How to be Happy, The Torment of an Evil Conscience

1.  There is first of all a consciousness of sin committed.

This is experienced by many who have not been guilty of acts of any peculiar atrocity.  And it is difficult sometimes to point out any immediate occasion of the disquietude.

After years of comparative ease and indifference, a vivid recollection is produced of past faults, and several considerations are ushered into the mind by which these past actions are greatly aggravated.

External means, in some cases, have so little to do with the agitation that is must be ascribed either to the inherent activity of conscience itself, or to a secret and Divine influence upon the mind.  

At other times, the falling into some notorious sin is an occasion of producing a recollection of many other actions that had fallen into oblivion; jsut as a serious injury is, sometimes, an occasion of disclosing several maladies which had been latent in the constitution.

It is often the case, also, that the judicious application of some truth is a means of rousing the conscience from its dormancy, and of bringing forgotten sins into remembrance.  By turning a rod in the bottom of a well or pool, the deposited sand or slime is raise to the surface; so also by applying some truths, old sins are brought to recollection.

Sometimes, also, a heavy affliction is an occasion of producing the same effect.  

This answers the same purpose with regard to some of the metals - the excessive dross and impurity are soon made apparent.

When either of these means is an occasion of producing a conviction, the subject of it can with propriety say, "My sin is ever before me."