obation: or higher still, the idea of
duty for its own sake, commonly called 'conscientiousness.' (4) _The
ideal of life_, the highest imperative of conscience. Here the
nobility of life, as a whole, the supreme life-purpose, gives meaning
and incentive to each and every action. The ideal of life is not,
however, something static and completed, given once and for all. It
grows with the enlightenment of the individual and the development of
humanity. The consciousness of every age comprehends it in certain
laws and ends of life. The highest form of the ideal finds its
embodiment in what are called noble characters. These ethical heroes
rise, in rare and exceptional circumstances, above the ordinary level
of {79} common morality, gathering up into themselves the entire moral
development of the past, and radiating their influence into the
remotest distances of the future. They are the embodiments of the
conscience of the race, at once the standard and challenge of the moral
life of mankind, whose influence awakens the slumbering aspirations of
men, and whose creative genius affects the whole history of the world,
lifting it to higher levels of thought and endeavour.

The supreme example--unique, however, both in kind and degree, and
differing by its uniqueness from every other life which has in some
measure approximated to the ideal--is disclosed in Jesus Christ. Thus
it is that the moral consciousness of the world generally and of the
individual in particular, of which the conscience is the organ and
expression, develops from less to more, under the influence of the
successive imperatives of conduct, till finally it attains to the
vision of the greatness of life as it is revealed in its supreme and
all-commanding ideal.[12]

3. Finally, in this connection the question of the _permanence of
conscience_ may be referred to. Is the ultimate of life a state in
which conscience will pervade every department of a man's being,
dominating all his thoughts and activities? or is the ideal condition
one in which conscience shall be outgrown and its operation rendered
superfluous? A recent writer on Christian ethics[13] makes the
remarkable statement that where there is no sense of sin conscience has
no function, and he draws the inference that where there is complete
normality and perfect moral health conscience will be in abeyance.
Satan, inasmuch as he lacks all moral instinct, can know nothing of
conscience; and, bec