If I am consciously and continually false to this, it is of no avail that I seem loyal to all besides; I make the light that is in me darkness, and how great is that darkness! The centre of my manhood is gone, and I am rotten at my heart. Men may respect me, honor me, but I am not respectable, I am a base, dishonorable man, and like a tree, broad-branched, and leafed with green, but all its heart gnawed out by secret worms, at some slight touch one day, my rotten trunk will fall with horrid squelch, bringing my leafy honors to dishonored dust, and men will wonder that bark could hide such rottenness and ruin.
But if I am true to this Legate of God, holding his court within my soul, then my power to discover the just and right will enlarge continually; the axis of my little life will coincide with the life of the infinite God, His Conscience and my own be one. Then my character and my work will lie in the plane of his Almighty action; no other will in me, His infinite wisdom, justice, holiness, and love, will flow into me, a ceaseless tide, filling with life divine and new the little creeklets of my humble soul. I shall be one with God, feel His delight in me and mine in Him, and all my mortal life run o'er with life divine and bless mankind. Let men abhor me, yea, scourge and crucify, angels are at hand; yes, the Father is with me!
How we mistake. Men think if they can but get wickedness dignified into a statute, enrolled in the capitol, signed by the magistrates, and popular with the people, that all is secure. Then they rejoice, and at their "Thanksgiving dinner," say with the short-lived tyrant in the play, after he had slain the rightful heirs of England's throne, and set his murderous hoof on justice at every step to power,—
"Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer" ...
and think that Sin sits fast and rides secure.[17] But no statute of men is ever fixed on man till it be first the absolute, the right, the law of God. All else lasts but its day, forever this, forever still the same. By "previous questions," men may stop debate, vote down minorities with hideous grin, but the still small voice of Justice will whisper in the human heart, will be trumpet-tongued in history to teach you that you cannot vote down God.
on the natural law of God, inherent in your nature and in his; if the nation would build securely, it must build so. Out of their caprice, their selfishness, and their sin, may men make statutes, to last for a day, built up with joyous huzzas, and the chiming of a hundred guns, to come down with the curses of the multitude, and smitten by the thunder of God; but to build secure, you must build on the Justice of the Almighty. The beatitudes of Jesus will outlast the codes of all the tyrants of the old world and the new. So I have seen gamblers hurry and huddle up their booths at a country muster, on the unsmoothed surface of a stubble-field, foundation good enough for such a structure, not a post plumb, to endure a single day of riot, drunkenness, and sin; but to build a pyramid which shall outlast empires, men lay bare the bosom of the primeval rock, and out of primeval rock they build thereon their well-joined work, outlasting Syria, Greece, Carthage, Rome, venerable to Time, and underneath its steadfast foot the earthquakes pass all harmlessly away.
All things conspire to overturn a wrong. Every advance of man is hostile to it. Reason is hostile; religion is its deadly foe; the new-born generation will assail it, and it must fall. Of old it was written, "Though hand join in hand, the wicked shall not prosper," and the world's wide walls, from the remotest bounds of peopled space, laugh out their loud and long "Amen!" Let Iniquity be never so old and respectable, get all the most eminent votes, have the newspapers on her side, guns fired at her success, it all avails nothing; for this is God's world, not a devil's, and His eternal word has gone forth that Right alone shall last forever and forever.
Oh, young man, now in the period of the passions, reverence your Conscience. Defer that to no appetite, to no passion, to no foolish compliance with other men's ways, to no ungodly custom, even if become a law. Ask always "Is it right for me?" Be brave and self-denying for conscience' sake. Fear not to differ from men; keeping your modesty, keep your integrity also. Let not even your discretion consume your valor. Fear not to be scrupulously upright and pure; be afraid neither of men's hate, nor even of their laugh and haughty scorn, but shudder at the thought of tampering with your sense of right, even in the smallest matters. The Flesh will come up with deceitful counsels—the Spirit teaching the commandments of God; give both their due. Be not the senses' slave, but the soul's free man.