'6 V . 
 
 kv^&^K*
 
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 tbanbboohs of 
 Catholic jfaitb anb practice 
 
 EDITED BY W. J. SPARROW SIMPSON, D.D. 
 
 CONSCIENCE OF SIN
 
 HANDBOOKS OF 
 CATHOLIC FAITH AND PRACTICE. 
 
 Volumes in Preparation 
 
 for publication, Autumn, 1916. 
 
 Cloth, each 2s. 6d. net. 
 
 THE MYSTERY OF MARRIAGE. By the Rev. Prebendary 
 H. P. DENISON, B.A. 
 
 MONASTICISM. By the Rev. Brother DENTS, of Pershor* 
 
 Abbey. 
 ROMAN TENDENCIES. By the Rev. T. J. HARDY, M.A. 
 
 THE INTERMEDIATE STATE. By the Rev. R. E. HUTTON, 
 Chaplain of St Margaret's, East Grinstead. 
 
 THE LATER TRACTARIANS. By the Rev. Canon S. L. 
 OLLARD, M.A. 
 
 THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS. By the Rev. H. LEONARD PASS. 
 
 RECENT FRENCH TENDENCIES. By the Rev. G. C. RAWLIN- 
 SON, M.A. 
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND THE ARTIST. By R. ELLIS ROBERTS. 
 EUCHARISTIC SACRIFICE. By the Rev. DARWELL'STONE, D.D. 
 
 THE EPISCOPATE AT THE REFORMATION. By the Rev. 
 Professor J. P. WHITNEY, B.D. 
 
 LONDON : ROBERT SCOTT. 
 
 ROXBURGHE HOUSE, PATERNOSTER ROW, E.G.
 
 CONSCIENCE OF SIN 
 
 Six Lenten Sermons 
 
 By 
 THE REV. T. A. LACEY, M.A. 
 
 Warden of the London Diocesan Penitentiary 
 Author of " Marriage in Church and State," etc. 
 
 LONDON: ROBERT SCOTT 
 
 ROXBURGHE HOUSE 
 PATERNOSTER ROW, E.G. 
 
 M CMXVI 
 
 All rights reserved
 
 PREFACE 
 
 r I "HESE sermons were preached last 
 -L Lent at the churches of St. Mar- 
 garet Pattens, and St. Mary, Hampstead. 
 They were a development of lectures 
 previously delivered in the crypt of St. 
 Paul's and at the church of St. Mary 
 Magdalene, Munster Square. 
 
 I have thought it well to add some 
 pages from my Elements of Christian 
 Doctrine, published fifteen years ago. 
 That book is out of print, and I am too 
 much dissatisfied with it as a whole to 
 think of a new edition, but the section 
 treating of Conscience seems to me not 
 unsatisfactory, and it may be useful as 
 an appendix, stating in more theological 
 form the basis of the sermons. 
 
 T. A. L.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 I 
 
 THE FOUNDATION 9 
 
 II 
 THE FACT ...... 26 
 
 III 
 THE EXPLANATION ..... 42 
 
 IV 
 JUDGMENT 62 
 
 V 
 
 CONVERSION 82 
 
 VI 
 REDEMPTION 101 
 
 Appendix . . . . . .119 
 
 vu
 
 I 
 
 The Foundation 
 
 " Declare to my people their transgression, and 
 to the house of Jacob their sins." ISAIAH Iviii. i. 
 
 WHAT need ? The heart knoweth 
 its own bitterness. Who shall 
 expose you to yourself ? Who shall 
 tell you what you have said and done, 
 whether openly or in secret ? Above 
 all, who can lay bare, if it be not your- 
 self, your innermost thoughts and 
 intentions ? Here is the field of sin : 
 who knows it better than yourself ? 
 
 True ; but self-deception is neither 
 difficult nor rare. I do not speak of 
 moral ignorance : bare ignorance of 
 obligations lying upon you, actual want 
 of knowledge in regard to the value or 
 
 9
 
 io CONSCIENCE OF SIN 
 
 effect of particular actions, and that 
 massive prejudice which makes you 
 positively blind. You may do harm 
 under these conditions, and when you 
 have found it to be harm you may be 
 full of bitter regrets, but we are not here 
 in the presence of sin. Human judg- 
 ment may condemn you, human author- 
 ity may punish you ; lack of knowledge 
 can seldom be allowed as a plea in excuse 
 of crime ; the loosening of social dis- 
 cipline would be too great, and a judge 
 who could penetrate the disguise of a 
 pretended ignorance is hard to find. 
 But when we speak of sin we have a 
 more fearless judgment in view. God 
 is your judge. He penetrates your dis- 
 guise ; He takes the true measure of 
 your excuse. We are not concerned 
 here with the outward framework of 
 society. To violate that is a crime. 
 But crime and sin are on a different 
 footing. A sin may be a crime, or no
 
 THE FOUNDATION n 
 
 crime; a crime may be no sin. In the 
 judgment of sin you may plead ignor- 
 ance. If real and complete, it spells 
 innocence. 
 
 But if God is your judge, He has also 
 committed judgment in the first in- 
 stance to yourself. He makes you 
 viceroy in the Kingdom of your own 
 personality. You are the master of 
 your soul in this sense, that you are 
 answerable to your Master for what you 
 make of yourself. You make or mar; 
 and to mar yourself is to spoil God's 
 work. St. Paul will put it higher ; you 
 are the temple of God, Whose pleasure 
 it is to fill you with the Divine Presence, 
 that you may worship in the secret of 
 your being ; and whoso defile th the 
 temple of God : what will you expect ? 
 
 God bids you sit in judgment on your- 
 self. Can you plead ignorance in this 
 court ? Can you know your own ignor- 
 ance ? While it remains, evidently not. 

 
 12 CONSCIENCE OF SIN 
 
 You do not know that you have been 
 ignorant of a thing until you have learnt 
 the truth. Then you may be aghast. 
 " The Lord is in this place, and I knew 
 it not." You cannot even accuse your- 
 self until the knowledge comes ; much 
 less can you pass judgment on yourself. 
 You are not to be troubled about this. 
 You are not an unfaithful judge. Your 
 silence faithfully reflects God's acquittal. 
 Then let us get this clear out of the 
 way. In the judgment of sin, ignor- 
 ance is a good plea. It is as good a 
 plea as constraint. You will not hold a 
 man guilty even of a crime when he has 
 done some unlawful thing under ab- 
 solute compulsion. Still less will you 
 hold him guilty of sin. For sin resides 
 conclusively in the will. It is the deter- 
 mination to do what is wrong. You may 
 be determined either by strength or by 
 weakness ; you may be led astray either 
 by strength of will or by infirmity of
 
 THE FOUNDATION 13 
 
 purpose. Even when you think of deter- 
 mination as fixity of purpose, you will 
 remember that there is no obstinacy so 
 persistent as that of a weak fool. By 
 strength or by weakness, by sloth or by 
 vigour of mind, by passion or by malig- 
 nant self-control, by sheer push of appe- 
 tite or by cold calculation, your will is 
 made up to do what is wrong. That, 
 and only that, is sin. 
 
 But what is wrong ? Do not palter 
 with the question. Do you believe in 
 God, the Maker of the world ? If so, 
 you are at no loss. That is right which 
 agrees with the purpose of God in crea- 
 tion ; that is wrong which runs counter 
 to this purpose. You need not tease 
 yourself with ingenious doubts whether 
 a thing is wrong because forbidden, or 
 forbidden because it is wrong. The two 
 notions come to a point in the truth of God. 
 
 You believe in God. But even if you 
 do not, or if the thought of God is seldom
 
 14 CONSCIENCE OF SIN 
 
 in your mind, you still have a sense of 
 right and wrong. It controls all your 
 judgments of your fellow-men ; it 
 affects, even if it does not control, your 
 own actions. You act upon it more or 
 less in dealing with your neighbour ; you 
 are conscious of it in business, in the 
 life of your family, in play, especially 
 perhaps in play. It is an equipment of 
 your nature, which you cannot get rid of 
 without destroying the completeness of 
 your nature. To have no sense of right 
 and wrong is to be beside yourself ; it is 
 nothing short of insanity. You may lose 
 it for a moment under pressure of an 
 overmastering passion ; to lose it per- 
 manently is to be mad. No sanction of 
 religion is required for this judgment. 
 The common sense of mankind is suffi- 
 cient. The sense of right and wrong is 
 part and parcel of a healthy-minded man. 
 You can have it and act upon it without 
 reference to God.
 
 THE FOUNDATION 15 
 
 But reference to God makes a great 
 difference. Without this the distinction 
 of right and wrong is more or less irra- 
 tional. It is not the less clear on that 
 account. You can perceive it as you 
 perceive any facts of nature, without 
 being able to explain them. Many ex- 
 planations of it have been attempted 
 which fail at some critical point. Per- 
 haps the least unsatisfactory is the utili- 
 tarian explanation. Put this in its most 
 generous form, say that an act is right 
 which tends to the greatest happiness of 
 the greatest number, and you have an 
 admirable rule of practical morality. 
 But you have not much to say to one 
 who asks why he should seek the greatest 
 happiness of the greatest number, and 
 not rather his own happiness. You can 
 but fall back upon the unexplained 
 sense of right and wrong and the con- 
 sciousness of duty, telling him that he 
 ought to do this thing, and that in a
 
 16 CONSCIENCE OF SIN 
 
 healthy state of mind he knows it. You 
 remain where you started ; your ex- 
 planation still needs explanation. But 
 belief in God brings with it an explana- 
 tion which is final. 
 
 What do you mean by God ? You 
 mean the Creator of all things. You 
 probably mean much more than this, 
 but this at least. You do not think of 
 God as a blind and casual force ; you 
 think of Him as having intelligence, pur- 
 pose, and will. The world in which you 
 live, and of which you are a part, is the 
 work of God ; there was purpose in its 
 beginning, and a purpose that runs 
 unceasing through its manifold variety. 
 Believing this, you can give a rational 
 account of what is good. That is good 
 which is in accordance with the purpose 
 of God. And what is not good ? Can 
 there be evil in the world that God 
 made ? What is there in the world 
 which is not there by His will ? You
 
 THE FOUNDATION 17 
 
 may let that question so distract you 
 from the realities of your own experi- 
 ence, that you will be ready to deny the 
 presence of evil in the world ; you will 
 take refuge in the poor sophism which 
 makes of evil nothing but a less degree 
 of good. It is really no escape, for why 
 should one thing be less good than 
 another in God's world ? But there is a 
 better answer to the sophism than this 
 retort. You know that there is evil in 
 the world ; you know that there is evil 
 in yourself ; you are not by any jug- 
 glery of argument to be denied this 
 knowledge ; any theory which runs counter 
 to a fact so evident stands condemned 
 as false. There is evil in the world, 
 whether we can account for it or no. 
 
 There are only two ways of accounting 
 for it. The first is found in the assump- 
 tion of something in the world, some 
 part of the world, which is not created by 
 God; it may be the material out of 
 
 B
 
 i8 CONSCIENCE OF SIN 
 
 which God made the world, or it may 
 be something introduced into the world 
 by another Power. This is the theory 
 of Dualism. It is the backbone of many 
 religions, of many philosophies. Whether 
 under the name of Manichaeanism or in 
 the more subtle form of heresies unnamed 
 and undiscerned, it has always been promi- 
 nent as an alternative to the Christian 
 religion. For Christianity stands by the 
 other explanation of the presence of evil 
 in the world. The world being wholly 
 made by God, nothing in the world can 
 run counter to God's purpose except by 
 express permission of God. The Chris- 
 tian doctrine is that such permission has 
 been given. God has endowed some of 
 His creatures with the power of Will. 
 Man has that power. You can choose 
 whether you will do this or that. Your 
 choice is rarely quite free. You are 
 moved by influences which you can sel- 
 dom identify through and through ; but
 
 THE FOUNDATION 19 
 
 in most of your actions, perhaps in all, 
 there is an element of freedom. All our 
 experiences, all our knowledge of our- 
 selves, all our judgments of other men, 
 are nonsense if that is not true. The 
 freedom of the human will may be a pos- 
 tulate of theology, but long before theo- 
 logy began it was a fact of nature. 
 
 This freedom explains the presence of 
 evil in the world. We are able to act 
 against the purpose of God. We have 
 no reason to suppose that we are the only 
 creatures endowed with such a power, 
 but it may be well to speak of ourselves 
 alone because we know ourselves. Evil 
 is everything done against the purpose of 
 God, and when you do this knowingly, 
 you sin. For sin means nothing else but 
 setting your own purpose, your own will, 
 against the purpose and the will of God. 
 Evil you can recognize without thought 
 of God, but sin has no meaning except 
 in relation to God.
 
 20 CONSCIENCE OF SIN 
 
 If you believe in God you know that 
 you can sin. You will hardly venture 
 to say that you have not actually sinned. 
 But how shall you know when you are 
 sinning ? To know vaguely that sin is 
 possible, and that it means wilful opposi- 
 tion to the will of God, will not carry you 
 very far when you sit in judgment upon 
 yourself. This knowledge may fill you 
 with uneasiness, with a fear lest you 
 should have sinned ; it may induce you 
 to make a general confession, to beat 
 your breast as a poor wretch who has 
 done he knows not what. If you go no 
 further, you may soon return to a more 
 complacent mood. God is good ; God 
 is merciful ; He knows whereof you are 
 made, He remembers that you are but 
 dust ; it is sufficient to acknowledge 
 yourself a miserable sinner and to cry 
 for pardon, and so you may go on sinning 
 with a comfortable reliance on the Divine 
 forgiveness. Something more than this
 
 THE FOUNDATION 21 
 
 is required of a Christian. " Declare to 
 my people their transgression and to the 
 house of Jacob their sins." You are not 
 only to know yourself a sinner, you are 
 to know your sins. Do you seek par- 
 don ? It is your sins that must be for- 
 given. You are to confess your sins, not 
 only your sinful state. You must know 
 them, and to know them it is not suffi- 
 cient to know that there is a Will of the 
 Lord which you have probably trans- 
 gressed ; you must know what the Will 
 of the Lord is. You can know this in 
 some small measure by the light of 
 nature, but even there you need a 
 teacher. You learned the first lessons of 
 morality in the nursery, and you have 
 been learning them ever since in rude 
 contact with your fellow-men. But 
 there are deeper lessons to be learnt. 
 
 Conventional morality is notoriously 
 faulty. It is full of doubtful com- 
 promises. It is anything but fixed and
 
 22 CONSCIENCE OF SIN 
 
 immutable. The standards are per- 
 petually shifting, and at all times they 
 are various. There is one standard for 
 the servants' hall, another for the draw- 
 ing-room, and neither has much to boast 
 of against the other. You probably 
 have one law for the counting-house, 
 another to regulate your dealing with 
 friends and kinsfolk. Public morality 
 and private morality are sometimes so 
 different as to be openly contrasted. 
 No law which rests exclusively or mainly 
 upon the mutual agreement of men can 
 have any great measure of stability. Is 
 there anything better ? Perhaps you 
 turn to the Bible. There also you will 
 find varying standards. The books of 
 the Bible come to us from many dates, 
 and were intended for various circum- 
 stances. Even what is most clearly 
 divine in them admits of this variety, 
 for divine commands are mercifully ad- 
 justed to the possibilities of human
 
 THE FOUNDATION 23 
 
 nature. God spoke to the fathers in the 
 prophets by diverse portions and in 
 diverse manners. But when you turn 
 to the Gospel you find something else. 
 At the end of those days God spoke to us 
 in His Son, and here there is finality. 
 Read the Sermon on the Mount. There 
 you will find no compromise ; nothing 
 but unbending precepts which are terrible 
 in their absoluteness. Read the words 
 honestly and you will cry out that this 
 standard is beyond you. It is beyond 
 you. " Ye shall be perfect as your 
 Heavenly Father is perfect." Who shall 
 attain to this ? 
 
 Let us be honest. The precepts of the 
 Sermon on the Mount require adjustment 
 to our necessities. You may obey some 
 of them to the letter without being seri- 
 ously inconvenienced. There are some 
 who do so, and you admire them at a 
 respectful distance. But who observes 
 them all ? To do so will be to suffer
 
 24 CONSCIENCE OF SIN 
 
 intolerable loss, to endure what human 
 nature cannot bear. You will certainly 
 allow that if all men observed them alike 
 this would be a delightful world to live 
 in ; but you will say that while others 
 refuse to be bound by them you also must 
 be allowed some freedom. Some few 
 men have not claimed even this, have 
 lived in every detail of their lives accord- 
 ing to the Gospel ; they have suffered 
 and they have endured. You regard 
 them from a distance with something 
 more than respect. They are heroes ; 
 they are saints. You are neither hero 
 nor saint ; you cannot pretend to live 
 like Francis of Assisi. It is true ; and 
 God is not unjust to despise your puny 
 efforts to follow such men afar off. But 
 do you try to follow them at all ? Do 
 you set aside this terrible standard of 
 right as a thing which does not concern 
 you ? Do you, less boldly but more 
 falsely, try to reduce it by convenient
 
 THE FOUNDATION 25 
 
 interpretation to the level of your 
 ability ? To do that is to give up the 
 Gospel. The Gospel sets before you a 
 standard of perfection. Attainment is far 
 off, but you can keep the goal before your 
 eyes. Go down on your knees and read 
 the Sermon on the Mount ; measure your 
 habits and your doings by that stand- 
 ard ; do not excuse yourself or palter 
 with your conscience ; plead your weak- 
 ness if you will, but beat your breast as 
 you plead. So will God show you your 
 transgression and expose to you your 
 sins.
 
 II 
 
 The Fact 
 
 " The good which I would I do not : but the 
 evil which I would not, that I practise." 
 ROMANS vii. 19. 
 
 SIN is not a fancy of theologians. 
 It is one of the grim facts of 
 human life. It has to become known 
 to you, like other facts, by experience. 
 Some reflection, no doubt, is required 
 for the interpretation of the experience. 
 There is a kind of thoughtlessness by 
 which you can escape all serious know- 
 ledge of good and evil. There is an age 
 of innocence when the faculty of dis- 
 cernment has not been developed, and 
 there are some people, perhaps some 
 races, with whom childishness becomes 
 
 26
 
 THE FACT 27 
 
 chronic. But when you take men and 
 women as they generally are, you will 
 find in them the knowledge of sin. You 
 will find it in yourself. 
 
 It is not specially Christian. You 
 may be as ignorant of Christian doctrine 
 as the ordinary public schoolboy, and 
 yet have a keen sense of sin. It is 
 found, more or less, in all religions, and 
 in people of no religion. Whether you 
 can have anything that deserves to be 
 called religion without it, I am not sure ; 
 in point of fact it does seem to lie at 
 the very base of all religions. We our- 
 selves can hardly think of sin except in 
 relation to God ; it is an offence against 
 God, rebellion, or contemptuous in- 
 difference, or mere forget fulness. We 
 blacken it by considering the goodness 
 of God, enlarge on the ingratitude of it, 
 or play upon our fears by picturing the 
 consequences of a departure from the 
 one Supreme Good. We do well ; for
 
 28 CONSCIENCE OF SIN 
 
 so we are getting to the heart of things. 
 But you can have the sense of sin with- 
 out any thought of God. I believe it 
 will be weak and inoperative, but it will 
 not be unreal. A theoretical atheist 
 can say quite sincerely, " I have sinned." 
 Tfyat more common sort of atheist, 
 the man who lives as without God in 
 the world, may beat his breast, or 
 perhaps tear his hair, and make the 
 same confession with penetrating misery. 
 
 For what is this sense of sin ? We 
 use the word conscience. What does 
 it mean ? Conscience is just knowledge ; 
 science, but knowledge of a particu- 
 lar kind. It is knowledge of yourself, 
 what you may call consciousness if you 
 are either playing at philosophy or 
 talking about manners. But hold fast 
 to the essential meaning. It is knowledge. 
 
 Then, more particularly still, it is 
 knowledge of yourself as seen in a 
 certain light. You know that you have
 
 THE FACT 29 
 
 done right, or that you have done 
 wrong ; that you have a good or an 
 evil habit. Conscience is that form 
 of self-knowledge which enables you 
 to pass a moral judgment on yourself 
 or on your actions. You should use 
 the word strictly in this sense. The 
 more delightful task of passing judg- 
 ment on others is not properly an 
 exercise of conscience. Your objection 
 to what they do is not properly a con- 
 scientious objection. 
 
 We must look a little farther. When 
 you have once judged yourself to be 
 right or wrong in a certain line of action, 
 you have a standard by which to 
 regulate your future conduct. The 
 action which you have condemned once, 
 or approved once, you will condemn or 
 approve again, if it be repeated. Bear 
 in mind that the standard, in so far as 
 it belongs to conscience, is for yourself 
 alone. You are not to impose it on
 
 30 CONSCIENCE OF SIN 
 
 others. To do this thing will be wrong 
 for you, and you will condemn yourself 
 for doing it : whether it will be wrong for 
 your neighbour depends on other con- 
 siderations. 
 
 This kind of knowledge that we call 
 conscience exists. I dare not say that 
 it exists in every man and woman. 
 There are some in whom it seems to be 
 conspicuously absent. But we regard 
 such people as abnormal, as almost 
 insane. We call them irresponsible. 
 Whether they are really irresponsible is a 
 question to be considered in each several 
 case, and the investigation is like the 
 diagnosis of a disease. So true it is 
 that conscience is a part of the regular 
 equipment of humanity, and that a man 
 who lacks it is an abnormal creature. 
 
 You speak of a good conscience or a 
 bad conscience ; and you speak well, 
 for you know yourself as either good or 
 evil, as doing either right or wrong.
 
 THE FACT 31 
 
 To do a thing with a bad conscience is 
 to do it, knowing yourself to be choosing 
 the wrong part. The sense of sin is 
 nothing else but this bad conscience. 
 " The good which I would I do not : 
 but the evil which I would not, that I 
 practise." So says St. Paul, in a piercing 
 examination of the state of sin. Do 
 not imagine that he is here relying on 
 some special insight, peculiar to him 
 as an inspired Christian teacher. The 
 whole passage is remarkably clear in 
 perception of facts (though, by the way, 
 you have to distinguish carefully between 
 the apostle's own statements and the 
 opinions which he is contesting) but 
 the facts belong to the common experi- 
 ence of mankind. He is not setting out 
 a new and strange doctrine ; he is 
 appealing to men's knowledge of them- 
 selves. Indeed, the same thought was 
 expressed even more clearly by the 
 Latin poet who stands the most remote
 
 32 CONSCIENCE OF SIN 
 
 from all Christian thought. Ovid des- 
 cribes Medea hesitating between duty 
 and inclination ; or rather hesitating no 
 longer, because she has now made her 
 choice. Video meliora proboque, she 
 says ; deteriora sequor. " I see the 
 better course and allow it ; I go the 
 worse way." Do you not know what 
 it is to stand just so ? You know what 
 you are going to do ; you know that 
 you will condemn yourself for doing it ; 
 and you do it. You do it with a bad 
 conscience. 
 
 Look at the way St. Paul puts it. 
 " The good which I would I do not." 
 What I would : that is important. If 
 you acknowledge a thing to be good, 
 you wish to do it. If you do not, you 
 will not call it good. You may wish to 
 do a thing that you know to be wrong ; 
 but at the same time you wish not to 
 do it, for otherwise you would not think 
 it wrong. Your will is directed this
 
 THE FACT 33 
 
 way and that ; you are divided against 
 yourself. What a perplexing state of 
 things ! You might think it an im- 
 possible state of things, if you did not 
 know that you yourself are often just so. 
 There are influences pushing you this 
 way and that ; you yourself are half 
 inclined this way and half inclined that 
 way ; but at last you come to a decision, 
 and you go. Who decides ? It is one 
 of the most puzzling questions about 
 human nature, and yet you know quite 
 well that you yourself decide. You 
 pull yourself together, as we say ; you 
 are no longer divided ; you follow this 
 influence or that, this inclination or that. 
 And you know that you are responsible 
 for the decision ; you blame yourself, 
 or you are satisfied. 
 
 But look further at what St. Paul 
 says. " If what I would not, that I do, it 
 is no more I that do it, but sin which 
 dwelleth in me." That is strange. " It 
 
 c
 
 34 CONSCIENCE OF SIN 
 
 is not I that do it." Then you are not 
 responsible ; you have no call to blame 
 yourself. You wish to do what is right. 
 That is enough. Something prevents 
 you ; some overpowering influence or 
 inclination draws you to evil. You 
 cannot help yourself ; against your will 
 you do what is wrong. Evidently you 
 cannot be blamed for what you do under 
 compulsion, against your will. 
 
 Is that so ? It sounds reasonable. 
 You are probably aware that there are 
 fantastic religions which make this the 
 sum of the whole matter, which say that 
 to think right is the one thing necessary, 
 and that action is of no account, being 
 the sport of circumstances. Fantastic 
 forms of religion, I call them, not fan- 
 tastic forms of morality, for in truth 
 they are the end of all morals. 
 
 But what about St. Paul ? In this 
 passage he is tackling a very big question, 
 and he looks at it from all sides. The
 
 THE FACT 35 
 
 plea is put forward : " It is not I that 
 do it." St. Paul knows that there is 
 some truth in the plea. Sometimes, 
 at all events, there are overpowering 
 influences. Sometimes you are beaten 
 by temptation ; reduced to helplessness. 
 Why ? He tells you the reason. It is 
 because of a traitor within the camp : 
 " sin which dwelleth in me." Sin here 
 means the sinful habit. He will tell 
 you that you have partly inherited 
 this, partly formed it in yourself. In 
 part, at least, you are responsible. You 
 cannot be personally responsible for your 
 inheritance, but even here you lie under 
 a general responsibility of your race. 
 You are human, and you cannot cut 
 yourself adrift from humanity. And 
 your responsibility does not end there. 
 We allow the force of habit to be pleaded 
 in extenuation of the guilt of a crime, 
 but it does not set up innocence. Crime 
 and sin must be kept distinct ; what is
 
 36 CONSCIENCE OF SIN 
 
 true of one is not always true of the other ; 
 but they have in common the element 
 of guilt, and the human justice that 
 deals with the guilt of crime is a faint 
 image of the divine justice that deals 
 with the guilt of sin. We cannot doubt 
 that human frailty, and the sinful habit 
 which extends it, may cry for mercy 
 before God ; " He knoweth whereof we 
 are made, He remembereth that we 
 are but dust ; " but we dare not deceive 
 ourselves to the extent of saying that 
 on this account we have no sin. In 
 your conscience you know that it is not 
 so. You know that you are not entirely 
 the slave of habit ; or if it be so, it is 
 the result of a slothful surrender. Even 
 a slave can fight for freedom, if he is 
 willing to pay the cost. 
 
 You cannot acquit yourself entirely 
 on the plea of the force of habit. If you 
 hear any one else do that, you count 
 him a dangerous person, Judgment of
 
 TH FACT 37 
 
 another may help you in this case to 
 self- judgment. And indeed we do not 
 stand alone. A human being is never 
 isolated. Conscience is knowledge of 
 yourself alone, but you know also that 
 others are like yourself, having similar 
 difficulties, similar struggles, the same 
 failures and the same victories. Do you 
 remember how boldly St. Paul contra- 
 dicted himself, saying in the same 
 breath, " Bear ye one another's bur- 
 dens," and then, " Each man shall bear 
 his own burden." There is no escape ; 
 but there is hardly any limit to mutual 
 help. What you know about the con- 
 science of another may increase the 
 activity of your own. On the other 
 hand, it may retard it. What is com- 
 moner than to drug your conscience 
 with a dose of the easy-going laxity 
 of your neighbours ? We live together, 
 and we must influence one another. So 
 God has ordained. It is inaccurate Ian-
 
 38 CONSCIENCE OF SIN 
 
 guage, but we can say that after a fashion 
 there is an English conscience ; there 
 is a conscience of your class, of your 
 neighbourhood, of your calling. It is 
 what we know as public opinion. Public 
 opinion is an unsafe guide, but at its 
 worst it does testify to the reality of 
 conscience of sin. We are shy of talking 
 about sin, especially in public, but we 
 are never afraid of saying that it is a 
 shame to do such and such a thing. 
 And what is shame but the sense of sin ? 
 " Who told thee that thou wast naked ? " 
 Public opinion is seldom strict, but it will 
 not tolerate a plea of innocence on the 
 score of the force of habit. That would 
 be too dangerous to the public good. 
 
 Public opinion can be sanctified to be- 
 come the surest of guides. For what other 
 purpose has God gathered us into the 
 fellowship of the Christian Church ? 
 There is not only a body of formal Chris- 
 tian doctrine, which each may assimilate
 
 THE FACT 39 
 
 for himself ; there is also, and it is 
 much more important, a Christian habit 
 of thought. What is the value of saintly 
 example, if it does not help to form that 
 habit ? You are not at all likely to 
 be in the same circumstances, or to have 
 the same special vocation, as any of the 
 famous saints ; you cannot imitate them 
 in that sense ; but you can follow them 
 generally in all virtuous and godly living. 
 Their recognized sanctity is a measure 
 by which the conscience of a Christian 
 may work. But they are recognized 
 as saints only because they reflect broken 
 lights of the one splendour of the Sun of 
 righteousness. The conscience of Jesus 
 Christ is the beacon. 
 
 Conscience of Jesus ? The sense of 
 perfect goodness, no doubt. Ah ! more 
 than that. If that were all, it would 
 be a poor guide for us. But conscience 
 of sin ? " He hath laid on Him the 
 iniquity of us all." St. Paul is very bold :
 
 40 CONSCIENCE OF SIN 
 
 " Him who knew no sin He made to be 
 sin on our behalf." What is this ? 
 " My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even 
 unto death." What is that cry ? 
 " My God, my God, why hast thou 
 forsaken me ! " We are left in no doubt 
 that the Son of God, when made in the 
 likeness of sinful flesh, took upon Him 
 the whole burden of the consciousness of 
 sin. 
 
 This thing exists in fact. It has be- 
 come a part of the complete equipment 
 of humanity. You are a man, and 
 therefore you are capable of it. You can 
 smother it ; you can so divert your 
 mind to other things as to forget this ; 
 you can become insensible to sin. That 
 insensibility is not innocence, though 
 it may sometimes wear the mask of 
 innocence. It is extremely improbable 
 that you are without sin ; so improbable 
 that we may leave it out of count. And 
 even if it be so, you are a man ; the
 
 THE FACT 41 
 
 experiences of mankind, the pains of 
 mankind, are yours. If you become 
 insensible to sin, you become something 
 less than human. The Lord Jesus Christ 
 is perfectly human. Where He has no 
 burden of His own to carry, He shoulders 
 the burden of His fellow-men. That is 
 the meaning of the Cross. 
 
 You are a Christian. You are called 
 to bear the Cross after your Lord. The 
 Cross means nothing apart from con- 
 science of sin. You can stifle that 
 conscience in yourself ; but you do so 
 at the cost of separating yourself from 
 your fellow-men, and from God Who is 
 made Man.
 
 Ill 
 
 The Explanation 
 
 " I had not known sin, except through the law." 
 ROMANS vii. 7. 
 
 HOW shall we account for con- 
 sciousness of sin ? It is not of 
 first-rate importance to do so at all. 
 What counts in the first place is to have 
 the sense of sin, to have a lively con- 
 science and to keep it in activity. What 
 counts in the second place is to secure 
 the right information of the conscience. 
 If you do this, you do well, and there 
 is no need of subtle inquiry into the 
 origin or growth of this faculty. You 
 are conscious of sin ; it is one of the 
 elementary facts of your experience. 
 There is no call to ask why it is thus 
 
 42
 
 THE EXPLANATION 43 
 
 with you. Indeed, there is some danger 
 in such inquiry. You may dull the 
 delicate sense of sin by probing your 
 consciousness to discover the source of 
 your feeling. You may delay action 
 while investigating the motive that 
 impels you. There is an examination 
 of conscience which is merely curious, 
 and the end of it may be a morbid 
 interest in the perversities of human 
 conduct. That is disastrous. But 
 short of this extremity there may be a 
 dissipation of interest in a wrong direc- 
 tion. It is better, says Thomas a 
 Kempis, to feel compunction than to 
 know the definition of sin. You should 
 rather tend the growth of conscience 
 than pull it up to examine the roots. 
 But investigation of this kind cannot 
 be altogether avoided. Obstinate ques- 
 tionings beat against the doors of the 
 soul ; if they are disregarded, there may 
 spring up a growth of secret doubts,
 
 44 CONSCIENCE OF SIN 
 
 silenced but not solved, which will in 
 the long run bear bitter fruit. You 
 are likely enough to have the beginnings 
 of such trouble. It is the more likely, 
 because of some notions about the 
 nature and working of conscience which 
 are so widely current that you can 
 hardly avoid contact with them. Hold 
 fast to your conscience, whatever hap- 
 pens ; but if you must ask questions 
 about it, be bold. 
 
 Conscience is knowledge. Know- 
 ledge of what ? Of yourself, as doing 
 right or wrong. Then the object of 
 knowledge is double. In the first place 
 you have consciousness of self. You 
 know yourself to be a real person, a real 
 agent. Things do not merely happen. 
 You do them, and you know that you 
 have a certain measure of freedom, so 
 that you are responsible for what you 
 do. Whence comes this knowledge ? 
 It was not in you when you were born ;
 
 THE EXPLANATION 45 
 
 it is not like the sense of pain, which is 
 probably the first of our experiences. 
 It came with your growth. But it 
 begins very early ; you may watch the 
 da,wn of it in a child not many days after 
 birth. Children are so taught from the 
 first that we cannot distinguish clearly 
 what springs spontaneously from what 
 is implanted by suggestion ; but it is 
 certain that a child becomes conscious 
 of self long before any explanation of 
 the fact is given him, and has the be- 
 ginnings of a sense of freedom and 
 responsibility long before he learns the 
 meaning of what he feels. Things do 
 happen for him in the most casual and 
 unaccountable way, but at the same 
 time there are things that he himself 
 does, knowing that he does them. 
 
 We cannot get behind these facts. 
 They are elementary. We can only 
 say that consciousness of self, conscious- 
 ness of freedom and responsibility, is
 
 46 CONSCIENCE OF SIN 
 
 part of our natural equipment : as 
 natural, as fundamental, as irreducible, 
 as the sense of pain. You who believe 
 in God the Creator will prefer to put 
 this in a rather different way. You 
 will say that God has made you so. 
 He has made you capable of this self- 
 knowledge. You are content to leave 
 it there. It does not trouble you that 
 this capacity grows in you from imper- 
 ceptible beginnings, as your body has 
 grown and your intelligence. You do 
 not know how the bones grow in the 
 womb of her that is with child, and you 
 do not know how conscience grows in 
 the child that is born into the world. 
 Both alike are inexplicable works of 
 God. The fact is sure. It is enough. 
 Then in the second place you have 
 consciousness of right and wrong. This 
 is not nearly so simple a matter. Be 
 content with the fact, if you like ; but 
 if you wish to understand it further,
 
 THE EXPLANATION 47 
 
 you do no wrong. Only do not lose 
 hold of the fact. 
 
 Can we explain it ? If you know 
 that you are doing right or wrong, you 
 must measure your action by some 
 standard. What is that standard, and 
 how do you obtain it ? 
 
 There is a mistake that you must 
 avoid. It is sometimes said that your 
 conscience is a standard to itself. It 
 is treated as a lawgiver ; your own con- 
 science forbids you to do this thing. 
 That will not do. How can you separate 
 your conscience from yourself ? How 
 can you make it a sort of adviser or 
 judge of your actions ? If you can 
 imagine such separation, it is not your 
 conscience that instructs you ; it is 
 rather you yourself who instruct your 
 conscience. But indeed, the separation 
 is altogether a mistake. Conscience 
 is merely a part of your knowledge ; 
 you cannot set it up in a sort of inde-
 
 48 CONSCIENCE OF SIN 
 
 pendent existence, any more than 
 other departments of knowledge. You 
 would not set up your knowledge of 
 geography, or of chemistry, or of book- 
 keeping, as an authority over you. 
 In a sort of pictured language you might 
 say that your knowledge of geography 
 guards you against some stupid blunder, 
 or that your acquaintance with book- 
 keeping warns you against extravagant 
 expenditure. But you will not be 
 deceived by such language. St. Paul 
 himself used it. He could say that 
 his conscience bore witness to his inte- 
 grity. Talk in that way, if you will, 
 so long as you do not let the words run 
 away with your wits. 
 
 The danger of it can easily be illus- 
 trated. There is a line of a Greek come- 
 dian which says that for every man his 
 own conscience is God. That is the 
 very spirit of the Greek paganism : it 
 is the making of gods out of men. It
 
 THE EXPLANATION 49 
 
 follows, you see, that there is no eternal 
 standard of right. What seems to me 
 right is right for me. I am even bound 
 to do it. 
 
 Now, in a sense, that is true. In a 
 sense, I am a law to myself, and must 
 be. What I know about right and 
 wrong is the immediate standard by 
 which I must regulate my conduct. 
 I have nothing else to go by. But this 
 state of things will be tolerable only 
 if there is some universal standard of 
 right, about which I know something, 
 and which I am trying to know better. 
 I may be deplorably ignorant ; genuine 
 ignorance will be a good excuse for 
 mistakes. If I were entirely ignorant 
 I could be blamed for nothing ; I should 
 be a mere innocent, but not a moral 
 being at all. I am not entirely ignor- 
 ant ; no man, short of extreme insanity 
 or idiocy, or of temporary unconscious- 
 ness, is entirely ignorant. I know
 
 50 CONSCIENCE OF SIN 
 
 something of a standard of right, and 
 I can try to learn more. Therefore 
 I am a responsible being. 
 
 Conscience, you see, is nothing else 
 but that department of knowledge in 
 which you lay hold of a standard of 
 right, external to yourself. You find 
 that other men measure your actions 
 with a judgment more or less resembling 
 your own. You naturally conclude that 
 there is one standard for all men. It 
 does not depend upon the changes of 
 individual opinion. It is eternal. 
 
 The simplest form of natural religion 
 or natural morality can carry you so 
 far. That is why I have said that even 
 an atheist can confess, " I have sinned." 
 But you believe in God. More than 
 this, you are Christians. What differ- 
 ence does that make ? 
 
 ^Do not exaggerate the difference. 
 There are some who think the precepts 
 of the Gospel ought to be entirely dif-
 
 THE EXPLANATION 51 
 
 ferent from the rules of human con- 
 vention, that Christian morality should 
 be utterly unlike natural morality. It 
 disturbs them to hear of resemblances 
 to evangelic teaching ; to be told that 
 in the writings of an ancient Chinese 
 sage may be found with only a verbal 
 difference the golden rule : " What- 
 soever ye would that men should do 
 to you, even so do unto them." They 
 fear for the uniqueness of the Christian 
 religion. But that is a mistake. The 
 Gospel was not preached as they im- 
 agine. You will find St. Paul appeal- 
 ing fearlessly to the conscience alike 
 of Jew and of Greek. He would have 
 appealed, no doubt, to the conscience 
 of Barbarian or Scythian, if circum- 
 stances had required it. There was much 
 to be corrected in the standard of all 
 men alike, but the teaching of the 
 Gospel does not make a clean sweep of 
 all that has gone before, and proclaim
 
 52 CONSCIENCE OF SIN 
 
 an entirely new law. It builds upon the 
 common morality of mankind, for this 
 also is of God's planting. 
 
 Take the most exalted teaching of 
 our Lord. Read once more the Sermon 
 on the Mount. See how the mistakes 
 of an imperfect morality are corrected, 
 how its limitations are removed, how 
 its crudeness is refined. But the cur- 
 rent morality is taken for granted, and 
 the new teaching is grafted upon it. 
 Consider, for example, the correction 
 of the law of retaliation. " Ye have 
 heard that it was said, an eye for an 
 eye and a tooth for a tooth." Even 
 that was a restraining law ; the inclina- 
 tion of an angry man is to exact double 
 for every injury done, and the rule of 
 retaliation would restrict the vengeance 
 of justice to an equal retribution. The 
 evangelic law extends the restraining 
 process and confines wrath yet more 
 closely : " But I say unto you, Resist
 
 THE EXPLANATION 53 
 
 not him that is evil : but whosoever 
 smiteth thee on thy right cheek, turn 
 to him the other also." You will find 
 this rule applied by St. Paul. He 
 would have Christians decline even the 
 protection of the law : " It is altogether 
 a loss to you that ye have lawsuits one 
 with another. Why not rather take 
 wrong ? Why not rather be de- 
 frauded ? " Here you have one of the 
 most tremendous demands of the Gos- 
 pel, a demand to which few men are 
 equal ; but even this, you see, follows 
 in true sequence upon a rule of common 
 morality. The ordinary human con- 
 science condemns unbridled vengeance ; 
 you dislike even a man who stands 
 stiffly on his strict rights ; you think 
 him an unsocial being, a nuisance to his 
 neighbours. The Gospel does but ex- 
 tend that judgment. Belief in God 
 had already found a basis for the limita- 
 tion of personal rancour. " Vengeance
 
 54 CONSCIENCE OF SIN 
 
 is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord." 
 The imperfection of human judgment, 
 the ease with which it is warped, and 
 the danger of indiscriminate anger, 
 make it impossible to set all wrongs 
 right ; some things must be wisely toler- 
 ated, and left to the correction of God's 
 providence. That is human morality 
 controlled by belief in a supreme Ruler 
 of the world. 
 
 Hold fast to this close connexion 
 of the Christian law with the common 
 law of humanity. Only so can you 
 understand the working of conscience. 
 The Gospel appeals to you, to some- 
 thing sound and wholesome in yourself. 
 You can see that the precepts of the 
 Gospel are reasonable, even when you 
 are least able to follow them. You 
 may be slow to understand them, slower 
 still to reduce them even partially to 
 practice. That slowness hinders the 
 establishment of the Kingdom of God.
 
 THE EXPLANATION 55 
 
 But for this the kingdoms of the world 
 would long ago have become the King- 
 dom of our God and of His Christ. That 
 conversion is in process ; we can see 
 signs of it, though hope is constantly 
 deferred, and often set back with rude 
 rebuffs. Evil is resurgent, and there 
 are in history whole periods of retro- 
 gression. We must put aside the 
 dream of continuous and unvaried pro- 
 gress. At the present time you can 
 hardly cling to the dream. With war 
 as the main occupation of your thoughts 
 and almost the sole outlet of your 
 energies, with Europe .lapsing into 
 methods of barbarism, you cannot fail 
 to recognize the stubborn resistance 
 of the world to the message of peace. 
 But even the methods of barbarism 
 may be penetrated by the spirit of the 
 Gospel ; we are not to confuse Chris- 
 tianity with civilization, though a per- 
 fect civilization must be its fruit. What
 
 56 CONSCIENCE OF SIN 
 
 is most terrible in the present state of 
 war is not the slaughter and rapine 
 which accompany it, but the harden- 
 ing of hearts, the riot of hatred, the 
 open and contemptuous abandonment 
 of the doctrine of love. For this means 
 the degradation of men, and not only 
 of individual men, but of whole groups 
 of men, or indeed of whole nations. 
 It is the corruption of conscience, the 
 control of it by another law, alien to 
 the law of Christ. You have need to 
 look narrowly into yourselves, lest this 
 evil spirit enter into you and dwell there. 
 You must be living by some law. 
 You cannot get rid of conscience. You 
 cannot help distinguishing one thing 
 as right, another as wrong. And when 
 you think of right or wrong, you have 
 not in view only your own conveni- 
 ence or your own advantage ; you are 
 measuring things by some universal 
 standard. The most utterly selfish of
 
 THE EXPLANATION 57 
 
 men seeks his own profit or pleasure 
 at the cost of others because he has 
 in some way persuaded himself that his 
 own pleasure or profit is the chief 
 purpose of the world ; he makes it a 
 law for others no less than for him- 
 self ; he becomes crazy at last in his 
 infatuation, denounces the iniquity of 
 those who will not let him have his own 
 way, and probably falls into a state of 
 persecution-mania. Conscience, good or 
 evil, demands an absolute law. 
 
 As Christians you acknowledge, 
 theoretically at least, the absoluteness 
 of the law of God. It is the' natural 
 law, imposed by the Creator upon His 
 creatures, illuminated by prophecy, 
 elucidated by the precepts of the Gos- 
 pel, guarded by the teaching of the 
 Church. Good. But does this law 
 remain a thing external to yourself ? 
 It is external ; it exists apart from 
 you ; you have not devised it for your-
 
 58 CONSCIENCE OF SIN 
 
 self, and its sanction does not come 
 from your recognition. But does it 
 remain external, pressing upon you 
 from without with terrible authority ? 
 That may be. There are terrors of 
 the Lord which St. Paul knew how to 
 invoke for the purpose of persuading 
 men. The hand of God may be heavy 
 upon you, and, if that is all, your mois- 
 ture will be like the drought in summer. 
 In utter dryness of soul you will try 
 to render a mechanical obedience. That 
 obedience is not to be despised. It is 
 better than rebellion. But it is not the 
 obedience of Christ. The Kingdom of 
 God comes not with observation ; no 
 demonstration of external power can 
 establish it ; " the Kingdom of God is 
 within you." Here you find the mean- 
 ing of St. Paul's vehement language 
 about law. He speaks at times as if 
 obedience to law were a state of sin. 
 Do not suppose that he is talking merely
 
 THE EXPLANATION 59 
 
 of a superstitious regard for the Mosaic 
 law ; his vigorous fight for the freedom 
 of his Gentile converts from that law 
 of ordinances opened up for him a larger 
 contention ; no external rule of any 
 kind had any final validity in the dis- 
 cipline of the soul. " Law is not made 
 for a righteous man, but for the lawless 
 and unruly, for the ungodly and sin- 
 ners." Yet law is good, "if a man use 
 it lawfully." What he meant by the 
 lawful use of law is evident. It is for 
 the instruction of the uninstructed con- 
 science. " I had not known sin, except 
 through the law ; for I had not known 
 coveting except the law had said, Thou 
 shalt not covet." To know sin is not 
 merely to know the difference between 
 right and wrong ; it is to know what 
 things are wrong ; it is to have an in- 
 structed conscience. For that instruc- 
 tion law is needed. But the man of 
 informed conscience will transcend law ;
 
 6o CONSCIENCE OF SIN 
 
 he will no longer obey commandments 
 merely as commands ; they will have 
 become part and parcel of his own will ; 
 they will be written not on tables of 
 stone, but on fleshly tables of the heart. 
 St. Paul pushed this doctrine to para- 
 dox, affording cover for that antmomian- 
 ism which troubled him among his own 
 converts and which has often worked 
 havoc in Christian history. He opposed 
 to it the truth that men can find free- 
 dom only by bringing every thought 
 into captivity to the obedience of Christ. 
 He alone has perfect liberty whose will 
 is in perfect accord with the will of God, 
 for he alone can freely range to the 
 utmost limit of his desires unhindered 
 by any barriers of law. 
 
 You are not likely to have attained 
 that freedom. You are in part enfran- 
 chised ; there is for you no brass-bound 
 code of ordinances which you can pre- 
 tend to regard as in very deed the eternal
 
 THE EXPLANATION 61 
 
 and unalterable law. St. Paul vindi- 
 cated that freedom for you in a bitter 
 fight. But it was not won for you by 
 St. Paul. It was won by the proclama- 
 tion of the Gospel, by the victory of the 
 Cross, by the triumphant substitution 
 of the one precept of love, by the found- 
 ing of the Kingdom of God within you. 
 Stand fast in that liberty. See that 
 no conventional code usurps the place 
 of the eternal law. But remember that 
 you too have to vindicate your liberty 
 by bitter fight. While the fight con- 
 tinues you need the help of law, marshal- 
 ling your forces, marking the enemy, 
 making sin exceeding sinful, guarding 
 your conscience against insidious deceits.
 
 IV 
 Judgment 
 
 " If we discerned ourselves, we should not be 
 judged." i CORINTHIANS xi. 31. 
 
 WHAT use will you make of con- 
 science ? It is a form of know- 
 ledge, and knowledge, we have heard 
 say, is power ; but bare knowledge is the 
 most barren of possessions. The maxim, 
 " Know thyself," was inscribed in letters 
 of gold on the gates of the temple at 
 Delphi, and a very earthly Roman 
 satirist could read in this a message sent 
 down from Heaven ; it was meant for 
 the beginning of wisdom, a preparation 
 for the higher mysteries to which you 
 come as you gain access to God. The 
 
 62
 
 JUDGMENT 63 
 
 idea was characteristic of the Greek 
 religion ; you begin with man, you start 
 from yourself, you make your own 
 nature the point from which you leap 
 outward or upward into the unknown 
 where you may chance to find God. 
 The end of it is that you find yourself, 
 a magnified and idealized self, and take 
 that for God. The Hebrew religion 
 found another starting-point : " The 
 fear of the Lord is the beginning of wis- 
 dom." There you get the true differ- 
 ence between the revealed religion of the 
 Prophets, which led laboriously to the 
 Gospel, and the natural religion of the 
 Greek mind, which led easily to the cult of 
 the Roman Emperor. The two move- 
 ments ended in the rivalry between the 
 adoration of the Lamb and the worship 
 of the Beast, which is the subject of St. 
 John's Apocalypse. 
 
 Go back to the beginning, and you find 
 that the difference is not only in the
 
 64 CONSCIENCE OF SIN 
 
 object of knowledge or worship. In the 
 one case you have for the foundation 
 self-knowledge ; in the other case, rever- 
 ence for what is beyond self. The Greek 
 mind could rest in knowledge as the 
 very end and purpose of existence. The 
 way of knowledge is to proceed from the 
 known to the unknown, from the better 
 known to the less known. You widen 
 your knowledge, but it remains what it 
 was : knowledge, and nothing more. 
 You start from a centre in yourself, for 
 you can know nothing better. Even 
 that is difficult to know, and you may 
 easily be deceived ; the sage who gave 
 the inscription for the gate of Delphi was 
 not mistaken when he appointed this 
 study for a stern discipline From this 
 centre of knowledge you stretch yourself ; 
 whither ? Out into a limitless un- 
 known. Growing knowledge will be your 
 reward. It is a magnificent idea, but 
 rather cold comfort. You get away into
 
 JUDGMENT 65 
 
 vagueness. The farther you go from 
 yourself the more abstract your know- 
 ledge becomes. A doubt paralyses you : 
 is it anything but your own shadow that 
 you are pursuing ? 
 
 " The fear of the Lord : " that is 
 another beginning. Here also you are 
 facing the unknown. That fact is quite 
 undisguised : " Verily Thou art a God 
 that hidest Thyself, O God of Israel ! " 
 And the beginning of wisdom is not to 
 penetrate the darkness. It is to stand in 
 awe. " No man shall see My face and 
 live," is the warning. " Set bounds 
 about the mount and sanctify it," is the 
 first command at Sinai. A passionate 
 desire to know God is not rebuked ; it 
 is a holy aspiration : " Like as the hart 
 desireth the water-brooks, so longeth my 
 soul after Thee, O God. When shall I 
 come to appear before the presence of 
 God ! " Knowledge is promised, but as 
 a reward of patience : " They shall all 
 
 E
 
 66 CONSCIENCE OF SIN 
 
 know Me, from the least of them unto 
 the greatest of them." The religion of 
 the Old Testament, down to the preach- 
 ing of the Gospel, is all in the wrestling 
 of Jacob. " Tell me, I pray Thee, Thy 
 Name." It may not yet be told. " I 
 will not let Thee go, except Thou bless 
 me." The Name may not be told, but 
 the blessing is given. So God hides 
 Himself in the thick darkness, and yet, 
 "It is good for me to hold me fast by 
 God." 
 
 These two beginnings of religion are 
 constant all the world over. You may 
 call them Greek and Hebrew, but that 
 does not mean that either of them is 
 peculiar to Greeks or to Hebrews. The 
 Hebrew religion is important because 
 it led historically to the Gospel. It was 
 God's special preparation for the coming 
 of the Incarnate Word. But the sub- 
 stance of it is found everywhere, and not 
 least among the Greeks. '\ The Greek
 
 JUDGMENT 67 
 
 religion led men direct into a rather 
 offensive quagmire ; but none the less 
 it had something to contribute to the 
 preparation of the Gospel, which you may 
 read in the Book of Wisdom, and many 
 things of great importance for the fur- 
 therance of the Gospel ; the Holy City, 
 which John saw coming down from God 
 out of heaven, is not furnished exclu- 
 sively from the Old Testament, for the 
 glory and honour of the nations are 
 brought into it. 
 
 But there is something of the Greek 
 mind also in the Old Testament. That 
 remote and awful unknown God was 
 not all that men looked to. There was a 
 place where He would meet His people, 
 withdrawn behind a veil but in their 
 midst ; and there the priest might enter 
 with the blood of atonement. There was 
 no small danger of their being content 
 with this ; but the sanctuary was laid 
 in ruins, and then John heard the voice
 
 68 CONSCIENCE OF SIN 
 
 from heaven saying, " The tabernacle of 
 God is with men." That is just what 
 the Greeks had loved to dream of, until 
 their persistent search of knowledge be- 
 ginning from self had pushed God far 
 away. So I must not ask whether your 
 religion is of th.e Greek type or of the 
 Hebrew type. You are a Christian, and 
 your religion must have something of 
 both types. But you may ask yourself 
 what is your starting-point. Is it know- 
 ledge, or is it the fear of the Lord ? For 
 every one of us has to make a beginning, 
 just as you see it made in the history of 
 the world ; indeed, most of us have to 
 make it and remake it more than once. 
 But I shall speak of that next week. It 
 is enough at present that there must be 
 a beginning. What is your starting- 
 point ? And what way are you mov- 
 ing ? To more knowledge, and know- 
 ledge only ? Or to that which grows 
 out of the fear of the Lord ?
 
 JUDGMENT 69 
 
 We are not talking about religion at 
 large, but about that important element 
 in religion which is conscience. And 
 conscience is knowledge of self. We 
 seem to be engaged on the Greek side. 
 Yes ; and very much so. For although 
 the fact of conscience is known to men 
 of all religions and of no religion, yet it is 
 worth while to remark that the word 
 came into Christianity straight from the 
 Greeks. It is probable that St. Paul, who 
 knew Greek much better than most 
 of the early preachers of the Gospel, was 
 the first among them to use it. I have 
 quoted to you the Greek comedian who 
 said that conscience is God. That is 
 very Greek. I have warned you against 
 making your own conscience the stand- 
 ard of right. That also is very Greek. 
 But there is something still more Greek, 
 and a real peril. It is to be content 
 with having this knowledge which is 
 called conscience.
 
 70 CONSCIENCE OF SIN 
 
 To a mind of the Greek sort knowledge 
 is an end in itself. Do you know the 
 man ; no, that is not the right question : 
 are you yourself the sort of man that can 
 be content with this where conscience 
 is concerned ? 
 
 What does it mean ? To know that 
 you are doing what is right is a comfort 
 that you may reasonably take to your- 
 self, if the knowledge is well founded. 
 It is the comfort of an approving con- 
 science. But to know that you are 
 doing wrong : what is that worth ? Do 
 you acquiesce ? It is possible. There 
 is sometimes even a touch of compla- 
 cency in it. There is an inclination to 
 make the most of mental honesty. We 
 detest hypocrisy. We are ready enough 
 to thank God that we are not as other 
 men, self -deceivers, dealers in cant, or 
 even as this Pharisee. "I don't pretend, 
 even to myself, to be any better than 
 I am." It is easy to stop therev If you
 
 JUDGMENT 71 
 
 take sin for granted, a regrettable fact 
 but one which is to be expected and which 
 cannot be helped, you will stop there. 
 And you will have no difficulty in cloth- 
 ing yourself with a special cant of your 
 own. You can procure it ready made. 
 " Tout comprendre, c'est tout pardon- 
 ner." The proverb contains a truth. 
 There is nothing finer than to reflect of 
 God our judge : "He knoweth whereof 
 we are made : He remembereth that we 
 are but dust." It is true also that con- 
 fession, full, free and unreserved, is 
 the way to win pardon of God, or of one 
 who judges as God judges. But I am 
 speaking of your treatment of yourself. 
 You are quite ready to forgive yourself ; 
 unless, indeed, your fault has brought on 
 you some unpardonable inconvenience ; 
 so ready, that it is hardly worth your 
 while to blame yourself at all. You 
 know that you are wrong, what else 
 matters ? "I stan' reproved, what mair
 
 72 CONSCIENCE OF SIN 
 
 can a man do ? " says one of Scott's char- 
 acters. It becomes quite a virtue for a 
 man to say that he is not a plaster 
 saint. I do not know exactly what is 
 the corresponding boast for a woman, 
 but frankness seems to be accepted 
 as an ample condonation for any- 
 thing. 
 
 That is to make conscience of sin suffi- 
 cient unto itself, and there can hardly 
 be anything more dangerous. It may 
 go with a good deal of religiosity. Burns 
 knew it. He was a violently prejudiced 
 observer of the religious people of his 
 neighbourhood, but he knew human 
 nature remarkably well, and you find 
 what I am speaking of in " Holy 
 Willie's Prayer." The old villain of the 
 piece does not deceive himself. He 
 spreads out his sins before God can- 
 didly and with unction. He knows 
 them, and confesses them : it is 
 enough.
 
 JUDGMENT 73 
 
 Conscience of sin is not an end in itself. 
 It is a means to an end. And the end is 
 self-correction. 
 
 God is your lawgiver and your judge. 
 I have warned you against making your 
 conscience a standard. Your only stand- 
 ard of right and wrong is the ['purpose, 
 the will, of God your Creator. As you 
 know this the better, your conscience 
 is the better informed, and according 
 to your information you are to be 
 judged. 
 
 What is the purpose of judgment ? 
 This also is a means to an end. St. Paul 
 shall tell you what is the end. " When 
 we are judged of the Lord, we are chas- 
 tened, that we may not be condemned 
 with the world." Chastened ; the word 
 has grown to a stiff and formal meaning. 
 Let us say " we are educated," for that 
 is really what St. Paul says. Judgment 
 is educative, and the end of this educa- 
 tion is deliverance from condemnation,
 
 74 CONSCIENCE OF SIN 
 
 that is to say, from guilt. It is more 
 than pardon ; it is acquittal. 
 
 God is your judge. But there is a 
 preliminary judgment. " If we discerned 
 ourselves we should not be j udged. ' ' You 
 are to anticipate God's judgment. You 
 are to sit in judgment on yourself. And 
 this judgment also is to be educa- 
 tive. 
 
 So you are to use your conscience. 
 Use it sternly. Judgment is a grave 
 matter, above all when you sit as God's 
 representative. And in judging yourself, 
 you are nothing less. 
 
 The judge must know the law. You 
 know it imperfectly, and therefore your 
 judgment is faulty. But you must do 
 your best. You must inform your con- 
 science, gathering information wherever 
 it can be had. You are not to suppose 
 that you can dispense with instruction. 
 I have said that you still have need of 
 law, of an eternal rule of conduct, because
 
 JUDGMENT 75 
 
 the perfect law is not yet deeply and 
 ineffaceably graven upon your heart. 
 Much is already written there, and you 
 know it, but the writing is sometimes 
 blurred ; a sharp tool may be required 
 to make it clear. And there is much 
 more to learn ; you still have need of the 
 law which is a schoolmaster to bring 
 you to Christ. You are not to despise 
 the teaching of the Church, the guardian 
 of the tradition of the Gospel. In some 
 things you may be a law to yourself, for 
 your nature bears witness to the purpose 
 of the Creator, but selfish desires confuse 
 the testimony and you are in constant 
 need of correction. To speak more 
 strictly, you can never be a law to your- 
 self. God is the one lawgiver, as He is 
 the final judge ; and you have to judge 
 according to His law, or your judgment 
 is naught. You must learn the law, 
 never content with ignorance, until 
 your knowledge is perfect.
 
 76 CONSCIENCE OF SIN 
 
 The judge must apply the law. I 
 have said that the law by which you are 
 to judge yourself is not a brass-bound 
 code of ordinances. The Pharisees 
 made it that, adding details which were 
 foolishly, though honestly, devised for 
 safeguards. You cannot take the code 
 and measure your conduct by it as with 
 a foot-rule. Self -judgment is no such 
 easy task. That kind of procedure leads 
 to but one conclusion ; it means the 
 tithing of mint, anise and cummin, to 
 the neglect of weightier matters. " Cir- 
 cumstances alter cases," and in judg- 
 ment you have to weigh the circum- 
 stances. Do not be afraid of the name 
 of casuistry ; it means nothing else but 
 the judgment of cases with circumstance. 
 There is bad casuistry ; the casuistical 
 twisting of the law for the comfort of a 
 bad conscience. You must be on your 
 guard against it, for there is nothing more 
 common in self- judgment. But do not
 
 JUDGMENT 77 
 
 neglect good casuistry. You need it if 
 your judgment is to be sincere. There 
 is an absolute law, but it needs adjust- 
 ment to the circumstances of human life. 
 The law is absolute ; read again the 
 Sermon on the Mount and see how 
 absolute ; yet to the Church is com- 
 mitted the power to bind and to loose, 
 and that power is nothing else but 
 authority in questions of adjustment. 
 But you must not be too eager for loosing. 
 The Church should be pitiful, as God 
 is pitiful. But do not squander pity 
 on yourself. Self-pity is despicable, 
 and ruinous to judgment. Be gentle 
 with others, and correspondingly stern 
 with yourself. You know what it 
 is to balance things the other way 
 about. 
 
 You have to sit in judgment on your- 
 self. It is a perilous task. Who shall 
 be judge in his own cause ? Safety lies 
 in sternness. If the cause be with your
 
 78 CONSCIENCE OF SIN 
 
 neighbour, you must be ready to give 
 sentence against yourself. The cause 
 is also with God, and there you can have 
 no doubt. Yet to condemn yourself is 
 no easy thing ; excuses abound, and you 
 grasp at them. You need an assessor 
 in judgment, one who shall be less par- 
 tial. You must not abdicate the judg- 
 ment seat ; you may seek direction of 
 conscience, but the director must never 
 be allowed to depose you. A physician 
 seldom prescribes for himself ; the most 
 experienced lawyer usually commits a 
 cause of his own to a fellow-practitioner ; 
 but these are not altogether parallel cases. 
 Your soul is not as your body or as your 
 goods. Moreover, you are not here plead- 
 ing your cause, but sitting in judgment ; 
 and, if you seek healing, it is only when 
 judgment is complete. You need an 
 assessor in judgment, before whom you 
 will lay your case without reserve. The 
 very statement will make things clear
 
 JUDGMENT 79 
 
 which self-love might confuse, and coun- 
 sel may do much more. That is the 
 educative value of confession. Make no 
 mistake about the meaning of the word. 
 Confession is not the same thing as intro- 
 spection, or the secret examination of 
 conscience in the sight of God. In the 
 writings of the New Testament, confes- 
 sion never means anything but open 
 acknowledgment in the hearing of your 
 fellow-men. " Confess your sins one to 
 another," says St. James in his homely 
 wisdom, and confession before the 
 Church, or before a priest who represents 
 the Church, is a normal procedure for 
 Christian men. I am not speaking of 
 the grace of absolution, but of the con- 
 fession which is preliminary to absolu- 
 tion, the stern self-discipline which is 
 the price paid for that healing comfort. 
 Confession of sins may be made without 
 thought of sacramental absolution. 
 " You must hear my confession," said
 
 8o CONSCIENCE OF SIN 
 
 a French colonel the other day to an 
 astonished private soldier. He lay mor- 
 tally wounded where no priest was at 
 hand ; he gave some terse orders to his 
 command, and then turned to the nearest 
 man who could receive his confession, 
 that as accuser and judge in one he 
 might discern himself ; there was to be 
 no cloaking of his sins. 
 
 That is the purport of confession that 
 I now have in mind; a guarantee for 
 honesty in self -judgment. You can 
 make something else of it ; a pharisaic 
 observance, an end in itself, a dreary 
 formality; or again, a slippery tale of 
 things half concealed, a display of virtue, 
 a sedative for the conscience. But to do 
 that is to give up self- discernment alto- 
 gether, and to await without prepara- 
 tion the terrors of God's judgment. You 
 are to use your conscience for self- 
 judgment ; you are to neglect no 
 means by which that judgment can
 
 JUDGMENT 81 
 
 be made searching and stern ; you 
 are to use what means there are, and 
 look to it that you use them faith- 
 fully.
 
 V 
 Conversion 
 
 " Water, which also in the antitype doth now 
 save you, even baptism, not the putting away of 
 the filth of the flesh, but the interrogation of a 
 good conscience toward God, through the resur- 
 rection of Jesus Christ." i PETER iii. 21. 
 
 I HAVE asked what is your starting- 
 point in religion : knowledge or the 
 fear of God. Some knowledge there 
 must be ; the knowledge at least of 
 yourself as owning an obligation, the 
 knowledge which is conscience ; and 
 some measure of knowledge also, which 
 perhaps hardly amounts to knowledge, 
 of Him to Whom you stand in obligation, 
 of Whom you stand in awe. " Stand 
 in awe and sin not ; " those few words 
 of the psalm seem to sum the matter up
 
 CONVERSION 83 
 
 very neatly. Some knowledge is neces- 
 sary ; but if conscience, your know- 
 ledge of yourself, is made the starting- 
 point, it does not seem to lead to much 
 more than the worship of an image 
 of yourself. Even knowledge of God, 
 taken merely as knowledge, will lead 
 only to a more or less satisfied curiosity, 
 and so at the best to complacency. It 
 is another matter if the fear of the Lord 
 is the beginning of your wisdom. 
 
 So I have said to you before ; and 
 now I am going on to ask what is the 
 meaning of this beginning. From your 
 starting-point do you go straight forward, 
 unhaltingly, unswervingly ? Have you 
 received an impulse which drives you 
 continuously onward ? Do you advance 
 from the first feeling of awe to an ever 
 deepening sense of the divine majesty, 
 and thence to the perfect love that casts 
 out fear ? Is your religion sufficiently 
 described as the path of the just, a,
 
 84 CONSCIENCE OF SIN 
 
 shining light that shines more and more 
 unto the perfect day ? There may have 
 been Christians who could say as much. 
 But one does not come across them. 
 
 Our experience is very different. A 
 little more light ; and then the clouds 
 roll over your head. A brief sojourn 
 at the Palace Beautiful, and then the 
 stumb le as you go down to the Valley of 
 Humiliation. You are lifted up until 
 you seem to be within reach of holiness ; 
 and then you slip back into the mire. 
 Or worse : you seem to be going well, 
 you are comfortably disposed, have no 
 alarming temptations, pay your way 
 with little acts of penitence none too 
 costly, find the path much easier than 
 it is reputed ; and then something 
 happens ; a doubt assails you : " Am 
 I a Christian ? Is this the way of the 
 Cross ? " And the doubt deepens until 
 you are convinced that you have lost 
 the way. Or worse still: you are
 
 CONVERSION 85 
 
 struggling with difficulties, vanquishing 
 temptations ; you are satisfied that you 
 must be in the right way, it is so strait 
 and steep ; and suddenly it brings you 
 to the brink of a precipice, where there 
 is no passage. 
 
 What will you do ? Will you lie 
 down in despair ? Or will you hark 
 back to make a fresh start ? It may 
 be a costly business ; there may be 
 weary steps to retrace, much self- 
 approval to be dropped. Or it may be 
 necessary only to pick yourself up, 
 to recover your footing, and to go for- 
 ward. But even that is a fresh start, 
 and you need a renewal of the driving 
 impulse. 
 
 What is the impulse ? What is the 
 beginning ? The fear of the Lord. 
 But not the fear that makes you draw 
 back. That is no impulse. It is the 
 fear that draws you, as Moses was 
 drawn to the burning bush : "I will
 
 86 CONSCIENCE OF SIN 
 
 turn aside now and see this great sight." 
 There is something so terrible about 
 the mystery of the world, and of myself 
 in the world ; above all, there is this 
 strange notion of something wrong with 
 the world, something wrong in myself, 
 of which I am conscious. I must manage 
 to solve this riddle. The beginning of 
 religion is in the search of God. 
 
 But of God, the Maker of the world 
 which I am helping to spoil. How 
 shall I face Him ? " Wherewith shall I 
 come before the Lord, and bow myself be- 
 fore the high God ? " The impulse of 
 religion is a desire to come before God 
 with a good conscience. How can it 
 be compassed ? 
 
 There are times when it seems an 
 easy thing. You have but to throw 
 yourself, without fear, without reserve, 
 on the bosom of your Heavenly Father. 
 He has commended His love toward us, 
 in that while we were yet sinners Christ
 
 CONVERSION 87 
 
 died for the ungodly. The Gospel is a 
 message of welcome to sinners. " Come 
 unto Me all ye that labour and are heavy 
 laden and I will give you rest." You 
 come in faith, trusting His promise : 
 there is nothing else to be done ; you 
 know your unworthiness, and acknow- 
 ledge it : "I have sinned against heaven 
 and in Thy sight, and am not worthy 
 to be called Thy son ; " but you will not 
 let the terrors of an evil conscience hold 
 you back, and in the very act of coming 
 you find your conscience cleansed ; the 
 consciousness of love overwhelms and 
 sweeps away the consciousness of guilt. 
 What is guilt, after all, but a relation to 
 God ? It is God Himself that justifies 
 you ; who shall condemn ? 
 
 What do we know of that experience, 
 we to whom the Christian religion has 
 become a routine ? We are conscious 
 rather of besetting sins, of weak spas- 
 modic endeavour, of nerveless acquies-
 
 88 CONSCIENCE OF SIN 
 
 cence, of failure, of many failures. It 
 dates from our childhood, and it has 
 always been much the same. Are you 
 inclined to envy those to whom the 
 faith of the Gospel comes as a new thing, a 
 new hope, a new assurance, a new appeal ? 
 These are such ; and all were such at 
 the beginning. You can see their fresh- 
 ness in all that you read about them. 
 They were not remarkably good Chris- 
 tians ; St. Paul had to visit some of 
 them with a rod, St. Peter had to 
 instruct them in elementary morality 
 with warnings against murder and theft ; 
 even St. John had trouble with Dio- 
 trephes, who was rebellious, prating 
 against him with wicked words. But 
 where else will you find such splendid 
 optimism as in John's great Epistle ? 
 " Hereby know we that we abide in 
 Him, and He in us, because He hath 
 given us of His Spirit. . . . Herein is 
 love made perfect with us, that we
 
 CONVERSION 89 
 
 may have boldness in the day of judg- 
 ment. . . . There is no fear in love : 
 but perfect love casteth out fear. . . . 
 Ye have an anointing from the Holy 
 One, and ye know all things. . . . 
 Hereby shall we know that we are of 
 the truth, and shall assure our heart 
 before Him, whereinsoever our heart 
 condemn us ; because God is greater 
 than our heart, and knoweth all 
 things." 
 
 To these men their baptism was a 
 tremendous fact which there was no 
 gainsaying. And what did it mean ? 
 They linked it with another tremendous 
 fact, the resurrection of Jesus Christ. 
 Think of that. For them it was no far- 
 off historic event, dim and disputed ; 
 it was a new thing, a strange thing, an 
 unheard of thing, which had happened 
 within living memory, and they knew 
 the very witnesses who had told them 
 what was seen. As new, as strange,
 
 90 CONSCIENCE OF SIN 
 
 as unheard of, was for each one the 
 fact of his own baptism. What did it 
 mean ? 
 
 I might send you to St Paul : " We 
 were buried with Him through baptism 
 into death : that like as Christ was 
 raised from the dead through the glory 
 of the Father, so we also might walk 
 in newness of life." But St. Peter will 
 serve me better. Let us see what he 
 says. 
 
 " Water," (I pass by the strange 
 teaching of types, so foreign to our way 
 of thinking, in which the waters of the 
 Flood are treated as the means by which 
 the family of Noah was saved from 
 death) " water, which also in the anti- 
 type doth now save you, even baptism." 
 And what way of salvation was here ? 
 I have no doubt that many of them 
 confusedly attributed to the water it- 
 self some cleansing efficacy. But St. 
 Peter comes down forcibly on that
 
 CONVERSION 91 
 
 folly. " Not the putting away of the 
 filth of the flesh " : that had a sym- 
 bolic value, and the act was an essential 
 part of the mystery of Christian initiation, 
 but the operative part of the mystery 
 is what the washing signifies. And what 
 is that ? " The interrogation of a good 
 conscience toward God." I wish our 
 later translators had given us something 
 more intelligible. The old rendering, "the 
 answer of a good conscience," was cer- 
 tainly wrong ; even if the word could bear 
 such a meaning, which is hardly possible, 
 this would give you the after effect of 
 salvation, not the way of attaining 
 salvation. But what is the interrogation 
 of a good conscience ? 
 
 You must look closely at the text, 
 and you will see that the phrases are 
 balanced. " Not the putting away of the 
 filth of the flesh " : that is, getting 
 rid of something ; then the correspond- 
 ing phrase means the acquisition of
 
 92 CONSCIENCE OF SIN 
 
 something. And the word used fits 
 this meaning very well. It is to ask, 
 but not only to ask a question. You 
 find it in St. Matthew's Gospel, where 
 it is said that the Pharisees asked our 
 Lord to show them a sign from heaven. 
 It implies an urgent, insistent request ; 
 indeed, a demand. You see, then, 
 what St. Peter means. In the man 
 who comes to baptism there is under- 
 stood to be an urgent desire for a good 
 conscience ; a consciousness, that is 
 to say, no longer of guilt but of par- 
 don complete and without reserve. An 
 urgent desire, and even more than a 
 desire ; a claim, a demand. And it is 
 this which is operative in baptism, 
 the mystery of Christian initiation. 
 
 What then ? Does the man clear 
 his own conscience by conceiving this 
 desire, by making this demand ? Is 
 it the same thing to wish and to have ? 
 Is he the author of his own salvation ?
 
 CONVERSION 93 
 
 In that case any way of expressing the 
 desire will do as well as any other way ; 
 the blood of bulls and goats will be 
 quite effectual for putting away sin. 
 You must know pretty well the sort of 
 mind that indulges that dream. Per- 
 haps you are inclined that way yourself. 
 All that is needed, you think, is a good 
 resolution ; you will turn over a new 
 leaf, and paste down the old leaves 
 with their unpleasant record. Only an 
 effort is required. " I will go out as at 
 other times, and shake myself," said 
 Sampson. Look to it that your locks 
 be not shorn. 
 
 That, of course, is clean contrary to 
 the teaching of the Gospel. Nay, long 
 before the teaching of the Gospel it was 
 said, " It cost more to redeem their 
 souls." And human experience verifies 
 the teaching of the Gospel. What is 
 the use of the new clean leaf, while the 
 record remains on the leaves that are
 
 94 CONSCIENCE OF SIN 
 
 turned ? Or how will you go forward, 
 leaving your old self behind ? Can you 
 cut yourself loose from your past ? 
 
 It is not the demand for a clear 
 conscience that wins it, but the ground 
 on which the demand is based. 
 " Through the resurrection of Jesus 
 Christ " : that is the condition. And 
 resurrection follows death. You must 
 die with Christ, if you are to rise with 
 Him. You are buried with Him through 
 baptism into death. Then you are 
 cut off from your past ; you lie down 
 with your sins, to wake without them, 
 and to go forth leaving the grave- 
 clothes behind. 
 
 That is what baptism means. How 
 can it mean this to us, who do not 
 even remember our baptism ? Does it 
 always mean this for those who do 
 remember ? At that first preaching of 
 the Gospel nothing less was expected ; 
 men were to go forward " holding the
 
 CONVERSION 95 
 
 mystery of the faith in a pure conscience." 
 A falling away was a terrible thing to 
 contemplate. " As touching those who 
 were once enlightened and tasted of 
 the heavenly gift, and were made par- 
 takers of the Holy Ghost, and tasted 
 the good word of God and the powers of 
 the age to come, and then fell away, 
 it is impossible to renew them again 
 unto repentance." There was no 
 second renewal, no repeated baptism. 
 Those stern words of the Epistle to 
 the Hebrews were perhaps enforced too 
 sternly. Before long, effective repent- 
 ance was denied to a Christian who had 
 fallen ; then there was a slight relaxa- 
 tion : one formal penance was allowed 
 with absolution to follow, and no more. 
 So it continued for some time. 
 
 That penitential discipline of the 
 primitive Church, the restoration of 
 which we vaguely desire on Ash Wednes- 
 day, was a very hard thing, strangely
 
 96 CONSCIENCE OF SIN 
 
 at variance with the tenderest teachings 
 of the Gospel. And it did not work well. 
 It required a sharp discrimination be- 
 tween the graver sins which excluded 
 a man from Christian fellowship, and 
 the venial sins for which there was 
 no formal penance ; the result was 
 that these latter were regarded too 
 lightly, and the standard of Christian 
 living was lowered. It broke down by 
 degrees, with relaxations which went 
 on no clear principle, and there fell 
 upon Christendom a dark shadow. Con- 
 sciousness of habitual sin was not to 
 be denied. But the darkness was illum- 
 inated by a new light. If sin was 
 habitual, it was found that penance 
 also might be habitual. Not many 
 things that we owe to the Middle Ages 
 are worth preserving, but this is one 
 of them, and we owe it chiefly to the 
 preaching of the Friars. It is not sur- 
 prising that the sons of St. Francis,
 
 CONVERSION 97 
 
 who renewed in his own person all the 
 sweetness of the Gospel, should have 
 found a new method of applying to the 
 moral weakness of mankind the healing 
 power of the Gospel. The penitential 
 discipline of the Church, remaining the 
 same in principle, became a new thing 
 in practice. Absolution was free for 
 all comers, even for the worst of sinners. 
 Such procedure would have seemed in- 
 tolerable to the saints of an earlier 
 age ; the Apostles, I should say, never 
 dreamt of anything like it ; but the 
 roots of it are in the teaching of our 
 Lord Himself. 
 
 The Christian life is become a life 
 of penance. Not sinners alone, but 
 saints are penitents ; and advance in 
 holiness does but deepen penitence. 
 The holiest men and women make the 
 fullest and most tearful confessions. We 
 seem to be far removed from that fresh 
 vigour and cheerfulness of the begin-
 
 98 CONSCIENCE OF SIN 
 
 nings of the Gospel. And yet it is 
 not really so. The Christian community 
 has lost confidence ; sin is taken as 
 a matter of course ; we seem to be 
 back in the Old Testament : "I shall 
 go softly all my years in the bitterness 
 of my soul." But for the individual 
 penitent there is still the old freshness 
 of renewal, the same joyous hope. With 
 a difference : there is still the splendour 
 of conversion, but now it is Christians 
 who are converted. And conversion is 
 not one great crisis of a life, as it was 
 for St. Paul or for St. Augustine. It 
 is a frequent renewal. Your baptism 
 lies behind you, not to be renewed. 
 It is still impossible for you in that 
 sense to renew yourself again unto re- 
 pentance. But though you have cruci- 
 fied to yourself the Son of God afresh, 
 and put Him to an open shame (what 
 else is the meaning of the life that most 
 Christians live!), yet there is no barrier
 
 CONVERSION 99 
 
 built to shut you out from returning 
 to the arms of His love. And certainly 
 He would have it so. Conscious of 
 sin, of repeated sin, of shameful falling 
 away, you may yet make that bold 
 demand, claim the cleansing of your 
 conscience from dead works, through 
 the resurrection of Jesus Christ. You 
 are His ; and He will not have you 
 plucked out of His hand. Your former 
 tasting of the heavenly gift increases 
 your shame, but it shall not be reckoned 
 against you : no, not unto seventy times 
 seven. 
 
 " Turn Thou us, O good Lord, and 
 so shall we be turned. Be favourable, 
 O Lord, be favourable to Thy people, 
 who turn to Thee in weeping, fasting 
 and praying. For Thou art a merciful 
 God, full of compassion, long suffering 
 and of great pity. Thou sparest when 
 we deserve punishment, and in Thy 
 wrath thinkest upon mercy. Spare Thy
 
 ioo CONSCIENCE OF SIN 
 
 people, good Lord, spare them, and let 
 not Thine heritage be brought to con- 
 fusion. Hear us, O Lord, for Thy mercy 
 is great, and after the multitude of Thy 
 mercies look upon us ; through the 
 merits and mediation of Thy blessed 
 Son, Jesus Christ our Lord."
 
 VI 
 
 Redemption 
 
 " If the blood of goats and bulls, and the ashes 
 of a heifer sprinkling them that have been defiled, 
 sanctify unto the cleanness of the flesh, how much 
 more shall the blood of Christ, who through the 
 eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish 
 unto God, cleanse your conscience from dead works 
 to serve the living God ? " HEBREWS ix. 13. 
 
 CONSCIENCE of sin is knowledge 
 of your own guilt. Properly, it 
 is that and nothing else. But it carries 
 with it a consequence. Sin is not done 
 with when it is done. We are so con- 
 stituted by nature that every human 
 act has incalculable effects. You can 
 seldom trace them, but now and then 
 you come up against one of them where 
 you least expect it, and you are re- 
 101
 
 102 CONSCIENCE OF SIN 
 
 minded of what you have done, put 
 aside, and forgotten. It may be a 
 good deed that you blush to remember, 
 a seed of kindness bearing fruit to your 
 surprise. It is more likely to be some- 
 thing which it angers you to remember, 
 an act of meanness or falsity, which 
 you thought was put safely out of the 
 way. For we cover up our misdeeds 
 even more carefully than our virtues, 
 and are correspondingly annoyed when 
 they are brought to light in their 
 consequences. They are not always 
 brought to light, but they always have 
 consequences. 
 
 We can hardly help knowing this, 
 however careful we may be not to 
 trouble ourselves about it ; and so 
 conscience of sin carries with it a dis- 
 agreeable consciousness of results partly 
 unknown, of a harvest not yet reaped. 
 That may be terrific. Consequences 
 stretch out (it is the common phrase)
 
 REDEMPTION 103 
 
 to the crack of doom ; but the crack 
 of doom can at most herald only the 
 full disclosure of the consequences, not 
 the end of their course. And mean- 
 while we are liable to unknown perils. 
 
 There is no getting away from this. 
 You cannot undo anything that you 
 have done. You can modify its effect 
 by your subsequent conduct, because 
 what will happen in the future is the 
 sum of the effects of all causes that 
 have gone before ; but that is the 
 utmost that you can do. You cannot 
 wipe out any consequence of anything 
 that you have done. And what all 
 the consequences may be you have 
 no means of knowing. 
 
 But some things we know. We know 
 the meaning of a formed habit. It is 
 usually the effect of repeated actions, 
 but sometimes there is an astonishingly 
 rapid growth ; one act leads directly 
 to another, and to another ; a habit
 
 104 CONSCIENCE OF SIN 
 
 seems to be formed from the first ; 
 one determined effort of the will, or 
 even one act into which you stumble 
 almost unwittingly, seems to establish 
 you in a certain way of conduct. We 
 know also that a formed habit is not 
 easily broken off ; and then we observe 
 a strange and disconcerting fact ; good 
 habits are less secure, and are more 
 easily dropped, while bad habits are 
 most persistent. I doubt whether 
 anyone misses that experience. Per- 
 haps the explanation is that as a rule 
 we do not try to get rid of good habits, 
 and so have no opportunity of observ- 
 ing how they stick ; but most of us 
 are trying to correct bad habits, and 
 their persistence is a constant trouble 
 to us. Good resolutions often come 
 to nothing, and it is a very broad road 
 that is paved with good intentions. 
 
 For the most part we take these 
 things easily. The Gospel takes them
 
 REDEMPTION 105 
 
 very seriously. It is a gospel, a mes- 
 sage of hope, precisely because it is a 
 promise of liberation from this trouble. 
 If we make light of the Gospel, as 
 most of us do, it is because we have 
 not taken the full measure of the trouble. 
 The Gospel has no meaning for you 
 unless you have a conscience awake 
 and well-informed. A well-informed 
 conscience is consciousness, not only 
 of a burden of guilt, but also of some 
 consequences of sin. If guilt were all, 
 you would have nothing to desire but 
 forgiveness. Knowledge of the effects 
 of sin makes you demand something 
 more. You are conscious not only of 
 sin but also of sinfulness, of a sinful 
 habit. From that you ask to be de- 
 livered. 
 
 You are not likely to feel the pres- 
 sure of the sinful habit with the inten- 
 sity which you find in St. Paul. Few 
 have so felt it. To few, therefore,
 
 106 CONSCIENCE OF SIN 
 
 can the Gospel come home as it came 
 home to him. His language may seem 
 to you exaggerated. Let me quote 
 some of it. 
 
 " The scripture hath shut up all 
 things under sin." A sweeping asser- 
 tion : is it founded only on the external 
 warrant of Scripture ? " We were 
 held in bondage under the elements 
 of the world." The poor world : are 
 we to blame it ? "Ye were in bond- 
 age to them which by nature are no 
 gods." Are paganism and idolatry 
 what matters ? " The flesh lusteth 
 against the Spirit, and the Spirit against 
 the flesh ; for these are contrary the 
 one to the other ; that ye may not do 
 the things that ye would." And the 
 works of the flesh are manifest : fornica- 
 tion, uncleanness, lasciviousness, and the 
 rest. " The animal man receiveth not 
 the things of the Spirit of God ; for 
 they are foolishness unto him." How
 
 REDEMPTION 107 
 
 helpless we are then ! " The wisdom 
 of this world is foolishness with God." 
 Even its wisdom : and what then its 
 folly ? "I buffet my body and bring 
 it into bondage ; lest by any means, 
 after that I have preached to others, 
 I myself should be rejected." What 
 violence ! " There was given to me a 
 thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan 
 to buffet me, that I should not be exalted 
 over much." This after his conversion, 
 and his many labours ; thrice he prayed 
 to be delivered from it, but was told to 
 bear it courageously in the power of 
 God's grace. And what of his former 
 state ? What of those not yet brought 
 in ? " God gave them up in the lusts 
 of their hearts unto uncleanness. . . . 
 God gave them up unto vile passions. 
 . . . God gave them up unto a repro- 
 bate mind." Here are terrible words : 
 " God gave them up ; " a thrice repeated 
 assertion. Left to their own devices, to
 
 io8 CONSCIENCE OF SIN 
 
 their own formed habits, what could 
 they do ? " Sin reigned in death ; " 
 the brand of it was on all mankind. 
 " Ye were servants of sin." Does he 
 speak as a harsh teacher, from a stand- 
 point of superiority ? He turns to his 
 own experience. He finds that the 
 very law of God does but aggravate his 
 sinfulness. " I was alive apart from 
 the law once : but when the command- 
 ment came, sin revived, and I died." 
 Died : he calls it death, this subjection 
 to the sinful habit. He calls it slavery : 
 " I am carnal, sold under sin." And 
 he knows this of his own self-knowledge : 
 " I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, 
 dwelleth no good thing : for to will is 
 present with me, but to do that which 
 is good is not. ... O wretched man 
 that I am ! who shall deliver me out of 
 the body of this death ! " 
 
 I have gone through the earlier Epis- 
 tles, written by St. Paul in great stress
 
 REDEMPTION 109 
 
 of emotion ; but it is noticeable that 
 in the later Epistles, which belong to 
 a much less combatant period of his 
 life, you find even plainer language, 
 used in sober statement of fact. " Ye 
 were dead through your trespasses and 
 sins, wherein aforetime ye walked accord- 
 ing to the course of this world. . . . 
 We also all once lived in the lusts of 
 the flesh ; doing the desires of the flesh 
 and of the mind, and were by nature 
 children of wrath. . . . Having no 
 hope, and without God in the world." 
 He sees men " darkened in their under- 
 standing, alienated from the life of God 
 because of the ignorance that is in them." 
 Even in that last Epistle to the Philip- 
 pians, most beautiful and serene of 
 all, he turns for a moment to glance at 
 those " whose end is perdition, whose 
 god is the belly, and whose glory is in 
 their shame, who mind earthly things." 
 It is a tremendous indictment of
 
 no CONSCIENCE OF SIN 
 
 mankind. Or rather, it is no indict- 
 ment, but a confession ; a cry wrung 
 out of the heart of suffering humanity. 
 I do not suppose that you can make it 
 altogether your own. You are probably 
 much less human than St. Paul. But 
 there must be some correspondence with 
 it in your own conscience. What I 
 would press upon you at present, how- 
 ever, is the fact that this consciousness 
 of misery is the background of the Gospel 
 which you do at least accept. What- 
 ever your personal feelings may be, your 
 open prayer is, ' ' Have mercy upon us 
 miserable sinners." 
 
 There are two ways in which we com- 
 monly speak of this background of 
 sin, and there are two consequent titles 
 of our Lord. Sin is treated as a deadly 
 sickness of the human soul, and He is 
 therefore the Saviour, the Healer. His 
 miracles of healing were used in illus- 
 tration. He would say alike to the
 
 REDEMPTION in 
 
 blind and to the sinner, " Thy faith 
 hath saved thee." He said to the par- 
 alytic, first, " Thy sins are forgiven 
 thee ; " and then, for evidence of power, 
 " Rise up and walk." Sinfulness, again, 
 is treated as a state of helpless subjuga- 
 tion ; in a word, of slavery ; and He is 
 therefore the Redeemer. To those who 
 would deny their enslavement, He said, 
 " The truth shall make you free." It 
 was an unwelcome suggestion. ' We 
 were never in bondage to any man," 
 they replied. It was a pitifully false 
 boast, in any sense ; it was an evasion 
 of the truth that was being driven home 
 to their consciences. 
 
 You must know something of the 
 sickness of soul which is the result of 
 sin. Your experience may not reach 
 to the great saying, " The wages of sin 
 is death ; " but weakness and languor 
 you must have felt, perhaps even a 
 weariness of life. But you are probably
 
 H2 CONSCIENCE OF SIN 
 
 far more conscious of the enslavement 
 of sinful habit. It is to the Redeemer 
 that you look more than to the Saviour. 
 But the truth of Redemption may be 
 obscured for you by the way in which 
 it is presented, and now in Passiontide 
 is the time for its consideration. 
 
 The exact meaning of Redemption is 
 deliverance of captives by purchase, 
 on the payment of a ransom. This 
 practice has so entirely disappeared 
 from our ordinary course of life that 
 language drawn from it has almost lost 
 meaning for us. It was generally in 
 evidence during the whole period of 
 human history in which the way was 
 being prepared for the Gospel. It 
 coloured all religious practice. Above 
 all, it gave a special significance to sacri- 
 fice. Sacrifice is an obvious way of 
 worship. It is the payment of tribute 
 to God. It is waste ; the destruction 
 of what you might use for your own
 
 REDEMPTION 113 
 
 advantage. But in sacrifice there is 
 always a thought of communion with 
 God. What the worshipper freely gives, 
 without reserve, is graciously returned 
 in part ; they who serve the altar, and 
 they who approach the altar, are in 
 varying degrees partakers with the altar. 
 There is no need to dwell on complicated 
 rules of ritual ; the main point is what 
 matters. But when consciousness of 
 sin comes in, another thought presents 
 itself. The sinner is in forfeit ; con- 
 sciousness of the sinful habit is conscious- 
 ness of a state of penal servitude. How 
 can the sinner be free to approach 
 God ? The gift that is offered in sacri- 
 fice becomes a ransom paid for his 
 enfranchisement. " Wherewith shall I 
 come before the Lord, and bow myself be- 
 fore the high God ? . . . Shall I give 
 my firstborn for my transgression, the 
 fruit of my body for the sin of my soul ? " 
 These ideas, no doubt, were at all 
 
 H
 
 ii4 CONSCIENCE OF SIN 
 
 times very confused. They seem to be 
 made precise in the Mosaic ritual. There 
 you find the whole burnt- offering of 
 solemn worship, various sin-offerings 
 for redemption, and the peace-offerings 
 with their feast of communion. But the 
 distinctions are not as abrupt as they 
 seem at first sight ; the three ideas are 
 interwoven, and the ritual of the blood 
 of redemption is represented in every 
 sacrifice. The great events of the Gos- 
 pel were designed to fulfil these and 
 other types. It is important to insist 
 on this. The language of St. Matthew 
 is precise ; it is repeatedly said that 
 something was done expressly " that 
 it might be fulfilled which was spoken 
 by the prophets." Our Lord was careful, 
 for reasons which can be divined by 
 a careful reader, to act in literal accord- 
 ance with a particular prophecy when He 
 made His strange entry into Jerusalem 
 from the mountain of Olives, No other
 
 REDEMPTION 115 
 
 example stands out quite so clearly, 
 but this one example reveals the prin- 
 ciple of the fulfilment of prophecy. 
 The law and the prophets were in general 
 a preparation for the Gospel ; particular 
 things were done and said in order that 
 men might recognize the coming of what 
 they hoped for, though it did not come 
 by any means in the way of their expecta- 
 tion. Thus the death of the Lord upon 
 the Cross was the fulfilment of all sacri- 
 ficial types ; above all, of the type of 
 redemption by blood. But the reality 
 must not be interpreted, except in a 
 limited sense, by the types and the 
 ideas that man had of them. This mode 
 of interpretation has led to strange and 
 fantastic theories of redemption, some 
 of which stand in the names of great 
 leaders of Christian thought. Their 
 variety and their mutual contradic- 
 tions show that they are no integral 
 part of the real truth. They all contain
 
 n6 CONSCIENCE OF SIN 
 
 some shreds of truth, as the original 
 types did, but the truth exceeds them 
 all. They are attempted explanations 
 of the fact of redemption ; you may 
 use them as partial expressions of the 
 fact ; you may put them all aside, if 
 you hold fast to the fact itself. It is 
 the fact that matters, not the explana- 
 tion. We cling to the language of the 
 types ; we cannot do otherwise, for it 
 is consecrated; but we must not sup- 
 pose that we can gather it up into a 
 full explanation of the reality. Full 
 explanation is probably impossible ; 
 you cannot reduce a mystery of God 
 to the compass of a limited understand- 
 ing. 
 
 Redemption is a fact. It is the 
 central fact of our religion. You can 
 know it only as a fact of your own experi- 
 ence. It is a real deliverance from the 
 enslaving and paralysing burden of the 
 sinful habit. And this deliverance will
 
 REDEMPTION 117 
 
 be found at the Cross. That was St. 
 Paul's experience. It is the experience 
 of unnumbered saints. Love, and the 
 sacrifice of love, conquer sin. Bunyan's 
 Pilgrim comes to the Cross, and straight- 
 way the burden of sin which was bound 
 upon his back is loosed and falls away. 
 He was conscious of the burden, and 
 is conscious of the deliverance ; he can 
 explain neither the one nor the other, 
 but he cannot deny his consciousness. 
 I would not trust Bunyan's theory of 
 redemption ; still less would I take him 
 for a guide in other departments of 
 theology ; but these two facts he knew 
 by experience, that he had been bound 
 under sin, and that the Crucified was 
 his Redeemer. 
 
 You too can know this only by experi- 
 ence. You may believe it as a doctrine 
 taught. You can receive it, to begin 
 with, in no other way. You must go 
 to the Cross in reliance on the testimony
 
 n8 CONSCIENCE OF SIN 
 
 of others, on the witness of the Church, 
 on the recorded experience of sinners 
 become saints. But your belief will 
 be a poor infructuous thing, until you 
 have rendered it into the terms of 
 your own experience. You must be 
 conscious of sin, you must make your 
 own the language in which you are 
 taught to call yourself a miserable sin- 
 ner. Then you must become conscious 
 of deliverance. Then all will be changed. 
 " I had heard of Thee by the hearing 
 of the ear, but now mine eye seeth 
 Thee." Then you are conscious of 
 redemption. You may try to account 
 for it, or you may rest content with 
 the fact ; it matters little which you do. 
 You have the fact in possession. You 
 have entered into the Holy of Holies 
 by the blood of Jesus. No sermon or 
 catechism can do more than bring you 
 to the threshold. In your own con- 
 science you must pass the veil.
 
 Appendix 
 
 CONSCIENCE 
 
 RELIGION is the voluntary submission of 
 human actions to the control of a 
 higher Power. In the language of the New 
 Testament the Christian Religion is usually 
 described as the service of God. The strongest 
 possible word is used. Christians are bond- 
 servants, slaves ; that is to say, their wills, 
 their souls and bodies, are not their own ; 
 they are bought with a price. But they enter 
 into this servitude and continue in it by an 
 act of their own will. The Christian ideal is 
 to be free, not using freedom for a cloak 
 of wickedness, but as a bond-servant of 
 God. 1 
 
 1 i Cor. vi. 20 ; i Pet. ii. 16. The word religion 
 
 is badly used in the English Bible. In Acts xxvi. 5, 
 
 it stands for Oprja-Keia, the formal observance of rule ; 
 
 in Gal. i. 13, 14, 'lovSaioytos is merely the Jewish 
 
 119
 
 120 CONSCIENCE OF SIN 
 
 The first thing needed for service of this 
 kind is to know the will of the Master. The 
 knowledge of God, whether attained by nature 
 or by revelation, is the groundwork of religion. 
 But for this purpose a purely objective know- 
 ledge is not sufficient. To be religious a man 
 must have this knowledge subjectively in 
 relation to himself. He must begin with the 
 question that rose to the lips of St. Paul at the 
 moment of his conversion : " What shall I do, 
 Lord ? " Knowledge of this kind is called by 
 a special name, Conscience. The idea was 
 common to Greek and Latin thought, and 
 found similar expression in both languages. 
 The Greek word barely made its way into the 
 Septuagint rendering of the Old Testament ; 
 it does not occur in the Gospels, but is frequent 
 in the Epistles of the New Testament. 1 
 
 polity (cf. 2 Mace. ii. 21) ; in Jas. i. 26, 
 probably means an observer of ceremonies, and such 
 is his 6p-rja-Kf.ia, while in the next verse Oprjo-Keta seems 
 to be used with a touch of irony. The word religion 
 occurs nowhere else. 
 
 1 The verb crweiSeVcu, Lat. conscire, or more com- 
 monly conscius esse, gives the substantive TO o-weiSos 
 or crwee'Siyo-is, Lat. conscientia, common from the time 
 of Cicero. The LXX. has the word only in Eccles. 
 X. 2O, Kai^ye ev crweiSi/crei <rou /3cunAea ///>) Ka.Tapa.a-r). 
 The reading in John viii. 9 is apparently not genuine.
 
 APPENDIX 121 
 
 The Apostles build then upon a current idea, 
 the exact nature of which we must ascertain. 
 It starts from the notion of acquaintance with 
 the actions of another. To be conscious of 
 him is to share his knowledge of what he is 
 doing, to be privy to his designs, the word 
 being used more especially of a guilty know- 
 ledge which makes a man accessory to crime. 
 From this we pass to a like knowledge of 
 one's own guilt ; and here the specific sense 
 of the word begins. To be conscious, in this 
 sense, is to know oneself to be guilty, or in- 
 versely to know oneself to be innocent. Mens 
 sibi conscia recti is so written by Vergil, while 
 the Horatian phrase nil conscire sibi shows 
 how the word, used absolutely, points rather 
 to consciousness of wrong. So St. Paul writes, 
 " I am conscious of nothing." He speaks of 
 men who are " branded in their own conscience 
 as with a hot iron," the knowledge of their 
 guilt being ineffaceably impressed on them. 
 He speaks of the testimony of his conscience to 
 his own purity of motive. There is a " con- 
 science of sins," which is destroyed by the 
 grace of pardon. The Blood of Christ cleanses 
 the conscience from dead works. There is 
 thus an evil conscience which needs cleansing,
 
 122 CONSCIENCE OF SIN 
 
 and a good or pure conscience, which is the 
 knowledge that sin either has not been done, 
 or has been altogether put away by the sanctify- 
 ing grace of God. 1 
 
 Passing from this use, the word comes to 
 mean the faculty of the mind by which a man 
 reviews his own actions, adjudging them right 
 or wrong. There is a curious tendency to 
 separate this faculty from the other reasoning 
 powers, and to personify it as a being apart 
 from the man himself, praising him or con- 
 demning him for what he has done, and con- 
 sequently controlling him by the anticipation 
 of judgment. This would seem to be what 
 Socrates meant by his familiar demon. The 
 real fact is shrewdly expressed in the well- 
 known line of Menander, which declares that 
 to every man his own conscience stands for 
 God. 2 The only approach to this in the New 
 Testament is found in St. Paul's words, " my 
 
 1 i Cor. iv. 4 ; i Tim. iv. 2 ; 2 Cor. i. 12 ; Heb. ix. 
 9, 14 ; x. 2, 22 ; xiii. 18 ; Acts xxiii. i ; xxiv. 16 ; 
 i Tim. i. 5, 19 ; 2 Tim; i. 3. 
 
 2 Bporois ttTracrtv 17, kruv eiSrja-ts eos, The more natural 
 word in this sense is TO crwetSds, which is not used in 
 the New Testament. It may be doubted whether 
 conscientia is used in this sense by classical writers, 
 but the phrase salva conscientia approximates to it.
 
 APPENDIX 123 
 
 conscience bearing witness with me " ; but in 
 the strictly accurate sense of a reasoning 
 faculty the word frequently occurs. Mind 
 and conscience are coupled by St. Paul, as 
 denied by sin ; that is to say, the reasoning 
 faculty which seizes the distinction of right and 
 wrong as objective fact, and the faculty which 
 views the distinction subjectively in relation 
 to self, are alike injured. The pure conscience 
 in which we are to hold the mystery of the 
 faith is a faculty clarified by grace. The mean- 
 ing of the word is made especially clear in St. 
 Paul's instruction to the Corinthians about 
 the idol-offerings. We have an objective 
 knowledge, he says, that an idol is a mere 
 nothing, the sacrifices before the idol have no 
 significance, the flesh of the victim has no sacra- 
 mental effect and is merely so much good food. 
 There can therefore be no harm in eating it. 
 " Howbeit in all men there is not that know- 
 ledge : but some, being used until now to the 
 idol, eat as of a thing sacrificed to an idol ; and 
 their conscience, being weak, is defiled." This 
 weak conscience is a faculty incapable of dis- 
 tinguishing between what is right and what is 
 wrong in the action ; unable to dissociate the 
 act of eating from an act of communion with
 
 124 CONSCIENCE OF SIN 
 
 the idol. For this reason Christians were 
 bound to be careful. " For if a man see thee 
 which hast knowledge sitting at meat in an 
 idol's temple, will not his conscience, if he is 
 weak, be emboldened to eat things sacrificed 
 to idols ? " That is to say, he will be led to 
 do that which he considers in some measure an 
 act of idolatrous worship. Returning to the 
 subject, and giving the Corinthian Christians 
 practical advice, St. Paul says, " Whatsoever 
 is sold in the shambles, eat, asking no question 
 for conscience sake." It may or may not be 
 the flesh of a sacrifice ; they are not to trouble 
 themselves about it, or make it a matter of 
 conscience. " If one of them that believe not 
 biddeth you to a feast, and ye are disposed to 
 go ; whatsoever is set before you, eat, asking 
 no question for conscience sake." It is the 
 same advice again. " But if any man say 
 unto you, This hath been offered in sacrifice, 
 eat not, for his sake that showed it, and for 
 conscience sake : conscience, I say, not thine 
 own, but the other's." Now the direction is 
 changed. To the man who says this (prob- 
 ably a Christian of confused mind) it is matter 
 of conscience ; he regards the flesh subjectively 
 as a means of idolatrous communion ; and the
 
 APPENDIX 125 
 
 man who knows better is required by the law of 
 charity not to cause him scandal. " But why," 
 St. Paul conceives an objector asking, " is 
 my liberty judged by another conscience ? " 
 He replies curtly, " Whether ye eat or drink, or 
 whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God. 
 Give no occasion of stumbling." l 
 
 To the respect which is due to the weak 
 conscience we shall presently return. Here 
 we must notice that, without passing alto- 
 gether away from subjectivity, the conscience 
 adjudges a thing right or wrong in the ab- 
 stract ; right or wrong for another as well as 
 for self. This implies a reference to an ex- 
 
 1 Rom. ix. i ; Tit. i. 15 ; i Tim. iii. 9 ; i Cor. viii. 
 i-io ; x. 25-32. The last passage admits two varied 
 interpretations. " For conscience sake " in vers. 
 25 and 27 may possibly mean, " Lest your own con- 
 science be denied by the knowledge of the fact," 
 in which case it is advice to those of weak conscience ; 
 but this is improbable in view of what follows. In 
 ver. 29 the question has been taken to mean, " Why 
 should I use my liberty so as to scandalize another, 
 doing that for which his conscience will condemn 
 me ? " But this is harsh and obscure, and leaves 
 the further question unexplained, " Why am I evil 
 spoken of for that for which I give thanks ? " The 
 interruption of a supposed objector is characteristic 
 of St. Paul's style.
 
 126 CONSCIENCE OF SIN 
 
 ternal standard. The judgment is not, " This 
 is wrong because I think it wrong ; " other- 
 wise I should not be able in my conscience to 
 judge another. The conscience, that is to say 
 is not a criterion to itself ; it refers to a stan- 
 dard. What is this ? The natural conscience 
 will refer to many standards : public opinion, 
 general utility, or others. Common morality 
 becomes possible only when a common stan- 
 dard is recognized. The Stoic notion of a 
 moral impulse in man, to obey which is virtue, 
 strikes at the root of social existence ; for it 
 makes every man a law to himself. This 
 would be an insufficient foundation for moral- 
 ity even if man were unf alien, abiding still in 
 the excellence of his created nature. That 
 God the Creator made man with an inclination 
 to good is as certain as that he gave him also 
 the power of choosing evil ; and this inclina- 
 tion is not wholly destroyed in fallen man. 
 But the fact that choice is possible and neces- 
 sary shows that a man is not merely to follow 
 inclination even when it is good. He is to 
 judge. There is no moral sense directly per- 
 ceiving right as right and wrong as wrong. 
 There is an active faculty of reasoning which 
 discerns between right and wrong, measuring
 
 APPENDIX 127 
 
 every act by reference to a standard. When 
 this standard is the will of a higher being, the 
 conscience becomes religious. The higher 
 being, real or imaginary, may still be far from 
 supreme ; may be whimsical, arbitrary, fan- 
 tastic. We then have a degraded form of 
 religion. But if it be to the one supreme God 
 that reference is made, to the Creator by whom 
 all things consist, whose Will is indistinguish- 
 able from the perfect good, we then have the 
 one true religion. 
 
 A conscience rightly informed is called by 
 St. Peter a conscience of God. 1 It is the con- 
 science of a man who not only acknowledges 
 God objectively as Creator and Judge, but also 
 accepts the Will of God subjectively as the 
 standard by which he discerns good and evil. 
 This, when duly instructed in the doctrine of 
 Jesus Christ, is the Christian conscience. In- 
 structed only by the law of Nature, it is still 
 a conscience of God. The Gentiles, says St. 
 Paul, without any revealed law, " show the 
 work of the Law written in their hearts, their 
 conscience bearing witness therewith, and their 
 
 1 i Pet. ii. 19 ; cp. i Cor. viii. 7, rfj <rwS?;(ret TOV 
 etSwAou, which means, if that be the right reading, a 
 conscience governed by the idolatrous idea,.
 
 128 CONSCIENCE OF SIN 
 
 reasonings one with another accusing or else 
 excusing them." By this standard of God's 
 Law a man's conscience judges not only his 
 own actions, but those of others ; marks them 
 as right or wrong either absolutely or in rela- 
 tion to circumstances. Such judgment is not 
 to be despised, as if each man had nothing to 
 regard but the conclusions of his own con- 
 science. To the conscience of Christians in 
 general St. Paul, though holding it a very 
 small thing to be judged of men, desired to 
 commend himself. 1 There is indeed no such 
 thing, strictly speaking, as a common con- 
 science, a conscience of the community. The 
 objective standard of right is proposed to the 
 Church, received by the Church, guarded by 
 the public teaching and judgment of the 
 Church : but the subjective judgment is 
 individual ; each man for himself measures 
 every action by the standard proposed. To 
 leave this undone, or to accept a judgment 
 ready-made, is to abdicate the function of con- 
 science altogether. At the same time the 
 judgment of many is founded on a broader 
 experience than the judgment of one. We 
 speak of common sense, meaning by this not 
 1 Rom. ii. 15 ; I Cor. iv. 3 ; 2 Cor. iv. 2.
 
 APPENDIX 129 
 
 a corporate judgment of humanity, but the 
 general consent of experienced men. A com- 
 mon conscience of this kind there is ; and the 
 Christian who dissents from the common 
 Christian conscience needs justification no less 
 than a man who runs counter to the common 
 sense of mankind. 
 
 The weak conscience, we have seen, is a 
 conscience imperfectly informed, and therefore 
 unable to come to a decision. The weakness 
 may be due either to lack of knowledge or to 
 lack of judgment. The latter weakness can 
 be remedied by saving grace with diligent 
 exercise of the undeveloped faculty ; the lack 
 of knowledge can be supplied only by instruc- 
 tion. But while the conscience remains weak, 
 how does the man stand ? They that are 
 strong are forbidden to encourage him by 
 their example to do a thing about which he is 
 doubtful. For him it is wrong. St. Paul has 
 a hard saying here. Dealing with a question 
 near akin to that of the idol-offerings, he says, 
 " He that doubteth is condemned if he eat 
 because he eateth not of faith ; and whatsoever 
 is not of faith is sin." We must not take these 
 last words out of their context, as if they were 
 a proposition universally applicable ; but St.
 
 130 CONSCIENCE OF SIN 
 
 Paul does lay down, as a rule of conduct apply- 
 ing to the case before him, the general prin- 
 ciple that a man who does a thing about which 
 he doubts whether it be not wrong is acting 
 sinfully. 1 
 
 The case, however, must be looked at nar- 
 rowly. It is a case of a single alternative, to 
 eat or to abstain. The one alternative, to 
 abstain, is certainly not wrong ; the other, to 
 eat, is doubtful. A man compelled to choose 
 between the two is bound to take the course 
 which is certainly not wrong. To act without 
 faith, that is to say, without the certitude of 
 being right in the sight of God, when he has 
 the option of doing so, is sin. But this ruling 
 does not directly cover the case of a man who 
 has before him two or more courses, about 
 every one of which he is doubtful whether it be 
 not wrong. How shall he act ? If he be shut 
 up to an absolute alternative, as to speak or 
 not to speak, and either course may with 
 equal possibility be wrong, it is clear that in 
 doing what is doubtful he acts under com- 
 pulsion ; and an act done truly under com- 
 pulsion has no moral quality at all, good or 
 
 1 Rom. xiv. 23.
 
 APPENDIX 131 
 
 bad ; the doer can be neither condemned nor 
 praised. But such a case must be of the 
 rarest. As a rule one course will be less prob- 
 ably wrong than the other, and probability, as 
 Butler has said, is the guide of life. The man 
 is bound to avoid the course which is more 
 probably wrong. 
 
 What is this probability ? It is a judgment 
 of the man's conscience, not final and conclu- 
 sive, but tentative, either because made dis- 
 trustfully or because based on imperfect evi- 
 dence. But why is a man bound to act on a 
 judgment so imperfect ? The answer is found 
 in the subjectivity of the service which God 
 requires, and of sin which is the denial of that 
 service. " To him," says St. James, " that 
 knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him 
 it is sin." He has nothing to go by except 
 his own conscience of God, whether weak or 
 strong, ill informed or well instructed. Even 
 if his judgment be altogether wrong, he is 
 bound to act upon it. "I know," says St. 
 Paul, " and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus, 
 that nothing is unclean of itself." There is 
 the objective truth. " But to him who ac- 
 counteth anything to be unclean, to him it is 
 unclean." There is the subjective judgment,
 
 132 CONSCIENCE OF SIN 
 
 contrary to the objective truth, but never- 
 theless a judgment on which the man must 
 act. 1 
 
 This truth, simple in itself, is confused by 
 the common mistake of personifying the con- 
 science, or treating it as an objective some- 
 thing external to the man, a guide and mentor. 
 If it were such, it were no more excusable to 
 act on a weak conscience than to obey any other 
 faulty adviser. A man beguiled by his con- 
 science would have no more to say than Eve 
 when beguiled by the serpent. On the other 
 hand, if a man were bound to follow a guide 
 external to himself, there would be an end 
 of personal responsibility. And worse ; this 
 guide would be set up in a sort of rivalry with 
 the Law of God. Warned by the Law, warned 
 also in a different sense by his conscience, a 
 man would be called upon to obey the latter. 
 Such intolerable consequences follow from St. 
 Paul's teaching if the conscience be personified. 
 But the conscience does not give commands ; 
 it receives them. It is not my conscience 
 that bids me do this or that. God bids me 
 by nature or by revelation ; my conscience 
 
 1 Jas. iv. 17 ; Rom. xiv. 14.
 
 APPENDIX 133 
 
 accepts the bidding, as my faith or under- 
 standing reads it. As I read, so I am bound 
 to act. 
 
 A man is not thereupon discharged from all 
 responsibility. He is responsible for the exer- 
 cise of every faculty, that he has, whether 
 faith or understanding or conscience. If he 
 misread the standard, or if he falter in applying 
 it to his own actions, he must answer for this. 
 But there is a difference in the degree of 
 responsibility. If a man run counter to the 
 objective rule of right, he will suffer. If he 
 run counter to his own subjective knowledge 
 of it, however imperfect, he is a worse offender. 
 The distinction is drawn by the Lord himself : 
 " That servant which knew his lord's will, and 
 made not ready, nor did according to his 
 will, shall be beaten with many stripes ; 
 but he that knew not, and did things 
 worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few 
 stripes." l 
 
 The Conscience, then, is the faculty by which 
 a man applies the Will of God, so far as he 
 knows it, to the control of his own actions. He 
 is bound to use this faculty as he best can. 
 
 1 Luke xii. 47, 48.
 
 134 CONSCIENCE OF SIN 
 
 This done, he is bound to act on the result. 
 Religion is that subjective obedience, the 
 joyful recognition of oneself as a bond-servant 
 of God. 
 
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