cal experiences in which they would vainly endeavour to imprison
it.

The commanding voice is heard throughout the ages, and men will, men
must, ask: Who is it--what is it that spoke? They will not be put off
with the reply that _all_ they hear is an echo of the past,
reverberating throughout the race as the successive generations arise.
Ah! but whence has it power to command me, even in the sanctuary of my
deepest solitude, in the loneliness of my silent thoughts? No
ancestral traditions, no shouts of blessing or curse of multitudes can
influence me there. I am alone in the abysmal depths of my
personality, solitary as though in a desert world, and yet the
mysterious voice is heard, the solemn sense of obligation and duty
makes itself felt. It bids me respect myself, my moral dignity, though
no one be nigh; it bids me chase the phantoms of evil from my mind.

In vain do you attempt to evade its jurisdiction by pointing to the
acknowledged facts that men form different estimates of their duties in
different countries and in different ages. Conscience is not concerned
with that. Such subordinate tasks as the formation of moral codes, the
ascertainment of the conformity or nonconformity of certain precise
acts with morality are the work of the reason. Conscience is no
_theoretical instructor_. Far more than that, it is a _practical
commander_. It speaks but one voice. Obey what you know to be right,
for the right's sake alone. And conscience has never wavered in the
inculcation of that precept. The reason of man has been constantly
advancing, discovering the content of the moral law just as it has been
discovering the content of the geometrical, mathematical or musical
law; but conscience, like the polar star, has been pointing steadily in
one direction, the direction of duty, without error, without failure.
"An erring conscience," says the ethical master, "is a chimera."

We learn, thus, from the teaching of both schools that conscience is at
once the voice of man, the accumulated and concentrated moral
experience of the race, but still more the voice of the eternal Reason
which is revealed to our wondering eyes in the true, the good and the
beautiful. If "this universe in its meanest province is in very deed
the star-domed city of God"; if "the glory of the One breaks through it
all in every place," what are we to say of that which is higher than
the stars, more radiant than the sun, diviner than all worl