cummin, and many other of my herbs, to my all but complete neglect
of justice and mercy and faith and love. Whether there are any of the
things that Brea would call mint and anise and cummin that are taking up
too much of the time of our controversially-minded men in all our
churches, highland and lowland, to-day is a matter for humbling thought.
Labour, my brethren, for yourselves, at any rate, to get yourselves into
that sane and sober habit of mind that instantly and instinctively puts
all mint and all cummin of all kinds into the second place, and all the
weightier matters, both of law and of gospel, into the first place. I
wasted myself on too nice points, laments Brea in his deep, honest, clear-
eyed autobiography. I did not proportion my religious things aright. The
laird of Brea does not say in as many words that he was wise in the penny
and foolish in the pound, but that is exactly what he means.

Then, again, the narrowness, the partiality, the sickliness, and the
squeamishness of our consciences,--all that makes us to be too often
penny-wise and pound-foolish in our religious life. A well-instructed,
thoroughly wise, and well-balanced conscience is an immense blessing to
that man who has purchased such a conscience for himself. There is an
immense and a criminal waste of conscience that goes on among some of our
best Christian people through the want of light and space, room, and
breadth, and balance in their consciences. We are all pestered with
people every day who are full of all manner of childish scrupulosity and
sickly squeamishness in their ill-nourished, ill-exercised consciences.
As long as a man's conscience is ignorant and weak and sickly it will, it
must, spend and waste itself on the pennyworths of religion and' morals
instead of the pounds. It will occupy and torture itself with points and
punctilios, jots and tittles, to the all but total oblivion, and to the
all but complete neglect, of the substance and the essence of the
Christian mind, the Christian heart, and the Christian character. The
washing of hands, of cups, and of pots, was all the conscience that
multitudes had in our Lord's day; and multitudes in our day scatter and
waste their consciences on the same things. A good man, an otherwise
good and admirable man, will absolutely ruin and destroy his conscience
by points and scruples and traditions of men as fatally as another will
by a life of debauchery. Some old and decayed