happiness of the mind must consist in the right application of its highest faculties. And can that be a right application of them, which omits all habitual reference to their great Author, or which fails to look towards Him as the object of supreme regard, and the source of purest joy? Conscience answers, No! She assures us that the soul without God, without religion, without holiness, is degraded and lost; is a stranger to inward peace; is a foe to its own best interests. And therefore, were our views bounded by that selfishness which entirely precludes all generous and disinterested sentiment, we should still even, within this narrow circle, hear the voice of conscience saying to us: Acquaint thyself with God, and be at peace; thereby good shall come unto thee."

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But our own individual happiness is not the focus in which all the rays of duty are concentrated. They are diffused far and wide through all the human family. Let us therefore listen to the instructions of our conscience respecting the duties we owe to others. There are, as Butler observes, the same indications in human nature, 'that we were made for society, and to do good to our fellow-creatures, as that we were intended to take care of our own life, and health, and private good.' He then refers to the natural principle of benevolence, which is in some degree to

1 Job xxii. 21.

2 Works. Vol. II. Sermon I, p. 5.-Oxford, 1826.

society, what self-love is to the individual, and proceeds; If there be in mankind any disposition to friendship; if there be any such thing as compassion, for compassion is momentary love; if there be any such thing as the paternal or filial affections; if there be any affection in human nature, the object and end of which is the good of another; this is itself benevolence or the love of another.'

Now conscience is not the source of this benevolence, which is as much a part of our nature, as the moral faculty itself. But it affords instruction respecting the due use and regulation of the benevolent affections. The benevolent feeling for instance, of parental affection towards children, will sometimes be too strong, and require the suggestions of conscience to moderate it, and to prevent it becoming disproportionate to the other sympathies and sentiments of our nature. Sometimes it may be too weak, and need the stimulant of conscience to raise it to its proper standard; and sometimes it may be undiscriminating and partial, producing family disquietudes, with various other evils; and then it will require conscience to adjust the unequal balance, and to prevent the unhappy preponderance of one side of the scale.

Similar remarks may be made on the subject of friendship. Here conscience has to interpose for the sake of defining its proper limits, lest on the one hand, partiality for the individual should lead to the neglect of what is due to the whole species;

and on the other, lest jealousies and suspicions should intervene, to burst asunder the sacred bonds by which kindred spirits are united together.

Compassion too, that sacred chord which vibrates to the touch of human woe, and pours out its notes of sympathy with deep distress, requires the salutary counsel of conscience, first to restrain it from excess, then to prevent its sudden cessation. Indeed, all the higher and nobler feelings of our nature, when uninstructed and unrestrained, are liable to confusion and disorder. And therefore they continually need the guiding eye and hand of conscience; and hence it often happens, that persons of most benevolent natural dispositions, become the occasions of injury rather than of advantage to the common good. It is easy to perceive how an indulgent parent injures the object of his too fond affection; how an injudicious friend flatters the vices, and aggravates the defects of a character which he might perhaps have materially improved; how the moralist who looks with too indulgent an eye upon the condition of mankind, may, through the exuberance of his kindly feeling, leave unscathed the vices of the age, and confirm the evils which he ought sedulously to uproot and to destroy; and finally, how the minister, whose office it is to fulfil the divine command, " Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and show my people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins; "1 may through a misplaced

1 Isaiah lviii. 1.

fear of giving offence, keep back necessary truths, because they are unwelcome, and leave undisturbed, fatal errors and delusions, because their hearers "love to have it so." And here it is that conscience interferes to correct mistaken apprehensions of duty, and to guide us to a wise and sober discipline of our other mental powers.

Under her direction we shall aim not merely at the present and temporal good of our fellow-creatures, but at their future and everlasting welfare. We shall be glad in every way to diminish the stream, if we cannot dry up the fountain of human misery, and add something, however little, to the stock of human happiness. It will give pleasure to wipe the falling tear from the mourner's eye, to alleviate the sorrow of the widow's heart, to cast the shadow of our protection over the orphan's head, to relieve the poor, to sympathize with the afflicted, and to vindicate the oppressed. But conscience proposes to us a higher task, and shows unto us a still " more excellent way." It tells us that as the servants of God, we are placed in scenes where all around us are exposed to eternal danger, and it demands of us the exertion of all our powers, and the use of all our opportunities for the sacred purpose of converting "sinners from the error of their way," and of thus, instrumentally, hiding "the multitude of their sins."

CHAPTER V.

ON THE AUTHORITY OF CONSCIENCE.

The place which conscience holds among the other powers of the mind. General examination of those powers. Butler's argument. It is not enough to observe that we have different faculties, but to mark the relation in which they stand to each other. The passions often violent, but have not equal right to rule with self-love. Nor has self-love equal right with the benevolent affections. Nor have these equal right with conscience; which is therefore supreme over them all. Chalmers. Conscience a regulator-may be plundered of its rights, but still asserts them. Every act against conscience is sinful. Practical conclusion.

Ir is not enough that conscience should instruct, should reason, should argue-it prescribes duty with the voice of command and of authority. It delivers its teachings in the form, and with the sanctions of a law, and therefore its dictates are not called advices, or recommendations, or proposals of duty, but " a law written on the heart." They have all the force of law, all the solemnity of legislative enactment, all the authority of legal prescription.

But to ascertain the exact place which conscience holds among the other powers of the mind,