Evolution of Christianity Author:Frederick George Smith Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. CONSCIENCE. In the preceding chapter we have shown the universal prevalence of the religious sentiment by its various systems and forms of extern... more »al manifestation; but the subject is incomplete without a consideration of conscience, which is a constituent of the religious nature. Men not only intuitively realize the presence of the Unseen Power, but also feel a sense of dependence and of moral obligation growing out of their relations with that higher power; and this native feeling of the soul that a standard of right and wrong exists and that it is one's duty to conform to that standard is what we term conscience. This sentiment also is common to all men; for all instinctively feel that they are moral beings, placed under a moral law enacted by a Moral Governor. In view of the universal belief in a future state in which men will be the recipients of rewards and punishments determined by their conduct in this life, this subject of moral accountability is extremely important, and it has always exerted a powerful influence upon the human mind. Still wewould not have it otherwise; for we could by no means desire the extinction of our rational will and a consequent degradation to the plane of inanimate nature, nor even to that of the animal kingdom below us. "What!" exclaimed Rousseau, "to render man incapable of evil, would we have him lowered to mere brute instinct? No! God of my soul, I will not reproach thee for having made me in thine image, so that I might be good and free and happy like thyself." Darwin says: "A moral being is one who is capable of comparing his past and future actions or motives, and of approving or disapproving of them. We have no reason to suppose that any of the lower animals have this capacity."1 Bishop Butler describes man's moral sus...« less