I did not proportion my religious things aright.

The laird of Brea does not say in as many words that he was wise in the penny and foolish in the pound, but that is exactly what he means.
Then, again, the narrowness, the partiality, the sickliness, and the squeamishness of our consciences,--all that makes us to be too often penny-wise and pound-foolish in our religious life.

A well-instructed, thoroughly wise, and well-balanced conscience is an immense blessing to that man who has purchased such a conscience for himself.

There is an immense and a criminal waste of conscience that goes on among some of our best Christian people through the want of light and space, room, and breadth, and balance in their consciences.

We are all pestered with people every day who are full of all manner of childish scrupulosity and sickly squeamishness in their ill-nourished, ill-exercised consciences.
As long as a man's conscience is ignorant and weak and sickly it will, it must, spend and waste itself on the pennyworths of religion and' morals instead of the pounds.