied to our former remark, viz: that conscience is not light in itself, but the moral sense to receive its appropriate light, is this, namely, conscience is not in itself a primary standard of duty. It is to be tested itself, by an infallible standard-the Word of God. Some appeal to their conscience as though it was with them an authoritative standard of morals or of religious duty. They are living it may be in the neglect of positive duty, or the commission of sin, and yet they appeal to the fact that conscience gives them no uneasiness, touching their manner of life. In their own eyes they are pure, till conscience, in thunder tones, utters its voice.

It is a principle not to be controverted, that we are never to act against conscience; but to ascertain what is right, we are not to go to conscience as an infallible standard, but to the Scriptures, the only and sufficient standard by which to test the correctness of conscience as well as the affections and actions. Now that conscience may be erroneous, is evident from these passages," The time cometh that whosoever killeth you, will think he doeth God service." "I verily thought that I ought to do many things

contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth, which things I also did, and was zealous in the Jew's religion above many mine equals." Here was Paul persecuting the disciples of Jesus, even unto death, but he does it conscientiously-" in all good conscience" without the least misgiving or upbraiding of this internal monitor. The heathen mother, who casts her offspring into the Ganges, to be devoured by crocodiles, is as conscientious as the Christian mother, in offering her child to God in baptism. The Hindoo, in throwing himself beneath the ponderous wheels of Juggernaut, is as conscientious in the sacrifice of his life as ever a Christian martyr was in suffering martyrdom.

A Catholic's pater noster, rosary, ava maria, and all that sort of mummery, as well as attendance at mass, are with him, it may be, as much a matter of conscience, as secret and family prayer, selfexamination and attendance upon divine worship, are to the devout Protestant.

Now, as conscience approves in the heathen, what it condemns in the Christian mother--as it condemns in the Christian's breast what it approves in the heathen victim who sacrifices his life to appease the wrath and secure the favor of his idol-god,-and as a Catholic has an approving conscience in observing the ceremonies of the Romish Church, and in keeping at a distance from the Protestant Bible and worship,-while the pious Protestant would be conscience-smitten in showing the least countenance to Romish ceremonies, Papal superstitions or dogmas, or in neglecting his Bible or religious worship,-it must be evident, to mathematical certainty, that, as it approves in one what it condemns in another, it cannot be a primary, infallible standard of duty. If right and wrong be immutably distinct, then the standard which determines the distinction must necessarily be unchangeable and unvarying; but as conscience pronounces the same act both right and wrong, at the same time, in different individuals, it cannot be that standard. Besides, if conscience is in itself a primary standard, or the primary standard of duty, in any case, then is the Bible no longer "the only and sufficient rule both of faith and practice."

This last objection lies with equal weight against the language of South. "It is," says he, "no less than God's vicegerent or deputy, doing all things by immediate commission from him. It commands, dictates everything in God's name, and stamps every word with an almighty authority. So that it is, as it were, a kind

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