The Testimony of Conscience to the Truth and Divine Origin of the Christian Revelation; Being the Essay Which Gained the Burney Prize, 1880 - Softcover

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1882. Excerpt: ... IX. The results of the foregoing discussion may now be briefly summed up. Without pretending that the testimony of conscience to the truth of Christianity is of such a character as to make us independent of all other evidence, we may fairly say that it is necessary, as complementary to the various other arguments. It has been shown that an investigation of the nature of conscience yields conclusions which are in complete and singular accordance with the teaching of the New Testament on the subject of our moral nature. And the voice of conscience, speaking as it does with universality and authority, corresponds exactly with what we should look for as the voice of God, which we are urged by Christianity to recognize within ourselves. When we turn to the character of the Founder of Christianity, the testimony of conscience is emphatic. As moral beings, we perceive in Jesus Christ a Person before whose purity and holiness we can only bow with humble reverence. If we examine the character of His teaching, we discover in it all that conscience pronounces to be highest and noblest of moral truth. We cannot conceive such a Teacher as this to have been, either intentionally or unintentionally, a deceiver. And the only other alternative is that His teaching was true. But conscience further reveals to us the fact of a discord in our nature; it lays bare the existence of moral evil. Christianity offers a remedy for this evil, and a remedy which the f experience of countless multitudes has pronounced to be adequate. Not only so: conscience leads us, as rational beings, to look forward to a future state in which the contradiction which exists, not only in our own natures, but throughout the world, shall be removed, and to look up to a higher Power, by Whose hands this ...