“_I believed, and was happy in it; you have taken my belief away, and my comfort. Now I have nothing left, and I die miserable; for the things which you have told me do not take the place of that which I have lost_.” And the mother, also, reproached the missionary, and said: “_My child is forever lost, and my heart is broken. How could you do this cruel thing? We had done you no harm, but only kindness; we made our house your home, you were welcome to all we had, and this is our reward_.” The heart of the missionary was filled with remorse for what he had done, and he said: “_It was wrong—I see it now; but I was only trying to do him good. In my view he was in error; it seemed my duty to teach him the truth_.” Then the mother said: “_I had taught him, all his little life, what I believed to be the truth, and in his believing faith both of us were happy. Now he is dead—and lost; and I am miserable. Our faith came down to us through centuries of believing ancestors; what right had you, or any one, to disturb it? Where was your honor, where was your shame_?” The missionary’s anguish of remorse and sense of treachery were as bitter and persecuting and unappeasable, now, as they had been in the former case. The story is finished. What is your comment? Y.M. The man’s conscience is a fool! It was morbid. It didn’t know right from wrong. O.M. I am not sorry to hear you say that. If you grant that _one_ man’s conscience doesn’t know right from wrong, it is an admission that there are others like it. This single admission pulls down the whole doctrine of infallibility of judgment in consciences. Meantime there is one thing which I ask you to notice. Y.M. What is that? O.M. That in both cases the man’s _act_ gave him no spiritual discomfort, and that he was quite satisfied with it and got pleasure out of it. But afterward when it resulted in _pain_ to _him_, he was sorry. Sorry it had inflicted pain upon the others, _but for no reason under the sun except that their pain gave him pain_. Our consciences take _no_ notice of pain inflicted upon others until it reaches a point where it gives pain to _us_. In _all_ cases without exception we are absolutely indifferent to another person’s pain until his sufferings make us uncomfortable. Many an infidel would not have been troubled by that Christian mother’s distress. Don’t you believe that? Y.M. Yes. You might almost say it of the _average_ infidel, I think. O.M. And many a missionary, sternly fortified by his sense of duty, would not have been troubled by the pagan mother’s distress—Jesuit missionaries in Canada in the early French times, for instance; see episodes quoted by Parkman. Y.M. Well, let us adjourn. Where have we arrived?