22 Sermon Illustrations on Conscience And Sin

Not every coin that bears the exact stamp is a genuine coin. Very often, the counterfeit, the base and worthless coin, bears the right stamp also. It isn't the impression that matters so much as the nature of the metal. Many an action that bears the impression of a good conscience is condemned before God as perilous, injurious, and destructive in its issues. The coin must be tested on the touchstone to discover if it rings true. Conscience must be tested on the touchstone of Christian principle and the Spirit of the Master. It is not enough to say, "It seems right to me." We must ask how does this action, this line of conduct, ring on the touchstone of Christian principle? Not what we think but what Christ thinks, what the Master thinks, matters most.

"Tf conscience speaketh not, it writeth; for it is not only a witness, but a register, and a book of record: 'The sin of Judah is written with a pen of iron, and the point of a diamond': Jer. xvii. 1. We know not what conscience writeth, being occupied and taken up with carnal vanities, but we shall know hereafter, when the books are opened: Rev. xx. 12. Conscience keepeth a diary, and sets down everything. This book, though it be in the sinner's keeping, cannot be razed and blotted out. Well, then, a sleepy conscience will not always sleep; If we suffer it not to awaken here, it will awaken in hell; for the present it sleepeth in many, in regard of motion, check, or smiting, but not in regard of notice and observation." Let those who forget their sins take note of this. There is a chiel within you taking notes, and he will publish all where all will hear it. Never say, "nobody will see me," for you will see yourself, and your conscience will turn king's evidence against you. What a volume Mr. Recorder Conscience has written already! How many blotted pages he has in store, to be produced upon my trial. O thou who alone canst erase this dreadful handwriting, look on me in mercy, as I now look on thee by faith.

That divine Spaniard, in his pleasant but useful fiction of the Life of Gusman, makes his rogue discourse of the unconscionableness of the Genoese, and their prying into and censuring of other men's dives; that, when they are young and go first to school, they play away and lose their consciences, which their master finding, he lays them up carefully in a chest. But because he hath the keeping of so many, and they mixed one with another, he gives to his scholars, when they go away, such consciences as come first to hand; which they take to be their own, but are, indeed, somebody's else: whence it comes to pass, that, no man bearing his own conscience in his own bosom, every man looks and prys into that of another man's. The moral is true. There is hardly a man that is not curious in other men's faults, blind in his own, partial to himself, never without matter against others, still complaining of the badness of the times, the decay of trade, the ripeness of sin, but will not be persuaded that he is in any way the occasion of the same. Spencer.

An ill conscience is no comfortable companion to carry with thee. An ill conscience is like a thorn in the flesh. A thorn in the hedge may scratch you as you pass by it; but a thorn in the flesh rankles with you wherever you go: and the conscience, the ill conscience, the conscience that is ill at ease, it makes you ill at ease. You cannot have peace so long as you have an evil conscience, so long as there is that continual monition flashing across your mind: "Judgment cometh, death cometh: am I ready?" Many a time when you go to your worldly scenes of pleasure, this conscience, like the finger-writing on the wall of the palace of the King of Babylon, alarms and frightens you. You tell nobody about it. Strange thoughts strike across your mind. You have no rest. Can a man rest on a pillow of thorns? Can a man rest with the heartache? Can a man rest with his soul disturbed with the horrors of guilt? I tell thee there is no rest to thee till thou comest to Christ. He alone can calm a conscience. S. Coley.

CONSCIENCE, Hardening the Look but upon a youth when he comes first to be an apprentice to some artificer or handicraft trade, his hand is tender, and no sooner is he set to work than it blisters, so he is much pained thereby; but when he hath continued some time at work, then his hand hardens, and he goes on without any grievance at all. It is just thus with a sinner; before he is accustomed to an evil way, conscience is tender and full of remorse: but a continued custom, and making a trade of sin, makes the conscience to be hard and brawny, able to feel nothing. As it is in a smith's forge, a dog that comes newly in cannot endure the fiery sparks to fly about his ears, but, being once used to it, he sleeps securely; so let wicked men be long used to the Devil's work-house, to be slaves and vassals to sin, the sparks of hell-fire may fly about them, and the fire of hell flash upon their souls, yet never trouble them, never disturb them at all: and all this ariseth from a continued custom in the course of evil. Spencer.

Philo Judæus telleth, that Flaccus played all the parts of cruelty that he could devise against the Jews, for their religion's sake; but afterwards, when the doom of Caligula fell upon him, and he was banished to Andros, an island near Greece, he was so tormented with the memory of his bloody iniquities, and a fear of suffering for them, that, if he saw any man walking softly near to him, he would say to himself, "This man is devising to work my destruction:" if he saw any go hastily "Surely it is not for nothing: he maketh speed to kill me." If any man spake him fair, he suspected that he would cozen him, and sought to entrap him; if any talked roughly to him, then he thought that he contemned him. Thus his sin did lie upon him, and ever remind him that some vengeance was to follow. Spencer.

Conscience is God's king, that he puts in a man's breast; and conscience ought to reign. You may get up a civil war to fight against conscience; but you cannot kill the king. You may dethrone him for a while; but he struggles and fights for the mastery. S. Coley.

It is related of Seine, the chief of one of the South-Sea Islands, who had offered no small amount of opposition to the introduction of Christianity, that, during a sickness which terminated in his death, he manifested more mental distress than is usually seen in a heathen. He often expressed a wish that he had died ten years before. And why? The light of life and love had been shining around him; but he had opposed its entrance into his heart, and its power over his people. And now, having loved darkness, in darkness of soul, stung by an upbraiding conscience, he must die. Gill.

A man and his wife were executed at Augsburg for a murder, the discovery of which, after a long lapse of time, strongly manifests the impossibility of eluding the all-seeing eye of Providence. The criminal, whose name was Wineze, was originally of Nuremberg, but removed to Augsburg in 1788, where he became a lawyer. In this city he became intimate in the family of M. Glegg, to whose daughter he paid his addresses; but the old gentleman not sanctioning his visits, he met the daughter privately, seduced her, and persuaded her, in order to remove the only obstacle to their union, to administer poison to her father. The horrid plan succeeded; no suspicions were entertained, and their union put him in possession of the old man's wealth. During a period of twenty-one years they lived externally happy, but, in secret, a prey to the greatest remorse. At length, unable to endure any longer the weight of guilt, the wife made confession of the particulars of the atrocious crime which she had been prevailed upon to commit. The husband was apprehended, and both of them received their desert in an ignominious death.

At a Justice's Court, held at Mayslick, Kentucky, says an eye-witness, a cause came on to be heard, wherein the sum in dispute was 75 cts. due to the plaintiff, a tavern-keeper for whisky.

Neither party having any testimony to introduce, Mr. S—, one of the justices, for the purpose of obtaining some knowledge of the situation of the claim, permitted the parties to go into a free conversation, on the subject of their dealings.

After considerable affirmation on one side, and denial on the other, the plaintiff told the defendant, if he would swear he had paid for two half pints, he would strike them out of his account; defendant said he would, and asked Mr. S— to administer the oath, but he being conscious from prior confessions of the defendant, that it was impossible it could be so, said to him, I feel a delicacy in doing so, and you had better pay it; it's a trifling sum, I would not take the trouble to swear for it. Something at that moment called the attention of Mr. S— from the subject, and before he again had fixed his eyes on the defendant, he had slept to Mr. Y—, another of the magistrates, in the other corner of the room, and had sworn in the most solemn manner, to the payment of the money, of which he immediately informed Mr. S—.

Until this awful period, the defendant had retained his usual appearance of health and vigor; but, alas! no sooner had he turned about to inform Mr. S— of his successful attempt to commit the horrid crime of perjury, than a death-like paleness was visible on his countenance; the people in the room simultaneously remarked, with astonishment, the change so instantaneously effected in his appearance. Mr. S— himself remarked, when relating the circumstance, that he had the appearance of a man already two days dead. Judgment was entered for fifty cents, and he retired from the scene of his guilt. But wretched, infatuated mortal! he could not retire from conscious guilt. He took neither refreshment nor sleep that night; but appeared restless, (as his wife relates,) and rolled in his bed from side to side, like one bereft of every earthly enjoyment. Morning came; but with it brought no relief to his perturbed bosom. Still taking no food, after breakfast he went to the field, where a number of reapers had met to cut his grain; he gave them some incoherent directions relative to the harvest, and returned to his house. The whole day was spent in thoughtful musings, and apparent agony of mind: and another night was spent like the preceding. In the morning, a short time after he had left his bed, he was seen running upon all-fours through the door-yard, and exclaiming, "John Johnston (the name of the constable who attended the trial) and the Devil are after me." He was picked up by some men who were about the house, and set down on the step of the door. In a few minutes he suddenly started from his seat, and again commenced running upon his hands and feet as before; and exclaiming most awfully, "John Johnston and the Devil are after me." In this manner he made his way into a small field of corn which stood open to the door-yard, and as he ran between the rows of corn, he tore up a number of hills by the roots, and whilst thus engaged, and before he could be reached by his pursuers, in the act of tearing up a cornhill, he suddenly and instantaneously expired.

This man, whose name was for many years a terror to commerce with the West Indies and South America, was at last taken captive, tried, condemned, and executed in the city of New-York. He acknowledged before his death that when he committed the first murder and plundered the first ship, his compunctions were severe, conscience was on the track, and made a hell within his bosom. But after he had sailed for years under the black flag, his conscience became so hardened and blunted, that he could rob a vessel and murder all its crew and then lie down and sleep as sweetly at night as an infant in its cradle. His remorse diminished as his crimes increased. So it is generally. If therefore remorse in this life is God's way of punishing crimes, the more they sin the less he punishes them! How absurd!