Progressing—Which Way?
By G. D. Ballou
"The soul that is heaven-born hardly knows that it has a conscience." "When I became a Christian I lost my conscience." "A good conscience is one that we do not feel—one that does not trouble us." Such were the remarks recently made in connection by a popular minister, as he was describing the holy condition of those who are sanctified. These sentiments are not repeated simply for the purpose of criticism, but as an index of the "progress" which modern theological teachers are making. Reader, glance at these statements and then reflect. Here we have a key to the course of action which we may reasonably expect the masses of professing Christians will pursue in the near future. Those whose consciences have been drowned in their wild endeavors to follow every whim of their emotional natures, will have very little to stand in the way of their working zealously for any church movement that they may "feel" is essential to their denominational prosperity. Surely those who have lost their consciences will not scruple to use any means to accomplish the ends they desire. When the masses of Protestants become sanctified to their own notion of things, they will not be long in adopting the sentiment of the mother church, that "The end justifies the means." We have the trite saying now, that "Corporations have no souls;" how long ere it will be said that churches have no consciences? Already it is evident that conscience is an unimportant factor in church work. Scheming policy is supplanting godly principle, and the world is fast ripening for the most subtle deceptions of Satan. When a large class of ministers, all the way from H. W. Beecher down to the backwoods preacher, vie with one another in making extravagant, unseemly, and sensational assertions for the purpose of tickling the public ear and loosening the public purse-string, what may we expect, only that the public mind shall become vitiated, and the public conscience calloused? Consciences which cannot feel and do not trouble the possessor are near of kin to the seared conscience to which Paul alludes in 1 Tim. 4:2. All such need toning up to healthy action, by a thorough application of the principles of the moral law as embodied in the life of Christ. But alas for the world! we need not expect this work to be done by the teachers of popular theology. Such teaching is a thing of the past and there is too much of a cross connected with it to expect much in that line from those who have lost their consciences. Any pointed mention of the ten commandments or denunciation of popular sins is sure "to bring a coldness over the meeting." Reader, we point you to the word of God. To the law and the testimony, and the life of Christ. If you wish to have a healthy conscience, one that will warn you of danger, one which the Holy Spirit can convict of sin, one which will be painfully sensitive to the approaches of evil, submit yourself daily to self-examination in the light of the Bible, looking into God's great mirror—the ten commandments—that you may see the defects in your character. Avoid the moral opiates so freely administered. They will lull you into carnal security, and you will fail to appreciate the work Jesus has done in opening a way for your salvation; and failing to live a humble, penitent child of God, you will lose the life everlasting, and the eternal weight of glory. You will find a keen moral perception of greater worth in the end than a passive conscience which allows you to cherish a false hope based upon false ideas of sanctification. Self-sanctified souls will have great opinions of themselves and of what wonderful things they are doing for Christ, and they will at last be heard saying, "Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name, and in thy name have cast out devils, and in thy name have done many wonderful works?" The reply will come back with appalling power, "I never knew you; depart from me ye that work iniquity." Conscience, no longer dethroned and cast out, will rend their souls with bitter anguish. If never before, conscience will now trouble them; but it will be too late. The nearer you approach the perfect Pattern in the work of overcoming, the more keenly will you sense the sinfulness of your own nature, and the more you will feel like humbling self and exalting Jesus. If you lose sight of the sinless Pattern and shut your eyes to your own wretchedness, it will be easy for you to imagine that you are very holy. A little self-righteousness will aid greatly in establishing a false hope. May God keep you from the fatal deceptions of these days. In humility of soul lay up in store a good foundation against the time to come. Never slight or dismiss your conscience, but rather train it to appreciate and discriminate in regard to the relations which you sustain to God and your fellow-man, remembering that only with a conscience thus trained and disciplined by the work of God, will you be permitted to at last enter in through the gates into the city.