My Conscience does not Condemn Me?
By Wm. Bell
THIS is the answer that a great many professors give when interrogated in regard to the correctness of their position or acts. It is pretty hard to understand what is always meant by the term conscience. But conscience certainly is a blind guide, when uneducated by reason or an enlightened judgment. Conscience cannot decide what is right. Its only voice is, be right. Whatever the judgment decides is right, the conscience will approbate; and whatever the judgment decides is wrong, it will disapprobate. Thus, the Hindoo mother's conscience never gives her rest until she devotes her child to the crocodile, because her dark and benighted judgment has been taught it is right to do so. So there are a great many persons at this day, and in this country, who are occupying positions, and doing what would not stand the test for a moment if they were examined in the light of the Bible, but they have made the teachings of their church, or party, their standard of right. This explains how some persons can live in violation of a plain command of the Bible, without any remorse of conscience, while they will show a great deal of penitence when they are convinced they have violated the rules of their church. I have heard professors say, and I am sorry they were Wesleyan Methodists too, that the same amount of dress that would be wrong for a person to wear in one community would not be wrong in another. If this be correct we cannot commit sin in dressing if we do not transcend the fashions of the community in which we live. This is making the fashions of the community the standard of right in regard to dress in place of the Bible. How easily we are deceived! O, how carefully should all persons go to the Bible, examine its sacred pages, and learn their duty? And we, brethren, who profess to be reformers, should be careful, lest while we make the Bible our standard on many points, we let the allurements of the world pervert our judgment on others. May God help us to examine his sacred word, and make its teachings the rule of all our action. Yours for undefiled religion.
[WM. BELL.—Wesleyan.