life of anything that
lived. We are only partially civilized as yet in the treatment of our
domesticated animals. How many people think of the torture of the curb
bit, of the check, of neglect in the case of cold, of thirst, of
hunger? How many people, I say, civilized and in our best society, are
careful yet as to the comfort, the rights, of those that serve them in
these humble capacities?

The time will come when our moral sympathetic sense shall widen its
boundaries even farther yet, and shall take in the trees and the
shrubs, the waters, the hills, all the natural and beautiful features
of the world. I believe that by and by it will be regarded as immoral,
as unmanly, to deface, to mar, that which God has made so glorious and
so beautiful. As soon as man develops, then, his power of sympathy, so
that it can take the world in its arms, so soon he will have grown to
the stature of the Divine in the unfolding of his moral nature.

I wish now to raise the question, for a moment, as to what is to be our
guide in regard to moral facts and moral actions. I was trained, and
perhaps most of you were, to believe that I was unquestioningly to
follow my conscience, that whatever conscience told me to do was
necessarily right. The conscience has been spoken of as though it were
a sort of little deity set to rule man's nature, this little kingdom of
thought and feeling and action. But conscience is nothing of the kind.
Half of the consciences of the world to-day are all wrong.

Let me hint by way of illustration what I mean: Calvin was just as
conscientious in burning Servetus as Servetus was in pursuing that
course of action which led him to the stake. One of them was wrong in
following his conscience, then. You take it to-day: some people will
tell you there is a certain day in the week that you must observe as
sacred. Your conscience tells you there is another day in the week that
you must observe as sacred. Can both be right? Many of the greatest
tragedies of the world have come about through these controversies and
confusions of conscience. The Quaker in old Boston went at the cart's
tail, in disgrace, because he followed his conscience; and the Puritan
put him there because he followed his conscience. Were both of them
right? The inquisitor in Spain put to death hundreds and thousands of
people conscientiously; and the hundreds and thousands of people
conscientiously went to their deaths.

What is conscience, then? Co