According to an Eastern tale, a great magician presented his prince with a ring of great value. Its value did not consist in the precious stones it contained, but in a peculiar property of the metal. Whenever the prince had a bad or lustful thought, or meditated a bad action, or was about to say a wicked, or cruel, or unjust thing, the ring contracted, and the pain caused by the pressure on the finger warned him against the evil. The poorest person may possess and wear such a ring as that, for the ring of the fable is just that Conscience which is the voice of God in our hearts. When Macbeth was on his way to murder King Duncan, he had a frightful vision of what he was about to do, and he saw an imaginary dagger beckoning him the way that he was going; the handle was towards his hand, and had gouts of blood upon it. That was Conscience calling upon him to stop before it was too late. Conscience sometimes speaks to us while we are actually doing evil. While Conscience speaks to us about what are, for us, great wrongs, it seldom does so about little wrongs until they are over and passed away. A boy says: "I do many things of which I am ashamed, and which I would not have done had Conscience warned me." That shows us very plainly that Conscience is a thing we must cultivate if it is to be of any real service to us in the way of preventing us from the doing of evil. A. says to B.: "I am going across to the corner store for some candy. If that master over there should see me, you tell him I have just gone over the fence after something." B. thinks for a moment, and says: "Can't do it; it's not straight." A. then asks C., who agrees to do it. B. consults Conscience; C. does not. If they go on thus, in a few years B. will meet some great temptation and overcome it; C. will meet some great temptation, and fall under it. If we do not form the habit of looking to Conscience for guidance, the time will come when its voice will be heard reproaching us for the evil that we have done, and that we can never undo. So common is it for men to think of Conscience only when the harm is done that it has been called "the awful compulsion to think." Half the grief that people suffer is through their own sins in the past, and it is Conscience pricking them that causes the grief. Sometimes this grief is so terrible that men, and even women, are led to take their own lives. He who listens to Conscience will never leave this world with the red blot of "suicide" staining his character.