The internal and external tribunals: Contradictory testimony and the ultimate verdict of conscience

“ May it please your Honors, and Gentlemen of the Jury:
A trial in a Court of Justice is a trial of many things besides the prisoners at the bar. It is a trial of the strength of the laws, of the power of the Government, of the duty of the citizen, of the fidelity to conscience and the intelligence of the Jury. It is a trial of those great principles of faith, of duty, of law, of civil society, that distinguish the condition of civilization from that of barbarism. ”

“ There is, also, belonging to the soul, the conscience, in which I may say, is placed the Seat of Judgment; for, as by the understanding things are let into the soul, so by the conscience the evil or good of such things are tried ”

“ And this conscience keepeth his court in the heart, and there fits upon the life or the death of the soul; and according as he finds every man’s work, so doth he pass sentence of condemnation or absolution, for there is no bribing of conscience. Conscience will speak the truth of every man’s ways before the Lord, be they good or be they evil: ‘If our hearts condemn us,’ saith St. Paul, ‘God is greater than our hearts.’ That is our conscience. ”

“ It is the natural office of the conscience to accuse a man in evil doing. As every man by sin is liable to the judgment of the supreme court of heaven, so he is likewise subject to the inferior court of his own conscience, for the most high God hath a deputy within every man's breast, that not only is a witness, but a judge, to fasten an accusation, and pronounce a sentence upon him according to the law of God. ”

“ Think upon this, O ye great ones of the world, who live in pleasure! remember that there is a conscience, and that there is a God, and that thou hast a precious and immortal soul; which if thy conscience, witness against, shall be thrown into hell. You that eat the fat and sweet of the earth, and drink wine in bowls, and clothe yourselves in silk, remember this, that conscience takes notice of all thy ways, of the pride of thy heart of the vanity of thy life, and setteth all down in his Black Book.’ You that, like the harlot, Prov. ”

“ For certain it is, there is a conscience in every man that sees and observes, and takes notice of all his ways, and will keep a just account of them, and so be a witness either for or against the soul, at the day of judgment. ”

“ His conscience, therefore, usually considered the surest witness to a man’s integrity,—his conscience, unless it might be for the little space of five minutes in the twenty-four hours, or, now and then, some black day in the whole year’s circle,—his conscience bore an accordant testimony with the world’s laudatory voice. And yet, strong as this evidence may seem to be, we should hesitate to peril our own conscience on the assertion, that the Judge and the consenting world were right, and that poor Hepzibah with her solitary prejudice was wrong. ”

“ Now what conscience is, I shall briefly shew you, and so conclude. Conscience a thing with which God endued the soul of man by creation, and is for our comfort, if we live as we ought to do; but will be a dreadful terror to them that live and die in their sins. For this conscience was in Adam before the fall, though not as a condemner till his fall; for where there is no sin, what needeth an accuser? So long as Adam kept the commandments of God, there was no cause of conscience to condemn him. ”

“ Therefore, let every one of us so think, “and so do, that we may not have conscience to condemn us; but let us live as those that expect to have conscience witness for them before the Lord, that with godly sincerity they have had their conversation in the world. But what multitudes are there in this world, that live as there were no conscience at all, neither God nor devil, neither heaven nor hell; ‘whose God is their belly, and whose end is destruction,’ as St. Paul saith, Phil. iii. 9. ‘Who declare their sin as Sodom, and hide it not. ”

“ Yes, but there is something else, gentlemen of the jury, something that cries out in the soul, throbs incessantly in the mind, and poisons the heart unto death—that something is conscience, gentlemen of the jury, its judgment, its terrible torments! ”

“ Thus, we always carry within us an incorruptible judge, who incessantly adopts the cause of virtue against our dearest inclinations; who blends with our most headstrong passions the troublesome ideas of duty; and who renders us unhappy even amidst all our pleasures and abundance.
Such is the state of an impure and a sullied conscience. The sinner is the secret and constant accuser of himself; go where he will, he carries a torment within which the hand of man cannot allay. ”

“ but what physic, what chirurgery, what wealth, favour, authority can relieve, bear out, assuage, or expel a troubled conscience? A quiet mind cureth all them, but all they cannot comfort a distressed soul: who can put to silence the voice of desperation? ”

“ To all unperverted minds, the verdict of conscience sounds with a preternatural voice; it is not the homely talk of their own poor judgment, but an oracle of the sanctuary. There is something of anticipation in our remorse, as well as of retrospect; and we feel that it is not the mere survey of a gloomy past with the slow lamp of our understanding, but a momentary piercing of the future with the vivid lightning of the skies. Our moral nature, left to itself, intuitively believes that guilt is an estrangement from God,—an unqualified opposition to his will,—a literal service of the enemy ”

“ When conscience speaks threatening language, to many, for such and such sins, they seek to turn conscience out of doors. But because they cannot possibly do this, they strive to stop his mouth, by running wilfully into sins, like men that desperately give up their souls to the devil, and so make shipwreck of faith, conscience, soul and all for ever. ”

“ Yet, on the other hand, when I reflect that it may be only the result of a reaction in principle, proceeding from a latent conviction that all is not right within, and that we reject the tribunal because we are conscious that it must condemn us—abjure the authority of the court because we have violated its jurisdiction; yes, when I reflect upon this, it is then that these visitations of gloom and wretchedness sometimes agonize my mind until it becomes dark and heated, like hell, and I curse both myself and my creed. ”

“ In this world our inner consciousness is absorbed by the crowd of eager passions which cheat remorse. The humiliation and disgrace involved in the practice of virtue do not permit us to realise its charm. But when, freed from the illusions of the bodily senses, we behold with joy the supreme Being and the eternal truths which flow from him; when all the powers of our soul are alive to the beauty of order and we are wholly occupied in comparing what we have done with what we ought to have done, then it is that the voice of conscience will regain its strength and sway ”

“ When a witness testifies to one thing, and then contradicts himself, if he is adjudged sane, the court will throw out his testimony, declaring him either ignorant of the truth of the facts he would relate, or else a perjurer. ”

“ If your Honor please, and you, Gentlemen of the Jury, you sit in judgment on the lives of your fellow-citizens. You act, you look, like men who are thoroughly imbued with a sense of your responsibility. You have listened attentively to all the details of the testimony. You have listened with admiration to the discussion of the testimony by the distinguished gentlemen who have preceded me. You can not have failed to note the radical difference between the method of treating the evidence by counsel for the defendant and by counsel for the people. One is wrong, altogether wrong ”

“ Society is often a silly juror, that judges according to testimony on one side; and honesty often agrees too late on its verdict, for fear of wronging the criminal; hence people with work on hand have little time to furnish gossip with law and evidence. ”

“ The struggles, in the history of the world, to have, in criminal trials, an honest judiciary, a fearless jury, and a faithful advocate, disclose a great deal of wrong and suffering inflicted on advocates silenced by force, trembling at the bar where they ought to be utterly immovable in the discharge of their duty—on juries fined, and imprisoned, and kept lying in dungeons for years, because they dared, in State prosecutions, to find verdicts against the direction of the Court. ”

“ What a difference it would have made in my life if I had been granted a second trial! I could have called other witnesses, submitted fresh evidence, and refuted false testimony. Is it not the climax of injustice that men and women, if sued for money, even for a few shillings, can appeal from court to court—even to the House of Lords, the English court of last resort; but when character, all that life holds dear, and life itself, are in jeopardy, a prisoner’s fate may depend upon the incompetent construction of one man, and there is no appeal? ”

“ God may say 'this is my word and commandment,' and a Jury replies, 'the substance utility, intelligibility of a word depend entirely upon the meaning attached to it, and we Jurymen will put and make all other men put what construction we please, upon it, under pains and penalties, so that the word is not yours, but ours.' A Defendant may argue, 'my construction is a matter between my conscience and my God.' The verdict replies, 'God has nothing to do with it ”

“ At the same time, the candid citizen must confess that, if the policy of the Government upon the vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by the decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made in ordinary litigations between parties in personal actions, the people will have ceased to be their own masters,—having, to that extent, practically resigned their Government into the hands of that eminent tribunal. ”

“ And while it is so, that a man is accused in both courts, at the supreme tribunal, and the lower house of a man's own conscience, when man's accuser is within him, and God, his righteous Judge, above him, who can come in to plead such a man's cause? A person self condemned, who shall plead for his absolution? If he cannot but accuse himself, and stop his mouth, being guilty before God of the transgression of all his law, then what place for an advocate to accuse him, or defend his cause? ”

“ He argued to the jurors, who might be in the crowd surrounding him, that, whatever might be the testimony given them to prove that Jerry was a slave; whatever words might be quoted from statutes or constitutions to show that a man can be by law turned into a slave, a chattel, the property of another man, they nevertheless might, with a good conscience, bring in a verdict acquitting any one of crime, who should be accused before them of having helped to rescue a fellow-man from those who would make him a slave. ”

“ A judge may have his emotions, but his charge to the jury must be dictated, not by his heart, but by his knowledge of the law. And the voice of conscience, whatever feelings it may stir, must be an intellectual utterance, and, to be worth anything in a case of difficulty, a reasoned conclusion, based on observation of facts, and application of principles, and consultation with moral theologians and casuists. ”

“ We come now to the conclusion of the allegory; and Dr. Temple shall again speak for himself. "The age of reflection begins. From the storehouse of his youthful experience the Man begins to draw the principles of his life. The spirit or conscience comes to full strength and assumes the throne intended for him in the soul. As an accredited judge, invested with full powers, he sits in the tribunal of our inner kingdom, decides upon the past, and legislates upon the future without appeal except to himself. He decides not by what is beautiful, or noble, or soul-inspiring, but by what is right. ”

“ Attention must bring all the powers of the mind to bear [Pg 335] on the question; habits of right action must carry the feelings, must make right-doing seem the easier and the pleasanter. In the meantime, desire is clamorous; but conscience, the unbiassed judge, duly informed in full court of the merits of the case, decides for the right. The will carries out the verdict of conscience; and the man whose conduct is uniformly moulded upon the verdicts of conscience is the conscientious man, of whose actions and opinions you may be sure beforehand. ”

“ An act, therefore, which concludes an earnest and protracted conflict, which has not been reached without a stormy debate in the soul, which marks the victory of evil over the love of character, sensibility to shame, the authority of conscience and the fear of God, an act of this sort concentrates in itself the essence of all the single determinations which preceded it, and possesses power to generate a habit and to derange the constitution, equal to that which the whole series of resistances to duty, considered as so many individual instances of transgression, is fitted to impart. ”

“ The heart and will are intensely determined to do wrong, while the conscience is unyielding and uncompromising, and utters its denunciations, and thunders its warnings. And what a dreadful destiny awaits that soul, in whom this conflict and collision between the dictates of conscience, and the desires of the heart, is to be eternal! for whom, through all eternity, the holy law of God, which was ordained to life peace and joy, shall be found to be unto death and woe immeasurable! ”

“ The judgment is put to confusion, being nourished by spiritual folly and insipidity; moral cowardice and inconstancy increase; and, by the darkness of the soul and the weakness of the heart, fear is begotten even where no fear is. At times, again, this joy begets a spirit of confusion, and insensibility with respect to conscience and spirit; wherefore the reason is greatly enfeebled, and is affected in such a way that it can neither take nor give good counsel, and remains incapable of moral and spiritual blessings and becomes as useless as a broken vessel. ”

“ Thus we have here a conclusive concurrence of testimony, and the truths announced in our text should be recorded in our memory as absolutely certain.
These declarations remind us of two things. I. That we are living now in a season of probation. These messages are much needed, because we are surrounded by much that is perplexing. Here and now fidelity to conscience often entails much loss, sorrow, and suffering. Many of the wicked are prosperous and triumphant. Iniquity pays. Moreover, the sufferings of the righteous and the successes of the wicked are often lifelong. ”

“ There is yet another witness for the condemning transgressors of these laws, and that is conscience: "Their consciences also bearing witness," says the apostle. Conscience is a thousand witnesses. Conscience! it will cry amen to every word that the great God doth speak against thee. Conscience is a terrible accuser; it will hold pace with the witness of God, as to the truth of evidence, to a hair's breadth. The witness of conscience, it is of great authority; it commands guilt and fastens it on every soul which it accuses. Conscience will thunder and lighten at the day of judgment ”

“ God breathes, not speaks, his verdicts, felt not heard—Passed on successively to each court, I call Man's conscience, custom, manners, all that make More and more effort to promulgate, mark God's verdict in determinable words, Till last come human jurists—solidify Fluid results,—what's fixable lies forged, Statute,—the residue escapes in fume, Yet hangs aloft a cloud, as palpable To the finer sense as word the legist welds. ”

“ Even prophets, as I have before observed, are at times driven to the cry that 'the law is slacked, and that judgment doth never go forth.' But the deepest instincts and necessities of conscience forbid the toleration of any such instinct of despair. If right were not essentially and ultimately might, I do not say—God forbid—that it would not still claim the supreme allegiance of the soul; but life would be a bitter mockery and an inexplicable cruelty. ”

“ At the bar of Truth, in the presence of divine Justice, before the Judge of our higher tribunal, the Supreme Court of Spirit, and before its jurors, the Spiritual Senses, I proclaim this witness, Nerve, to be destitute of intelligence and truth and to be a false witness.
Man self-destroyed; the testimony of matter respected; Spirit not allowed a hearing; Soul a criminal though recommended to mercy; the helpless innocent body tortured, — these are the terrible records of your Court of Error, and I ask that the Supreme Court of Spirit reverse this decision. ”

“ If any soul appears at the judgment and complains that he did not have a fair chance, will that gracious Judge condemn him if his complaint be true? We know He will not. But the facts of the judgment are these: at that time, whenever it is, upon the souls of men will be passed for their acts in the earthly life a verdict that will determine their everlasting destiny ”