WHEN the conscience is in exercise, there is great need that it should not be checked or quieted by partial action, or by imperfect intelligence. The conscience of a saint is awakened by the Spirit of God to seek relief from the presence of evil around. This is a true, healthy purpose, and most blessed and effective when carried out according to the word of God. The danger and consequent loss is when compromise is entered into, when the conscience is quieted by one step, rather than by a definite and clear escape from the place of grievance. And thus, alas! the flesh is spared and the Spirit of God grieved, and there is really no progress. This often occurs in our christian history; the conscience has been aroused, but to meet it fully as in the light of God's presence would cost our nature too much. Of course we do not reason in this plain way with our selves; but do we not often, perhaps years afterwards, discover that it was really sparing ourselves which led to our resisting the demands and strivings of our conscience? For now, being in the place of blessing which our conscience had long before indicated, we see how we had deceived ourselves, and thus had hin dered our own blessing; and all because we feared the personal trial to which we should have been exposed in reaching it.
It is well to be warned of this device or weakness, from which all suffer many times and in many ways -- one which I may call an effort to appease the conscience without putting the flesh to much sacrifice - because if we see how we have been deceived in this subtle way, we are the more careful to attend to our conscience, and how God is speaking to it, than how we may quiet it at the smallest cost to ourselves. In short, as a rule, when the conscience is arrested or exercised, the first thought is, not what will at all costs satisfy it according to God, but on the contrary, how I can answer its demand without involving myself in loss and pain. If in ordinary cases we are exposed to a temptation of this kind, and too often yield to it, how much more when the most eventful step in our life as a christian is the one on which the conscience is exercised. Can any step be more important, or involve consequences of greater magnitude, than the ground I take for Christ here in separating from the organised systems around?
Some dupe their consciences with the assertion that the evil in one place is as bad as in another; and hence they say they are not called to separate from any order or form in which they may find themselves. Others again endeavour to see themselves individually un implicated in the things they disapprove of, because they do not sanction them, though they do not separate from them. Others labour honestly for reform, while they remain where they admit reform is needed. Others separate, and take the ground of meeting with Christians in the name of Christ, and thus quiet their consciences, but make no real progress, because they do not reach, or seek to reach, the responsibility laid upon them because of this ground. Separation from what is evil is really never reached by departing from the place of evil, but by reaching the place appointed of God, where the flesh can have no place. Lot pleads for Zoar, no doubt a step in the right direction, but not the place appointed of God, and therefore not the place of strength and blessing. It is of all importance that I should reach God's ground, and not content myself with separating from the place of evil in which I find myself. It is written, "Forsake the foolish, and live; and go in the way of understanding", Proverbs 9:6. The former is the first right step, but it is not all. If I only do the former, I am only seeking what suits my consci ence, and not that which suits God, and therefore I am still in something of man. This is the snare which so many fall into in this day. When a person takes even a right step with the object of getting ease and quietude to himself, to his own conscience it may be, there is reason to fear for him; but if he is seeking to reach God's mind, and if the step be taken as leading thereto, there is every reason to be thankful and hopeful on account of him. Every day almost we hear of people who have taken a right step, but who never think of doing more. Lot ought to have left Sodom, but he ought not to have contented himself with Zoar. Jacob ought to have left Laban's house, but he ought not to have contented himself with Shalem. A right step is not enough. God's mind and appointment is the only measure, and Jacob has to be taught to go to Bethel, the house of God; and many a modern Jacob has to learn the same lesson.
Paul instructs Timothy not only to depart from evil, but also to follow on in the divine path. It relieves the conscience to retire from the evil; but it requires the light and power of God's Spirit to lead us into what suits God and what is His way for us. The two tribes and a half can plead skilfully for remaining on this side Jordan; but if they had not planted themselves outside the promised land, they never would have needed to erect an altar; or something to look to. There is no shore more dangerous to really zealous souls than this. Every effort at separation from evil has in most cases ended in some one step, and hence all the sects of dissenters which have arisen. There never was a dis senter yet who had not taken some one right step, and this very step proved a snare to them; for, knowing that they had made a good move, their conscience was quieted, and they were glad not to be called to make any greater sacrifice. The snare lies in this: one is occupied with the thing done, which quiets, because it is a step in the right direction, and thus one is diverted from seeing or enquiring what God calls His saints to. One's own ease is consulted and not God; therefore the measure which affords a lull to the conscience is accepted, instead of that which God enjoins. How many nowadays avow separation from the world and from Christendom, without seeing or really caring to apprehend the fundamental principle on which the church has been set up. It is not merely separation from the "great house", but it is also to "pursue right eousness, faith, love, peace, with those that call upon the Lord out of a pure heart". It is not only loosening and purging myself from everything unfit for God's house, but it is in heart and spirit adopting and main taining the principles which ever belong to His church, until He comes. His body is here, His members in unity through the one Spirit, and He in the midst where two or three are gathered to His name; and until the church be removed, any step short of this truth, if it be considered satisfactory, is a snare, because it deludes the heart, and diverts it from reaching the circle of Christ's heart on earth, and the circle in which, and for which, the Holy Spirit is here. It is a serious question; and it is sad indeed to see many, in the lawless spirit of the age, breaking loose from all church government which is conducted on false principles, but, like well manned vessels at sea, without chart or compass, going hither and thither as they are drifted. They have left the unreliable, but have not been taught of God the true or the reliable. It is not enough that I have done something right, but what I have to do is the whole will of God. Nothing less can please Him or bless my soul.
In fine, if I make my own ease of mind or judgement the measure of my action, instead of the revealed will of God and the leading of the Holy Spirit, the conse quence will be that it will be more difficult for me to be led on than for those who have not moved at all. For at the bottom the hindrance to me is the desire to spare myself the sacrifice; and according as I spare myself I deprive myself, in a hundred-fold proportion, of the blessing contingent on faithfulness; and hence they who rest satisfied with their right step never advance in truth or knowledge beyond a certain point.
