those of the heart.  We know that an idea or a conception, is totally different from an emotion, or a feeling.  How often do we remark, that a man may have an intellectual perception, without any correspondent experience or feeling in his heart.  How continually does the preacher urge his hearers to bring their hearts into harmony with their understandings, so that their intellectual orthodoxy may become their practical piety.

Now, all this is true of the distinction between the conscience and the heart.  The conscience is an intellectual faculty, and by that better elder philosophy which comprehended all the powers of the soul under the two general divisions of understanding and will, would be placed in the domain of the understanding.  Conscience is a light, as we so often call it.  It is not a life; it is not a source of life.  No man’s heart and will can be renewed or changed by his conscience.  Conscience is simply a law.  Conscience is merely legislative; it is never executive.  It simply says to the heart and will:  “Do thus, feel thus,” but it gives no assistance, and imparts no inclination to obey its own command.

Those, therefore, commit a grave error both in philosophy and religion, who confound the conscience with the heart, and suppose that because there is in every man self-reproach and remorse after the commission of sin, therefore there is the germ of holiness within him.  Holiness is love, the positive affection of the heart.  It is a matter of the heart and the will.  But this remorse is purely an affair of the conscience, and the heart has no connection with it.  Nay, it appears in its most intense form, in those beings whose feelings emotions and determinations are in utmost opposition to God and goodness.  The purest remorse in the universe is to be found in those wretched beings whose emotional and active powers, whose heart and will, are in the most bitter hostility to truth and righteousness.  How, then, can the mere reproaches and remorse of conscience be regarded as evidence of piety?

2.  But, we may go a step further than this, though in the same general direction, and remark, in the second place, that elevated moral sentiments are no certain proof of piety toward God and man.  These, too, like remorse of conscience, spring out of the intellectual structure, and may exist without any affectionate love of God in the heart.  There is a species of nobleness and beauty in moral excellence that makes an involuntary and unavoidable impression.  When the Christian martyr seals his devotion to God and truth with his blood; when a meek and lowly disciple of Christ clothes his life of poverty, and self-denial, with a daily beauty greater than that of the lilies or of Solomon’s array; when the poor widow with feeble and trembling steps comes up to the treasury of the Lord, and casts in all her living; when any pure and spiritual act is performed out of solemn and holy love of God and man, it is impossible not