Page:Masterpieces of German literature volume 10.djvu/443

 addressed to Buddha, to Allah, or to Jehovah, be heard by the same God, beside whom there is none other? Does not the mother hear her child's petition in whatever language it lisps her name?

Reason is nowhere in conflict with morality, for the good is always finally identical with the rational; but whether our actions shall or shall not correspond with the good, reason cannot decide. Here the ruling part of the soul is supreme, the soul which feels, acts, and wills. To her alone, not to her two vassals, has God entrusted the two-edged sword of freewill, that gift which, as Scripture tells us, may be our salvation or our perdition.

But, more than this, a trusty councillor has been assigned us, who is independent of our wills, and bears credentials from God Himself. Conscience is an incorruptible and infallible judge, whom, if we will, we may hear pronounce sentence every moment, and whose voice at last reaches even those who most obstinately refuse to listen.

The laws which human society has imposed upon itself can take account of actions only in their tribunals, and not of thoughts and feelings. Even the various religions make different demands among the different peoples. Here they, require the Sunday to be kept holy, here the Saturday or Friday. One allows pleasures which another forbids. Even apart from these differences there is always a wide neutral ground between what is allowed and what is forbidden; and it is here that conscience, with her subtler discrimination, raises her voice. She tells us that every day should be kept sacred to the Lord, that even permitted interest becomes unjust when exacted from the needy; in a word, she preaches morality in the bosom of Christian and Jew, of heathen and savage. For even among uncivilized races which have not the light of Christianity there is an agreement as to the fundamental conceptions of good and evil. They, too, recognize the breaking of promises, lying, treachery, and ingratitude as evil; they, too, hold as sacred the bond between parents, children, and kinsmen.