A WRONG CONSCIENCE

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jan 21, 1897

A WRONG CONSCIENCE.

Apply It to the Sunday-Law Question.

THE Pacific Coast Endeavourer of January 7 gives utterance to the following excellent Gospel thoughts, thoughts which seem to us should meet the approval of every Christian:—

A gentleman made a remark the other day which forcefully put a truth we too often overlook. He said “many of the most cruel things that ever have been perpetrated have been done at the stern dictates of conscience.” How true, and yet how sad! Why is it men must be so stern and cruel? Nay! not must be, but are. There is no must be to wrong, and that harshness and cruelty are always wrong, there can be no question. God makes his rain to fall on the just and the unjust. Christ said to the harsh condemners of the wicked woman, “Let him that is without sin cast the first stone.” And I do not believe in limiting the meaning of these words to the general idea, viz., that let him who is without the same sin of which this woman is guilty, cast the first stone. Sin is sin, and one sin receives condemnation at God's hands as much as another. There may be no desire to be a drunkard in your life, but should you, therefore, cast a stone at the drunkard? What about your own sins? Unbrotherly, unforgiving, full of “thinking evil” of your brother, uncharitable, not a peacemaker, a gossiper, a slanderer, perhaps, who are you that you should cast a stone at a poor drunken wretch, who, maybe, is striving with untold agonies to free himself from his thraldom? No! let us remember we are all imperfect, all incomplete, all human. Let us remember that Christ’s plan is the plan of love and forgiveness. Did ever the harsh, stern doings of these men who say, and doubtless say truly, that they are driven by conscience, lead the sinner they persecuted into the fold of Christ?

The statement quoted above is absolutely true. All the religious persecutions of the world have been instigated and carried on through the dictates of a corrupted or uninstructed conscience, a conscience which assumed to be conscience for others. And, furthermore, the methods always adopted by such consciences have ever led to the use of physical force, a thing which in both its genius and operation is foreign to the Gospel of Christ. Christ came and died to win sinners. He lives to win sinners through those who represent him here. But whenever the church of Christ departs from that spirit, that object, that method, her conscience becomes perverted.

Now a principle is worthless unless it can be put in practice where it applies. Why not let these principles of the Endeavourer apply to the Sunday reform? Why not win the sinners? They can not be coerced into keeping even one duty enjoined of God; for all of God’s laws are spiritual. Force can only compel an unwilling outward conformity. Sunday laws, instigated oftentimes doubtless by “the stern dictates of conscience,” have never led “the sinner they persecuted into the fold of Christ.” Why not, brethren in the Endeavour cause, use Gospel methods in the Sunday reform? But if there is no Gospel for Sunday to which you can consistently appeal, why not leave the day to care for itself? Jesus said, “Every plant which my heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up.” If Sunday is of God, there is Gospel and grace to support it in the Gospel way; if it is not of God, let it go. Let Christians use Christ’s methods.