ustice, disobedience, and ingratitude are essentially evil. Our
reason informs us of this difference; and our reason is nothing else
than our very nature as intelligent beings capable of knowing truth. The
voice of our reason or conscience is the voice of God Himself, who
speaks through the rational nature that He has made. Through our reason
God not only tells us of the difference between good and evil acts, but
He also commands us to do good and avoid evil;--to do certain acts
because they are proper, right, orderly, suitable to the end for which
we are created; and to avoid other acts because they are improper,
wrong, disorderly, unsuitable to the end of our existence. There is a
third class of acts, which, in themselves, are indifferent, i.e.,
neither good nor evil, neither necessary for our end nor interfering
with its attainment. These we are free to do or to omit as we prefer;
but even these become good and even obligatory when they are commanded
by proper authority, and they become evil when forbidden. In themselves,
they are indifferent acts.

6. These explanations are not mere abstractions, gentlemen, or mere
philosophical speculations. True, my subject is philosophical; but it is
the philosophy of every-day life; we are dealing with live issues which
give rise to the gravest discussions of your medical journals; issues on
which practically depend the lives of thousands of human beings every
year, issues which regard physicians more than any other class of men,
and for the proper consideration of which Doctors are responsible to
their conscience, to human society, and to their God. To show you how we
are dealing with present live issues, let me give you an example of a
case in point. In the "Medical Record," an estimable weekly, now in
almost the fiftieth year of its existence, there was lately carried on a
lengthy and, in some of its parts, a learned discussion, regarding the
truth of the principles which I have just now explained, namely, the
intrinsic difference between right and wrong, independently of the
ruling of law courts and of any human legislation. The subject of the
discussion was the lawfulness in any case at all of performing
craniotomy, or of directly destroying the life of the child by any
process whatever, at the time of parturition, with the intention of
saving the life of the mother.

I will not examine this important matter in all its bearings at present;
I mean to take it up later on in