CHRISTIANITY AND THE CONSCIENCE.
DOES the religion of Christ uphold the absolute authority of conscience? This is a question which the present tendency to doubt authority in all its outward forms must bring home more and more intensely to all Christians. Like so many moral and religious questions, it cannot be adequately answered by " Yes" or "No." Without doubt Christ appealed continually to the authority of conscience. Almost all His parabolic and figurative teaching is plainly designed to elicit its instinctive confirmation. In its simplest forms He respects its dictates, and conforms to its longings for absolute justice. Our Lord, who taught us that if we would be Godlike we must forgive our enemies, does not hesitate to point a moral by describing how the enemies of a righteous ruler came by their deserts in accordance with the righteous indignation of a just man. St. Paul in like manner believed that the Gospel would best be spread by an appeai to the natural moral sense. " Commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God," he says. On the abet hand, it would be impossible to maintain that either our Lord or St. Paul regarded either the corporate or the individual conscience as morally infallible. Christ, indeed, declared that He foresaw a time when men would persecute their brethren to the death on account of their religious opinions, and would even think that in so doing they did God service. On the same principle, He forbore to condemn the soldiers who, in accordance with what they considered their duty, carried out what the enlightened conscience was to pro- claim the typical crime of the world's history. But even if we admit that, while in the vast majority of cases the verdict of conscience is unquestionable, in certain instances a man may do a definitely wicked act unrebuked by his conscience and stand excused by his ignorance, we are still far from grasping the whole teaching of the New Testament on the subject of moral responsibility. St. Paul evidently considered—indeed, he literally said—that harmless and indifferent acts when performed by those who regarded them as wrong par- took of the nature of sin. For instance, our Lord had definitely declared that no one by the act of eating could be spiritually defiled. St. Paul accepted His con- clusion, and preached it unhesitatingly to the Church. " I know, and atu persuaded by the Lord Jesus, that there is nothing unclean of itself," he said, for " the kingdom of God is not meat and drink ; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit. For he that in these things serveth Christ is acceptable to God, and approved of men." At the same time, he recommended those who remained unconvinced not to eat meat offered to idols if they were not inwardly persuaded that they were right in doing so. On no account must they eat and doubt, for that was to court their own condemnation. Also he exhorted all supercilious critics of their scrupulosity to let them alone. It was better, he said, not to eat flesh at all while the world endured than to lead some one else to do so against his conscience. It is a curious fact, and one we do not remember to have seen remarked by the commentators, that St. Paul does not condemn the man who cannot satisfy his conscience by the thought of Christ's permission. From his own robust point of view, he could not help regarding him as somewhat weak-kneed, but he earnestly believed and taught that, since he meant right, he was by Christianity justified, and would be "holden up," for "God is able to make him. stand."
There is no actual saying of our Lord's in the Four Gospels which goes quite as far as St. Paul's "To him that esteemeth any thing to be unclean, to him it is unclean "; but there is a traditional saying—quoted in the " Codex Bezae" (D), the important MS. of the Gospels at Cambridge, in connexion with the narrative of David and the skew-bread, mentioned by St. Luke—on which it is not impossible that St. Paul founded his very decisive teaching in the matter of conscience. The passage runs as follows :—" On the same day, having seen one working on the Sabbath, He said to him, O man, if indeed thou knowest what thou doest, thou art blessed : but if thou knowest not, thou art accursed, and a transgressor of the law." [" Knowest" here of course means—art aware of the full significance of the act, art acting with a deliberate intention, and not out of carelessness or indifference to whether the act is right or wrong.] St. Paul's words, " Happy is he that con- demneth not himself in that thing which be alloweth," suggest a familiarity with the incident.
What, then, are we to conclude ? Clearly conscience is not infallible, since it may prompt one man to work and another to refrain from working on the Sabbath Day. On the other hand, both will be justified by their obedience, which looks as though conscience, if a fallible, must yet be regarded as a supreme authority. Our Lord would seem never to set aside its verdict. It is as though, to use a very modern figure of speech, Re was always tuning the "receiver" of divine messages, seeking not the destruction, but the better fulfil- ment, of the inward law ; and it is surprising to find that the instrument He uses for the correction of conscience is almost always common-sense. That the true aim of life is the service of God and man had already dawned upon the Jewish moral sense. But this service, our Lord explained, must be im- perfect while a man could acknowledge to hithself that be had enemies whom it was his object to injure. The Scribes and Pharisees loved those only who loved them, He said, and it was plain to be seen that by this restriction their service was rendered ineffectual. He does not blame those who are meticulous in the observation of the ceremonial law; but by an appeal to their common-sense He readjusts the proportion of their scruples. They must fix their minds, He says, upon the weightier matters of the law, and then the tithing of mint and rue will seem a matter of small importance. On the same principle, we may say that the Christian argument against persecution does not rest upon the fact—or rather fiction—that it does not matter what a man believes, but upon the common-sense consideration that cruelty and murder remain cruelty and murder whether the convictions of the victim be right or wrong. Charity remains the pre-eminent Christian virtue, to whomsoever it may be exercised ; and since it is true that " where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty," we may surely argue that where there is no liberty of conscience there is no spirit of Christ.
We think that any fair-minded reader of the Gospels must be left with the following impression on the subject of con- science. Our Lord seems to take it for granted that, broadly speaking, the human conscience is a true guide, and that upon matters of right and wrong there is a consensus of sane opinion. Ile does not deny, however, that a definite, and to the ordinary mind an easily recognisable, sin may be com- mitted without rebuke from the individual conscience. How far a man may be to blame for its imperfection He makes no direct statement, but He clearly regards that imperfection as in many cases a moral excuse. If a man is unaware that be is doing wrong, we must consider his conduct in the light of his ignorance, He teaches. Here again He appeals to common- sense. Who would be very bard on a servant whose dis- obedience was unintentional ? "He that knew not, and did commit things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes."
St. Paul, as we have shown, distinctly stated that a man who bad committed no breach at all of the moral law may be made by his conscience not only a coward but a criminal, and if we accept the traditional sentence quoted above, his words were not out of harmony with those of Christ. Christianity leaves the question of conscience, as it leaves so many others, theoretically very obscure, regarding it as the supreme yet imperfect medium of revelation. On the other hand, the teaching both of Christ and St. Paul upon the subject throws a clear light upon the path of practice sufficient to enable those who can accept it simply and without logic-chopping to judge righteous judgment, and continually to advance in moral perception, though they should be forced by logicians to admit that theoretically they have no infallible authority.
That it is a violation of the conscience which makes us sinners, and not a particular action, may conceivably be true in the region of pure thought, and conceivably also not otherwise than consonant with our Lord's teaching. It must never be forgotten, however, that, humanly speaking, there is a very real and very grave danger in this, as in all universal and absolute statements on religious and moral questions. The power to deceive lurks within them. And for this reason. No man can feel absolutely sure that the voice be takes for conscience is always and in every case the authentic reverberation of the still small voice. In ninety-nine cases out pf a hundred he may have no doubt that he has heard the voice aright, but every now and then there may be a doubt as to which of two inner voices is the true one. Here reason, faith, and the common conscience of Christianity may help him to decide. Our Lord meant us, no doubt, to find Him and obey Him in the conscience. But how can we be sure that conscience has spoken ?
Remember that the voice which purports to be the voice of conscience may, if not tested and explored, lead to anti. nomianism and the black night of spiritual anarchy. The man who thinks he is following conscience • may really be following his own lusts or whims, and the true inner voice may have ceased to speak, though the counterfeit has apparently almost the same accent.
To sum np, the true conscience is the very voice of God within us. Bnt it is our duty before we obey to make sure that it is the true conscience which speaks. At the same time, it may be urged : "If we hesitate and debate, may we not lose the power of recognising the voice in the drone of theological dialectic P" Possibly a conclusive test is the instant and imperative eon- viction that we must obey which sometimes comes with the inner voice. He who never thinks of asking whether he should obey, but obeys as soon as the injunction is beard, will not have, and perhaps need not have, any of the fears and difficulties here discussed. It is of such that it is written, "Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God." Lass happy men and women—and they must always be the majority-,-dare not be so bold, but must, as we have said, test even the conscience by the teaching of Christ.
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