The Testimony of the Conscience
“For our glorying is this, the testimony of our conscience, that in holiness and sincerity of God, not in fleshly wisdom, but in the grace of God, we behaved ourselves in the world, and more abundantly to you-ward.” — 2 Cob. i. 12.
That is the reply of an apostle to charges directed against the character of his life and ministry. The thunder has passed, and this forms the last rumbling of a storm of great severity. Alienation had arisen between the apostle and the believers at Corinth. Lax practices had been tolerated in the Corinthian church, and the apostle had denounced them with fiery and scathing indignation. And how had they answered his indictment? By questioning his authority, by throwing suspicion upon his credentials, by pronouncing him an interloper who did not bear the original apostolic seals, and by insinuating charges against his moral integrity. It is with this last charge that my text is concerned. They said he was light in promise and careless in execution. His word was not his bond. His path was strewn with once fair promises which were now blown about like withered leaves. They charged him with “lightness,” with levity, as being a man of ready words and unready performance. And how does he answer it? In the only way in which any man can find a satisfactory answer. By appealing to his own conscience, and ascertaining if the secret witness confirms or destroys the indictment of his foes. And that is the only point of interest for to-day. The details of the controversy are dead. It would serve little purpose to attempt to revive them. But it is of perennial interest, and of vital importance to know how a great apostle surveyed his own behaviour, by what standards he judged it, and in what conclusions he found his moral satisfaction and peace. How did Paul examine his life? What was the nature of the tribunal? In what did he find his peace? His court of judgment was the conscience. The case to be submitted was his public and private behaviour. The verdict was one of moral approbation. The issue was an enhanced and glorified rejoicing. “For our glorying is this, the testimony of our conscience, that in holiness and sincerity of God, not in fleshly wisdom, but in the grace of God, we behaved ourselves in the world, and more especially to you-wards.”
What was the court of judgment? “Our conscience.” That is the supreme court to which every man must make final appeal. But how is the court constituted? What is the conscience? Many symbols have been used in attempted definition. It has been described as a moral sense, and every physical sense has been enlisted in the work of interpretation.
Conscience has been said to be a sense of sight for discerning and discriminating moral colours — the virgin white of rectitude, the deadly black of iniquity, and the dubious greys of ambiguity and compromise. And conscience has been said to be a sense of hearing, for the detection of moral tones, moral harmonies and discords, and for distinguishing ‘’ the voice of the great Eternal ‘’ from the shrill loudness of the fleeting day. And conscience has been said to be a sense of taste, a palate for the appreciation of moral flavours, by means of which we may be able to apprehend the difference between the morally bitter and offensive, and the morally nutritious and sweet. Conscience has also been compared to the aesthetic sense. The aesthetic sense is an inherent capacity for detecting the ugly and the beautiful, making appreciative response to the graceful curve, and recoiling from makeshift and confusion. And the conscience is said to be an aesthetic sense on the moral plane, by which we feel the grace and fascination of moral loveliness, and the repulsion of moral chaos and perversity.
Well, all these analogies are significant, and they help us to give expression to the nature and ministry of the conscience. But I think we must track the matter into yet deeper places, even though we may feel the dark and awful silences of “unfathomable mines.” If conscience be only a sense, we can conceive it without awe. If conscience be only a superior sense it is void of the awful authority of the judgment bench. If conscience be only an aesthetic perception it is shorn of the thunders and lightnings of the throne. ‘No man reasons rightly about conscience who makes it to be pale moonlight, devoid of scorching beam. No conception is adequate which makes conscience a harmless sheet4ightning playing picturesquely about the ripening corn. Everybody knows that conscience is not only luminous but convicting, it not only lights but it strikes, its burning arrows are fraught with peril and death. We have got to trace that forked flame and therefore we must go deeper still.
Let me give John Wesley’s definition or description of the conscience. John Wesley says that the conscience is ‘^ a faculty or power implanted by God “in the soul by which every man perceives ^’ what is right or wrong in his own heart or life, in his tempers, thoughts, words or actions.” Does that take me any deeper? Apparently not, but in reality it leads me into the infinite. It names God in association with conscience, and in that conjunction I get the requisite awe of its judgment, and I begin to feel the mysterious origin of the lightning flash and flame. But may our analysis be even more precise than John Wesley’s? Let us examine the word itself. Our English word ‘^ conscience “is a very accurate transcript of the original word used by the apostle Paul. If we examine the one we shall be exploring the other. Take then the word ‘^ conscience.” Break it in two. Put aside the preliminary syllable. What have you left? “Science,” And what is ‘^ science “? Knowledge. Attach your preliminary syllable, “con.” What have you now? Con ‘’ is significant of association, fellowship, intercourse. “Con” marks the confluence of many or the meeting of two. Where “con” is, there is isolation. “Con-science “; ‘’ knowledge with “: here are two engaged! It is the fellowship of intelligences, it is the communion of man and God. It is the relation of pupil and teacher, of receiver and giver, of echo and voice. The preliminary syllable in ‘’ conscience” is significant of a mysterious second Presence whom we name God.
And now I am prepared to venture upon a sentence which I offer not as an exact definition but as a practical description of the conscience. Conscience is a medium in personality through which is transmitted to the soul the moral judgment and imperatives of God. In the word ‘’ conscience “the value of the last syllable is conditioned by the value of the first. The science “will be dim, dull, unreliable if the ^’ con,” the association, be frail or broken. In every healthy conscience there is correspondence between the human and the divine, and the quality of the correspondence is determined by the medium through which it is made.
The medium can be impaired. We can interfere with the ‘’ con,” and the ‘’ science “will be perverted. John Bunyan, that marvellous expert in the heart of man, declares that the conscience can become” stony, benumbed,” it can be “bribed, deluded, muzzled,” If all that can happen to the former part of the word, it is not difficult to imagine what will happen to the latter part. The apostle says that the medium can be ‘’ seared as with a hot iron,” its perceptive surface can be destrojed as we might destroy the prepared surface of a photographer’s plate. He declares that the conscience can abound in what he calls “offence,” like the flaws in a mirror which render its transmission untrue. And above all this, our Master Himself declares that the medium can be so distorted that the supposed knowledge is no knowledge at all. ‘’ If thine eye be evil,” if the ‘’ con “be ravaged, “thy whole body shall be full of darkness.” “And if the light that is in thee be darkness,” if thou art mistaking a miasmic willo’-the-wisp for a heavenly star, “how great is the darkness!”
Common experience gives confirmation to this teaching. There are consciences which are lacking in accuracy, and there are consciences which are lacking in range. There are consciences which are irregular anywhere, and there are others which are only accurate in limited spheres. There are consciences which are domestically vigilant but politically dormant. Some consciences are responsive to private debt, but dumb and numb to public obligation. There is a sense of right which reigns in the inch but not in the mile. Its decree governs the home, but it does not engirdle the world. Its dominion does not include the Congo and America, and it registers no imperatives concerning lands afar.
And so, if we are going to submit a matter to the conscience it is of the utmost necessity that we first of all examine the tribunal itself. Is the court capable, unbribable, pure and true? If we are going to consult the ‘’ science ‘^ we must rigorously scrutinise the “con.” When we go into conscience it must be into the most holy place, with only the thinnest veil between ourselves and God. When we hear the voice of conscience we ought to be able to say, with apostle and prophet,” The Lord said unto me,’’ and our light must be a beam from the great white throne.
It was before such an august tribunal that the apostle submitted his public and private life. ‘’ Our behaviour in the world, and more abundantly to yovr ward,” Let us note the breadth of the case submitted to the court. He appeared before the solemn sanctities of his conscience, and he submitted his behaviour as a Christian “in the world.’’ Think of it. The world is the realm of studied ambiguity and compromise. The speech of the world is the language of equivocation. Worldliness is human activity with God left out. And for a Christian to be” in the world “is to be always exposed to the snare of dissembling, to the temptation of borrowing an accent or a dialect, and of practising ‘the doleful arts of the trimmer. The Christian must have connection with the world, but no communion. He must be” in ‘^ it but not ‘^ of ‘’ it. He must move among its ambitions and not lose his aspirations. He must confront its experiences and not lose his principles. He must encounter its cleverness and not lose his wisdom. He must be able to look upon its coveted garlands and not throw away his crown. Can it be done? The apostle Paul, at any rate took his behaviour in the worlds and quietly and confidently submitted it to the searching judgment of a conscience which registered the holy mind of God.
But there is another part of the case. ‘’ My ‘behaviour more abundantly to you-ward,” He submits this to the tribunal, and I really think that this is even more daring than the other. He submitted his life in the church as well as his behaviour in the world. And that includes a very bold and inclusive scrutiny. For let me mention a very extraordinary thing which sometimes characterises the Christian life. There are Christian men whose consciences are more active in the world than they are in the Church. They pay more respect to the obligations of their membership in the club than to the obligations of their membership in the Church. They regard the one with scrupulous exactitude, they regard the other with comparative lightness and laxity. If thought and sympathy and prayer are the appointed contributions to Christian fellowship, then they pay or they dont pay, just as they please. They never infringe a rule of the club; they ignore the rules of the Church without compunction. A masonic pledge has more sanctity than their covenant with the Church of Christ. Their communion with a minor society is a reality, their communion with Christian believers is only a name. Now that is a very extraordinary thing, and I think that in some degree it is a common experience. If our Church relationships and obligations were to be brought before the searching glance of some supreme tribunal I think the majority of us would shrink into a dwarfed and pathetic insignificance. But it is just here that the apostle places his most exultant emphasis. “Our behaviour” more especially “to you-ward.” He takes his life of fellowship in the Church, and he spreads it out before the tribunal of a conscience that is illumined with the glorious presence of God.
And what is the verdict of the court? The verdict is in two parts, negative and positive. And the negative verdict is this: ‘’ Not in fleshly wisdom,” Such was the negative testimony of conscience concerning the life submitted to its judgment. “N’ot in fleshly wisdom! ‘^ said the court. This is not a life of” show,” of glittering cleverness and superficial sharpness. Whatever else it is, Paul’s “behaviour “is not a fine polish upon a vicious grain. It is not the courtesy of fine breeding detached from noble morals. It is not the shimmer on noisome waters: its wisdom is not a ghostly light playing about a grave. So said conscience, and therefore, said Paul, ‘^ Our glorying is this, the testimony of our conscience... not in fleshly wisdom.”
And what was the positive verdict? ‘’In holiness,” That was the first positive item in the verdict. ‘’ In holiness! “And what is that? Well, in the first place, holiness is something in the grain, it is in the stuff, in the fibre, in every thread and every fibre of the soul. It is all in the piece, and all of a piece. It is “wholeness. ‘^ And then, in the second place, holiness means the divine in the grain, the divine in the nature, in the life-stuff, God in the entire piece. Think of that, and prayerfully wonder! Here is a man, of such glorious consecration, that when he takes the fabric of his behaviour and spreads it before his conscience, and conscience has examined it in warp and woof, this is the verdict given — God in every thread, wrought” in holiness,’^ royal through and through!
And take the remaining clause in the verdict of the court — ‘’ in sincerity of God,” That was its second positive characteristic. And what is this word “sincerity ‘’? Its literal significance is ‘^ sunjudged.” The character of the apostle was not dulled in the radiant beam. Its brightness matches the light of God. And therefore there is nothing shady about it, and nothing underhand, nothing sneaking about in the shadows. There is no subtle manoeuvring, no Jesuitry, no duplicity. Everything is as frank as the day, and as candid as the noon.” In sincerity of God! ‘’
Such was the judgment of this august tribunal on this man’s behaviour in the world and in the Church.
“Our glorying is this the testimony of our conscience, that in holiness and sincerity of God, not in fleshly wisdom but in the grace of God, we behaved ourselves in the world, and more abundantly to you-ward.” Do you wonder at the sober glory, do you wonder at the sacred joy? When a vigilant conscience speaks in this wise, the awful tribunal is transformed into our Father’s house, and there is music and dancing. Any other kind of joy is vain and fleeting. Joy that is not born near conscience is only the flare of a street-lamp, subject to accident, and liable to be blown out on the first tempestuous day. Joy that is born near conscience shares the flame of the seraphim who burn and shine with the eternal life of Q^d.