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ed righteous, looked upon as though we had never sinned, is that not being really set free from guilt? And He of fers this to all as His free gift to be accepted solely by faith. Nor is this all. He also liberates from the power of sin. “He breaks the power of cancelled sin, And sets the prisoner free.” Are you enjoying the liberty where with Christ sets free? If not, take Him as your Saviour now. And if you are already free from guilt, but are being held in bondage to known sin, yield yourself to Him and trust Him, and you will find that the Son really sets free.
or a religious platitude. He is speaking of a genuine emancipation. According to Thayer, the word rendered “indeed” means “in reality, in point of fact as opposed to what is pretended; fic titious.” In his Emphasized New Testament, Rotherham renders the verse thus: “If perfhance, therefore, the Son make you free, really free shall ye be.” In His death on the cross, Christ has made a provision by which any one can be completely and forever de livered from the guilt of his sins. “Through his blood we have forgive ness” (cf. Eph. 1:7), and believers are “now justified by his blood” (Rom. 5:9). When we say “justified,” deelar-
spent; thousands upon thousands of lives are now being sacrificed in order that we may be saved from an un speakably horrible tyranny and con tinue to enjoy our dearly bought lib erty. There is, however, a bondage far worse than any that man can impose upon man—bondage to sin. Th« Lord Jesus said, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin” (John 8:34). Thank God, from this worst form of slavery all who will can be delivered by Him who declared, “If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed” (John 8:36). In.these words our Lord is not giving us a pleasant theory
Collapse of Conscience
America's
By DAN GILBERT San Diego, California
that one should fail to be caught, fail to be punished for sin. Fear of being caught is what controls men after they have killed their conscience. HOW CONSCIENCE IS KILLED: • It is sometimes said that it is a difficult task to kill one’s conscience. This adage, however, is not demon strated by the facts of human experi ence. The truth of the matter is that it is difficult to keep one’s conscience alive and functioning. Conscience is a delicate and fragile flower bloom ing in the human breast. It withers up and dies of neglect as often as it is done to death by rough handling. In his Moral Maxims, George Wash ington counseled, “Labor to keep alive in your breasts that little spark of celestial fire called conscience.” Un ceasing vigilance is the price of a living conscience. Lord Byron ob served, “In early days the conscience has in most, a quickness which in later life is lost.” .Conscience must be constantly exercised, lest it lose its power, falling first into disuse and fi nally into decay. In his study of pagan cultures, Lecky, the “great historian of morals," notfed that as moral corruption be came “more deep-seated," conscience “dried up and disappeared, ceasing to have any hold in later life on those who had failed to heed it when young.” To drive conscience away, out of your life, you need not even “talk back”; you need only ignore it. The conscience which is not listened to will, in time, cease to speak. Con science must always be a queen, a commander. It dies before it will be come a servant or a slave. The man [Continued on Page 250]
Perhaps, not until after death will some men discover for a certainty that they possess an immortal soul. But no person can live beyond the earliest phases of childhood without discovering that he owns a conscience. The existence of conscience is the simplest and surest fact of everyday, universal, human experience. You will have to take your physician’s or physiologist’s word for it that you have a pineal gland, but you can dis cover your conscience for yourself. It is so much more obvious than eyes that see or a heart that beats or lungs that breathe! WHAT CONSCIENCE IS NOT: • Even among those who concede the existence of conscience there are fre quently the most childish and super stitious ideas regarding what it is and how it functions. The brilliant skeptic, H. L. Mencken, has said, “Conscience is the suspicion that a policeman is watching. Conscience is what makes a man walk down the other Side of the street when he sees one coming.” Mr. Mencken probably thought this a clever and penetrating observation. In reality, it is puerile nonsense, plain stupidity. Conscience is not what causes the wrongdoer to fear and flee the police officer. Conscience is what keeps the wrongdoer awake at night until he goes out and hunts up an of ficer of the law and confesses his crime! Conscience is not the fear of getting caught; it is the fear of not getting caught. Conscience hurts a man most, not when he fails to get away with an evil deed, but when he succeeds. Con science gives a man no peace, not when he is punished for wrong, but when he is prospering in wrong. The one thing Intolerable to conscience Is
THE COLLAPSE OF CONSCIENCE: • A well-known Washington com mentator recently made this declara tion:
“Uncle Sam has suffered a collapse of conscience. The American people have lost their capacity for righteous indignation. The war effort is being impeded for this very reason: There is no protest of an outraged national con science against the forces of corruption a n d selfishness that are hampering the drive for national unity. “Our very conception of the difference between right and wrong has become blurred. Large elements of our people see nothing wrong in ‘hoard ing,’ if they feel that they can get away with it. Indeed, they seem to admire the wrong doer if he is smart enough to avoid being caught. “Without a strong and vo cal conscience, a nation is bound to drift into confusion and ultimate chaos. Unless a people’s conscience is their guide, they can have no moral guidance at all.”
WHAT IS CONSCIENCE? • The controversy which followed this charge that we have undergone a “col lapse of conscience,” led inevitably to a consideration of the question: What is conscience? In a scientific age in which the in tricacies of bodily functions have been laid bare, men remain in densest ignorance as to what conscience is and how it works. It is even popu lar in some scientific circles to deny that man has a conscience—or a soul.
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