CONSCIENTIOUS CONVICTIONS.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTFAT011."1
SIR,—One remark of your correspondent "A. N. B." in last week's Spectator invites energetic dissent. "Surely," he tells us,." the voice of conscience is the voice of God in a man's heart, which ought to be obeyed before all else." Have we not here the explanation of much of our discord and difficulty in the religious instruction question ? Given the proposition that conscience is the voice of God, and everything else, of course, follows,—the sacred duty of disobedience to unacceptable Jaws, the practical effect in "passive resistance," and the rest. But, notoriously, .what is right to one man's conscience is wrong to another's. Are there, then, two rights, and does God speak in different voices and in contradictory ways ? Do let us abandon this appeal to the individual conscience as the final arbiter of justice and right. Conscience is no more the voice of God than the eye is the light. Both are media only, and unless the media are clear and perfect they will play us false. Like "A. N. B.," I decline to pronounce upon the conduct of those who have "passively resisted" the law. They may be right and they may be wrong, but they will certainly not be right because they have acted according to conscience. For how many errors in individual and national conduct con- science is responsible, let experience and history tell! Does not Ruskin say in one of his books (I quote from memory) : "Whenever I hear a man say, I shall follow my conscience,' I feel inclined to answer, 'First be sure, my friend, that your conscience is not the conscience of an ass' "? Put in Ruskin's forcible way, does not the dictum say the truth upon this vexed question ? And will the truth never be taken to heart ? The duty of all of us is to cultivate the conscience, and a large part of the task consists in putting away prejudice, uncharity, suspicion, and intellectual blindness.—I am, Sir, &c.,
W. H. D.
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