A Tiny Whispering Sound
Elijah is the Anglicization of the Hebrew word Eliyahu, which means, “Yahweh is God.” As a man of God, Elijah fled to Mount Horeb out of fear for his life. Then, on that holy mountain, he experienced a theophany and received a commission from the God of Israel. He faced a mighty wind, an earthquake, and a devouring fire, but the Lord God was in none of those natural catastrophes. When the prophet finally heard “a tiny, whispering sound,” it was then that he knew that the true God was about to speak. What is this sound that Elijah had to pay attention to? It is the voice of the conscience, that instinct of the heart by which saints and sinners determine the difference between right and wrong.
This inner voice which on occasion accuses and oppresses, yet on other occasions conscience can bring joy. Conscience is a small subtle voice or an inborn feeling. By its very nature this inner voice is a spiritual instinct, which more clearly and quickly differentiates between good and evil than does the mind. Anyone who adheres to the voice of conscience will never regret or be ashamed of their behavior if they follow a properly formed conscience. In biblical terms, conscience is also identified as heart. In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus compared conscience to the eyes by which a person can evaluate his moral condition (Mt. 6:22). The Lord also compared conscience to a rival with whom a person must come to terms with before he presents himself at God’s Judgment (Mt. 5:25). Labeling this moral sense in terms of a rival stresses the main attribute of conscience: to oppose evil desires and/or intentions.
Widespread, personal experience testifies to the fact that this tiny whispering sound, called conscience, is not under intellectual control but expresses itself spontaneously in spite of the will to oftentimes do something contrary to what is right. Because no one can persuade themselves that they are full while still hungry or become convinced that they are well-rested when remaining tired, similarly it is impossible for someone with a well-formed conscience to convince themselves that their troublesome behavior is correct when their conscience tells them otherwise.
Saint John Henry Newman said that conscience is “the aboriginal Vicar of Christ in the soul” or the faculty that every human being possess in order to know what is right – the voice of God Himself speaking to the heart. Paraphrasing what Newman said in a Letter to the Duke of Norfolk, you can say that conscience is not a long-sighted selfishness, nor a desire to be consistent with oneself; but it is a messenger from Him, who, both in nature and in grace, speaks to us behind a veil, and teaches and rules us by His representatives. Conscience is the aboriginal Vicar of Christ, a prophet in its informations, a monarch in its peremptoriness, a priest in its blessings and anathemas, and even though the eternal priesthood throughout the Church should cease to be, in it the sacerdotal principle would remain and would have a sway (Letter to the Duke of Norfolk (1875); in The Genius of John Henry Newman: Selections from his Writings (Clarendon Press, Oxford: 1989).
Nature and dignity 