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CONGRUITY

CONSCIENCE.

Everything, when blended together, turns to a wild of nothing. Ed. Many discourses resemble such a wilderness.

Job, 10: 15. "I am full of confusion." Ed. This is bad; to be filled with distraction, is worse; but to be full of mischief, is the superlative.

Unbidden guests know not where to sit down, and soon find themselves in deep confusion.

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Ed. "What is the order of the day in Rhode Island?” said one to Rev. Thomas Williams, who replied, “ For everybody to give orders, and nobody to obey."

Ed. The confusion of the worst times on earth is order, compared with the confusion of hell. Weeping, wailing, gnashing of teeth, cursing, reviling, blaspheming, and the like, will constitute a reign of terror. Those who sow to the wind here, will reap the whirlwind hereafter.

153. CONGRUITY.

Every man should act conformably with his character and station. Ed. What if his character is bad, and his station a nuisance?

Ed. God's universal plan takes in all the incongruities in the universe, and turns them into shades to adorn the picture. "Nothing can be put to it, nor anything taken from it." [See 161.]

154. CONQUEST.

Ed. The most valorous conquest is to overcome the world, the flesh, and the devil.

Ib. If a victory is to be measured by the power and stratagem of the enemy, he is the great Victor who made the devil flee.

Ib. The conquest of Canaan, by Moses, Joshua and others, was by Divine command, which was their excuse for inflicting dire and heart-rending calamities upon those corrupt nations, who had forfeited their lives and privileges. But few conquerors have such an apology for the use of the sword.

155. CONSCIENCE.

Conscience is the universal court of equity.
Conscience is the inner chamber of justice.

Your conscience and looking-glass will tell you what none of your friends will.

Varle.

in creation.

Conscience is the best of friends or worst of enemies

He that loses his conscience has nothing that is left worth keeping.

The jewel of a good man is a good conscience.

It is desirable to satisfy others; much more so to satisfy ourselves.

Nothing can pacify an offended conscience, but that which satisfies an offended God.

Take care to keep a good conscience, and leave to others the care of keeping your good name.

A clear conscience fears no accusation.

Conscience is not the executor of Divine justice, but the guilty soul's accuser.

Dickens. There is a Sunday conscience, as well as a Sunday coat; and those who make religion a secondary concern, put the coat and conscience carefully by, to put on only once a week.

Ed. Conscience is a counsellor that should never be dismissed.

156. CONSCIENCE DEMANDS OBEDIENCE. Bowen. The requisitions of conscience are unlimited, perfection being the only standard placed before us.

Varle. The greatest deference, and precise obedience, are due the commands of conscience.

J. Q. Adams to his Son. Your conscience is the minister plenipotentiary in your breast. See to it, that this minister never negotiates in vain. Attend to him in opposition to all the courts in the world.

Paul. Herein do I exercise myself to have always a conscience void of offence.

157. CONSCIENCE, LIABLE TO IMPOSITION. Spring. Conscience may be so blinded, as to lead a man sincerely to do what is abomination in the sight of God. He may act from prejudice, selfishness, and malevolence; and the

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CONSCIENCE PURSUES THE GUILTY.

time may come, when, notwithstanding all the convictions of his conscience, like Saul of Tarsus, he may bewail the madness of his spirit, and see that he was altogether without excuse.

Pascal. We never do evil so effectually as when we are led to do it by a false principle of conscience.

Napoleon. There is no class of men so difficult to be managed in a State, as those whose intentions are honest, but whose consciences are bewitched.

158. CONSCIENCE PURSUES THE GUILTY.

D. Webster. There is no evil which we cannot face or fly from, but the consciousness of duty disregarded.

lb. A sense of duty pursues us ever. If we take to ourselves the wings of the morning, and dwell in the utmost parts of the sea, duty performed or duty violated is still with us, for our happiness or our misery. If we say the darkness shall cover us, in the darkness as in the light, our obligations are yet with us. We cannot escape their power, nor fly from their presence. They are with us in this life, will be with us at its close; and in that scene of inconceivable solemnity, which lies yet farther onward, we shall still find ourselves surrounded by the consciousness of duty, to pain us wherever it has been violated, and to console us so far as God may have given us grace to perform it.

Ed. There is no emancipation from a guilty conscience, but deliverance from sin.

Landon. Deep in the heart is an avenging power,
There is no shape

Conscious of right and wrong.

Reproach can take, one half so terrible,
As when that shape is given by ourselves.
There is no wretchedness like self-reproach.
Sh. Who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of love despised, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns

That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
(When he himself might his own exit make,

With a bare bodkin?) Who would fardels bear,

CONSCIENCE, CONSIDERATION.

To grunt and sweat under a weary life;
But that the dread of something after death, -
The undiscovered country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns,― puzzles the will;
And makes us rather bear those ills we have,
Than fly to others that we know not of?

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all.

Ib. Conscience is a thousand swords.

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Varle. Conscience has a thousand witnesses, and is next to God in judgment.

159. CONSCIENCE AIDS THE JUST.

Varle. A good conscience is to the soul what health is to the body. It preserves a constant serenity within us, and more than countervails all the calamities and afflictions that can be

fal us.

As health is the paradise of the body, so a good conscience is the paradise of the soul.

Paul. Our rejoicing is this, the testimony of our conscience. Ed. Conscience rewards her obedient subjects and servants better than any other earthly master, external or internal. The righteous have a perennial source of exquisite internal joy which the world can neither give nor take away.

160. CONSIDERATION.

Ed. Proper consideration will do that for vice, which patent medicines promise for disease.

Ib. Human consideration, like a jumping horse, is almost always to be found out of the right place. God requires men to "consider that the Lord he is God," and to "consider his wondrous works," and their own ways. He laments that they will not "consider their latter end." And he complains of them that "they consider not in their hearts that he remembers all their wickedness." These most important objects are the last ones that mankind are disposed to consider. But "God has made his wonderful works to be remembered;" and if men will not attend to them here, they shall attend to them hereafter, when consideration will be painful beyond all present anticipation or conception. [See 791.] .

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CONSISTENCY, CONTAGION.

161. CONSISTENCY.

Consistency, thou art a jewel.

Em. Somewhere there must be a system of Divine truth that is consistent with itself, with facts, with common sense, conscience, and the Bible.

Ib. Consistency is the beauty and ornament, if not the essence of good preaching. This arises from considering the relation which one truth bears to another, and which each bears to the whole counsel of God.

Henry. In all God's providences, it is good to compare his word and his works together; for we shall find a beautiful harmony between them, and that they mutually illustrate each other.

God's universe has a perfect symmetry. Sin has covered, but not annihilated, the harmony that fills heaven, and will yet fill the earth with ecstasy.

Ed. Consistency is a kind of Century-plant, whose blossoms are far between; or a bird of paradise, that seldom is seen alighted upon the earth.

Ib. Truth maintains a constant warfare, offensive and defensive, against all error, but knows no civil war. No self-evident principle is clearer, than that truth is, and ever must be, harmonious in all its parts. Facts always confirm each other. Mathematical truths have no power to subvert moral truths. [See 153.]

162. CONTAGION, CONTAMINATION.

One scabbed sheep infects the whole flock.

Ed. Men are thrown into a panic by physical contagion; but run into moral contamination, inconceivably more loathsome, abominable, and dangerous, without fear or hesitation. In this respect, they are as wise as doves, who are devoid of wisdom, and as harmless as those serpents, who are sure to bite and poison.

ль. There is a single source of contamination in the United States, which most of our leaders strangely and obstinately overlook, that has already spoiled the beauty, and tarnished the glory, and jeopardized the vital interests of the nation. Some