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“THE DUTY OF INSTRUCT
ING THE CONSCIENCE.”
A SERMON
PREACHED AT ST. GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE,
AUGUST 18th, 1872. BY A
CLERGYMAN
of the
CHURCH
of
ENGLAND.
*
[From the Eastern Post, August 24tZi, 1872.]
On Sunday last, in the absence of Mr Voysey, a Minister of the
Church of England officiated, and preached on “The Duty of In
structing the Conscience,” taking for his text, Romans xiv., pt. of
23,—“ For whatsoever is not of faith is sin.”
Some persons have understood this statement to mean that all
actions are in their nature sinful that do not spring from a
principle of Christian faith ; i.e. that all the works of unbelievers
“ have the nature of sin,” as the 13th Article of the Church of
England says. Whatever Divines, however, may allege for this
theory, it must be evident from a consideration of the whole scope
of the chapter, that St. Paul here means nothing of the kind.
He is treating of persons who are in doubt as to the lawfulness or
unlawfulness of certain proceedings ; though he himself, he says,
is persuaded of their lawfulness or indifference, yet it would be
wrong for anyone to do them who thinks them unlawful, “ for
whatsoever is not of faith is sin i.e. whatever action is ventured
on without a full persuasion of its rightfulness is wrong in the
doer of it; which is no more than what Cicero tells us when he
says, “ Nothing ought to be done concerning which you doubt,
whether it may be rightly done.” The declaration of Paul, there
fore, comes to this, that in any case it must be wrong to act
against the persuasion of one’s own conscience. A statement which
�THE DUTY OF INSTRUCTING THE CONSCIENCE.
none of us would be likely to deny, for if one doubts of the recti
tude of an action, to persist in it notwithstanding such doubt
argues a deliberate carelessness as to whether one’s actions are
right or she contrary, and as to the criminality of such conduct,
I think there is no room for difference of opinion.
But then arises the question, can we be always sure that when
we act on the prompting of conscience we are certainly right ?
That is, are the affirmative dictates of conscience a safe guarantee
of the rectitude of actions ? Experience, I think, compels us to
answer this question in the negative. To do what our conscience
forbids is clearly wrong; but it by no means follows
that to do what our conscience prompts is clearly right.
Although subjectively a man may be held guiltless who has
acted conscientiously, and yet erroneously, yet objectively
it is evident the action itself derives no sanction from the edict of
conscience. And since experience has so often taught us this
lesson of the defectiveness of conscience, it is a question whether
a man can be held guiltless who gratuitously makes his own con
science the measure of actions beyond his personal and proper
sphere. Certainly he cannot be acquitted of arrogance and pre
sumption.
Examples of the fallibility of conscience crowd upon us from all
quarters. Louis IN., perhaps the most sincerely conscientious man
that ever existed, made no scruple in robbing heterodox bankers.
Many a one has conscientiously persuaded a Hindoo widow into sui
cide. It is needless to rake history for instances of this kind, espe
cially as common experience shows us the same thing every day. A
pious family in Tyburnia thinks it wrong to open the ipiano on
Sundays, when an equally pious family in Saxony finds its con
science unwounded in listening through the harmless afternoon to
the public band, playing Straus’s Waltzes. In fact, conscience
changes with the latitude; the incoherent collection of sentiments
which a man calls his conscience, North of the Tweed, forms a
curious contrast with the equally heterogeneous convictions of
dwellers South of the Seine.
Some persons endeavour to evade objections of this sort'
against the absolute authority of conscienc, by alleging that
there is pre-supposed a belief in God and goodness. But it is
evident this is only shifting the difficulty from one shoulder to
the other; for what is your standard of goodness ? ’ Goodness is
�THE DUTY OF INSTRUCTING THE CONSCIENCE.
what your conscience approves,—and conscience is your opinion
with respect to what constitutes goodness. We are, you perceive,
going round in a circle. It has been shown by numberless reasoners
that there is no innate infallible test on these matters ; morals have
varied from age to age according to the world’s progress, and their
historical developement is as traceable as that of the intellect.
Now what is the result of all this ? Not as some of the Sophists
once alleged an utter Scepticism as to the difference between
right and wrong, nor a denial of the utility and authority of con
science in her proper sphere. Nothing we have said affects the
validity of the rule of St. Paul and Cicero with which we set out,
that where we are not fully persuaded of the rectitude of an action,
to do it is wrong. But the confession of the errors to which
conscien ce is liable, at once involves the positive duty of informing
the conscience ; if, as some say, conscience is the great judge in the
human breast, it must certainly be as much our interest as our
duty to see that the judge is as fully instructed as possible ; it
becomes a man’s duty in short to convince himself of the correct
ness of his creed, by examining its grounds and weighing sub
stantial objections against it. Our creed is to our conscience as the
motive power and governing-wheel to a machine. Conscience
prompts us to act in such or such a manner because of certain
beliefs and opinions. As a sweet stream will not flow from a
bitter fountain, so neither can a truth-loving and charitable con
science result from a bitter creed, when such creed is personally
realised.
Now it does'not appear to me thatthe partisans of rational religion
can be justly charged with failing in this duty of enlightening the
conscience, sincethedifferenceswhichnowdistinguish them from the
rest of the community have mainly1 arisen from their endeavour
ing to seek out the grounds on which the judgments of conscience
are founded. But here we come upon a curious anomaly, the
rationalists who do not consider a correct creed the most important
thing in the world, at any rate they do not think an incorrect one
a damning matter, they are most scrupulous in examining the
round of their conclusions; while the orthodox, who for the most
part think correctness of belief of vital necessity, who even venture
in their public proclamations to put forth such declarations, as,
“Whosoever will be saved before all things, it is necessary that he
hold this,” and “furthermore it is necessary to everlasting salvation
�THE DUTY OF INSTRUCTING THE CONSCIENCE.
that he also believe rightly that,” these orthodox, who thus stickle
for exactness of creed, discountenance that free enquiry and re
search by which only exactness can be arrived at, and while pro
claiming the peril of error denounce the processes by which error is
to be avoided. No one at all acquainted with the subject can deny
that the most prominent representatives of orthodoxy withstand
free enquiry, and too often decry and calumniate its advocates,
They ^commonly represent that hesitation, and doubt, which are
the parents of enquiry; “are diabolical temptations bombshells. as
a certain prelate called them, from the camp of Satan shot into the
citadel of the soul. The mass of their followers readily accept this
representation, they have been .content to take their creed whole
sale, as it was provided for them in infancy, and no more think of
enquiring into its evidence than into that of their nationality. In
face of piled up masses of evidence, increased bj every newspaper
which brings tidings from other lands, all evincing the conflict of
human judgments and the variation of that moral thermometer,
which men call conscience, they congratulate themselves on re
taining their old-fashioned weather-glass, which persistently points
to “set fair” in all weathers. Like a boy’s watch, more for show
than use, it is all the same to them that it never shows the right
hour. They refuse to be told that as far as keeping time goes, as
far as answering to outward facts, their machine is perfectly use
less. They are careless as to its use and object, while they glory
in its possession. The very object of a creed and a conscience is to
discriminate the true from the untrue, the right from the wrong,
like the needle of a hand-compass, whichever way you turn, it
should always find its way round to the north, but they have fixed
their needle down for the rest of the voyage, and wherever borne
still consider it a safe indicator of their course- But Niccea is no
more a perpetual test of truth than the letter N of the real north.
The magnetic current of the universe is. the heaven-sent force
which sways the living needle round to the pole, as the heavendirected onward march of humanity is the invincible attraction
which leads the eye of a living faith to the never setting star of
truth. But the orthodox sometimes endeavour to vindicate the
wisdom and conscientiousness of their refusal to entertain enquiry
by affirming for themselves “our conscience is fully informed
already, complete instructions were laid down for us, and the
limits of its safe exercise determined long ago by wise men, who
�THE DUTY OF INSTRUCTING THE CONSCIENCE.
went into all these matters you wish us to re-open; we feel quite
sure of the correctness of this judgment, and. do not consider
ourselves bound to enter upon enquiry <on our own account.” All
we can reply is, if this is'what your teachers tell you to rely on,
you are buildiug on a simple historical fallacy, which an hour’s
honest reading will enable the most illiterate to refute. Your
wise men, you say, went into thfese matters, why how many hundred
new matters have entered the mental spectrum since your latest
creed was manufactured. Why, man, since your old theory of the
universe was concocted, an absolutely new world has come
into existence; Columbus has sailed the waters, and
a new race has been planted in the West, while scholarship
and commerce have lifted the curtains of the east, have broken
the slumber of centuries, and disclosed to us vast churches and
religions which your sages never dreamt of. In the writings of
those old-world teachers you may find the most difficult problems
of religion and philosophy treated, and theories on which your
best doctors are still unsettled, estimated, argued out, exploded,
and thrown away ages before yofir venerable patriarchs had
mastered the rudiments of grammar. While your Western
fathers and schoolmen were blundering in bad .Latin, and still
innocent of Greek—ay ! even before Greece herself had a philoso
phical literature—the problems had long been squeezed dry, over
which some of your orthodox Divines are still addling their brains,
You would not choose to sail the globe by a -chart constructed on
their- limited knowledge, whose whole world lay round the Medi
terranean, and which was adapted to the voyage of the good ship
Argo. But youT spiritual chart is just about as much in accord
ance with modern discovery, and bears about as exact a relation to
truth and reality.
This then is the answer we give to our orthodox friends—this is
the challenge that is borne to them, whether they will hear or
whether they will forbear, not merely from a few liberal thinkers
here in London, but from every corner of thd intellectual and civi
lised world. We say, that your old theory of existence, your in'
fallible book, your exclusive creeds are totally inconsistent with
the truth and reality of things-. They cannot anyhow be made
to square with the patent phenomena of the universe. We do not,
of course, presume to say that you are bound to accept what one or
another of us, may offer you in their place, but we say you are
�THE DUTY OF INSTRUCTING THE CONSCIENCE,
hound to examine, to inquire, to inform yourselves; that you
cannot, as honest men, ignore the voices and the light pressing
upon you from every side; that it is impossible for you to keep a
safe and candid conscience while you resolutely blind its eyes and
close its ears,
I do not, indeed, affirm of the orthodox that their conscience
is always as narrow as their written creed ; in various ways the
creed has submitted to a sort of smoothing down of its more horrescent parts—fashionable lectures on science and language have
loosened a few misconceptions, have accustomed them to bear a
little light, and the general tone of society encourages a certain
laxity. It is notorious, moreover, that some have arrived at the
stage of “ making believe to believe.” But this, it appears to me,
makes their conduct all the more disingenuous, they have seen
enough light through the chinks to certify them that there is much
more behind if they would only draw the curtain, but yet when
their theories are challenged they immediately recur to the old
barriers, they deny or prevaricate their former concessions, they
count those as enemies who would be their friends, and excite a
prejudice where they are at a loss for an argument; they bolster
up with all their might those institutions and societies which
carry on the war against enlightenment a outranee. If they were
truly conscientious, the light they have attained would at least
lead them earnestly to examine the asserted unsoundness of their
belief. But the very fact of being in their secret heart suspicious
of the validity of their creed, seems to make them all the more
angry with those who would call their attention to it.
As I explained last Sunday, I can make every allowance for that
natural apprehension with which some view any kind of change,
nor do I think that the less wealthy of the middle-class, whose
time and energies are so severely taxed, are to be blamed if they
are not the first in'encountering such inquiries, or removing the
obstacles which hinder the progress of truth. But what are we
to say of those who labour under no such impediments, who
have great opportunities for enlightenment, whose time even
often hangs wearily on their hands for want of useful employment,
who many of them have more than a shrewd suspicion of the
groundlessness of the popular orthodoxy, who yet not only decline
all candid enquiry themselves, but do all they can to make enquiry
difficult and dangerous for others.
�THE DUTY OF INSTRUCTING THE CONSCIENCE.
We can understand the feeling which resents in others that
activity of mind to which they feel themselves disinclined, we can
even feel a certain sympathy with that love of ease and quiet which
dreads the noisy invasion of religious and social problems,—(were
it not for overwhelming evidence that shows that ere long these
problems will seek a solution in a way they most dislike,)—but we
cannot understand that they should consider this a mark of
conscientiousness, that they should even pretend they are paying
a deference to conscience when they decline the opportunity of
enlightenment, when they refuse to hearken to the injunctions of
their own Apostle St. Paul. For how can a man “prove all things”
and study, as St. Paul says, to “have a conscience void of offence
towards God and towards men”, who is indifferent to the distinction
between sham and reality, who refuses evidence, who is careless
whether or no the light in him be darkness, or how great is that
darkness. If they simply deny that it is their duty to enlighten
their conscience and that they accept the consequences, then
of course we have nothing more to say to them except
that they deny the very basis on which Christianity
itself professes to rest. When Christianity was first preached, it
was professed to be an appeal to every man’s conscience in the sight
of God, Why had not those who refused to listen to evidence in
that day, as good an excuse as those who refuse in this ?
After all, however, it might be but small concern to the more
reflecting part of the community that the orthodox should
acquiesce in an unillumined conscience, and shape their lives on
baseless theories, if they would be content to restrain its exercise
to their own concerns, and simply forbear themselves from doing
that of which they doubt the legality. But this would never
satisfy them. Not happy in a monopoly of darkness, they seek to
make it universal. The languid crowds of orthodoxy throng the
fashionable churches, and strive to spread their system everywhere;
too listless for the intellectual exertion to which we call them,
their interest is, however, excited when it is a question of lording
it over God’s heritage and dictating to other men’s faith, and
they subscribe their handsome sums, to those favoured religious
societies whose chief ambition it is to run down, persecute, mulct
of their honest gains, and if possible, ruin every soul within their
reach who has shown the slightest sympathy with freethought.
The faithful now-a-days, instead of keeping their conscience to its
�THE DUTY OF INSTRUCTING THE CONSOIE
E.
proper office of checking their own. acts, and restraining the judg
ment for which prejudice disqualifies them, make it the chief ex
cuse for interfering with others- Gne man’s conscienc is wounded
because someone else sees fit' to use the post-office on
Sunday, another man has severe inward searchings because his
neighbour likes toitake a glass of beer. There is hardly a path
of life into which they do not intrude their conscientious scruples;
they would certainly have a stroh'ger plea for their interference
if they tried earnestly to enlighten their conscience. As it is
they upset the world with blunderihg efforts to make their narrow
notions the measure of other men’s faith and .practise, and then
when their ignorant and injudicious missionaries have embroiled
themselves with offended governments, they expect European
fleets and armies to fly to the rescue, and carry out their delusive
gospel at the point of the bayonet.' Certainly before trying to make
their notions palatabledo the numberless votaries of Buddha and
Brahm, they should furnish a solid answer to the objections raised
on their own hearth. Butit has beena comm on mse of superannuated
despots, ecclesiastical and other by enterprise abroad, to divert
attention from defects and collapse ' at home. It was during the
throes of the Reformation, for instance that the Roman Church
set on foot its missions t0 China, India, Japan and elsewhere.
This much . may suffice to show the plain duty of every man to
try and inforni his conscience, both:oh account of the truth which
he thus may require himself; and as restraining that unwarrant
able interference with the rights of others, and those harsh judg
ments against which both Christ and the Apostles protest.
The consideration of the best mode of instructing the conscience
would be ample material for a separate discourse. I will conclude
therefore with a passage which affords some indication of the
true method, from the works of a> renowned political writer and
patriot lately deceased.
“ God;‘the Father and Educator of
Humanity, reveals his law to Humanity’ through Time and
Space. Interrogate-the' traditions- bf Humanity, which is the
Council of yohr .brother, mfen, hot hi the restricted circle of an
age or sect? but in ‘all ages, and in a; majority of mankind past aDd
present. Whensoever that; con sent .bf humanity Corresponds with
the teachings of-your own conscience; you are certain of the
truth, certain of having’read ope lint) of thelaw of God?"
�
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Victorian Blogging
Description
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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The duty of instructing the conscience. A sermon preached at St. George's Hall, Langham Place, August 18th,1872, by a clergyman of the Church of England.
Date
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[1872?]
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CT9
Description
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Place of publication: [s.n.]
Collation: [8] p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: From the Eastern Post, August 24th, 1872. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Text taken from Romans xiv, pt. of 23 - 'For whatsoever is not of faith is sin'.
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[s.l.]
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Sermons
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (The duty of instructing the conscience. A sermon preached at St. George's Hall, Langham Place, August 18th,1872, by a clergyman of the Church of England.), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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Text
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English
Conscience
Conway Tracts
Sermons