Octooer, 1942
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ment word,- and the New Testament rtames at least sixteen different con ditions under which conscience may function. How many of the sixteen can you find? The search will pay you big dividends in blessing. For Those Who Have Topics L CONSCIENCE AS A CONVICTING AGENCY. 1. The story of the Prodigal Son, recorded., in Luke 15, presents for our study several states or conditions of one conscience. The particular verses chosen foi the text reveal conscience functioning healthily as a convicting agency. 2. Another excellent picture of a convicting conscience is found in John 8:9: “ And they . . . , being convicted by their own conscience, went out.” A convicting conscience is a healthy conscience. II. CONSCIENCE: NONMATERIAL BUT REAL. 1. The Standard Dictionary defined conscience as “that power or faculty in man by which he distinguishes be tween right and wrong in conduct and character, and which imperative ly commands and obligates him to do the right and abstain from doing the wrong." Think that over carefully. 2. A physician or surgeon may dis sect a human body and place on the table before his students a heart, a liver, kidneys, and stomach, and may point them out by name so that the students w ill recognize those organs again. But no doctor can dissect a human body and place on a table the spirit or soul or mind or memory or conscience so that they may be recog nized readily. Yet God’s Word attri butes these to every man, and recognizes each of them as a God- given part of every man’s being. III. CONSCIENCE AT ITS WORK. 1. Some one has said that con science is God’s watchdog, housed in the human heart to bark at the ap proach of temptation and sin; that conscience is the only link that still holds man to God after every other bond had been ruthlessly sundered through sin; that conscience is God’s window, through which the eye of God penetrates into the soul’s most secret and sacred precincts. You may enlarge on each of these thoughts and add many others. 2. It is the duty of a healthy con science to utter a solemn and vigorous protest against every sinful act com mitted or premeditated. A normal con science will never allow one single act of sin in the individual’s life, or one inordinate desire, to pass un challenged or unreproved. It was so with the Prodigal Son. In his case conscience was God’s lash, cutting deeply day and night until, under the sting of its lead-tipped scourge,
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• The BIOLA BOOK ROOM— feeling that the readers of this magazine would be in- terested in k n o w i n g the message of President Roose* velt to the booksellers of America— presents his mes-
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sage herewith.
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If the words of our President are applicable to all good books, how much more so are they applicable to the
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BOOK OF BOOKS!
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The following message was read at the annual banquet of the American Booksellers Convention at the H otel
Astor on May 6, 1942:
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“I should have liked to be with you in person to extend * my greetings and talk to’ you, for I have been a reader and + borrower and collector of books all my life. It is more im- * portant that your work should go on now than1 it has ever 4* been at any other time in our history: in a very literal sense -k' you carry upon your bookshelves the light that guides civil- -k ization. I need not labor the contrasts between the estate of * books in the free democracies and the estate of books in f countries brutalized by our foes. * “We all know that books burn — yet we have the greater knowledge that books can not be killed by fire. x People die, but books never die. No man and no force can 4 c abolish memory. No man and no force can put thought in -k a concentration camp forever. No man and no force can * take from the world the books that embody man’s eternal * fight against tyranny of every kind. In this war, we know, * books are weapons. And it is a part of your dedication * always to make them weapons for man’s freedom.” J FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT * The WHITE HOUSE £ W a s h i n g t o n , d . c . i BIOLA BOOKROOM £ 560 South Hope Street Los Angeles, California -k •
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he finally agreed to the only thing that would give him peace. IV. CONSCIENCE: INEFFECTIVE OR OPERATIVE. 1. I am convinced that it is possible to deaden conscience. Probably the Prodigal did that by refusing to listen to the still small voice for a long time, even as you and I are prone to do. Conscience is very much like an alarm clock. Try this test some time (preferably while on a vacation): Allow your alarm clock to ring in the morning until it runs down, but pay no attention to it. Do that every
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