The Columbus dispatch., 1921-03-27
CONSCIENCE


ject of Conscience by Rev. George A.
Lotion, the noted Baptist divine, was
the basis Of the program for discus
sion at a recent prayer meeting ser
vice at the First Baptist church.
1t embraces splendid thought and
fine sentiment and We reproduce it
here for the benefit of our readers.
1t follows:
A glorious and dangerous mystery
centers in the heart of man and there
is nothing he should so study and
preserve as his conscience, which sits
enthroned and sceptered in his soul.
This is our great "moral sense" in
volving the concurrent testimony of
every human faculty as to what is
right and wrong-as to the ought and
ought not which rules our life. Con-
science is the central sun of an inter-
nal system around which revolve our
ruling principles and passions, held to-
their orbits by the centripetal and
centrifugal forces of will and motive.
How delicate the adjustment, how
easily disordered and made chaotic.
What needs more habitual philoso-
phic, and scriptural education than
conscience? How often perverted by
a false training, or for want of educa-
ton. Often this sense becomes dor
mant or dead. 1t is the key to the
heart, the sentinel which guards the
soul; and here God or the devil enters
and reigms. Here every human rela-
tionship is adjusted. Conscience is
the granite column which supports
the fabric of self and society, and
many Samson blind lifts in indistin-
guishable ruin this magnificent shaft
from beneath the structure of his own
and the souls of others. Conscience
wrecked is the worlds chaos, and
Napoleon went so far as to call it
"the inviolable asylum of the liberty
of man." Man with it dethrone is
self propeller upon turbulent deep,
hurled with the force of his own de-
struction upon the reefs of an inevi-
table rum. Conscience involves every
thing. Origin calls it the chamber
of justice" and let me say that with
a good conscience toward God and
man we need neither judge nor jury.
Coleridge pronounced it "the pulse of
reason" and we may add that all
mental science is mastered when a1
trained conscience rules our intel
lections. Johnson declared it "the
sentinel of virtue;" and we have COM
passed all mortal philosophy when
conscience subordinates our passions.
Others have styled it, Goods deputy,
Gods Vicegerent, Gods oracle in the
soul; and, if so, the heart which
treasures and heeds Goods monitor" /"
! as another. calls it, needs no other
scepter to sway our mental and emo
tional nature.
On the other hand, Shakespeare
says, Conscience is thousand
swords" and hence, destroyed, she be-
comes the Nemesis of the lost soul.
Theodore Parker said, "There is no
college for the conscience" and
Lavater said, "The conscience is wiser
than science;" but, if so, it is none the
less the subject of education, false or
true, and from this standpoint it is all
the more fatal if perverted or pros
tituted. | love to feel like Luther
when he said, 81 am more afraid of
my own heart than of the Pope and
all his cardinals. have within me
the great hope, self" And he who
fears himself most profoundly will be
best guided by an involate conscience.
How truly did Byron, that man of ex-
perience on this subject, describe the
remorse of guilty conscience regain
ing dominion over the guilty soul:
"The mind that broods DER guilty
woes
Is like the scorpion girt by fire,
In circle narrowing as it glows,
The flames around their captive close
Till only searched by thousand
Till only scorched by thousand throes,
And maddening in her ire,
One and sole relief she knows:
The sting she nourished for her foes,
Whose venom never yet was vain,
And darts into desperate brain.
SO do the dark in soul expire,
Or live like scorpion girt by fire:
SO writhes the mind remorse has
rven,
Misfit for earth, undoomed for
heaven;
Darkness above, despair beneath,
Around it flame, within it death"