Romans 2:15

Which show the work of the law written in their hearts.

The work of the law written in the heart

“I know and approve the better, and yet follow the worse,” said one of the wisest heathens; yet it did not require any superlative wisdom to arrive at that conclusion. Dr. Livingstone tells us that he found the rudest tribes of Africa ready to admit that they were sinners. Indeed they hold almost everything to be sin which, as such, is forbidden by the Word of God. Nor is it possible to read his clear statement on that subject without arriving at this interesting and important conclusion, that the decalogue is but the copy of a much older law--that law which his Maker wrote on Adam’s heart, and which, though sadly defaced by the Fall, may still, like the inscription on a time-eaten, moss-grown stone, be traced on ours. See how guilt reddens in the blush, and consciousness of sin betrays itself in the downcast look of childhood. Even when they wallow in sin as swine in the mire, there is a conscience within men which convicts of guilt and warns of judgment. Dethroned, but not exiled, she still asserts her claims, and fights for her kingdom in the soul; and resuming her lofty seat, with no more respect for sovereigns than beggars, she summons them to the bar, and thunders on their heads. Felix trembles; Herod turns pale, dreading in Christ the apparition of the Baptist; while Cain, fleeing from his brother’s grave, wanders away conscience-stricken into the gloomy depths of the solitudes of the unpeopled world. Like the ghost of a murdered man, conscience haunts the house that was once her dwelling, making her ominous voice heard at times even by the most hardened in iniquity. In her the rudest savage carries a God within him, who warns the guilty, and echoes those words of Scripture, “Depart from evil and do good.” (T. Guthrie, D. D.)

The law written and rewritten in the heart

The moral law is interwoven in man’s moral constitution. Man was created in God’s image (Genesis 1:27); so in knowledge and holiness (Colossians 3:10; Ephesians 4:24). The expression “written” is an allusion to the two tables of stone (Exodus 32:15), perhaps also to Roman laws written on brass. God’s law is rewritten in the renewed heart (Jeremiah 31:33; Hebrews 8:10). In creation it is written as a light to direct and convict; in regeneration it is rewritten as a power to govern and transform. In creation it is written so as to be known and felt; in regeneration it is rewritten so as to be known and loved. (T. Robinson, D. D.)

Their conscience also bearing witness.

The witness of conscience

At the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every matter be established. The three in regard to men are God, the Bible, conscience. The latter is--

I. An inward witness. Other witnesses are outside, and so may be set aside. One witness may be produced against another, or circumstances may destroy the testimony given, but it cannot be so with the witness within. A man may as soon fly from God or himself as from conscience. Now that which is thus within a man has the greatest influence upon him either for comfort or terror: so that we had better have all men and all devils for our enemies than our own conscience!

II. A knowing and intelligent witness. None can know what conscience knows but He who knows all things. Human witness are sometimes set aside on account of intellectual feebleness, but conscience penetrates into the secret windings of our hearts; and as--Its discernment is clear, so its judgment is generally true, and what it once knows it never forgets.

III. An authorised and credible witness. Witnesses are sometimes disallowed on the ground of moral blemish; but conscience is the King’s witness, so that he who heareth conscience, heareth God (Romans 9:1).

IV. A faithful and true witness. It will not be bribed: like its Master it accepts of no man’s person. It deals impartially with the monarch and the slave; and though it may sometimes speak amiss, yet never contrary to its judgment.

V. A loud witness. The deaf shall hear the voice of conscience. Like the voice of God, it is terrible and full of majesty. Cain found it so. The cry of conscience was as loud as that of his brother’s blood. Judas thought it so when he went and hanged himself. How loud does it sometimes speak on a sick and dying bed! The law thunders, and conscience is but the echo of its voice. The law speaks by terrible things in righteousness, and conscience does the same. The law says, “The soul that sinneth it shall die”; and conscience says, “Thou art the man!” Many endeavour to drown it in riot, and the hurry of business, but their efforts will be ineffectual. When God bids it speak, it will speak to purpose; and those who would not hear the voice of parents, ministers, providences, or even of the Divine Word, yet shall hear the voice of conscience.

VI. A sufficient witness. It will silence all pleas and excuses, put an end to all subterfuges and evasions, and leave a man self-judged and self-condemned, It is sufficient now; there is no refuting its testimony, or setting aside its verdict, and it will be so at the last day.

VII. An eternal witness. If all other witnesses were dead, conscience lives, and will hereafter bear its testimony unrestrained. Its language will be, “Son, remember”! (Proverbs 5:12). Conclusion:

1. Let us take care of sinning against conscience. It is an enemy that no bolts nor bars can keep at a distance. The approbation of conscience, next to God’s, is the greatest blessing this side of heaven.

2. Let us endeavour to keep conscience tender, then attend to its motions, and hearken to its remonstrances. Tenderness is its perfection. God takes notice of it (2 Chronicles 34:27).

3. Above all, let us have our hearts purged from an evil conscience by the blood of Christ.

4. Let wicked men remember that if conscience be ever so silent now, it will be vociferous enough at the great day. As the spectre said to Brutus, “I will meet thee at Philippi,” so conscience says, “I will meet thee at judgment seat!” Good men, who at times suffer much from the lashes of their own consciences, learn the importance of having always “a conscience void of offence” (1 John 3:21). (B. Beddome, M. A.)

Conscience

The apostle is explaining how the heathen, who had not the written law of God, were yet amenable to an unwritten law impressed on the hearts of all mankind. Their conscience is a witness for or against them.

I. Its nature and office.

1. God has given man a written law as the supreme standard, whose object is to educate and confirm him in his duty to God and man. This law, however, is--

(1) Of late communication. The Old Testament, given only gradually through centuries. The New Testament only when the world was already old.

(2) Of only local extent. Before Moses there was none. In St. Paul’s day it was known only to the Jews. In our day vast regions and even in our own country too many have no knowledge of it. If, then, there were only God’s written law, the mass of men, in the past and still, would have no standard of right and wrong--their passions unchecked. Society would be impossible.

2. But the existence of a written moral law implies an already existing moral sense, or unwritten law. Without this our obedience to any law would want a moral character. It would be either mere training and discipline, or submission to force. There would be no sense of obligation to keep it, no choice of the will and heart in doing so.

3. An unwritten law of God, however, does exist. In every race there is an instinct which--

(1) Condemns evil. The judgment day not only in the future. The great white throne, and He that sits on it, are in effect set up in every bosom. No deception is possible. No outward position screens us.

(2) Vindicates the right. The answer of a good conscience is the support of the soul under any trial. Of old it sustained the saints in their fiery trials. Fidelity to principle still bears up many a one. It is the greatest solace in the retrospect of life.

(3) Is given to receive and act up to the higher teachings of the written law. “By manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God.” Imposes on us the duty of learning all the bearings of our obligations.

II. Hindrances to its healthful vigour.

1. Ignorance. In savage life, obscured and limited in its range by circumstances. Imperfect conception of relative duties from the struggle for self-preservation. Now long reign of selfish passion. Violence and hereditary darkness. In criminal life amongst ourselves. The child of a thief, what can it know of right and wrong in some directions?

2. Perversion. Education colours our estimate of the character of acts in many eases. Pascal speaks of morality as varying with latitude and longitude. This is seen--

(1) In religion. Inquisitors torturing and burning for the greater glory of God. Whitefield defending slavery. Paul thinking he honoured God by helping to stone St. Stephen.

(2) In business. Conventional or trade morality. Men do in business what they would shrink from in private life.

3. The seared conscience. The religious faculty may be well-nigh extirpated by neglect; like eyes of cave insects and fishes.

4. The weak conscience. A failing that leans to virtue’s side. Troubles itself and others by making a principle of what is really indifferent. The disputes in Paul’s Epistles, new moons, eating flesh, Levitical laws, etc. So some object to matters of no moral moment.

III. Characteristics of a healthy conscience.

1. It accepts and acts on principle, not its accidental illustration. It guards itself in great matters by fidelity in all. Its rule is, “He that is faithful in that which is least, is faithful also in much.”

2. It is not content with profession, but carries its convictions into practice; not “go” and “went not.”

3. It is always humble. Feeling its own weakness and constant need of strength.

4. It is manly. Will not yield to custom, favour, gain.

5. It bases its action on the law of Christ as the ideal of morality.

6. It keeps the example ever before it, and remembers its obligations to honour Him by loyal duty. Conclusion: One may strengthen and enlighten conscience. In any case it grows with the wider realisation of the breadth and sweep of God’s law. In our own day it has widened its sphere. Needs still further quickening in each walk of life; especially in the vital matters of the soul. The deputy of the Almighty. Bring your soul before it. As it asks you, “Guilty, or not guilty?” answer. If guilty, repentance and a holy life, looking to the great salvation of Christ, will reverse the verdict. (C. Geikie, D. D.)

Conscience

I. Its offices.

1. It is an ever present, true and helpful friend. One who will not be afraid to speak plainly, and whose counsels will be to the point, and, as a rule, wise, kind, true, and good.

2. It is an ever observant and faithful witness--one out of whose sight we can never get, who is diligent to record, careful to remember, and ultimately faithful to bear its testimony.

3. It is an impartial judge. It not only bears witness, but acquits or condemns.

4. In regard to the impenitent, it will be the righteous executioner fulfilling the behests of the Great Judge of all, and the punishment itself--the worm that never dies.

II. The seasons at which it executes its several offices.

1. To an extent at all times--with more or less efficiency.

2. To a more powerful degree--

(1) After some special act of sin.

(2) Under some specially awakening sermon.

(3) Under some severe affliction.

(4) At the hour of death.

III. The circumstances which may for a time interfere with its efficient action.

1. It may be misinformed or ignorant. Conscience can only condemn a man for what he himself believes to be wrong.

2. It may be warped or swayed--

(1) By prevalent customs and notions.

(2) By a man’s interest, passions, tastes.

(3) It may be partially stifled and benumbed.

Tampering with conscience will enfeeble its action. A watchdog gave notice of danger to the inhabitants of a log hut; they were disturbed by his bark, and, annoyed, they silenced him--but only when too late. The Indians were upon them, their hut was burned, and their lives sacrificed. Conclusion:

1. Do not trifle with conscience.

2. Seek its enlightenment.

3. Remember that conscience after all is less rigid than the law of God (1 John 3:20).

4. Let it lead you not only to tremble, but to the Cross. (G. J. Adeney, M. A.)

Conscience

We all know that the word comes from con and scio, but what does that con intend? Conscience is not merely what I know, but what I know with some other; for the prefix cannot be esteemed superfluous, or taken to imply merely that which I know with or to myself. That other knower whom the word implies is God. His law making itself known and felt in the heart; and the work of conscience is the bringing of the evil of our acts and thoughts as a lesser, to be tried and measured by this as a greater--the word growing out of and declaring that awful duplicity of our moral being which arises from the presence of God in the soul--our thoughts, by the standard which that presence implies, and as a result of a comparison with it, “accusing or excusing one another.” (Abp. Trench.)

Conscience quickened by the Holy Spirit

The Holy Spirit is to the moral sense what the warm breath of spring is to the hidden seeds of things. This brings them out, this unfolds them into flower and fruit, this makes of a barren expanse a landscape of beauty, fertility, and gladness. (T. Griffith.)

Conscience: its power

This is--

I. Discriminating. By it man--

1. Discovers the reality of moral law.

2. Determines his character according to it.

II. Binding. Conscience--

1. Tells us that we are under obligation to God’s law.

2. Produces consciousness of obligation.

III. Judicial.

1. As a witness.

2. As a judge.

Inferences:

1. The reality of conscience.

2. Its originality.

3. Its universality. (D. Thomas, D. D.)

Conscience: susceptible of improvement and injury

I. It may be improved.

1. By use.

2. By reflecting on the moral character of our actions.

3. By obedience to its admonitions, or conscientious acting.

4. By meditating on characters of preeminent moral excellence.

II. It may be injured.

1. By disuse.

2. By neglecting to reflect on the moral character of our actions.

3. By disobedience to its admonitions, or want of conscientiousness.

4. By frequent meditation on vicious characters and actions. “Vice seen too oft, familiar with its face, we first endure, then pity, then embrace.” (T. Robinson, D. D.)

Conscience

Nothing has done so much to perplex men’s speculations about conscience as certain fundamental mistakes respecting its proper nature and functions.

1. In the first place, conscience is not a law, but a faculty; not the decision pronounced in a particular case, but the faculty which pronounces the decision.

2. Again, this faculty is susceptible of instruction and improvement, like other faculties of the human mind; like the understanding, for example, or the taste.

3. There is also another important distinction to be made in respect to conscience. Its authority is sometimes said to be supreme and final. And so it is, in a certain sense; that is to say, it is supreme over every other kind of human motive and inducement; should a conflict arise, our sense of what is right ought to prevail, in all cases, over our sense of what is expedient or agreeable. But the authority of conscience is not final in such a sense as to forbid conscience itself from, if need be, reversing its own past decisions. I may appeal at any time from my conscience less instructed to my conscience more instructed, and under these circumstances what was right to me yesterday may become wrong to me today; and what is right to me today may become wrong to me tomorrow.

4. But if conscience itself is an Improvable faculty, and if, in its legitimate action today, it can revise and reverse its own decisions of yesterday, the question naturally arises, Is there anything in conscience which is fixed and absolute? I answer, Yes. The things which are fixed and absolute in conscience--that is to say, the things which are the same in all consciences, and the same in every conscience at all times--would seem to be these three. In the first place, all consciences make a distinction between actions as being right or wrong secondly, the notion of right, as such, or of wrong, as such, is identical to all minds; and, thirdly, all concur in the feeling that they ought to do what they believe to be right. Each man’s conscience is a special development of our common moral nature; and each man’s duty in respect to it is, to take care that this special development shall be more and more complete, and more and more effective; in short, that he may have a better conscience to obey, and obey it more faithfully.

5. It remains to consider the means by which this two-fold improvement in conscience and in conscientiousness may be promoted. The first condition is, a habit of attending to the moral aspects of things, and especially of our own dispositions and conduct; in one word, moral thoughtfulness. A second necessary condition of the moral progress required--of progress in both conscience and conscientiousness--is found in a determination to do right, cost what it may; in other words, to moral thoughtfulness we must add an invincible moral purpose. The progress insisted on in this discourse supposes another condition; namely, that we not only obey conscience, but obey it as an echo of the Divine will: in other words, to moral thoughtfulness and a moral purpose we must add a sense of the authority and sanctions of religion. One condition more. To make us more observant of conscience, and, at the same time, to make conscience what it ought to be, we must take our standard of righteousness from the New Testament. (James Walker.)

The law of conscience

(with John 8:9):--Like every other mental and moral power, conscience has its own distinct function. It is that faculty of our moral nature Which perceives the right and wrong in our actions, accuses or excuses, and anticipates their consequences under the righteous government of God.

I. Conscience is an original law in man’s moral nature. Being so, it is the same in all men, civilised and uncivilised. It cannot be educated any more than the eye can be taught to see, or the ear to hear. The only training a man can be given is in applying the law of conscience to the conduct, and in the art of subjecting the other powers of the soul to its authority. When conscience is spoken of as enlightened and unenlightened, there is applied to it what properly belongs to some of the other powers with which it is associated, particularly the understanding. Being intended for all classes the Scriptures are written not in metaphysical, but in popular language, and therefore, while it is proper to make such distinctions as those we have just indicated, we shall at present treat of conscience in the popular, that is in the Bible, sense. “Their own conscience” is an expression which suggests these two things, viz., that every man is endowed with this faculty, and that it is an essential part of his being, so really his own as to be inseparable from him, and indestructible. But conscience is not now in any man what it originally was. In consequence of sin, the moral law written at first on the fleshly tables of the heart had lost much of its clearness and certainty, like a scarcely legible inscription on a decaying gravestone. It had therefore to be deeply graven by the finger of God on tables of stone, and afterwards given in the imperishable Book, which could be read in every tongue throughout the habitable globe. But while conscience is not now in anyone what it once was, and has in some reached its lowest possible degree of weakness, in different persons it may exist in different states. Paul speaks of some who had their conscience seared with a hot iron. As that part of the flesh becomes insensible to pain, so conscience, under the habit of sinning, comes to be so familiar with evil that its accusing voice is, if at all, but faintly heard. It is past feeling. Jude speaks of some ungodly men in his day as being twice dead, implying that their conscience had been once quickened, but that it had again sunk into its previous condition of torpor and paralysis, which was little different from death. Having been dead before, it was thus twice dead. The man whose conscience is in this condition will practise lying, dishonesty, intemperance, and uncleanness, without often thinking he is doing wrong, and without at all dreading the consequences of his wrong-doing. A more hopeful condition of conscience is that which is described as a pricking in the heart. This was how the first converts on the day of Pentecost were affected. A more appropriate phrase could not easily be found to portray the same moral change in any who undergo it. Piercing sorrow, sharp mental pain, is what it points to. Yet, distressing though it be, this is an interesting and hopeful state of mind. The thunder is not a more certain presage of a pure and settled atmosphere; the storm is not the more certain forerunner of a calm; the opening buds and genial breezes of spring are not the surer signs of retreating winter than are those prickings of heart, the signs of a spiritual winter breaking up in the soul, and of a spring of life and growth and beauty having come. Then there is also the peaceful conscience. True peace can come from only one source, When a man sees that Jesus Christ has by His obedience unto death borne the penalty of his sin, and when he accepts of God’s forgiveness through Christ, his fears leave him, his conscience is pacified, hope springs up in his breast. He may now and again have his regrets and his fears, but as his knowledge of the Saviour and of His work with his own purity of heart and life increases, so does his peace become fuller and more settled.

II. It is by conscience that conviction of sin is produced. There are no doubt other powers which cooperate with it to bring about this result. There is the understanding. Truth and duty must be known before they can be believed and practised. A man cannot rightly realise his sinfulness until he knows what God’s law requires of him, nor believe the gospel, which is God’s great revelation to us, before he knows what it means. Without a knowledge of its truths there cannot be faith, and without an increasing knowledge of its truths there cannot be much progress in goodness. There is also the will. The renewal of our moral nature presupposes as one of its conditions the subduing of the will, and the bringing of it into harmony with the will of God. There are, it is true, preliminary steps in this inward change, such as the enlightening of the mind with regard to sin and salvation, and the melting of the heart into penitence and contrition, but there is, besides, the bending of the will to choose and to follow the Divinely appointed way of deliverance. And, humanly speaking, it is here the greatest difficulty in the work of conversion is met with. The hardest of all struggles is to conquer a man’s self-righteous pride, that he may humbly and thankfully accept eternal life as God’s free gift to the undeserving who believe in His Son.

III. It is by the truth of the gospel that conscience is awakened. The teachings of science and philosophy are powerless here. Only the truth as it is in Jesus can work its way into the deep recesses of man’s nature, stir into life its slumbering activities, meet all its wants, and satisfy its highest aspirations. No other truth can give us a fixed and unchanging standard of duty outside of ourselves and not subject to our variations, show us how far we come short of it, and set before us with certainty the fixed and indissoluble connection there is between cause and consequence in the moral universe. No other truth has the same self-evidencing power. (James Black, D. D.)

Conscience: its uses and perversions

The world is under a solemn economy of government, discerning, approving, or condemning. Now it was requisite there should be something in the soul to recognise this; a faculty to feel obligation to, and apprehension of a greater power. And that which makes a man feel so is a part of himself, so that the struggle against God becomes a struggle with man’s own soul. Therefore conscience has been often denominated “the God in man.”

I. This internal judge has not been altogether in vain.

1. Many men have wished they could be rid of it, and in most it may be presumed, therefore, that conscience has had some restraining effect. Criminals would have been still more criminal but for this. It has been one dissentient power among man’s faculties, as if among a company of gay revellers there should appear one dark and frowning intruder whom they could neither conciliate nor expel. It has struck on the soul, and said, “Listen to that!--that belongs to thee!”

2. It has often compelled confessions of great importance to truth and justice. Very generally, in the last scene of life, it has constrained even bad men to give testimony to religion and the guilt and wretchedness of trifling with it.

3. It has often been made effectual to urge men to a persevering application to Divine mercy, as acting through the mediation of Christ. The guilt is too deep for Divine justice to pardon. There must be some grand expedient as a medium of mercy, and here it is.

4. In good men it has been mighty in trial and temptation, consolatory under injustice, and a sublime energy under persecution.

II. But there is a darker side of the subject, i.e., the view of its perversions and frustration.

1. With by far the greatest number of men conscience has been separated from all true knowledge of God. Now God is both the essential authority of conscience and the model for its rectitude. What is its condition then where the one true God is lost from human knowledge? and instead, a tribe of deities whose characters exemplify all varieties of iniquity, dictating absurdities and abominations, blended, indeed, with some better things which are spoiled in such combination. Or (paganism being disclaimed), there is a falsified notion of God, and a perverted apprehension of His will, Think what an authority for conscience to acknowledge. What should it do but correspond to its authorities? “He that killeth you shall think he doeth God service.” A perpetrator in the St. Bartholomew massacre said, “God was obliged to me that day.”

2. Conscience has often been beguiled to admit trifling ceremonies as an expiation of great sins, when, had it been in its right state, it would have shaken the whole soul.

3. Conscience may suffer itself to be very much conformed to prevailing customs and notions. That which ought to ever look to the throne and law of God may be degraded to this most irreligious homage to man. So that the superior and eternal order of principles is nearly out of sight, as in some countries they rarely see the sun or the stars.

(1) When, at moments, conscience does attempt to resume a little of the genuine spirit of its office, it is solicited to look out on the world and see whether the common estimates and practices do not warrant that which it is disposed to accuse.

(2) The next consequence is that it will have little to take account of short of positive vices. Therefore it will begin with slight censures at a point where very grave ones are deserved. Supposing the whole of what the Divine law condemns to be measured by a scale of one hundred degrees of aggravation, then, the censure beginning at one, will become extremely severe by the time of rising to fifty. But let this first fifty be struck off as harmless in accommodation to the general notions, then conscience will but begin, and in slight terms, its censures at the fifty-first degree, and so, at the very top of the scale, will produce with but just that emphasis which was duo at the point where it began.

4. Conscience is extremely liable to be accommodated to each man’s own interests, passions, and tastes. What will he not do to reconcile it or make it submit to them? He will not part with them, and consequently has great advantages against his conscience. The favourite interest or inclination he sets in the fairest light; palliations of what is wrong in it multiply; it is far less culpable than many things in others which they think very venial, and there is such and such good to which it will turn to account. Now it is not strange if, by this time, his conscience has come to speak in a much more submissive voice. And, melancholy as the fact is, there are few things that gratify a corrupt mind more than to have gained a victory over conscience.

5. Conscience may, in a great degree, be turned to a judgment on bare external actions. Now conscience has a great advantage as a judge over outward observers. It is seated, with its lamp, down in the hidden world among the thoughts, motives, intentions, and wishes. The greater the grievance I but how to obviate it? Labour to think that what is practical is of far greater importance than feelings and thoughts. These are varying and transient; actions substantial and permanent. Inward principles within do injury to none; the right actions do much good. Thoughts and movements within are much involuntary; the outward conduct is the result of will and effort. Look so much on the best parts of conduct as to become emboldened to make the inference--“the case is not so wrong within as conscience had attempted to charge,” for “by their fruits shall men be known.” Thus, in a measure, may conscience be beguiled out of its inward watching place, to be content to look only at the outside.

6. When conscience is seriously alarmed, it may be quieted by delusive applications. “There will be time enough yet.” Sometimes these alarms are frustrated by treacherous presumptions as to the way of propitiating the Divine Justice; men may reconcile God by repentance; satisfy His demands by a reformed conduct; secure final safety by a careful obedience instead of faith in Christ. This last is a deadly treachery practised on conscience; for it is quieting its alarms by inducing it to abjure that very law which is its appointed standard, and of which it is its very office to be the representative and sanction.

7. Conscience can be reduced to a state of habitual insensibility. This is attained by tampering and equivocating with it; by a careful avoidance of all that might alarm it; continual neglect of its admonitions; a determined resistance and repression; and habits of sin. The result of this will be a deep torpor and stupefaction. Think of the advantage of being able to look at others who are troubled by a wakeful, interfering conscience! But why does this dead stillness appear an awful situation? Because it will awake! and with an intensity of life and power proportioned to this long sleep, as if it had been growing gigantic during its slumber. It will awake!--probably in the last hours of life. But if not, in the other world there is something which will certainly awake it.

III. The right treatment of conscience.

1. It should be regarded with deep respect--even its least intimations attended to, not slighted as scrupulous impertinencies, blown away, etc.

2. We should diligently aim at a true judgment of things, because our judgment is the rule by which conscience will proceed, There must be much reflection and retirement.

3. We shall recollect always that the most judicial conscience is less rigid and comprehensive than the Divine law. “If our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart.” Therefore in consulting conscience we should endeavour to realise to ourselves the Divine presence, and implore that our consciences may ever be in the Divine keeping rather than our own.

4. As we often speak of improvements in the Christian life be it remembered that one of them is an improvement in the discerning sensibility, and extent of jurisdiction of conscience. And if this involves an increase of solicitudes, pains, penitential emotions, so much the more desirable will appear that better world where there is no possibility of sin, where the continued improvement of spiritual perception will be a continually augmented exquisiteness of the felicity. (John Foster.)