Conscience is that faculty of the mind which teaches us to distinguish between right and wrong. It often warns us when we are about to do wrong, and reproaches us for the wrong we have done.
A great man once said that when he was a small boy he was walking one day by the side of a pond, when he saw a turtle creeping out of the water. He had never yet killed anything, and he felt a great temptation to kill it with his stick, when some one seemed to whisper to him: "It is wrong." He went home and asked his mother what it was. She told him that men called it Conscience; but she called it the voice of God, speaking in his heart. He said that he often afterwards tried to listen for the voice, and it kept him from much wrong that he would otherwise have done.
Conscience has been compared to the needle in the sailor's compass; by its means the ship is kept upon her proper course. If we consult Conscience, we cannot go far astray. A boy is about to steal some money for the first time. Just as his hand is upon it, he fancies he hears steps approaching. He hastily drops the money, and turns away with a beating heart. But he finds he is mistaken, and, perhaps, thinks it was only imagination. He is wrong; the beating heart and the imaginary noises are Conscience warning him that he is about to do wrong. If he is an unthinking boy, he merely laughs at his fears, and next day goes back again. This time he listens for the sound of steps, but he does not hear them. The fact that he listened shows that Conscience has been at him again; but this time the warning is fainter, and he commits the theft. It is possible to stifle Conscience altogether.
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.