What to Do by Francis Wayland

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Mar 10, 1909

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 36, No. 10.

What to Do.

By Francis Wayland

If conscience convicts you of having acted wrongly,

1. Reflect upon the wrong, survey the obligations which you have violated, until you are sensible of your guilt.

2. Be willing to suffer the pains of conscience. They are the rebukes of a friend, and are designed to withhold you from the commission of wrong in future. Neither turn a neglectful ear to its monitions, nor drown its voice amid the bustle of business or the gaiety of pleasure.

3. Do not let the subject pass away from your thoughts, until you have come to a settled resolution, a resolution founded on moral disapprobation of the action, never to do so any more.

4. If restitution be in your power, make it, without hesitation, and do it immediately. The least that a man ought to be satisfied with, who has done wrong, is to repair the wrong as soon as it is possible.

5. As every act of wrong is a sin against God, seek, in humble penitence, His pardon, through the merits and intercession of His Son, Jesus Christ.

6. Remark the actions, or the courses of thinking, which were the occasions of leading you to do wrong. Be especially careful to avoid them in future. To this effect says President Edwards: “Resolved, That when I do any conspicuously evil action, to trace it back, till I come to the original cause; and then both carefully endeavor to do so no more, and to fight and pray, with all my might, against the original of it.”

7. Do all this in humble dependence upon that merciful and everywhere present Being who is always ready to grant us all assistance necessary to keep His commandments, and who will never leave us, nor forsake us, if we put our trust in Him.—Francis Wayland, D.D.