The Birmingham age-herald., 1918-09-23
CONSCIENCE" DR.
 STUART'S TOPIC AT
 FIRST METHODIST
Popular Pastor Says Uncle Sam Aided Pastors When He Put on the h.
 come Tax


 ject yesterday morning at the First Methodist church, when he preached to a capacity house. He took his text from Acts, 1s-24 And herein do l ex- ercise myself to have always a con science void of offense toward God and toward man.
 Dr. Stuart related Paurs experiences when he was being taken by the Ro- man captain and how the apostle told the captain to allow him to speaK 10 the people, and as hes spoke and told them truths which they did not want to hear they became more and more outraged against him and they were going to take him out and beat him. Lust as they raised the scourge and were going to scourge him, Paul said DO you know that I am 8 Roman citizen% and the scourge was stopped. They ordered him carried before Felix, and there is where he made the state ment which is my text.
 "When a man talks about conscience he talks about something that more ignorant stuff has been spoken about than anything else on earth At the stoning of stephen, which Paul ad- mitted that he ordered Paul was an unregenerated man, he did not have the light. Consciousness is the Judgement of the soul. As to right or wrong, someone has said it is the voice of God in the soul' It is that which ar rests you and makes you a criminal; strips you of your chains and makes of you a free man; tells you when you do right and when you do wrong, but you have to have a standard to go by.
 IGNORANT CONSCIENCES
 .Your conscience often fails to hurt you because you fail to know-you think it is your day when it is Gods day You have not studied the prop osition as you should have-you are ignorant of it, and you refuse to listen to Gods preacher.
 There are men before me here to- day that used to vote wet with just as clear conscience as I voted dry and that was because they were not informed. Now they know better, for sober streets and empty jails have taught them the things that we could not. It is a bad thing to follow an ignorant and misinformed conscience"
 What do you think of the ignorant mother who throws her baby into the mouth of the crocodile in the Ganges river? Do you think she does not love that baby? Certainly she does, and you can see her kissing it for per- haps half hour before she throws it into the river for the waiting croco- iiles, and then she signs a sigh of re- lief as she raises her arms to heaven and feels that her conscience is clear because she has done that which she has been taught to do.
 CONSCIENCE BECOMES DEAD
 'sYou can educate your conscience until you are all wrong and your con- science becomes scared over-ands then you have a wicked conscience, and you are in the Bible, for this kind is found there. You are giving attention to se- ducing influences and soaring over your conscience until it becomes dead.
 Uncle Sam has shown many of you fellows who would say that you did not know what you made per annum, when it comes to tithing, just how to keep account of it. You are doing this for him, and he is taking his. and you get it right down to the scratch --and f-want to say this. you old, lying rascal. you could have done that for God if you had wanted to. long ago, but you lied about it.
 'So | say Uncle Sam has helped us preachers by making you fellows come up to the scratch. You didn't want to, but he made you, and now We can find out what you are making when you give the answer that you don't know.
 REGENERATED CONSCIENCES
 The Holy Ghost can speak to re- generated conscience, but you may be following dead, blind and unregen- .erated conscience, and perhaps that is the reason that you are so comforta- ble and So undisturbed, you have scared your conscience over until you have come to the conclusion that your religion is good enough for you-and say that it is good enough for tha devil, too. Let us awaken our con. sciences and then take the Bible and standardize them'' VI X%