Moral reason and conscience

Check out, especially, the last sentence below. Well seeing Shedd was an English Lit. professor before he turned to theology.

The quote comes from an essay that Shedd published in 1859, 'The Atonement, a Satisfaction for the Ethical Nature of both God and Man.'

"The moral reason and conscience are the intellectual media whereby man and his Maker are put en rapport. When the Eternal Judge addresses the creature upon the subject of religion, upon the duties which he owes, and the liabilities under which he stands, he speaks first of all, not to his imagination, or his taste, or his hostile heart, or his perverse will, but to his moral sense and sentiment. When God begins the work of conviction, and in order to this throws in an influence from his own holy and immaculate Essence, He first shoots a pang through this part of man’s complex being. This, like Darien, is the isthmus of volcanic fire that both divides and joins the oceans."

W.G.T. Shedd, Theological Essays (New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Company, 1877), p274, 275.