Keeping the Conscience Tender
One of the strongest evidences of a spiritual decline is loss of conscientious scruples. This is not to say that conscientious scruples are always correct. Sometimes they are based on superstition and tradition; but when these give way to clearer light, true conscientiousness is deepened and intensified. When, therefore, conscience grows hard, it ought to be a cause of serious alarm. A man without a conscience is always an impending danger, and all the more so the higher the position of the conscienceless man. He is not only a danger to others, but to himself. With a declining integrity of conscience, one stands just where the devil finds hooks for his various schemes, and prepared soil for the seeds of evil. Better the conscientious scruples of the heathen widow who refuses to eat but her daily handful of rice, and so shortens life, or the devoutly ignorant Catholic who pays homage to a reputed holy bone, than the conscience of a once earnest Protestant which has so undergone decadence, so departed from God, that it fails to recognize sin or be pained by what is wrong, and which it once knew to be wrong. Keep the conscience tender by reading the Word of God, by earnest, faithful, humble prayer, and by devoted practice of good.