The daily morning journal and courier., 1897-12-22

l +''N'''NiSSI HUT DOOrlSn lellOWS OL tue 1 paser sort. They were both graduates or Cambridge, and Barrowe belonged to a good family and was "a 1lourishing | courier in his time." They believed l that true church of Jesus Christ was company of regenerated persons bound together under their Lord, and | appointing their own minister, teacher and other officers They did not be- lleVe that the state and the church were l one, and while they declared their complete loyalty to their sovereign, they refused to recognize as a true church that ecclesiastical system of which she | was the head. They gathered those of like mind with themselves in private for | worship in such manner as they be- lteved to be proper.
 They did not hesitate to publish their | views, and to maintain them with such arguments as they found in the Scrip ture. It was for these publications that they were arrested; and although they were detained for several years Illegal | ly without trial, they were at length in 1593 convicted and executed for publish 1 ing "seditious books" as their papers and arguments Were called
 1 In other words, Congregationalism | was sedition. They believed in the Con 1 gregational way and said so in such manner as we of to-day sometimes take the trouble to do when We have every | encouragement They were hung by 1 order of the royal court; but there are 1 plenty of American Congregationalists | of our day, supposed to have the same kind of a conscience, who would be safe | enough before such q court as that 1 There is every reason for believing | that these were true Christian men maintaining in good conscience what | they believed to be truth and duty | There is no doubt that there were | some fallacies in the positions which 1 they took This at least is true as viewed from our standpoint. Their re- action against Romanism and ritualism 1 carried them to excess, and led them to l discard some things which were good, and which their descendants have called | back into the service. But even that is not saying that in the conditions which | surrounded them the positions which | they took may not have been justified. Leaves are an integral part of an apple 1 tree, but in time they fall away them l selves. So With sepals and petals and even the fruit itself.
 The moral worth of certain deeds or acts of conduct is not always the same, but it must be estimated in it's setting, and in relation to the whole world of which it is a part The use of the or gan in worship, for example carried to many of the PrOtestants of that day a | meaning totally unknown to us. It | would not be just therefore to measure | the same thing in the two ages by the same standard. The conscience which in the sixteenth century would call the | organ a chest of whistles would say that In the nineteenth century or any other 1t is the same.
 But not only do circumstances alter the moral worth of things they also modify the conscience which measures that moral worth. A man in old age puts different estimate on things from what he did in youth. One who has come to poverty hears different voice from conscience from what he was ac- customed to hear in the days of his wealth. A fallen and degraded and dissipated man does not have the same conscience that he had when he was still unspotted from the world. The man who has thoroughly committed himself to the Christian life gets diff
 
 tor than he got before. And these diff ferences are still more marked between different people whose training and traditions are not alike, and who have lived in different ages.
 All this is true and necessary from the fact that conscience is living voice. Conscience is not the authority of dead hand ruling blindly and stiff q
 changing conditions. Conscience is an open-eyed intelligence which sees all the conditions of the case which we will permit it to see, and it speaks it's word in the light of what it sees.
 Conscience is not a little king that sits back in the hidden recesses of ones being, shut away from all that is pass ing around him, declaring a Medo-Per- sian law. But it is rather the whole being of the man. such as it Is, passing moral judgments and declaring the law unto itself moment by moment. The more open-aired and clear-eyed those judgments are the better, The dangers are that they will be formed in the close darkness so much beloved by eve- ry evil thing, and that as moral judg- ments they will be spoiled by that darkness.
 This is the judgment that light is come into the world. There can be no judgment without light Conscience | renders judgment only according to it's light. Those whose deeds are evil love the darkness rather than the light, be- cause in the darkness they may escape judgment He that dOeth the truth cometh to the light that his deeds may | become manifest that they have been wrought in God.
 The enlightened conscience is, then, the thing to be desired. If we love to | deceive ourselves we will keep con- science darkened We will keep it care fully shut away from the new light l which pastor John Robinson said should yet break forth out of Gods 1 Holy Word Gods word breaks forth to-day from unnumbered sources, and the enlightened conscience will not be shut up against these words. It will not be shut up against the light which is struggling forth out of our political chaos, nor against the light which shines out of every defeat and victory of reform movements. The enlightened conscience will not close it's blinds as the sun of an improved social life be- l cri7 to ii with bpo1inor in