THE WITNESS OF CONSCIENCE
‘When the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves: which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness.’
Nothing is sadder than St. Paul’s impeachment of the heathen world as shown in this letter to the Romans. Its sadness arises from its absolute truth as witnessed to by the confessions of the heathen themselves. To St. Paul the heathen world appeared as if divided into two classes. Those who did by nature the things contained in the law, and those who deliberately shut their eyes to the truths which God had written on their hearts, and refused to listen to the voice of conscience which spoke within them.
I. What is conscience?—It may be defined as the testimony or secret judgment of the soul which approves of what it believes to be good, and condemns what it believes to be wrong. Or ‘that within me which says I ought or I ought not’ (Maurice on ‘Conscience’). ‘Conscience,’ says St. Bernard, ‘is the roll in which our dark sins are written.’ To speak more precisely, ‘Conscience is not merely that which I know, but that which I know with some one else. That other Knower Whom the word implies is God. His law, making itself known and felt in the heart’ (Trench: Study of Works). Thus St. Paul speaks of the conscience of the heathen bearing witness for or against them—for them if they are doing well, against them if they are doing evil. So do their own wise men. They speak of the testimony of a good conscience almost in the same words as the Apostle, and of the witness of an evil conscience in terms which show how fully they felt its power. They picture guilty men as tossing on their beds, restless and unquiet, conjuring up imaginary terrors, unable to drive away thought, alarmed at any sound, appalled by the avenging spirits of their victims. ‘Such,’ says St. Chrysostom, ‘is the way with sinners. Everything excites their suspicion; they quake at every noise, they start at every shadow, they look on every man as an enemy’ (Hom. in Matt.).
II. Conscience is faithful, but stern and inexorable.—It comes to the sinner like the prophet of old with its inflexible ‘Thus saith the Lord.’ It points at him as did Nathan to David, and says, ‘Thou art the man.’ It is like an Elijah to Ahab, ‘Hast thou found me, O mine enemy?’ It is the ‘handwriting on the wall’ to sacrilegious Belshazzar. It is the evil genius that came to Cæsar in his tent. It is the shadow which dogs our steps. It is the livid Care which sits behind the horseman. It unfolds the record of the law, whether written in the heart as the law of nature, or in the revealed word. Its warning voice is to keep the sinner from transgression by pointing out to him the impossibility of escape from the consequences of his acts. Its approving voice is the witness of the Divine Spirit with the spirit of man. It is only in the last and saddest stage of all, when men are past feeling, that conscience is altogether silent—silent because God’s Holy Spirit, the co-witness, has deserted them; silent because of spiritual deadness.
III. Conscience is the same faculty, and its action is the same before as after the preaching of the gospel.—Hence the apologists of the Early Church claimed the philosophers as witnesses for truths, afterwards more fully revealed in the gospel. ‘All the truths,’ says Justin Martyr, ‘which philosophers and legislators have discovered and proclaimed they derived from the Word of Whom they had caught a partial glimpse’ (Apol. 2). These good men showed the work of the law written in their hearts; their conscience bore witness to the purity of their motives. What they needed was the rising of the Sun of Righteousness with healing in His wings to remove their perplexities, to solve their doubts, and to establish truth on a firm and imperishable basis, to make known to them a Saviour Who should also be their God.
Illustrations
(1) ‘Herod was a Sadducee; yet did his guilty conscience conjure up the murdered and martyred Baptist as risen again with renewed power in the person of Jesus Christ. Herodias had the same fears; “observe the terrors of a guilty conscience: Herodias was afraid that if the head of John were reunited to his body he would rise again, and again denounce her incestuous marriage with Herod” (Cornelius à Lapide). Caligula professed to be an atheist, but history tells that, Emperor of the world as he was, he hid his head or got under the bed when he heard thunder. Charles IX. of France, pale with fear and trembling at the recollection of the massacre to which at the instigation of his mother he had given a reluctant consent, was but another example of the truth that “conscience doth make cowards of us all.” Shakespeare’s Macbeth, starting at the fancied apparition of the betrayed and murdered Banquo, and his guiltier wife in her sleep-walk gazing at her bloody hand, are true to the experience of human nature.’
(2) ‘An old writer tells us that near to the Pole, where the winter’s darkness continues for months together, the inhabitants, towards the end of this long night, betake themselves to the mountain-tops, striving who should gain the first glimpse of the orb of day. No sooner do they see it than they deck themselves in their best apparel and congratulate each other with the cheery words, “Ecce Sol, Ecce Sol.” (Behold the Sun.) The long night of darkness has now passed away, the Sun of Righteousness has risen, Ecce Sol, Ecce Sol. Light has come into the world—walk ye as children of the light.’