CONSCIENCE

emotional accompaniments of penitence and remorse, as well as the glow incident to the hearing of noble deeds— all anticipations of the Lord's 'Well done!' are instances of moral feeling. These pleasures and pains are a class by themselves. They are as distinct from those of sensation and intellect as colours are distinct from sound. That pleasures are qualitatively different was rightly maintained by J. S. Mill, though his general theory was not helped by the opinion. In consciousness we know that sorrow for sin is not of the same order as any physical distress, nor is it to be ranked with the feeling of disappointment when we are baflSed in a scientific inquiry. The difference between the moral and the unmoral emotions is one of kind and not of quantity, of worth and not of amount : some pleasures low in the scale of value are very intense, while the moral satisfactions may have small intensity and yet are preferred by good men to any physical or intellectual delights. It should be noticed that the pleasure attendant upon a choice of conduct known to be right may be not unmixed ; for the feelings, clinging for a while to that which has been discarded, interfere with the satisfaction due to the change that has been made. Converts are haunted by renounced beliefs, and their peace is disturbed ; beside the main current of emotion there is a stream which comes from past associations and habits.

4. Education of conscience. — (1) No training can Impart the idea of right : it is constitutional. (2) Malev-olent feelings (as vindictiveness, the desire to give pain gratuitously) are known by all to be wrong; immediately they are perceived at work, they are un-conditionally condemned. (3) The inward look makes no mistake as to our meaning, gets no wavering reply to such questions as, ' Do you desire to have full light? to know all the facts? to be impartial? to act as a good man should act in this particular?' For thisaccurate self-knowledge provision is made in our nature. (4) Some general moral principles are accepted as soon as the terms are understood. (5) When two competing incentives are to be judged, we know, and cannot be taught, which is the higher. (6) The imperative lodged in a moral conviction is intuitively discerned. ' I do not know how to impart the notion of moral obliga-tion to any one who is entirely devoid of it' (Sidgwick). (7) The feeling of dishonour comes to us without tuition when we have refused compliance with known duty. Belonging to a moral order, we are made to react in certain definite ways to truths, social relations, etc. The touch of experience is enough to quicken into action certain'moral states, just as the feelings of cold and heat are ours because of the physical environment, and because we are what we are. We can evoke while we cannot create the elementary moral qualities. ' An erring conscience is a chimera' (Kant). 'Conscience intuitively recognizes moral law; it is supreme in its authority; it cannot be educated' (Calderwood). These sentences are not intended to deny that in the ap-plication of principles there is difficulty. One may readily admit the axioms of geometry, and yet find much perplexity when asked to establish a geometrical theorem the truth of which directly or indirectly flows from the axioms. The Apostle Paul prayed that his friends might improve in moral discrimination (Ph l'", Col 1'). We have to learn what to do, and often the problems set by our domestic, civic, and church rela-tionships are hard even for the best and wisest to solve. The scheme of things to which we belong has not been constructed with a view to saving us the trouble of patient, strenuous, and sometimes very painful in-vestigation and thought.

5. Implications. — Of the many implications the following are specially noteworthy. The feeling of responsibility suggests the question, to Whom? Being under government, we feel after the Ruler if haply we may find Him. Jesus tells us of the ' Righteous Father.'

CONVENIENT

The solemn voice of command is His. The preferences which we know to be right are His. The pain felt when righteous demands are resisted, and the joy accompany-ing obedience, are they not His frown and smile? Neither our higher self nor society can be the source of an authority so august as that of which we are con-scious. To the best minds we look for guidance; but there are limits to their rights over us, and how ready they are to refer us to Him before whom they bowl We are made to be subjects of the Holy One. Admitting that we are in contact with Divine Authority, and that His behests are heard within, the encouraging persuasion is justified that He sympathizes with the soul in its battles and renders aid (Ph Z'^. is). The inference that it is God with whom we have to do makes it fit-ting for us to say that conscience is man's capacity to receive progressively a revelation of the righteousness of God. But is law the last word? May there not be mercy and an atonement? Cannot the accusing voices be hushed? May the man who admits the sentence of conscience be pardoned? Conscience is a John the Baptist preparing the way for the Saviour, who has a reply to the question 'What must I do to be saved?' W. J. Hendebbon.

CONSECBATION.— See Clean and Unclean, Nazirite.

CONSOLATION.— See Comfoet.

CONSinfflPTION.— The Heb. word (kaiah) which is translated 'consummation' in Dn 9" is rendered ' consumption ' in Is 10^ ZS''*, these Eng. words having then the same meaning. Cf. Foxe, Actes and Mon., ' Christ shall sit . . . at the right hand of God till the consumption of the world.' Consumption occurs also with the same meaning in Is 10^ (Heb. killyOn). But in Lv 26", Dt 2822 it is used of a disease of the body. See Medicine.

CONTENTMENT.— 1. The word does not occur in the OT, but the duty is implied in the Tenth Command-ment (Ex 20"), and the wisdom of contentment is enforced in Pr 15" 17' by the consideration that those who seem most enviable may.be worse off than ourselves. But the bare commandment 'Thou shalt not covet' may only stir up all manner of coveting (Ro 7"); and though a man may sometimes be reconciled to his lot by recognizing a principle of compensation In human life, that principle is far from applying to every case. It is not by measuring ourselves with one another, but only by consciously setting ourselves in the Divine presence, that true contentment can ever be attained. Faith in God is its living root (cf. Ps 16« with v.'; also Hab 3"').

2. In the NT the grace of contentment is expressly brought before us. Our Lord inculcated it negatively by His warnings against covetousness (Lk 12"-"), positively by His teaching as to the Fatherhood of God (Mt e^s-'^ll) and the Kingdom of God (v.8s, cf. v.""-). St. Paul (Ph 4"-") claims to have 'learned the secret' of being content in whatsoever state he was. The word he uses is autarkss, lit. 'self-sufficient.' It was a characteristic word of the Stoic philosophy, implying an independence of everything outside of oneself. The Apostle's self-sufficiency was of a very different kind (see Y."), for it rested on that great promise of Christ, 'My grace is sufficient (arkei) for thee' (2 Co 12"). Christian contentment comes not from a Stoic narrowing of our desires, but from the sense of being filled with the riches of Christ's grace. For other NT utterances see 1 Ti 68, He 13'. J. C. Lambert.

CONVENIENT.— This Eng. word often has in AV its primary meaning of befluing, as Ro 1^8 'God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient' (RV 'fitting'). So in the trans, of Agrippa's Van Anes (1684) 'She sang and danc'd more exquisitely than was convenient for an honest woman.'

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