and right are? Are there any clearly defined paths by which this
knowledge may be reached? Is not truth a matter of education? And is
there any absolute right? A Hindoo Swami, of the school of the Vedanta,
lecturing in this country, solemnly assured an intelligent audience
that there is no sin; that what is called sin is only the result of
education; that what is vice in one place may be virtue in another; and
that in the sphere of morals all is relative and nothing absolute. Then
there is no wrong, for wrong and sin are closely related; and no right
because if right is not a dream it implies the possibility of an
opposite. There is little permanent danger from such shallow theories.
The peril from confusion is greater than from denial. But even confusion
at this point is not long necessary because in every soul there is a
voice which men call conscience, which never fails to impel toward the
true and the good. Conscience may be likened to a compass whose needle
always points toward the north. When it is uninfluenced by distracting
causes conscience always shows the way toward truth and right. The
Spartans believed that lying was a virtue if it was sufficiently
obscure; and a Hindoo woman who throws her child to the god of the
Ganges does so because she is deeply religious. Are not such persons
conscientious? Yet they perform acts which are in themselves wrong? Of
what value, then, is conscience? That they are both conscientious and
religious I have no doubt. It is their misfortune to be ignorant. The
light appears to be colored by the medium through which it passes, and
yet it is not colored; and conscience seems to approve what is wrong,
and yet it never does. It always impels toward the right, but men often
make serious mistakes because of their ignorance. The needle in the
moral compass is deflected by selfishness or false teaching. The Hindoo
mother might hear and, if she dared to listen to it, would hear a deeper
voice than the one calling her to sacrifice her child--even one telling
her to spare her child. She has not yet learned that it is always safe
to trust the moral sense. Superstitions are not conscience; they are
ignorance obscuring and deadening conscience. Every man is born with a
guide within to point him to paths of virtue and truth, and one of the
most important lessons which the growing soul has to learn is that when
it is true to itself it may always trust that guide. The call of his
destiny finds e