conscience, and all that is of interest is to show that such a conviction
and experience can never be set aside by the protest of those who aver
that they know nothing about it. One must insist on this, however it may
expose him to the charge of judging. Can we utter any truth at all, in
which conscience is concerned, and which is not universally acknowledged,
without seeming to judge?
Sometimes, apart from the general denial of any connection between death
and sin, it is pointed out that death has another and a totally different
character. Death in any given case may be so far from coming as a
judgment of God, that it actually comes as a gracious gift from Him; it
may even be an answer to prayer, a merciful deliverance from pain, an
event welcomed by suffering human nature, and by all who sympathise with
it. This is quite true, but again, one must point out, rests on the
false abstraction so often referred to. Man is regarded in all this
simply in the character of a sufferer, and death as that which brings
suffering to an end; but that is not all the truth about man, nor all the
truth about death. Physical pain may be so terrible that consciousness
is absorbed and exhausted in it, sometimes even extinguished, but it is
not to such abnormal conditions we should appeal to discover the deepest
truths in the moral consciousness of man. If the waves of pain subsided,
and the whole nature collected its forces again, and conscience was once
more audible, death too would be seen in a different light. It might not
indeed be apprehended at once, as Scripture apprehends it, but it would
not be regarded simply as a welcome relief from pain. It would become
possible to see in it something through which God spoke to the
conscience, and eventually to realise its intimate relation to sin.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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