§ III.—CHAPTER III.

CONSCIENCE DIVINE RIGHTEOUSNESS.

AS freedom is the fundamental condition of our moral being, so conscience is its guide and regulator. The soul, while self-acting, is at the same time spiritually controlled. It is then, indeed, most itself, most truly free, when most fully informed and controlled by conscience.

As in the case of every other element of man’s spiritual being, the special character of conscience has been greatly disputed. Philosophy has found here even a favourite field of struggle. Among all our most earnest thinkers, however, there may be said to be at length something like unanimity in regarding conscience as a primitive and distinct fact or faculty. The attempts which have been made to resolve it into some simpler element of our mental constitution have merely served to prove the intimate alliance between conscience and our other mental powers, and their necessary influence upon its education and development. But in no case have they sufficed fully to explain its origin. The most skilful 269analysis of the association of ideas, or of our common intellectual judgments, into both of which it has been sought to be explained, still leaves a residuary element unaccounted for, which, whatever name we give to it, is nothing else than the germ which expands into the full moral reality which we mean by conscience.

In its most general application it may be defined as that element of our being by which we become conscious of duty. It introduces man into a set of relations bearing to him the peculiar character of obligation, which, however little he may be able to analyse it, is felt by him in the strongest manner. Viewed as a mental power, its chief peculiarity accordingly consists in the position which it thus assumes amongst our other powers. It not only perceives, but commands; not only points the way, but orders to walk in it.

Since the profound and luminous expositions of Butler, in his Sermons on Human Nature, the attention of moralists has been prominently fixed on this authoritative aspect of conscience. Its special function has been recognised as that of a guide and governor. It is impossible, as Butler has pointed out, to dissociate from it the notion of direction and superintendency. “This is a constituent part of the idea—that is, of the faculty itself; and to preside and govern, from the very economy and constitution of man, belongs to it.” “This faculty,” he adds, “was placed within us to be our proper governor; to direct and regulate all under principles, passions, and motives of action. This is its right and office. Thus sacred is its authority. And how often soever men violate and rebelliously refuse to submit to it, for supposed 270interest which they cannot otherwise obtain, or for the sake of passion which they cannot otherwise gratify, this makes no alteration as to the natural right and office of conscience.” Even when its judgments are set aside, or trampled under foot, by the perverse force of the will, conscience, as Butler here truly indicates, does not, rightly speaking, lose its authority. It holds the transgressor in its grasp, and can bring him trembling before its judgment-seat, even when he would seem to have broken loose from all its restraints, and completely overborne its power. It asserts its sovereignty with a fearful reality, even although its sceptre has been broken, and its throne desecrated. Aloft itself, even among the ruins of its kingdom, it arraigns the stoutest rebel, and often holds in cowering bondage the most reckless criminal. “Had it strength, as it has right; had it power, as it has manifest authority, it would,” in Butler’s expressive language, “absolutely govern the world.”

It is especially this supreme and legislative aspect of conscience which gives it significance for the natural theologian. As a simple fact of creation it yields, undoubtedly, like every other fact, its appropriate testimony to the Creator; but here, in its authoritative import, is rightly recognised a peculiar and important element of theistic evidence. For the question immediately arises, whence this authority of conscience? Does not the very fact of a law within us directly testify to a Lawgiver without and above us? Does not the one fact, in its very nature, involve the other? The argument seems irresistible. The sense of government in 271every heart can only proceed from a living governor, who placed it there. The moral power within us, therefore, gives, as its immediate inference, a Divine Power above us.

Every one will recognise in our statement a form of the theistic argument which, expounded by the zealous eloquence of Dr Chalmers, has passed into familiar currency in our natural theology. “The felt presence of a judge within the breast,” he says, “powerfully and immediately suggests the notion of a Supreme Judge and Sovereign who placed it there. Upon this question the mind does not stop short at mere abstraction, but, passing at once from the abstract to the concrete, from the law of the heart it makes the rapid inference of a Lawgiver. The sense of a governing principle within, begets in all men the sentiment of a living Governor without and above them, and it does so with all the speed of an instantaneous feeling; yet it is not an impression—it is an inference notwithstanding, and as much so as any inference from that which is seen to that which is unseen. There is, in the first instance, cognisance taken of a fact, if not by the outward eye, yet, as good, by the eye of consciousness, which has been termed the faculty of internal observation. And the consequent belief of a God, instead of being an instinctive sense of the Divinity, is the fruit of an inference grounded on that fact. There is instant transition made, from the sense of a monitor within to the faith of a living Sovereign above; and this argument, described by all, but with such speed as almost to warrant the expression of its being felt by all, may be regarded, notwithstanding the force and fertility 272of other considerations, as the great prop of natural religion among men.”¹⁴⁴¹⁴⁴   Natural Theology, vol. i. p. 331-332.

It is a question of little moment for the substantial conclusion involved—which is good in either case—whether the act by which it is reached be considered, with Dr Chalmers, really inductive, or rather intuitive. This obviously depends upon the further question as to what are regarded to be the special constituents of conscience. If we recognise it, with Butler, according to the view already set forth, to be itself a delegated power, and not merely the perception or revelation of a power, we obviously leave room for an inductive step or inference. We have in this view, as the immediate fact of consciousness, a sense of authority which, as we cannot conceive it to be self-constituted, we necessarily refer to a supreme or divine Source. But if, according to the more simple view, and what would seem to be the direct import of the name conscience, we consider it as not in any way containing in itself the power with which it rules us, but as directly revealing to us that power in another, then we leave no room for induction. We have, in the very fact of conscience, the intuition of the Divine will, just as we have in the fact of self-existence the intuition of the Divine existence. As we cannot realise our own being without at the same time realising another and a higher Being, so we cannot become conscious of duty, without at the same time realising another and a higher Will. The moral law is to us nothing more than the revelation of this higher or divine 273Will in the soul. We do not, therefore, need to rise from it to God, for it is already the voice of God within us. We are carried out of ourselves, so to speak, in the simple reality of conscience. The authority which, in conscience, speaks to us is not merely something from which we may infer a divine Power, but is already the direct expression of that power.

This, upon reflection, we feel convinced, is the more just and penetrating view of the subject. Preserving all the truth of Butler’s view, in even a higher form than he presented it, it gives, in a psychological respect, a more discriminating and consistent interpretation of conscience, than when it is regarded as in itself both a perceptive and imperative faculty. Viewed simply as the organ of a higher power, its psychological dignity is at once vindicated, and its possible abuse readily understood. For let the organ be untrained or neglected, and its intuition will be dim and obscure, or even absolutely perverted. But let it be appropriately disciplined, and its intuition will rise into clearness and truth. We do not see, in any case, how conscience can ever be adequately explained, without bringing into prominence the theological meaning which it so essentially expresses. Apart from God it would be an inexplicable riddle: held as revealing God, it becomes beautifully intelligible. It is the light within whereby we perceive at once the Hand that guides us, and, although more dimly, the destination that awaits us.

We have not yet, however, exhausted the theistic significance of conscience. It is not merely to the fact of a divine 274Power that it testifies, but eminently to the character of that power. The moral law, which it reveals, is not simply the expression of a supreme Will, but of a Will which is essentially good and righteous. It is this, in truth, which gives all its force to conscience. It is by the good alone that it governs. It is the law of goodness which asserts itself in the human heart, under whatever violation, and holds itself a sovereign, even when its kingdom has been invaded and laid waste. To this idea of a Good above man, claiming his obedience, we alone owe the very conception of duty. It is this which gives all its peculiar sacredness and beauty to human life. Apart from it man would merely be as the brutes around him, with no nobleness of piety in his heart, and no long-suffering love mingling its purifying fires in his lot. In conscience, therefore, we must recognise a peculiar testimony to the divine goodness. As the organ of duty, it is in fact specifically the revelation of the Supreme Good. It brings man not only into converse with Goodness, but relates him to it, as the power which binds him in his daily life, and would guide him to daily happiness.

But the divine Goodness, to which conscience testifies, is at the same time divine Righteousness. This is a further very significant and wholly peculiar element of theistic evidence disclosed in conscience. The Supreme Good interprets itself here as the Supreme Right. This idea of Right is one which, hitherto, we could not possibly have encountered; for it only finds an application in the region of free moral life, where it emerges correlatively with duty. It is the idea in which alone duty finds its complement, and so becomes the sacred 275bond which holds our moral being in harmony. The element or attribute of righteousness is one, therefore, which a comprehensive natural theology must ever recognise in the Divine Being. The broad and earnest mind of Dr Chalmers did, perhaps, especial service in making this clear and prominent. And it has since become more and more a matter of conviction that Theism is not only bound to take up this element, but that it furnishes, to some extent, the key to the profound mysteries which lie around the special attribute of divine goodness. For in order to perceive a benevolent meaning in much that would otherwise seem opposed to benevolence, we have only to see that goodness completes itself in righteousness, and can never validly come short of it. The conception of goodness becomes thus not only exalted, but discriminated. Whereas, in the lower regions of sentient and intellectual life, the former attribute is apparent merely as a disposition to bestow happiness—here, in the light of the further conception into which it rises, it appears before us as something which may, in the highest sense, assert itself, not certainly irrespective of happiness, yet apart from its immediate bestowal—yea, even in the bestowal of partial and temporary unhappiness. For, as the good is at the same time ever the right, as love only sustains itself in holiness, so it becomes conceivable that, where the right has been invaded, and the holy desecrated, goodness may express itself most distinctively in suffering or punishment. This bearing of the subject we now merely indicate, as it will afterwards come before us for special consideration.

In the mean time we fix attention upon the fact of Righteousness, 276as it has come before us at this upward point in the course of our theistic evidence. It is among the last facts which meet us in the evolution of the idea of God, which is the appropriate task of Natural Theology; but in another sense it is undoubtedly among the reasoned primary springs of Theism. For there is no deeper or more universal source of the divine consciousness in every heart. It is, above all, as a righteous power that God is spontaneously known in the common mind. It is the ineradicable testimony of conscience which, above all, preserves the sense of Divinity in the world, amid the corruptions of passion or the delusions of intellectual self-conceit. It asserts a divine Presence with a cogency which no sophistry can parry, and no argument gainsay. And while man retains within him this impressive monitor, the belief in God can never cease, even although the manifold adaptations of matter and of mind should fail to arrest his wonder, and engage his study.