Conscience is the con-knowing of a particular act or state, as coming under the law accepted by the reason as to right and wrong; and the judgment of conscience subsumes this act or state under that general standard. Conscience cannot _include_ the law—cannot itself _be_ the law,—because reason only knows, never _con_-knows. Reason says _scio_; only judgment says _conscio_. This view enables us to reconcile the intuitional and the empirical theories of morals. Each has its element of truth. The original sense of right and wrong is intuitive,—no education could ever impart the idea of the difference between right and wrong to one who had it not. But what classes of things _are_ right or wrong, we learn by the exercise of our logical intelligence, in connection with experiences of utility, influences of society and tradition, and positive divine revelation. Thus our moral reason, through a combination of intuition and education, of internal and external information as to general principles of right and wrong, furnishes the standard according to which conscience may judge the particular cases which come before it. This moral reason may become depraved by sin, so that the light becomes darkness (_Mat. 6:22, 23_) and conscience has only a perverse standard by which to judge. The “_weak_” conscience (_1 Cor. 8:12_) is one whose standard of judgment is yet imperfect; the conscience “_branded_” (Rev. Vers.) or “_seared_” (A. V.) “_as with a hot iron_” (_1 Tim. 4:2_) is one whose standard has been wholly perverted by practical disobedience. The word and the Spirit of God are the chief agencies in rectifying our standards of judgment, and so of enabling conscience to make absolutely right decisions. God can so unite the soul to Christ, that it becomes partaker on the one hand of his satisfaction to justice and is thus “_sprinkled from an evil conscience_” (_Heb. 10:22_), and on the other hand of his sanctifying power and is thus enabled in certain respects to obey God’s command and to speak of a “_good conscience_” (_1 Pet. 3:16_—of single act; _3:21_—of state) instead of an “_evil conscience_” (_Heb. 10:22_) or a conscience “_defiled_” (_Tit. 1:15_) by sin. Here the “_good conscience_” is the conscience which has been obeyed by the will, and the “_evil conscience_” the conscience which has been disobeyed; with the result, in the first case, of approval from the moral sentiments, and, in the second case, of disapproval. E. Conscience in its relation to God as law-giver.—Since conscience, in the proper sense, gives uniform and infallible judgment that the right is supremely obligatory, and that the wrong must be forborne at every cost, it can be called an echo of God’s voice, and an indication in man of that which his own true being requires.