138 THEODORE ROBERTS, E?Q., ON 



preseLit day we find non-Christians exhibiting scruples of con- 

 science, such as Mrs. Annie Besant refusing to take the sacrament 

 with her dying mother without informing the clergjTnan who 

 administered it. the late Dean Stanley, that she was an atheist. 

 And no one would think of questioning that Lord Morley is a 

 conscientious man, although he would disclaim any profession of 

 Christianity. But it must be remembered that, although men 

 to-day may repudiate Christianity, they cannot erase from their 

 minds, or indeed from their manners, the effect which the preva- 

 lence of its principles in the world around them has produced. 

 Although refusing the name of Christian they are essentially a 

 product of the Christian rehgion, which has operated on long 

 generations of their forefathers and in their own early training. 

 Anyone who doubts this has only to compare the state of society 

 in the first- three centuries of our era with what obtains to-day 

 amongst us, the one being the result of philosophy appealing 

 to men's reason, and the other of the Christian EeTelation appeal- 

 ing to men's conscience. The sceptic Matthew Arnold's descrip- 

 tion taken almost verbatim from a contemporary Eoman poet, is 

 well known, 



" On that hard Pagan world disgust 

 And secret loathing fell, 

 Deep weariness and sated lust 

 Made human life a hell.'" 



When first we find the new religion confronting the old non- 

 Christian system, we get Paul's well-known declaration in his 

 defence before the Eoman governor Felix, " Herein do I exercise 

 myself, to have always a conscience void of offence toward God, 

 and toward men." (Acts xxiv. 16). A man whose conscience 

 thus responds both to divine and human claims is the noblest 

 product of our religion, as indeed the speaker of these words was 

 in his time. 



There is nothing we should prize so much as an exercised 

 conscience, whether in ourselves or in others. a.nd even if the 

 other man's obedience to his conscience leads him to differ very 

 widely from me, I need to treat him with the highest respect, 

 though I may think him badly instructed. 



Nothing was so humiliating to my mind during the late war 

 as the wave of reprobation, to use no stronger term, which 

 swept over our land against those whose conscience forbade them 

 to kill or to take any part in warfare. It is no doubt very dis- 

 agreeable when at grips with a foe to find those who will not 

 move one finger to help you, but you will do well to remember 

 that if you get such men on your side in any future contest they 

 will prove your most redoubtable supporters. I recollect hear- 

 ing how The Times wrote after one of Bright 's greatest speeches 



