Shame is a kind of social conscience. Shame is a
secondary sense of sin. In shame, our imagination becomes a kind of
moral sense. Shame sets up in our bosom a not undivine tribunal, which
judges us and sentences us in the absence or the silence of nobler and
more awful sanctions and sentences. But then, as things now are with us,
like all the rest of the machinery of the soul, shame has gone sadly
astray both in its objects and in its operations, till it demands a long,
a severe, and a very noble discipline over himself before any man can
keep shame in its proper place and directed in upon its proper objects.
In the present disorder of our souls, we are all acutely ashamed of many
things that are not the proper objects of shame at all; while, on the
other hand, we feel no shame at all at multitudes of things that are
really most blameworthy, dishonourable, and contemptible. We are ashamed
of things in our lot and in our circumstances that, if we only knew it,
are our opportunity and our honour; we are ashamed of things that are the
clear will and the immediate dispensation of Almighty God.
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