By J.B. Stoney
WHEN the conscience is in exercise, there is great need that it should not be checked or quieted by partial action, or by imperfect intelligence. The conscience of a saint is awakened by the Spirit of God to seek relief from the presence of evil around. This is a true, healthy purpose, and most blessed and effective when carried out according to the word of God. The danger and consequent loss is when compromise is entered into, when the conscience is quieted by one step, rather than by a definite and clear escape from the place of grievance. And thus, alas! the flesh is spared and the Spirit of God grieved, and there is really no progress. This often occurs in our christian history; the conscience has been aroused, but to meet it fully as in the light of God's presence would cost our nature too much. Of course we do not reason in this plain way with our selves; but do we not often, perhaps years afterwards, discover that it was really sparing ourselves which led to our resisting the demands and strivings of our conscience? For now, being in the place of blessing which our conscience had long before indicated, we see how we had deceived ourselves, and thus had hindered our own blessing; and all because we feared the personal trial to which we should have been exposed in reaching it.
It is well to be warned of this device or weakness, from which all suffer many times and in many ways -- one which I may call an effort to appease the conscience without putting the flesh to much sacrifice - because if we see how we have been deceived in this subtle way, we are the more careful to attend to our conscience, and how God is speaking to it, than how we may quiet it at the smallest cost to ourselves. In short, as a rule, when the conscience is arrested or exercised, the first thought is, not what will at all costs satisfy it according to God, but on the contrary, how I can answer its demand without involving myself in loss and pain. If in ordinary cases we are exposed to a temptation of this kind, and too often yield to it, how much more when the most eventful step in our life as a christian is the one on which the conscience is exercised. Can any step be more important, or involve consequences of greater magnitude, than the ground I take for Christ here in separating from the organised systems around?
