is reasoning and querying imply? Will take the position and stand to it, that the not a rational and responsible creature? that he sess sufficient knowledge of moral truth, to justify his bought to the bar of judgment? Will he say that the dation that knew enough to build the pyramids did not know enough to break the law of God? Will he affirm that the civilization of Babylon and Nineveh, of Greece and Rome, did not contain within it enough of moral intelligence to constitute a foundation for future rewards and punishments? Will he tell us that the people of Sodom and Gomorrah stood upon the same plane with the brutes that perish, and the trees of the field that rot and die, having no idea of God, knowing nothing of the distinction between right and wrong, and never feeling the pains of an accusing conscience? Will he maintain that the populations of India, in the midst of whom one of the most subtle and ingenious systems of pantheism has sprung up with the luxuriance and involutions of one of their own jungles, and which has enervated the whole religious sentiment of the Hindoo race as opium has enervated their physical frame-will he maintain that such an untiring and persistent mental activity as this is incapable of apprehending the first principles of ethics and natural religion, with clear and celestial visi under the L Esquima will cone very sti.. him tl “ (c * ed and obscure ratiocina, and lucid as atmospheric crist does not speak in this a different purpose, he enevery man, and eulogizes the in in the scale of being. With swelling phrase: "What a piece 'n reason! how infinite in faculties ! ress and admirable! in action how n how like a god! the beauty of the als!" It is from that very class of The heathen are in danger of eternal perut the whole missionary enterprise as a a, that we receive the most extravagant acal powers and gifts of man. Now, if these belong to human nature by its constitution, a foundation for responsibility; and all such able to show that the pagan has made a right has thought and acted in comformity with this of truth and reason, with which, according to their cat, he is endowed, or else they consign him, as St. to "the wrath of God which is revealed from heaven, i ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who hold the u unrighteousness." If you assert that the pagan man has to talents at all committed to him, and can prove your asserea, you are consistent in denying that he can be summoned to he bar of God, and be tried for everlasting life or death. But if you concede that he has had one talent, or two talents committed to his charge; and still more, if you exaggerate his gifts, and endow him with five or ten talents-then it is impossible for you to save him from the retributions to come, except you can prove a perfect administration and use of the trust. II. And this brings us to the consideration of the second fact. upon which St. Paul rests his position that the pagan world is in a state of condemnation. He concedes that man outside of the pale of revelation is characterized, not indeed by total, but by great ignorance of God and divine things? that his moral knowledge in exceedingly dim and highly distorted. But the fault is in himself that it is so. "As they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind." The question very naturally arises, and is frequently urged by the unbeliever: How comes it to pass that the knowledge of God, of which the Apostle speaks, and which he affirms to be innate and constiutional to the human mind, should become so vitiated in the pagan world? The majority of mankind are polytheists and idolaters, and have been for thousands of years. Can it be that St. Paul is correct in affirming that the doctrine that there is only one God is native to the human mind-that the pagan "knows" this God, and yet does not glorify him as God? The majority of mankind are earthly and sensual, and have been for thousands of years. Can it be that St. Paul is correct in saying that there is a moral law written upon their heart, forbidding such carnality, and enjoining purity and holiness? Some theorizers argue that because the pagan man does not obey the law, therefore he does not know the law; and that because he has not revered and worshipped the one Supreme Deity, therefore he does not possess the idea of such a being. They look out upon the pagan populations, and see then. bowing down to stocks and stones, and witness their immersion in the abominations of heathenism, and conclude that these millions of rational beings really know no better, and that therefore it is unjust to hold them responsible for their polytheism and moral corruption. But why do they confine this species of reasoning to the pagan world? Why do they not bring it into nominal Christendom and apply it there? Why does not this theorist go into the midst of European civilization-into the heart of London or Paris-and gauge the moral knowledge of the sensualist by the moral character of the sensualist? Why does he not tell us, that because this civilized man acts no better, that therefore he knows no better? Why does he not maintain, that because this voluptuary breaks all the commandments in the decalogue, therefore he must be ignorant of all the commandments in the decalogue? that because he neither fears nor loves the one only God, therefore he does not know that there is any such being? It will never do to estimate man's moral knowledge by man's moral character. He knows more than he practices. And there is not so much difference in this particular between some men in nominal Christendom, and some men in Heathendom, as is sometimes imagined. The moral knowledge of those who lie in the lower strata of Christian civilization, and those who lie in the higher strata of Paganism, is probably not so very far apart. Place the imbruted outcasts of our metropolitan population beside the Indian hunter, with his belief in the Great Spirit, and his worship without images or pictorial representations; beside the stalwart Mandingo of the high table lands of Central Africa, with his active and enterprising spirit, carrying on manufactures and trade with all the keenness of any civilized worldling; beside the native merchants and lawyers of Calcutta, who still cling to their ancestral Boodhism, or else substitute French infidelity in its place; place the lowest of the highest beside the highest of the lowest, and tell us if the difference is so very marked. Sin like *There are no profane words in the (Iowa) Indian language; no light or profane way of speaking of the "Great Spirit."-Foreign Missionary, May, 1863, p. 337. holiness, is a mighty leveller. The "dislike to retain God" in the consciousness, the aversion of the heart towards the purity of the moral law, vitiates the native perceptions alike in Christendom and Paganism. The theory that the pagan is possessed of such an amount and degree of moral knowledge as has been specified has awakened some apprehensions in the minds of some Christian theologians, and has led them unintentionally to foster the opposite theory, which, if strictly adhered to, would lift off all responsibility from the pagan world, would bring them in innocent at the bar of God, and would render the whole enterprise of Christian missions a superfluity and an absurdity. Their motive has been good. They have feared to attribute any degree of accurate knowledge of God, and the moral law, to the pagan world, lest they should thereby conflict with the doctrine of total depravity. They have erroneously supposed that if they should concede to every man, by virtue of his moral constitution, some correct apprehnsions of ethics and natural religion, it would follow that there is some native goodness in him. But light in the intellect is very different from life and affection in the heart. It is one thing to know the law of God, and quite another thing to obey it. Even if we should concede to the degraded pagan, or the degraded dweller in the haunts of vice in Christian lands, all the intellectual knowledge of God and the moral law that is possessed by the ruined archangel himself, we should not be adding a partical to his moral character, or his moral excellence. There is nothing of a holy quality in the mere intellectual perceptions that there is one Supreme Being, and that he has issued a pure and holy law for the guidance of all rational creatures. The mere doctrine of the divine unity will save no man. There is no redemptive power in it. It forgives no sin, and it delivers from no bondage to sin. "Thou believest," says St. James, that there is one God; thou doest well; the devils also believe and tremble." Satan himself is a monotheist, and knows very clearly all the commandments of God; but his heart and will are in demoniacal antagonism with them. And so it is, only in a lower degree, in the instance of the pagan and of the natural man in every age and in every clime. This intellectual perception, therefore, this constitutional apprehension of the first principles of natural religion, instead of lifting up disobedient man into a higher and more favourable position before the eternal bar, cast him down to a deeper perdition. Light that is abused ministers to a greater condemnation; and the Eternal Judge will say to every man, Jew or Gentile, that has held any portion or degree of moral truth in unrighteousness, as his apostle said to the unfaithful Jew: "Thou therefore that teachest another, teachest thou not thyself? thou that preachest a man should not steal, dost thou steal? thou that sayest a man should not commit adultery, dost thou commit 66 adultery?" (Rom. ii. 21, 22.) If the heathen knew nothing at all of his Maker, and his duty, he could not be held responsible, and would not be summoned to judgment. As St. Paul affirms : "Where there is no law, there is no transgression." But if when he knew God in some degree, he glorified him not as God to that degree; and if, when the moral law was written upon his heart, he went counter to its requirements, and actually heard the accusing voice of his own conscience after so doing, then his mouth must be stopped, and he must become guilty before his judge, like any and every other disobedient creature. It is this serious and damning fact in the history of man upon the globe, that St. Paul brings to view, in the affirmation that the pagan world" did not like to retain God in their knowledge." He accounts for all the idolatry and sensuality, all the darkness and vain imaginations of paganism, by referring them to the aversion of the natural heart. The primary difficulty was in the affections of the pagan, and not in his understanding. He knew too much for his own comfort in sin. The contrast between the divine purity that was mirrored in his conscience, and the sinfulness that was wrought into his heart and will, rendered this inborn constitutional idea of God a painful one. It was a fire in the bones. If the Psalmist, a renewed man, yet not entirely free from human corruption, could say: "I thought of God, and was troubled," much more must the totally depraved man of paganism be filled with terror, when in the thoughts of his heart, in the hour when the accusing conscience was at work, he brought to mind the one great God of gods, the vast unseen Power, whom he did not glorify, and whom he had offended. It was no wonder, therefore, that he did not like to retain the idea of such a being in his consciousness, and that he adopted all possible expedients to get rid of it. The Apostle informs us that the pagan actually called in his imagination to his aid, in order to extirpate, if possible, all his native and rational ideas and convictions upon religious subjects. He became vain in his imaginations, and his foolish heart, as a consequence was darkened, and he changed the glory of the incorruptible God, the spiritual unity of the deity, into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and to four-footed beasts, and creeping things (Rom. i. 21-23). He invented idolatry, and all those "gay religions full of pomp and gold," in order to blunt the edge of that sharp, spiritual conception of God which was continually cutting and lacerating his wicked and his sensual heart. Hiding himself amidst the columns of his idolatrous temples, and under the smoke of his idolatrous incense, he thought like Adam, to escape from the view and inspection of that Infinite One, who from the creation of the world downward, makes known to all men his eternal power and godhead (Rom. i. 20); who, has St. Paul taught the philosophers |