SERMON X.

CONSCIENCE.

ACTS XXIV. 16.

AND HEREIN DO I EXERCISE MYSELF TO HAVE ALWAYS A CONSCIENCE VOID OF OFFENCE TOWARD GOD, AND TOWARD MAN.

We have in this simple statement an explanation of the energy and intrepidity of the apostle's character. He had high purposes to accomplish, and he was moved onward in his course by the purest and most elevated principles. His faith was not a cold intellectual assent merely. It reached his heart. Every principle of it touched all the springs of action in his soul. His conscience felt the power of truth, and the light within him beamed forward upon the path of duty. His fidelity was intimately associated with his own personal happiness, with the salvation of men, with the honor of his Master, and with the glory of God. He could not desert his duty without ingratitude, cruelty and impiety, without opening his bosom to the stings of conscience, far more to be feared than the wasting fires of persecution, without losing himself in the woe of a diseased, guilty, ruined mind. All this he fully felt; and hence his ardor, constancy, and courage in duty. Not only did Paul possess these high qualities of character, but he was a truly happy man. When we read of his sufferings, of his unwearied efforts amid the most appalling

dangers, and of the contempt in which he was held by a large portion of the world, we too readily picture him as a man from whose countenance every smile is chased away, and whose heart is the abode of the deepest sorrow. But this was far from being the actual character of the apostle. You do not find in his writings either the spirit of misanthropy or of settled melancholy. There is, indeed, an air of solemnity breathing through all his compositions; and this is suited to the weighty topics on which he always wrote. But whoever with common discernment examines the memorials, which Paul has left of his own character, will perceive that he wrote and acted as a man, who on the whole was happy. His own heart reproached him not. He looked abroad upon the world with the utmost benevolence of feeling; and happiness is always an attendant upon true benevolence. His mind and his heart were in a state of constant excitement, produced by the action of the most elevated sentiments, and by his constant engagedness in promoting the highest interests of the world. He looked onward into the future, and glory beamed upon the opening day. He found in his own bosom a sympathy with higher beings; and he felt the delightful consciousness, that he could participate in their joys. He might indeed say that, were he exposed to the numerous trials which attended him, without these principles and hopes, he should be of all men the most miserable; but, with these principles and hopes, he was happy, even while treading the path of danger and of suffering. Indeed, we often bestow our pity suffering virtue, when it is rather due to those, who have made it suffer. I doubt not that the martyr, as he has trod upon the path which was leading him to torture, has had the high principles and hopes of his faith so brought home to his soul, that, could he be seen by man as he is by God, he would be rather an object of envy than of compassion. To the good man, who feels strongly the connexion between himself and God, there is even in danger and

suffering an exciting power, which leads him upward, strengthens him for the conflict, brings in upon his soul in their rich fulness the consciousness and the rewards of virtue, and thus makes him happy.

But my present purpose is not to dwell on trains of thought like these, which have already detained us too long. In reflecting upon the infidelity which has displayed itself more or less in every age, I have been led to remark that generally, it is not simply the rejection of Christianity, but of religion in every form; that it is not unfrequently accompanied with confounding or totally denying the distinction between virtue and vice. Hence whoever has an enlightened regard to the moral health of the community, must be convinced of the necessity of developing and enforcing the very elementary principles of morals; for what can be done, where the distinction between virtue and vice, where the existence of conscience as a part of man's nature is denied? My present purpose is to offer you some very simple remarks upon conscience. If I can convey to you correct instructions upon this subject, my efforts may not be without a salutary religious influence.

1. I shall endeavor to give you some distinct notion of what is meant by conscience, as I understand the term." It is apparent, that there is a class of emotions, which have a direct relation to the moral character of actions, or rather of agents. Wonder and joy are emotions which all understand. Gratitude and the recollection of struggles successfully encountered in the discharge of duty produce emotions, to which few, we trust, are strangers. Wonder at what is new is not only a different emotion from gratitude to a benefactor, but the latter is accompanied with a consciousness of a moral character, which does not at all belong to the former. We do not pronounce the emotion which novelty produces virtuous, nor should we regard him as guilty, as deserving reproach, who should feel no emotions whatever on seeing what would

excite our astonishment.

It is not so in the other case.

Ingratitude is regarded as a sin, and he who is guilty of it is considered odious. Is this sin found in our own bosoms? As often as we bring it distinctly to view, we feel remorse. It is so with the other emotions noticed. We are filled with joy when the tide of prosperity sets strongly in our favor. We rejoice at meeting a friend whom we love, and who has long been separated from us. But we do not regard ourselves as virtuous, merely because we feel the gladness of prosperity, or because we kindle into rapture on unexpectedly meeting one whom we love. This joy, it is true, may be accompanied with moral emotions; but, as mere gladness of heart, it has no moral merit. On the other hand, we venerate the man whom we behold struggling with temptation, and yet withstanding its seductions. We regard with very different feelings Joseph fleeing from the allurements of a princess, and David with blood-stained hands locked in the embraces of guilt. They are presented to us in characters as dissimilar as light and darkness; and our emotions with regard to them are equally dissimilar. But the emotions produced in the bosoms of those who merely contemplate these different transactions, though powerful, are feeble when compared with those of the individual actors in these different scenes. Joseph in a dungeon enjoyed that high moral pleasure, that noble consciousness of virtue, that freedom of spirit, which chains could not shackle, which the darkness of a prison could not eclipse. David on his throne, surrounded with the splendor and the flatteries of a court, experienced inward tortures, was the prey of sorrows which neither power nor splendor could' soothe.

It is not merely intellectual discernment that is requisite to constitute a man a moral being. Were he able to contemplate actions as he does objects in nature, he might pronounce them useful or beautiful, or nicely calculate their different effects, yet he might regard the guilty only

as subjects of thought, and this or that action as advisable or otherwise as it might tend to make or mar his fortune. The murderer, if only distinguished in point of intellect, education or station, he could without the least repugnance fold to his bosom in the most intimate friendship; and he might congratulate himself on the commission of the foulest crimes, if they could be made to accomplish the purposes of his ambition. But it is not so. We do not regard right and wrong in others with the same emotions. We as necessarily approve certain actions, and condemn others, as we perceive that two and two make four. This approval or condemnation is accompanied with emotions more or less vivid, which seem to arise as necessarily, as images do before the eye, when it is opened to take in the beauties or deformities of a landscape. This innate susceptibility of the mind lies at the foundation of all our moral obligations. Conscience is that modification of this principle, which has particular reference to our own moral conduct and condition. It is that which judges of the right or the wrong of our own doings, and which, in the very judgment which it pronounces, brings pleasure or pain to the heart. It is the voice of God within the human breast, which speaks forth its warnings, and gently utters its encouragements; which sounds out the terrors of guilt, and proclaims the peace and joy of the righteous.

2. But here we are met by the friends of irreligion and impiety with various objections to the doctrine, that God has endowed man with a distinct feeling of right and wrong, and that this is a part of his nature, a simple and leading principle of his moral constitution. It is said, that this principle is not uniform in its decisions; that the conscience of one man pronounces that to be right, which the conscience of another man condemns as criminal. Hence the broad inference is drawn, that conscience is a mere creature of education and circumstances; that no dependance can be placed upon the decisions of the mon