THEOLOGY AND LAW. 239 



ality, and woman as a " living tool " to be bought 

 and sold. And Law looks on, almost powerless to 

 assert itself, because it is unsupported by that 

 vague thing called public opinion No ! let us be 

 true with ourselves, because our conscience, trained 

 in all these centuries of Christianity, gives such an 

 uncertain sound in a matter where Religion and 

 Morality and Law are at one. 



Law fails and becomes dead only when the 

 conscience of the nation refuses its support. And 

 no stronger proof can be urged that it is from 

 Conscience that its authority is ultimately derived. 



But there is an additional proof to be found in 

 this, viz. that what we have already noticed as 

 characteristic marks of Law belong in a special 

 sense to Conscience. Thus Conscience, whatever 

 its origin, is authoritative, it speaks with power, but 

 it speaks not from itself. Its decision is no mere 

 ipse dixit. It is a derived authority. And it is 

 bound up so closely with the fact of Personality 

 that there is no attack directed against the one 

 which, if sustained, would not be fatal to the other. 

 Conscience moves solely in the region of Person- 

 ality. It speaks from a Person to a Person. A 

 thing cannot speak with authority to a Person. 

 And all the attempted analyses of Conscience fail 

 in this, they do not account for its authority. 

 They analyze the evidence on which the judgment 

 is given ; they show how different would have 



