Conscience by G. B. T.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Nov 2, 1916

Conscience

By G. B. T.

Within every human breast is that mysterious thing called conscience. The Bible speaks of a good conscience (1 Tim. 1:5), a pure conscience (1 Tim. 3:9), an evil conscience (Heb. 10:22), a defiled conscience (Titus 1:15), and a seared conscience (1 Tim. 4:2). Conscience is said to be God's vicegerent to the soul. It is that through which God, by the Spirit, speaks to us, and impresses us concerning his will. It is the sense of right and wrong. It may be kept pure, but if continually outraged, and its authoritative, magisterial voice unheeded, it may become defiled, and seared as flesh which has come in contact with a hot iron. Men's consciences, therefore, vary in their opinions or classification of sin. As one writer says, “You may dim the glass until it ceases to reflect the sunshine.”

Conscience is a tremendous power. It sometimes tortures with the burning remorse of hell, and has driven thieves and murderers to confess their crimes, even though by so doing they faced the penitentiary or the scaffold. Its lashings caused Judas to hang himself, and the knees of Belshazzar to weaken and smite together when the mystic hand wrote on the palace wall. On the other hand, it may speak an unutterable peace and tranquillity to the soul of those who seek to do right.

Around conscience battles have been fought which have convulsed the world. Because they refused to violate their conscience, men, women, and tender virgins have been fed to the beasts in the arena, or have stood calmly at the stake while the lurid flames extinguished their lives. Its sovereignty led the Hebrew worthies into the fiery furnace, and Daniel into the lions' den.

It is a terrible thing to stifle and drown the accusing voice of this great religious instinct in the soul, until its counsel is heard very indistinctly, if at all. “An old historian says about the Roman armies that marched through a country, burning and destroying every living thing, ‘They make a solitude, and they call it peace.’ And so men do with their consciences. They stifle them, sear them, forcibly silence them, somehow or other; and then, when there is a dead stillness in the heart, broken by no voice of either approbation or blame, but doleful, like the unnatural quiet of a deserted city, then they say, ‘It is peace;’ and the man's uncontrolled passions and unbridled desires dwell solitary in the fortress of his own spirit! You may almost attain to that.”

There is nothing in this world worth more than a clean, approving conscience. How carefully it should be preserved! But sin hardens. It dulls the tender sensibilities of the soul, and dims the light which may be shining in the life. One writer says a crippled conscience “may be like the great Cunarder which found itself on Nantucket shoals, when sextant and compass showed it to be two hundred miles distant. A nail driven by the ship's carpenter too close to the needle had swerved it just a little from its course, until it took the great steamship astray. The needle is conscience; the nail is sin.”

Many continue in violation of known duty, and silence the voice which speaks to them. We knew a man once, where we were holding a series of meetings, who was deeply stirred by the Sabbath truth. Duty was plain, and he knew he should keep God's holy day as set forth in the Scriptures. His conscience lashed him; his nights were sleepless. We urged and prayed. But he put off the matter of obedience. His business stood in the way. He was afraid to trust God. He continued to work on the Sabbath, promising to obey God later. Time went on. His conscience was outraged and stifled by disobedience. Later he told me he did not feel so much like keeping the Sabbath as he once did. Still later the binding claims of the law promulgated amid the grandeur of Sinai ceased to grip his soul, and he said he did not believe it necessary to keep the Sabbath. Disobedience had destroyed the voice of conscience, until it could no longer be heard.

Others who are doing a similar thing should take warning from this. The Spirit of God will not always chide. It may be grieved away from us forever. But the sting of conscience and the unrest in the life may be revived. Sometimes it may require confession to those whom we have wronged, as well as to God, whose law we have violated. But the peace which comes into the life is well worth the price. To walk humbly as a child before God, keeping the conscience pure by obeying its dictates, is worth more than anything which this world affords. To do our known duty and walk in every ray of light which falls across our pathway, may mean great sacrifice and hardship, but the approval of conscience will repay us well; for when our conscience condemns us, we may know that God, who is greater than our conscience, does also. G. B. T.