“I will give an instance how the peculiar character of a language may influence even religious expressions. A Mohawk (coming originally from North America) was questioned concerning his mother-tongue. It seems that in Mohawk it is impossible to say father, mother, child, nor the father, the mother, the child. We must always say, my father, thy mother, or his child. Once when I asked him to translate the Apostles’ Creed for me, he translated ‘I believe in our God, our Father, and his Son’ all right. But when he came to the Holy Ghost, he asked is it _their_ or _his_ Holy Ghost? I told him there was a difference of opinion on that point between two great divisions of the Christian Church, and he then shook his head and declared that he could not translate the Creed till that point had been settled.”[135] This fact has an interest for linguists; what I am about to relate concerns all. A lady wishing to practise a little philosophy with the means within her reach, wrote to me once: “I am perplexed; my heart tells me one thing, and my soul another.” It required some moments of reflection to understand what my correspondent meant; the heart was, in her eyes, obviously, the seat of earthly affections; and the soul that of purely spiritual aspirations. This hazy manner of explanation might, at first sight, appear harmless, but on looking at it more closely, it is seen to be unfortunate, for this confusion between thoughts and words, meets one in many a book of so-called edification, where the reader seldom takes note of it, especially if he be hurried or careless; but one regrets to see good women waste daily half an hour in reading such indefinite nothings, thinking to accomplish thereby a religious duty; these persons, with intellectual culture would draw greater benefit to themselves in devoting their half hour to the perusal of books of a more sturdy tone. We believe ourselves to be in the possession of very clear notions concerning conscience; earnest men speak of it as an inward monitor; simple folk like ourselves call it the Voice of God; for the one and for the other conscience seems to be a guide on which they can rely, and the Greek poet Menander was not mistaken when he wrote the line “Conscience is a god to all mortals.” But if we possessed within us a faculty to tell us what is our duty, how could Pascal have said that good and evil differ with a few degrees of latitude? It is a well-known fact that the conscience of a Mormon speaks another language to that of a non-Mormon. We say with truth that we are conscious of having done well or ill, but it does not follow that it is to our conscience that we owe the fact of knowing right from wrong; this consciousness is the result of instruction from without, which we accept when our own judgment and our own experience demonstrate its truth.