Conscience and Sin: Daily Meditations for Lent, Including Week-days and Sundays. S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould

      Second Thursday in Lent.

       Table of Contents

      THE SCRUPULOUS CONSCIENCE.

      1. The Scrupulous Conscience is a niggling Conscience that vexes itself about inconsiderable matters, and magnifies trifles into things of importance.

      The Scrupulous Conscience is that which has no sense of proportion. In a large number of cases it is vastly particular over matters of indifference, and supremely indifferent about matters of importance. It is a Conscience that never goes back to first principles.

      This was the sort of Conscience possessed by the Scribes and Pharisees, who tithed mint, and anise, and cummin, and passed over the weightier matters of the law. (Matt. xxiii. 23.) By Scrupulous Conscience is not meant a tender Conscience, but an itchy one. It is one that is ever suffering from vain apprehension, and regards things harmless and licit as though they were forbidden.

      A sound and direct Conscience is necessarily a tender one. It sees what is right and what is wrong, all in due proportion; and shrinks from what is evil as from a serpent, and also is never at rest if it does not fulfil those obligations which it sees are enjoined. A Scrupulous Conscience is one that sees everything topsy-turvy, it magnifies trifles, and passes by without seeing them the more plain and obvious duties. It is influenced, not by its knowledge, but by its fears, and this allows it to strain at gnats and swallow camels.

      The Scrupulous Conscience often causes quite as much scandal as the erroneous Conscience, for people see it making much of small matters, and are led to despise or disregard Conscience as an unreliable guide.

      2. That a Scrupulous Conscience may be brought to a right perception of the relative proportions of duties, it must, or at all events, it is most advisable that it should be put under directions by a wise Confessor, who will labour to give it robustness, will strive to drag it out of its confusion, and set it well aloft, where it may be able to survey the whole map of the county of duty, and orientate itself accordingly.

      A right Conscience is also a tender one, but the converse is by no means true, that a tender Conscience is always a right one.

      3. A Scrupulous Conscience is often a companion to extraordinary self-conceit. To bring it into healthy condition, and remove its distortion of view, humility must be very resolutely practised. Even where there is not self-conceit, there is generally self-centredness, the mind is for ever turned in on self, and occupies itself with probing all its tender places, and fretting it into sores. The best, if not the only remedy for this is the forcible disengagement of the mind from the consideration of self, and rough, resolute, and protracted labour for others.

      Consciences are sometimes scrupulous about the misdeeds, real or imaginary, of others, and inert in judging of their own condition. Cruel acts of injustice are done under the plea of obedience to Conscience—this is due to the undue scrupulosity of the Conscience which considers only itself; on the other hand, great lack of charity, courtesy, and consideration for the feelings of others is shewn by a Scrupulous Conscience, which concerning itself with others only, disregards the broad principles of right action as relates to itself.

      4. In directing a Scrupulous Conscience aright, care must be taken, not only to give that Conscience a clear and healthy view of the comparative proportions of duties, and the comparative sinfulness of things forbidden, and to bid it distinguish between those things that are duties, and those which are optional; those things that are sins, and those which are harmless; but also, it must be bidden to take into consideration its responsibilities to other persons as well as to itself, so that under the plea of following Conscience some gross piece of injustice or rudeness may not be committed.