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printsellers’ windows of a forbidden book being looked at with very great 
gusto by two young ladies ; and every one can understand the story conveyed 
in the picture. But conscience must have been present in the min ds of 
those ladies as well as curiosity ; and as we listen to the voice of conscience, 
and determine to do what is right or wrong, so are we guilty or innocent. 
If St. Paul describes the natural man as in a state of darkness, the slave of 
ignorance and passion, he also most emphatically asks his converts, What did 
hinder them that they should not obey the truth ? Consequently, unless 
you are prepared to deny the voice of conscience altogether, contrary to what 
St. Paul teaches, — unless you deny that even nature itself teaches us to 
distinguish between right and wrong, — Buckle’s philosophy and Mr. Waring- 
ton’s principles must alike be false 
Mr. Warington. — What I have said has been altogether misunderstood 
by Mr. Beddie. I said merely that there exists in the spirit of man that 
which claims to be heard in every man, I grant, but which cannot exercise 
its right to control unless it is assisted by the Spirit of God. I denied the 
existence of conscience in no man, nor the clear speaking of its voice. I 
believe there is no action in which conscience does not take some part ; but, 
in order to clear the way for the first part of my argument, I said I would 
exclude the operation of conscience for a moment. 
Mr. Beddie. — Mr. Warington’s explanation — which I am glad to have 
heard — does not seem to require me to qualify any portion of what T have 
said. To return to the paper before us, there are one or two passages in it, 
in which I think the author is scarcely consistent. For instance, he says in 
one place, “ To act without motive is impossible and in the preceding page 
he finds fault with Mr. Buckle for overlooking the fact that, though all motives 
are antecedents, all antecedents are not motives. But we sometimes act 
merely and purely from habit, without any motive at all. Beference has 
been made to the faith of the Gospel ; and I may here be permitted to say, 
that the fact of the Gospel having made man a more completely free agent 
than he was before, is not the only great improvement in our moral con- 
dition it introduced. The Gospel also restored hope to man, as a motive, 
notwithstanding sin. St. Paul describes those who were without God, and 
who were ignorant of His character, as living “ without hope.” But Chris- 
tianity is precisely adapted to our moral nature. We are not bound to judge 
ourselves merely in the way in which the Stoic or other heathen philosophers 
might judge themselves — we have opportunities for repentance. A man's 
conscience pricks him — he has committed an evil deed, and he sees its bad 
effects, and regrets it and repents. For the great feature of the Gospel is not 
that a man shall never sin at all, but that, having sinned, he may repent and 
sin no more. It is in that grand hope — the hope of retrieving our errors — 
that the Gospel has restored the moral tone of human nature. Buckle calls 
belief in free will “ a dogma ” ; and Mr. Bow seems to think that a nick- 
name. But I do not know why it should not be called a dogma : it is an 
established principle that is taught, and I am very glad to know that it is. 
But there is a loose way of speaking of dogmas, which Mr. Bow appears to 
have fallen into, as if there were something wrong in dogmas, merely as such. 
