Seite:Marsh Hallig 1856.djvu/116

116THE HALLIG.

him as the great business of life. On the contrary, be
does not feel within himself any protest against such a
state of being, because he has never learned, or has for-
gotten how to examine his own life in the mirror of
God's law ; and besides, he has his points of honor
which his conscience will not allow him to disregard.
The voice which perhaps sometimes reaches him, as
from a higher world, is but an echo of the Divine law
which he once knew, or a note of the same called forth
by one of God's providences. But conscience, in its.
truth and purity, is neither more nor less than a reflec-
tion of the glory of the Divine law. It is a mirror in
which we may perceive the will of the Eternal, if we
will hold this will before it. But if we place before it
only our own image, then shall we see in it also only
the likeness of ourselves ; and our desires and acts will
be but a repetition of that image, not the willing and
doing of that which the Lord our God requires of us.
The pilgrim who has no point before him which he is
striving to reach, no guide as to how or where he should
go, is governed by the vigor or the weariness of his
limbs, by the pleasantness or the difficulties of the road,
by the sunshine or the showers of the day. So it is
with the pilgrimage of life, without a law from without
But where this Jaw shines before us as the supreme will
of the Judge of the living and the dead, then no delay
and no hesitation avail, no fear and no favor, no life and
no death, nothing is considered but the stem, unyield-
ing word that permits no distorting, no interpreting
away, no pretext or excuse, recognizes no seduction or
temptation, but demands obedience — obedience alone.
Without such a word of discipline and power, that is