Let us now consider the remainder of the chapter, which treats of the law of Christian conscience.  You will observe that it divides itself into two branches—­the first containing an exposition of the law itself, and the second the Christian applications which flow out of this exposition.

I. The way in which the apostle expounds the law of Christian conscience is this:—­Guilt is contracted by the soul, in so far as it sins against and transgresses the law of God by doing that which it believes to be wrong:  not so much what is wrong as what appears to it to be wrong.  This is the doctrine distinctly laid down in the 7th and 8th verses.  The apostle tells the Corinthians—­these strong-minded Corinthians—­that the superstitions of their weaker brethren were unquestionably wrong.  “Meat,” he says, “commendeth us not to God; for neither if we eat are we the better, neither if we eat not are we the worse.”  He then tells them further, that “there is not in every man that knowledge; for some with conscience of the idol, eat it as a thing offered unto an idol.”  Here then, is an ignorant, mistaken, ill-informed conscience; and yet he goes on to tell them that this conscience, so ill-informed, yet binds the possessor of it:  “and their conscience being weak, is defiled.”  For example,—­there could be no harm in eating the flesh of an animal that had been offered to an idol or false god; for a false god is nothing, and it is impossible for it to have contracted positive defilement by being offered to that which is a positive and absolute negation.  And yet if any man thought it wrong to eat such flesh, to him it was wrong; for in that act there would be a deliberate act of transgression—­a deliberate preference of that which was mere enjoyment, to that which was apparently, though it may be only apparently, sanctioned by the law of God.  And so it would carry with it all the disobedience, all the guilt, and all the misery which belongs to the doing of an act altogether wrong; or as St. Paul expresses it, the conscience would become denied.

Here then, we arrive at the first distinction—­the distinction between absolute and relative right and wrong.  Absolute right and absolute wrong, like absolute truth, can each be but one and unalterable in the sight of God.  The one absolute right—­the charity of God and the sacrifice of Christ—­this, from eternity to eternity must be the sole measure of eternal right.  But human right or human wrong, that is the merit or demerit, of any action done by any particular man, must be measured, not by that absolute standard, but as a matter relative to his particular circumstances, the state of the age in which he lives, and his own knowledge of right and wrong.  For we come into this world with a moral sense; or