It is fascinating indeed that for someone who advocated living to excess - "nothing succeeds like excess", Wilde would write such a moralistic story as The Picture of Dorian Gray.
Despite his infamous flamboyant and outrageous lifestyle that seems to reflect a lack of boundaries, the richness of Dorian Gray in its tale of good and evil, truth and reality is great.
Oscar Wilde is a true lover of the Aesthetic Movement...but funny that despite loving beauty and pleasures, even he realised the need for certain rules and that all our actions would have repercussions.
As Trevor Baxter, who adapted the story into the play, said, "It is as though Oscar Wilde wrote The Picture of Dorian Gray, which shows the tragic end of [making a far-reaching aesthetic exploration of the mind], as a warning to himself."
Conscience or the Holy Spirit? I believe that they're one and the same and that it resides in all of us - even the worse of all of us. And as Dorian found out, it would catch up with us sooner or later. And the scary thought is that by the time it does, it may be too late.
When we ignore our conscience, choosing to chase our own pleasures to the extreme, we are just as likely to die painfully lonely and depressed, a broken man, like Dorian. Like Wilde.
And that is why God is a God of balance.
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