p. 163 | Reason and Conscience by Cremer

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 17, 1874

Reason and Conscience.

By Cremer

WHERE truth is, there righteousness must be, and only where truth is can righteousness be. Where reason is, there is conscience; where conscience is, there is reason. They must not be separated from each other and cannot be separated. Now since reason and conscience capacitate us for the truth, for its apprehension and its transference into life, they require the truth, both for us and of us. With the capacity for it is closely connected its need; and only when man has abandoned the morally earnest use of his reason, and foolishly and wilfully separated himself from the impulses and requirements of his conscience, can he become insensible to his need, and as a beggar, who insanely imagines himself to be a king, be proud in the rags of his poverty.

Whatever comports with reason and conscience must spring from the truth, and only the whole truth can satisfy reason and conscience. Reasonableness and necessary assent of conscience form the standard of truth, and by this standard must be measured the thoughts of men, as well as that which calls itself a divine revelation.

Not until man has found the truth does he attain to peace with himself. It alone can give him knowledge of himself. It gives him the direction, the line in which, not only he must proceed, but in which alone he can freely and without hindrance order his life. The truth for man, and man for the truth—this is the mutual relation in which all yearnings and seeking of the spirit come to rest. Reason and conscience cannot say, I am the truth. The truth is above us, it must come into us since reason and conscience are adapted to unite with it, wherever it meets us.—Cremer.