I saw that it were better to make a mistake in one’s first effort at personal religious conversation, and correct that mistake afterwards, than not to make any effort. There can be no mistake so bad, in working for an individual soul for Christ, as the fatal mistake of not making an honest endeavor. How many persons refrain from doing anything lest they possibly should do the wrong thing just now! Not doing is the worst of doing.
Children need to learn how to do things which they do not want to do, when those things ought to be done. Older people have to do a great many things from a sense of duty. Unless children are trained to recognize duty as more binding than inclination, they will suffer all their lives through from their lack of discipline in this direction.
Quoted by Melinda Keen Lewis, Simply Homeschooling, Morris Publishing, 2002, p. 20-21.
Conscience tells us that we ought to do right, but it does not tell us what right is – that we are taught by God’s word.