Page:The Education of the Conscience.djvu/15

Rh only as the grammar of the knowledge of it that shall be when we see 'face to face ' the God whom we have loved!

One more point by which Christ educates the conscience, and without which all were worse than incomplete.

The earliest simple voice of conscience was twofold: it not only pointed to goodness, but it told us that goodness was for us. And what becomes of this last, when a man is educated to see what goodness really is, and knows it to be the glory of a holy and jealous God? What can he do with it? Can he draw near to it, can he make it his own, can it be to him anything but that which puts him to shame, and confounds him, and humbles him to the dust? Can he only say, "Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts ;" "Now mine eye seeth Thee, wherefore I abhor myself ?" Is goodness to be to him for ever nothing but a baffling or even a blasting vision? No, this one lesson more is given to you here by Christ and in Christ: you repeat it again and again in those familiar words, "through Jesus Christ our Lord:" the same teaching, the same Scriptures, the same sacraments which reveal God to us in Christ, reveal to us in ourselves the power of drawing near to God through Christ. In Him "we have access with confidence " to God. For He who teaches us to trace goodness up to God teaches us that God is love. He who brought the goodness of God down to men, did so not "to condemn