eternity, and lift them from the provincial stage of human society to the imperishable theatre of all being. When planted thus in the very substance of things, they justify and support the ideal estimates of the conscience; they deepen every guilty shame; they guarantee every righteous hope; and they help the will with a Divine casting-vote in every balance of temptation."[68] ==Power of Holy Spirit.== =4.= By the enlightening and obligating force of the Holy Spirit. This reality is assured both in the teaching of the Scriptures and the testimony of the Christian consciousness. We must distinguish between the simply natural action of conscience and the quickening and helping by the divine Spirit. Revelation fully recognizes the natural conscience and its obligating energy, Rom. 2:15; 1:20. It designates it by the term συνείδησις [Greek: syneidêsis] from σύνοιδα [Greek: synoida], _conscius sum_--a knowing with, _i. e._ a conjoined consciousness of self and of right, or a knowing with God, whose law it discerns. Its natural functions of discernment and imperative are not set aside by the Spirit, but enlightened and re-inforced. His part must not be counted zero. "When the Spirit is come, He will convince the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment," John 16:8. He works through the truth, in and through men's natural faculties. While the Christian's own conscience is acting in its natural functions, it is not acting alone. It is not alone; for the Holy Spirit is there as a quickening and helping power. In this is fulfilled the experience expressed by St. Paul: "My conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost," Rom. 9:1. This is a Christian conscience, one acting not alone and unaided, but embraced within and filled by the influence of the Holy Spirit. This influence has been well expressed as "like the energy of the sunshine in the fruit." ==Spiritual Regeneration.== =5.= Through spiritual regeneration and renovation. It is through this profound reality that Christianity accomplishes its great ethical result. It places the principle of holiness, of duty to God and men, in the very heart of human nature and life. It writes the law in the love of the soul. The divine wisdom of Christianity is marked by the stress which it places upon a purification of the inner life, "the heart," the very fountain of thought, purpose, and conduct. It points to the immoral source of the immoralities of conduct: "Out of the heart proceed murders, adulteries," etc. The remedy must purify the fountain. When this is secured and the law of holiness is established there, the ethical life, in its manifoldness and many-sidedness, comes into realization.