Page:The Message and Ministrations of Dewan Bahadur R. Venkata Ratnam, volume 2.djvu/198

 acorn. The first germs of conscience are in the infant bosom, pregnant with possibilities of growth under the pure atmosphere of a pious home and the genial light of a godly instruction. Nor has history been barren of striking examples of the working of conscience in children. The leader of the Theistic thought in America, Theodore Parker, was but four years of age when, returning home from a church of which his father was the minister, he saw a little tortoise peeping out from the water in an adjoining tank. He lifts up his stick to beat the tiny creature; but he hears a voice of warning and remonstrance, his infant hand is suddenly arrested, he turns round to see whence the sound has proceeded. But finding no human being within ken, he runs home and narrates the whole incident to his mother. The worthy lady takes the boy in her loving arms and says feelingly, with tears trickling down her face, "That voice that you have heard some men call conscience, but I prefer to call it the voice of God in the