The question convulsing the world is, What is Truth? Many honest searchers willing to "try the spirits whether they be of God," exclaim in bewilderment, Wherewith shall we try them? since all claim an origin in God.
Among the grandest and the most encouraging facts of revelation is this, that there is no speech nor language where the voice of Truth is not heard. No matter in what depth of infamy or suffering, in what savagery, or how near the level of the brute mortals may be found, louder than the wail of sorrow, higher than the din of discord, and above the storms of appetite and passion, there is a still small voice ever asserting itself. This voice is heard faintly perhaps by some people, and is unheeded and ignored by others, yet ever and anon so distinctly is it heard, that if it were implicitly obeyed, it would finally save from the bitterness and doom of all mortal things. As it is written, "The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. who hold the truth in unrighteousness; because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God has shewed it unto them. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse." (Rom. i. 18, 19, 20.) And again speaking of those who are without written revelation the apostle says: "The Gentiles which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves; which show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts meanwhile accusing or else excusing one another." (Rom. ii. 14, 15).
Centuries before the advent of Christian Science, as now understood, and before the personal advent of Jesus, Socrates the Grecian philosopher was publicly executed, because he declared an inward voice ever directing him, and that the counsels of this voice were constant and less erring than the dark oracles proceeding from the Athenian temples. Five hundred years before the ministry of Jesus, a Chinaman formulated and taught a negative statement of the golden rule, "Do not unto others as ye would not have them do to you." So that for twenty-four hundred years this rule has appeared in the literature of the Celestial Empire just as the saying of Jesus appears in ours. Above the wind, the earthquake, and the tire, there came a still small voice, "And it was so, when Elijah heard it, that he wrapped his face in his mantle." (I Kings xix. 11, 12, 13.)
