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 worlds--the conscience of man nobly conformed to the great obedience of the everlasting laws? What are we to say of lives such as those of Gotama, Socrates and Christ? Nothing. Like the psalmist of Israel, I am struck dumb in the presence of a vision so majestical. _Deveni in altitudinem maris et silui_: "I came unto the great deeps and I held my peace". [1] See his well-known essays, "The Ethics of Belief" and "The Ethics of Religion".