native widow took him into her humble home and nursed him back to
convalescence. Then her young boy was taken hopelessly ill, and
the grateful missionary helped her tend him. Here was his first
opportunity to repair a part of the wrong done to the other boy
by doing a precious service for this one by undermining his
foolish faith in his false gods. He was successful. But the
dying boy in his last moments reproached him and said:
“I BELIEVED, AND WAS HAPPY IN IT; YOU HAVE TAKEN MY BELIEF
AWAY, AND MY COMFORT. NOW I HAVE NOTHING LEFT, AND I DIE
MISERABLE; FOR THE THINGS WHICH YOU HAVE TOLD ME DO NOT TAKE THE
PLACE OF THAT WHICH I HAVE LOST.”
And the mother, also, reproached the missionary, and said:
“MY CHILD IS FOREVER LOST, AND MY HEART IS BROKEN. HOW
COULD YOU DO THIS CRUEL THING? WE HAD DONE YOU NO HARM, BUT ONLY
KINDNESS; WE MADE OUR HOUSE YOUR HOME, YOU WERE WELCOME TO ALL WE
HAD, AND THIS IS OUR REWARD.”
The heart of the missionary was filled with remorse for what
he had done, and he said:
“IT WAS WRONG–I SEE IT NOW; BUT I WAS ONLY TRYING TO DO HIM
GOOD. IN MY VIEW HE WAS IN ERROR; IT SEEMED MY DUTY TO TEACH HIM
THE TRUTH.”
Then the mother said:
“I HAD TAUGHT HIM, ALL HIS LITTLE LIFE, WHAT I BELIEVED TO
BE THE TRUTH, AND IN HIS BELIEVING FAITH BOTH OF US WERE HAPPY.
NOW HE IS DEAD–AND LOST; AND I AM MISERABLE. OUR FAITH CAME
DOWN TO US THROUGH CENTURIES OF BELIEVING ANCESTORS; WHAT RIGHT
HAD YOU, OR ANY ONE, TO DISTURB IT? WHERE WAS YOUR HONOR, WHERE
WAS YOUR SHAME?”
The missionary’s anguish of remorse and sense of treachery
were as bitter and persecuting and unappeasable, now, as they had
been in the former case. The story is finished. What is your
comment?
Y.M. The man’s conscience is a fool! It was morbid. It
didn’t know right from wrong.
O.M. I am not sorry to hear you say that. If you grant
that ONE man’s conscience doesn’t know right from wrong, it is an
admission that there are others like it. This single admission
pulls down the whole doctrine of infallibility of judgment in
consciences. Meantime there is one thing which I ask you to
notice.
Y.M. What is that?
O.M. That in both cases the man’s ACT gave him no spiritual
discomfort, and that he was quite satisfied with it and got
pleasure out of it. But afterward when it resulted in PAIN to
HIM, he was sorry. Sorry it had inflicted pain upon the others,
BUT FOR NO REASON UNDER THE SUN EXCEPT THAT THEIR PAIN GAVE HIM
PAIN. Our consciences take NO notice of pain inflicted upon
others until it reaches a point where it gives pain to US. In
ALL cases without exception we are absolutely indifferent to
another person’s pain until his sufferings make us uncomfortable.
Many an infidel would not have been troubled by that Christian
mother’s distress. Don’t you believe that?
Y.M. Yes. You might almost say it of the AVERAGE infidel,
I think.
O.M. And many a missionary, sternly fortified by his sense
of duty, would not have been troubled by the pagan mother’s
distress–Jesuit missionaries in Canada in the early French
times, for instance; see episodes quoted by Parkman.
Y.M. Well, let us adjourn. Where have we arrived?
O.M. At this. That we (mankind) have ticketed ourselves
with a number of qualities to which we have given misleading
names. Love, Hate, Charity, Compassion, Avarice, Benevolence,
and so on. I mean we attach misleading MEANINGS to the names.
They are all forms of self-contentment, self-gratification, but
the names so disguise them that they distract our attention from
the fact. Also we have smuggled a word into the dictionary which
ought not to be there at all–Self-Sacrifice. It describes a
thing which does not exist. But worst of all, we ignore and
never mention the Sole Impulse which dictates and compels a man’s
every act: the imperious necessity of securing his own approval,
in every emergency and at all costs. To it we owe all that we