CONSCIENCE AND ITS PLACE
By Prof. J. A. L. Derby
In Three Parts: "Conscience;" "Cause of Unbelief;" "Thinketh No Evil." DRUMMOND says that this means to impute no motive, to put the best construction upon every action. How eminently this is true in the highest and noblest examples we have of the power of charity—love—in the human heart! "Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do." This is the dying prayer for His enemies of the crucified Christ. "And now, brethren, I wot that thru ignorance ye did it, as did also your rulers," said Peter, excusing the murder of the Son of God. Yes, they were ignorant of what they did—culpably ignorant. But the suffering Messiah could not bear to add the incriminating word. Peter could not bear to risk losing the soul of any of his audience by telling the whole truth. Ignorant indeed the people were, but it was an ignorance whose cause was deep and malignant. Still it was unnecessary to taunt them with it. "You knew better!" has little charity in it. "Serves him right!" is pure malignance. No, this can neither raise the drunkard from the ditch nor reclaim the outcast woman. "I will not excuse her, her sins are indeed many; but she loved much, therefore those sins are all forgiven her." "Woman, doth no man condemn thee?" "Neither do I condemn thee. Go, and sin no more." Yes, the world is deceived. True, it is to blame for the deception. It need not be deceived. But the Bible puts the best construction on the matter. God knows the deceitfulness of sin, and He remembers that we are dust—born in sin. There is no vindictiveness, no spirit of accusation in the Lord's call to repentance. Jesus is not the accuser of His brethren—mankind. He came not to condemn. He is rather the Preacher of good news to the poor, the Healer of the broken-hearted, the Deliverer of the captive, the Recoverer of sight to those afflicted with blindness, the Liberator of those that are bruised by Satan. It is not that they are not to blame for their captivity, that they are not wilfully blind, that they are not bruised for their own obstinate folly. But they know that,—why remind them of it? "To be trusted is to be saved. If we try to influence or elevate others, we shall soon see that success is in proportion to their belief in our belief in them. For the respect of another is the first restoration of self-respect a man has lost; our ideal of what he is becomes to him the hope and pattern of what he may become," says the author already quoted. "Thinketh no evil!" Have we learned this spirit? Do we try to put the best face on the mistakes of others? Are we willing, even, to call them mistakes? Or, are they to us malign outcroppings of a corrupt heart? "Him that is overtaken in a fault," do we try to restore in the spirit of meekness, or do we rather consider the advisability of a church trial and a disfellowship? Alas! is there not enough of sordid suspicion, of malicious innuendo, of secret distrust, and open accusation? Let the adversary do that. He will see to it anyhow. Let us learn what this meaneth, "thinketh no evil." "Thinketh no evil!" This is the law of charity. Palliation and extenuation—not censure and reprehension. The sinner, the persecutor, the bigot, the heathen—all are deceived, deceived by an unfathomably deceitful heart. Where is the psychologist that understands the springs of human action? The libraries of mental science are crowded with books that seek to analyze the mind. But here, as everywhere, human curiosity serves only to make clearer the existence, but not the explanation, of the inscrutable. "His ways [are] past finding out." So it easily comes about and is the chiefest deception of all, that the sinner thinks he is not deceived. Even as God uses man for the accomplishment of His purpose, while man "meaneth not so, neither does his heart think so" (Isa. 10:7), so the deceiver of the race, the prince of the power of the air, "now worketh in the children of disobedience." These are in "the snare of the devil," "taken captive by him at his will." Eph. 2:2; 2 Tim. 2:26. Like the song of the sea sung by the shepherd boy of the Alps:
"There's a smile on the sea,
To the bath 'tis inviting;
On the shore's verdant lee,
All his senses delighting.
The youth falls asleep,
Into sleep that is mortal,
For a voice from the deep
Lures to death in its portal." So the deadly hypnotism of sin. We yield to the principle, not seeing the results involved. The blame lies not so much in what we do when hypnotized, but in consenting to be hypnotized. So also it is when in this condition we "know not what we do," even as the victim in the mesmeric trance knows not what he does; still we are guilty for being in such a condition. But divine love makes no note of that; it is content to pity us as deceived.9What a lesson might we learn from this in dealing with the souls for whom we labor. Here is one subservient to the pope, worshiping the Virgin Mary, bowing to images, praying to the saints, and hating Protestants. Who can say that such a one can not be reached if the good news of salvation by grace be rightly and charitably preached to him. The charity that thinketh no evil does not rail at the poor victims of superstition as obstinate and incorrigible lovers and defenders of what they know to be error. No, what they believe they believe to be true, and believe it as firmly as we believe true what we accept for doctrine. Nothing is gained by attacking doctrine until we have first made the soul ready to forsake sin. It is the deceptive power of sin that makes men believe Mohammedanism, Catholicism, and every fantastic, superstitious, and unscriptural notion. To break the power of sin is the first problem. How can this be done? Not by mere logic. By a curious irony, logic was the chief science of the Dark Ages. Not by ridicule and sarcasm. These have no effect but to embitter. Not by denunciation; this is the weapon of enemies. Not by criticism; this but arouses prejudice. Not by any means that a sinner can retort on us, that he can use in defense, and remain a sinner. There is but one weapon that disarms him. It is the charity that thinketh no evil. This he can not use and retain the mood of a sinner. The moment he attempts to meet love with love, he is conquered.