io The Natural Conscience CHAP. 



easily be so pressed as to become inconsistent with 

 fact. Were it true in any complete and absolute 

 sense, it would imply that the human faculties of 

 reverence, love, and worship first came into exist- 

 ence when the gift of the Holy Spirit was first im- 

 parted to men; and that these have no existence 

 at all in unspiritual men, but are created at the 

 critical moment of regeneration (or, as Professor 

 Drummond always calls it, conversion). But this is 

 contrary to the most obvious fact. And, moreover, 

 the language of Christ and of His Prophets and 

 Apostles assumes the contrary : it assumes that the 

 powers of spiritual discernment, knowledge, and love 

 are naturally present in man, and waiting to be 

 rightly directed. "The isles shall wait for (the 

 revelation of) His law," 1 said Isaiah; Christ said, 

 in the act of revealing Himself to Saul the persecutor, 

 "It is hard for thee to kick against the goad" 2 (of 

 conscience) ; and after the persecutor had become an 

 Apostle, he said to the idolaters of Athens, "The 

 unknown God, whom ye worship in ignorance, Him 

 I declare unto you." 3 These are but a few instances 

 of the appeals addressed by God and His messengers 

 to the natural reason, the natural conscience, and the 

 natural heart an appeal which would have no 

 meaning if the natural man were but as lifeless 

 matter in relation to the Spirit of God. 



We ought not to forget that God, even in the 

 darkest ages, has "left Himself not without witness," 

 1 Isaiah xlii. 4. 2 Acts xxvi. 14. 3 Acts xvii. 23. 



