III.
How are we to find moral laws? Just as we find natural laws. When we find the truth of natural bodies, reason sees the laws which inhere in them, and prudence dictates such action on our part as these laws require. When we come to truth, on the moral plane, or to such knowledge of the facts as corresponds to the truth, reason, unless perverted, sees the laws that reside in them, and conscience dictates that these laws should be obeyed. Conscience unerringly and infallibly approves the right. By the aid of the light which is thrown upon it when the intellect comes into relations of knowledge with moral truth, it recognizes the laws the will ought to follow. These laws make up a part of the truth. Before the right can be recognized, the truth must be seen. When that which the intelligence takes for truth is not the truth, the conscience will recognize laws for the will to follow that do not correspond to the laws of God. It has often happened that what the intelligence took for truth did not correspond to objective reality, and hence was not the truth; hence the conscience has often approved and suggested lines of action that were at variance with that which was essentially and eternally right. Those who followed the dictates of conscience, however, under such conditions, did, under the circumstances, right. To have refused to follow conscience would have increased their confusion. A man in the bog, with the certainty of death before him, ought to follow the guide that appears, even though he should not know how to lead him out of the swamp. Conscience never fails to come as near recognizing the right as the intellect comes to discovering the truth. When that which the intellect apprehends as truth corresponds to objective reality, we may be sure that the laws which inhere in it, and which conscience suggests as the ones the will ought to follow, correspond to the laws of God. One’s conscience may lead him wrong, but only when the intellect has led him wrong. St. Paul’s conscience led him wrong when it impelled him to persecute the Christians of the early church, but it was because that which he held for truth did not tally with the outward facts, and hence was not the truth. Had the supposed truth which he held while persecuting the Christians been real truth, then in persecuting the Christians he would have done right. The reversal of conscience resulted from the incoming of new truth, or such knowledge as was sustained by the outward facts. The conscience of the Hindoo mother that leads her to throw her child into the River Ganges is as good as the conscience of the Christian mother that leads her to carry her child to the Sunday school. The trouble with the Hindoo mother is not with her conscience, but with her religious knowledge; it does not correspond to the facts of the order of the moral and spiritual universe. We are to determine the value of the affirmations of conscience by determining the value of the knowledge out of which those affirmations grow. Knowledge is valuable in proportion to its correspondence with that which is real. As often as the intellect grasps the truth, the conscience will suggest the right that accompanies it. There is no truth of a moral nature that has not its attendant right.