p. 11 | Conscience not an Information Bureau

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D.C. · Dec 5, 1907

Conscience not an Information Bureau

If conscience is a safe guide to what is right and wrong, then the Bible is not needed. There is no half-way ground here, for a guide that needs guidance is no guide at all. And as a matter of fact, conscience is not a guide, and because so many souls mistakenly think it is, confused and wandering errors in the pathway of life are constantly made. Conscience is a monitor. It prompts and prods; it urges, “Do what you know to be right; do not do what you know to be wrong.” But it does not instruct us in what is right and what is wrong; it is not a bureau of information. That instruction we receive from God in many different ways, of which the Bible and the training of parents and teachers are some. Therefore it will not do to settle back in the easy assurance that we have a safe guide in conscience. We have a tremendous responsibility to learn, from sources outside of ourselves, what is our duty, and those sources are always available when we really seek them.—S. S. Times.