law is eternally right which says, "Thou shalt love thine enemy." And
had the Jews acted upon this principle they would have done well to
spare their enemies: but they did it thinking it to be wrong,
transgressing that law which commanded them to slay their idolatrous
enemies--not from generosity, but in cupidity--not from charity, but
from lax zeal. And so doing, the act was altogether wrong.

II. Such is the apostle's exposition of the law of Christian
conscience. Let us now, in the second place, consider the applications
both of a personal and of a public nature, which arise out of it.

1. The first application is a personal one. It is this:--Do what
_seems_ to _you_ to be right: it is only so that you will at last
learn by the grace of God to see clearly what _is_ right. A man thinks
within himself that it is God's law and God's will that he should act
thus and thus. There is nothing possible for us to say--there is no
advice for us to give, but this--"You _must_ so act." He is
responsible for the opinions he holds, and still more for the way in
which he arrived at them--whether in a slothful and selfish, or in an
honest and truth-seeking manner; but being now his soul's convictions,
you can give no other law than this--"You must obey your conscience."
For no man's conscience gets so seared by doing what is wrong
unknowingly, as by doing that which appears to be wrong to his
conscience. The Jews' consciences did not get seared by their slaying
the Canaanites, but they did become seared by their failing to do what
appeared to them to be right. Therefore, woe to you if you do what
others think right, instead of obeying the dictates of your own
conscience; woe to you if you allow authority, or prescription, or
fashion, or influence, or any other human thing, to interfere with
that awful and sacred thing--responsibility. "Every man," said the
apostle, "must give an account of himself to God."

2. The second application of this principle has reference to others.
No doubt to the large, free, enlightened mind of the Apostle Paul, all
these scruples and superstitions must have seemed mean, trivial, and
small indeed. It was a matter to him of far less importance that truth
should be _established_ than that it should be arrived at truly--a
matter of far less importance even, that right should be done, than
that right should be done rightly. Conscience was far more sacred to
him than e