CONSCIENCE. CONSCIENCE-Convictions of. CONSCIENCE. CONSCIENCE-A Good. The testimony of a good conscience will make the comforts of heaven descend upon man's weary head like a refreshing dew or shower upon a parched land. It will give him lively earnests and secret anticipations of approaching joy; it will bid his soul go out of the body undauntedly, and lift up his head with confidence before saints and angels. The comfort which it conveys is greater than the capacities of mortality can appreciate, mighty Where are thy terrors, conscience? where thy and unspeakable, and not to be understood till it is felt. justice? CONSCIENCE-Defiance of. That this bad man dare boldly own his crimes, CONSCIENCE-Definitions of. CONSCIENCE-A Guilty. South Francis. A guilty conscience is like a whirlpool draw- Yet still there whispers the small voice within, Whatever creed be taught, or land be trod, The pulse of reason. The sense of right. Coleridge. None have accused thee; 'tis thy conscience The witness in the soul that never dies; Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind; Shakspeare. A palsy may as well shake an oak, or a fever dry up a fountain, as either of them shake, dry up, or impair the delight of conscience. For it lies within, it centres in the heart, it grows into the very substance of the soul, so that it CONSCIENCE-the Minister of Justice. accompanies a man to his grave, he never Conscience is justice's best minister: it outlives it; and that for this cause only, be-threatens, promises, rewards, and punishes, cause he cannot outlive himself. CONSCIENCE-Fear of. South. In the commission of evil, fear no man so much as thyself: another is but one witness against thee; thou art a thousand; another thou mayest avoid; thyself thou canst not. Wickedness is its own punishment. Quarles. CONSCIENCE-A Good. and keeps all under its control: the busy must CONSCIENCE-Liberty of. Liberty of conscience (when people have consciences) is rightly considered the most indis What stronger breastplate than a heart un-pensable of liberties; and yet there may have tainted? Thrice is he arm'd that hath his quarrel just; A good conscience is to the soul what health is to the body; it preserves a constant ease and serenity within us, and more than countervails all the calamities and afflictions which can possibly befali us. Addison. been many periods when it could not be conceded without great hazard to public security. When the subjects of a state have that degree of education that they will not use their liberty of thought to take up with doctrines incompatible with the existence of society, the ruling powers can have no pretence for restraining this important attribute of humanity. It is a very natural mistake to confound liberty with popular power. Liberty has often been the result of the popular acquisition of power, but the two are not identical. Liberty of conscience and religious observance, liberty of thought, liberty of speech, liberty of doing good to our fellows in our own way, liberty of education, liberty of choosing our occupation, liberty of using our gifts and talents to advantage, liberty of doing what we please with our own, liberty of trading, liberty of guiding our own movements-all these we may have without any vote in the appointing of the government, and we may fail in securing many of them under a popular constitution. So long as a large proportion of our fellow-citizens I would abuse, to a ruinous extent, any one of these precious privileges, we must be for a time content to forego them. Chambers. CONSCIENCE-an Inward Monitor. I'll not meddle with it, it is a dangerous thing, it makes a man a coward; a man cannot steal, but it accuseth him; a man cannot swear, but it checks him; a man cannot lie with his neighbour's wife, but it detects him: 'tis a blushing shame-faced spirit, that mutinies ! in a man's bosom; it fills one full of obstacles : it made me once restore a purse of gold, that by chance I found; it beggars any man that keeps it; it is turned out of all towns and cities for a dangerous thing; and every man, that means to live well, endeavours to trust to himself, and live without it. Shakspeare. CONSCIENCE-Power of. The unanswerable reasonings of Butler never reached the ear of the gray-haired pious peasant; but he needs not their powerful aid to establish his sure and certain hope of a blessed immortality. It is no induction of logie that has transfixed the heart of the victim of deep remorse, when he withers beneath an influence unseen by human eye, and shrinks from the anticipation of a reckoning to come. In both the evidence is within, a part of the original constitution of every rational mind, planted there by Him who framed the wondrous fabric. This is the power of conscience; with an authority, which no man can put away from him, it pleads at once for his own future existence, and for the moral attributes of an omnipotent and ever-present Deity. In a healthy state of the moral feelings, the man recognises its claim to supreme dominion. Amid the degradation of guilt, it still raises its voice and asserts its right to govern the whole man; and, though its warnings are disregarded, and its claims disallowed, it proves within his inmost soul an accuser that cannot be stilled, and an avenging spirit that never is quenched. Dr. Abercrombie. CONSCIENCE-Power of. Who dost inhabit us without our leave; Even in the fiercest uproar of our stormy passions, conscience, though in her softest whispers, gives to the supremacy of rectitude the voice of an undying testimony. Chalmers. CONSCIENCE-Purity of. We should have all our communications with men, as in the presence of God; and with God, as in the presence of men. Colton. CONSCIENCE-a Quiet. In all ages and all countries, man, through the disposition he inherits from our first parents, is more desirous of a quiet and approving, than of a vigilant and tender conscience; desirous of security instead of safety; studious to escape the thought of spiritual danger more than the danger itself; and to induce, at any price, some one to assure him confidently that he is safe, to prophesy unto him smooth things, "and to speak peace, even when there is no peace." Whately. I feel within me Shakspeare. A man's first care should be to avoid tho reproaches of his own heart; his next, to escape the censures of the world. If the last CONSCIENCE. CONSISTENCY. interferes with the former, it ought to be Bathes in its deep tranquillity one image, CONSCIENCE-Remorse of. Addison. Remorse of conscience is like an old wound; a man is in no condition to fight under such CONSCIENCE-Sovereignty of the. An individual sovereignty, that none CONSCIENCE-Stings of. Pollok. CONSCIENCE-attendant on Virtue. CONSCIENCE-the Voice of. Milton. Conscience, that vicegerent of God in the loudest revelry cannot drown. human heart, whose "still small voice" the Harrison. In the wildest anarchy of man's insurgent appetites and sins, there is still a reclaiming voice; a voice which, even when in practice disregarded, it is impossible not to own; and to which, at the very moment that we refuse our obedience, we find that we cannot refuse the homage of what ourselves do feel and acknowledge to be the best, the highest prinChalmers. ciples of our nature. CONSCIENCE-Watchfulness of. A watchful foe! the formidable spy, As all rapacious usurers conceal In every pale delinquent's hapless ear, Wicked. Many a lash in the dark doth conscience give the wicked. Boston. CONSIDERATION-Advantages of. Better it is, toward the right conduct of life, to consider what will be the end of a thing, than what is the beginning of it; for what promises fair at first may prove ill, and what seems at first a disadvantage, may prove very advantageous. Wells. CONSISTENCY. Either take Christ in your lives, or cast him out of your lips; either be that thou seemest, or else be what thou art. Dyer. CONSTABLE-Importance of the. A constable is a viceroy in the street, and no man stands more upon't that he is the king's officer. His jurisdiction extends to the next stocks, where he has commission for the heels only, and sets the rest of the body at liberty. He is a scarecrow to that alehouse where he drinks not his morning draught, and apprehends a drunkard for not standing, in the king's name. Beggars fear him more than the justice, and as much as the whipstock, whom he delivers over to his subordinate magistrates, the bridewell-man and the beadle. He is a great stickler in the tumults of double jugs, and ventures his head by his place, which is broke many times to keep whole the peace. He is never so much in his majesty as in his night watch. Bishop Earle. CONSTANCY-without Change. True constancy no time, no power can move : He that hath known to change, ne'er knew to love. Gay. I am constant as the northern star, hensive; Yet, in the number, I do know but one Shakspeare. CONSTANCY-Characteristics of. I must confess, there is something in the changeableness and inconstancy of human nature that very often both dejects and terrifies me. Whatever I am at present, I tremble to think what may be. While I find this principle in me, how can I assure myself that I shall be always true to my God, my friend, or myself. In short, without constancy there is neither love, friendship, nor virtue in the world. Addison. CONSTANCY-Unalterable. I know thee constant. Sooner I'll think the sun would cease to cheer The teeming earth, and then forget to bear; Sooner that rivers would run back, or Thames, With ribs of ice in June would bind his streams; Or nature, by whose strength the world endures, Would change her course before you alter yours. Johnson. CONSTITUTION-Meaning of. There is nothing so much talked of, and so little understood in this country, as the constitution. It is a word in the mouth of every man; and yet when we come to discourse of the matter, there is no subject on which our ideas are more confused and perplexed. Some, when they speak of the constitution, confine their notions to the law; others to the legislature; others again, to the governing and executive part; and many there are who jumble all these together in one idea. One error, however, is common to them all; for all seem to have the conception of something uniform and permanent, as if the constitution of England partook rather of the nature of the soil than of the climate, and was as fixed and constant as the former, not as changing and variable as the latter. Fielding. CONSTITUTION. CONTEMPT. CONSTITUTION (The Human) Bene- The long wreaths of neglected hair! ficial Law of. The law of our constitution, whereby the regulated activity of both intellect and feeling is made essential to sound bodily health, seems to me one of the most beautiful arrangements of an all-wise and beneficent Creator. If we shun the society of our fellow-creatures, and shrink from taking a share in the active duties of life, mental indolence and physical debility beset our path. Whereas if, by engaging in the business of life, and taking an active interest in the advancement of society, we duly exercise our various powers of perception, thought, and feeling, we promote the health of the whole corporeal system, invigorate the mind itself, and at the same time experience the highest mental gratification of which a human being is susceptible; namely, that of having fulfilled the end and object of our being, in the active discharge of our duties to God, to our fellow-men, and to ourselves. If we neglect our faculties, or deprive them of their objects, we weaken the organization, give rise to distressing diseases, and at the same time experience the bitterest feelings that can afflict humanity-ennui and melancholy. The harmony thus shown to exist between the moral and physical world is but another example of the numerous inducements to that right conduct and activity in pursuing which the Creator has evidently destined us to find terrestrial happiness. It is most sad to watch the fall Of autumn leaves !-but worst of all Its summer light and warmth forget, To watch the banner-rose of health Pass from the cheek ;-to mark how plain, Upon the wan and sunken brow, Become the wanderings of each vein ! The shadowy hand so thin and pale! The languid step, the drooping head! That none, the meanest of created things, |