27 3dly. A Good Conscience—Asense ofill dessert gives to real good the seeming of evil. To a murderer the gentle footstep and voice of ministering love seem, sometimes the fierce tread and cry of the bloodavenger. It was an accusing conscience that made that lustrous hand-writing terrible unto Belshazzar as words of doom; and unto Herod arrayed the miracleworking and most merciful Savior in the terrors of an avenging phantom risen from the dead. And so it is ever. A troubled conscience makes our good seem evil—like the Gadarene demon driving the man, whose lot God had cast under the glorious skies, and by the blue lake of Galilee, to torture himself in the mountains, and make his home in the tombs. While a peaceful conscience builds for itself a palace even in the wilderness, gathering joy from all circumstances, prosperous, or adverse, adjusting the heart's chords, like an iEolian's, to give forth pleasant harmonies, whether touched by the zephyr, or swept by the hurricane. 4thly. A Sound Judgment.—Our discomfort with things as they are, springs often from a misconception as to how things ought to be. Setting out with the notion that present comfort is our chief good, we will be sure to misjudge God's dispensations. For, in that case, the kindest thing he can do for us, is to sink our rational powers into mere animal instincts. An immortal spirit, within the limits of time, and the conditions of probation, must necessarily be restless. The bird-of-paradise will never sing in a cage like a pet linnet. But zoophites are proverbially
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