That every man has a conscience is a truth of the last importance. God has taken care that man, falling into sin, should, in and with the sin, acquire the knowledge of good and evil—a profound and admirable ordering of divine wisdom, as it was impossible he could have that knowledge before. The knowledge of good and evil, in One necessarily above all evil in nature, is the sphere of, and inseparable from, holiness. In man this is impossible. He is in innocence, or with a conscience in sin. But then, if conscience come with sin, while in itself it is the knowledge of good and evil, (i.e. of the difference of right and wrong), it may be deadened, perverted; it gives no motives more than approval and disapproval, no power, no living object, save as fear of judgment may come in.
To man in this state, a revelation of God is made from the beginning, a promise of deliverance in another than himself; the all-important principle we have seen of the mind being taken out of self—affection, thankfulness, adoration of heart introduced in contrast with judgment, while the truth of judgment is owned, law confirmed, but deliverance given from it. But God gives a full revelation as to the whole of His relationships with man, in responsibility, and in grace. That is, He either puts Himself in relationship, or shows a relationship which exists, with the being who has the conscience. We must consider it in both these lights. The latter is law, the former grace. Both were already seen in Paradise. In and out of Christianity, men have sought to reconcile them: out of Christ they never can. But there they were, responsibility and life—a command (not knowledge of right and wrong), but a command, and free communication of life; responsibility, and giving of life. Man took of the first tree, and never ate of the second. He goes out a sinner, with death on him, and judgment before him—the promise of a Deliverer, but in another; no promise to him, (for he was in sin) but for him; the seed of the woman—which Adam specifically was not. The first creature, man, flesh was no longer in communion, or heir—he was lost. Then came God's witness to men, and temporal judgment of the world on that footing, i.e. the flood; then promise unconditional, again confirmed to the seed, to that one only, as Paul says, and as is strictly and profoundly true. (Gen. 22) No question of responsibility is raised; God would bless all nations in the promised Seed. But could the question of righteousness be left as indifferent? Impossible. It is raised by law—obedience and blessing, disobedience and the curse. This is broken, before it is formally given, in its first and chiefest link—that which bound man immediately to God. They made other gods—turned their glory into the similitude of a calf eating hay. Then, after various dealings in mercy, the work of God comes, not dealings with the responsibility of men, but recognizing it, (grace, which brings salvation, sealing the truth of all the previous responsibility, for otherwise salvation were not needed, but going on another ground and meeting the case). Christ takes the effect of the broken responsibility on Himself, dies for sin, and is the source of life, and that according to righteousness. The whole question of the two trees of Paradise, life-giving and good and evil, and man's ruin in this, is settled for those who receive Christ forever, with the largest, yea, a perfect revelation of God as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, in all His riches and ways. Two points come before us here: how are we to view the Bible, even the doctrinal parts of it? and is conscience to be between us and the Bible as supreme interpreter?
The whole question is, Is there a revelation? Is anything heavenly to come within the scope of man's thoughts? Has God to be known; or merely right and wrong discerned! And if He has to be known, must He not reveal Himself? Now I say, if we are to be blessed, God must be known. If I am away from God in sin, and so the Scripture treats man, and conscience cannot deny it, doing right and wrong cannot be settled but by returning to God. If a child has wickedly abandoned his father's house, he may leave off particular faults, but he can never be right till he returns and submits to his father. But the true knowledge of God is lost, and the more man reasons in sin, the more it is lost. God must be good: I can say that when once He has been revealed, for heathens did not know this as truth, though instinct looked for it—wants looked for it. They did not in their notion of God rise above the passions of men. When they did rise above them, they held that God could not have anything to say to men. But now God has been revealed; and even the poorest man knows God must be good. But if I begin to reason, what do I see? An innocent child perishing in agony, the mass of the world degraded to the lowest degree by heathenism—how is He then good? An infinitesimal part of the race, for centuries, alone knowing the unity of the Godhead, and they almost worse than their neighbors; sin having power over myself, brutality in families, wars, tumults, and miseries—how is He good? If I say, Ah! but that is fallen man, departed from God. Then I ask, how then can he be received back again? I cannot with any sense deny that he is a sinner, and if God did not make him bad, he is fallen. The cravings of nature prove he is. How can he be back with God, whom I must then think to be holy and pure A revelation from God, and of God, is the first necessity of my nature as a moral being. I get both in Christ. “He whom God hath sent speaketh the words of God.” I set to my seal, on believing Him, that God is true; but then it is not only the word received from above (that a prophet—that John had, and spoke of earthly things, moved in the sphere in which God dealt with man as a creature on earth responsible to God); but He came Himself from above. God spoke in the Son; His words were in a personal and complete way, though a man, the words of God. They were spoken by the Lord. Now, he that receives his testimony sets to his seal that God is true. And note how this is stated. No one is ascended into heaven, but He who is come down from heaven, even the Son of man who is in heaven, and what He hath seen and heard, that He testifieth. Oh what a blessing is here, which none else can give, for none else has gone up to heaven to tell us what is there! In this poor distracted sin-beset world, I have the sweet and holy ways and divine objects of heaven brought down to my heart, by One who is the center of its glory and delights, and come to bring them to me in love, yet without leaving it.
If it be said that there is a conscience which must and does judge what is before it (e. g. a God not good and not holy), I answer how long has this been the case with man? Did ever conscience make a difficulty, when a revelation had not been given? Was there ever such a thing as a holy God thought of, or the need of holiness in God dreamed of, in any religion but a revealed one? We may find partial traces of goodness as to human need and deliverance from tyranny in India, in the avatars of Vishnoo, in that otherwise monstrous idolatry. But all idolatry everywhere proves that the notion that goodness and holiness were required in a divine being by the conscience of man is utterly false. The gods were the reproduction of men's passions with a superior degree of power. When revelation was given, and redemption was made known by God, then holiness and goodness were made known and estimated, but nowhere else. That is, instead of the conscience being between us and the Bible or a positive revelation, there must be a revelation between God and us and our conscience, or if you please, between God and us, in order that the conscience may feel that God must be good and holy to be God at all. When the revelation has been given, the conscience recognizes it, but never before.
Now this is essential and conclusive on the question before us, and shows us that conscience within is wholly incapable of judging. But there is a conscience, and when a divine revelation or light comes to it from God, it is susceptible of impressions from it, so as to have a right judgment, but never without, as to what is divine. Modern infidels are reasoning from the effect of divine light, to deny its necessity. As when light comes in, the eye can see; with none it cannot, and would never know it could. Scripture is true—when men had the knowledge of God, they did not discern to retain God in their knowledge.
Men have not weighed these facts, or rather, have not thought of them; but they are true, and they certainly put the pretensions of infidelity and of man's mind in a very peculiar light. They are really vaunting themselves as competent to judge Christianity; whereas the only light they have to judge it by, they have got from it, or from Judaism. Without it man's mind sunk into the grossest idolatry and moral degradation. A revelation alone enabled them, by revealing what God really is, and so forming their understandings to judge of what He ought to be. There is another point strikes me in our conversation. How little their themes bear the test of history and facts. They make boast of philosophy, but it is well known that up to Socrates, it was little but Cosmogony, and Plato's morality was communism, and his theology demonism, perhaps metempsychosis. This argument from conscience is what they are least able to meet, for one was conscious that an unholy God, or one that was not good, could not have been borne for a moment.
And it is less possible, because men have a revelation. It is their great theme abroad. But it is always useful to meet infidels on their own ground—I mean on its untenableness, as has been already referred to. If God is simply good, and the fall and redemption are not God's truth, explain to me the state of this world, three-quarters heathen, and of the other, a great part Mussulman or Papist, and every kind of misery and degradation dominant, and selfishness the dominant spring of all its activities, where lusts and passions are not so. If man be not fallen, where is God's goodness? And if God be not good, what is? Christianity tells me man is fallen, and reveals to me God in goodness in the midst of the misery, and redemption has an issue out of it: and the history of man, not succeeding generations sacrificed to rationalists' theories of progress of the fifty-ninth century; but revelations of this goodness and deliverance for faith to lay hold of from the day of man's fall, though the time was not come to accomplish the thing promised. And allow me to ask you, if man be so competent, how comes it there is so much difficulty, and conflict, and uncertainty? Why is there so much difficulty in finding out God? Why any question of discovering Him, if men have not lost Him? Why did men believe in Jupiter, or Siva, &c., or Odin King of men, or Ormuzd and Ahriman, or Khem, or a host of others, which it is useless for me to follow?
Why have they such difficulty, when it is owned God must be good and holy, in coming to Him and walking with Him? No; it is evident man has got away from God, many horridly, degradingly; and the fairest of Eve's daughters caring more for a pretty ribbon, and of her sons for gold or a title, than all which God presents to them, to win their hearts in the Son of God's sufferings, and offering up Himself in grace for them. No; man is fallen, has lost the sense of what God is, and of His love—has not his heart's delight in that which God is, or what is supremely good. Nothing proves it more than his not finding it out. God has given a conscience; but it does not judge the word: the word of God judges it. In one sense, every man must judge; but his judgment reveals him in presence of the word. A man's judgment of other things always reveals his own state. He is certainly lost, condemned, if he does not receive the word. God speaks, and gives adequate witness of who He is. “He that believeth not is condemned already.” Light is come into the world. If men prefer darkness, it is not their conscience. There will must be at work.
I ask, is man bound to receive the love of God or not? There He is to test every man's soul by His reception, or the contrary. It does not test the soul. He has a right to judge, you tell me. If he does not receive Him, he proves himself bad, bad in will. He has to judge; but if he rejects what is perfect in goodness, his own state is shown. He is judged by his approval or disapproval of what is there, because perfection, because God manifest in the flesh, is there—because God is speaking woe to him who dues not hearken. Yes, he has to judge. It is not his right: he is a lost creature; but he is tested by it—it is his responsibility. How he can meet it, I do not inquire here. I believe the grace of God is needed; but there is God speaking—speaking in grace. Is He received or not? The two things John speaks of here are the words of God, and One come from above who is above all. Am I not bound to listen? am I not bound to receive? You tell me, must I not judge whether they are His words, and whether He came from above? I answer, yes; but you are judged by the result you come to, because God knows He has given a perfectly-adapted and gracious witness; yea, that He is it. If you have rejected this, you have rejected Him, and remain in your sins and under wrath.