Notes of a sermon preached by the Rev. C. E. Darwent in Union Church, Sunday morning, March 14.
Text: Exodus XXIII, 2 "Thou shalt not follow multitude to do evil."
The knowledge of human nature possessed by these men of old times, like Moses, is astonishing. Theze is more real knowledge of it la Moses than in all the Greek aal Roman writers put together. does look like inspiration. Then there is another thing that strike us. We are inclined to look down on the men of these early times rude and unscientific, and we imagine that even the facts and matter of all our sciences are new, whereas it is often only the cise that we have systematized the facts. This text, for instance, shows thay while Moses knew nothing about the science of psychology, be know just as much about tht facts of human nature, which it tries to explain, as any modern professor does, For here he warns us against something which has had a fine Latin' name given it, but which Moses evidently knew all abou; namely, what is called the ' collective conscience." What do we mean by that, first of alit Ws mean the general average of bel's; and practice on any matter right and wrong, for such matters are the only ones that are matters of conscience. There are what are called "collective fruits" of which the mulberry is an example: 7 little purple globe is really " f and what we call the mulberry fan aggregation of them. Some are perfect, some are half-eaten by insects, some withered. It is just s0 with the "collective conscience. It is an aggregation of the conscience of vast numbers of personi of some the conscience is lofty and pure: that of others is low and di reputable. We have all our dividual standards and opinion on all moral matters and the general average—if we may so call it—is the collective conscience. There is a collective conscience in every community of men. There is collective conscience in a club, ina nation, in a church, even in different churches. There is a collective conscience about a subject like war, which may be very different from that of individuals that nation. The collective conscience may be much lower than that of individuals, You can take any one. of the commands of Jesus Christ it, into which all kinds of factors, high and low have entered, prudence, self-interest and such-like. There never has been @ congress to create a collective conscience: it has grown up through the interplay of religious, social, business and other
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.