that St. Paul brings to view, in the passage which we have selected as
the foundation of this discourse. He accounts for all the idolatry and
sensuality, all the darkness and vain imaginations of paganism, by
referring to _the aversion of the natural heart_ towards the one only
holy God. "Men," he says,--these pagan men--"did not _like to retain_ God
in their knowledge." The primary difficulty was in their affections, and
not in their understandings. They knew too much for their own comfort in
sin. The contrast between the Divine purity that was mirrored in their
conscience, and the sinfulness that was wrought into their heart and
will, rendered this inborn constitutional idea of God a very 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 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 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 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; who, as St. Paul taught the philosophers of Athens, is not far
from anyone of his rational creatures (Acts xvii. 27); and who, as the
same apostle taught the pagan Lycaonians, though in times past he
suffered all nations to walk in their own ways, yet left not himself
without witness, in that he did good, and gave them rain from heaven,
and fruitful seasons, filling their hearts with food and gladness. (Acts
xiv. 16, 17).
The first step in the process of mutilating the original idea of God, as
a unity and an unseen Spirit, is seen in those pantheistic religions
which lie behind all the mythologies of the ancient world, like a
nebulous vapor out of which the more distinct idols and images of
paganism are struggling. Here the notion of the Divine unity is still
preserved; but the Divine personality and holiness are lost. God becomes
a vague impersonal Power, with no moral qualities, and no religious
attributes; and it is difficult to say which is worst in its moral
influence, this pantheism which while retaining the doctrine of the
Divine unity yet denudes the Deity of all that renders him an object of
either love or reverence, or the grosser idolatries that succeeded it.
For man cannot love, with all his mind and heart and soul and strength, a
vast impersonal force working blindly through infinite space and
everlasting time.
And the second and last stage in this process of vitiating the true idea
of God appears in that polytheism in the midst of which St. Paul lived,
and labored, and preached, and died; in that seductive and beautiful
paganism, that classical idolatry, which still addresses the human taste
in such a fascinating manner, in the Venus de Medici, and the Apollo
Belvidere. The idea of the unity of God is now mangled and cut up into
the "gods many" and the "lords many," into the thirty thousand divinities
of the pagan pantheon. This completes the process. God now gives his
guilty creature over to these vain imaginations of naturalism,
materialism, and idolatry, and to an increasingly darkening mind, until
in the lowest forms of heathenism he so distorts and suppresses the
concreated idea of the Deity that some speculatists assert that it does
not belong to his constitution, and that his Maker never endowed him with
it. How is the gold become dim! How is the most fine gold changed!
But it will be objected that all this lies in the past. This is the
account of a process that has required centuries, yea millenniums, to
bring about. A hundred generations have been engaged in transmuting
the monotheism with which the human race started, into the pantheism and
polytheism in which the great majority of it is now involved. How do
you establish the guilt of those at the end of the line? How can you
charge upon the present generation of pagans the same culpability that
Paul imputed to their ancestors eighteen centuries ago, and that Noah the
preacher of righteousness denounced, upon the antediluvian pagan? As the
deteriorating process advances, does not the guilt diminish? and now, in
these ends of the ages, and in these dark habitations of cruelty, has not
the culpability run down to a minimum, which God in the day of judgment
will "wink at?"
We answer No: Because the structure of the human mind is precisely the
same that it was when the Sodomites held down the truth in
unrighteousness, and the Roman populace turned up their thumbs that they
might see the last drops of blood ebb slowly from the red gash in the
dying gladiator's side. Man, in his deepest degradation, in his most
hardened depravity, is still a rational intelligence; and though he
should continue to sin on indefinitely, through cycles of time as long as
those of geology, he cannot unmake himself; he cannot unmould his
immortal essence, and absolutely eradicate all his moral ideas. Paganism
itself has its fluctuations of moral knowledge. The early Roman, in the
days of Numa, was highly ethical in his views of the Deity, and his
conceptions of moral law. Varro informs us that for a period of one
hundred and seventy years the Romans worshipped their gods without any
images;[2] and Sallust denominates these pristine Romans "religiosissimi
mortales." And how often does the missionary discover a tribe or a race,
whose moral intelligence is higher than that of the average of paganism.
Nay, the same race, or tribe, passes from one phase of polytheism to
another; in one instance exhibiting many of the elements and truths of
natural religion, and in another almost entirely suppressing them. These
facts prove that the pagan man is under supervision; that he is under the
righteous despotism of moral ideas and convictions; that God is not far
from him; that he lives and moves and has his being in his Maker; and
that God does not leave himself without witness in his constitutional
structure. Therefore it is, that this sea of rational intelligence thus
surges and sways in the masses of paganism; sometimes dashing the
creature up the heights, and sometimes sending him down into the depths.
But while this subject has this general application to mankind outside of
Revelation; while it throws so much light upon the question of the
heathens' responsibility and guilt; while it tends to deepen our interest
in the work of Christian missions, and to stimulate us to obey our
Redeemer's command to go and preach the gospel to them, in order to
save them from the wrath of God which abideth upon them as it does upon
ourselves; while this subject has these profound and far-reaching
applications, it also presses with sharpness and energy upon the case,
and the position, of millions of men in Christendom. And to this more
particular aspect of the theme, we ask attention for a moment.
This same process of corruption, and vitiation of a correct knowledge of
God, which we have seen to go on upon a large scale in the instance of
the heathen world, also often goes on in the instance of a single
individual under the light of Revelation itself. Have you never known a
person to have been well educated in childhood and youth respecting the
character and government of God, and yet in middle life and old age to
have altered and corrupted all his early and accurate apprehensions, by
the gradual adoption of contrary views and sentiments? In his childhood,
and youth, he believed that God distinguishes between the righteous and
the wicked, that he rewards the one and punishes the other, and hence he
cherished a salutary fear of his Maker that agreed well with the dictates
of his unsophisticated reason, and the teachings of nature and
revelation. But when, he became a man, he put away these childish things,
in a far different sense from that of the Apostle. As the years rolled,
along, he succeeded, by a career of worldliness and of sensuality, in
expelling this stock of religious knowledge, this right way of conceiving
of God, from his mind, and now at the close of life and upon the very
brink of eternity and of doom, this very same person is as unbelieving
respecting the moral attributes of Jehovah, and as unfearing with regard
to them, as if the entire experience and creed of his childhood and youth
were a delusion and a lie. This rational and immortal creature in the
morning of his existence looked up into the clear sky with reverence,
being impressed by the eternal power and godhead that are there, and when
he had committed a sin he felt remorseful and guilty; but the very same
person now sins recklessly and with flinty hardness of heart, casts
sullen or scowling glances upward, and says: "There is no God." Compare
the Edward Gibbon whose childhood expanded under the teachings of a
beloved Christian matron trained in the school of the devout William Law,
and whose youth exhibited unwonted religions sensibility,--compare this
Edward Gibbon with the Edward Gibbon whose manhood was saturated with
utter unbelief, and whose departure into the dread hereafter was, in his
own phrase, "a leap in the dark." Compare the Aaron Burr whose blood was
deduced from one of the most saintly lineages in the history of the
American church, and all of whose early life was embosomed in ancestral
piety,--compare this Aaron Burr with the Aaron Burr whose middle life and
prolonged old age was unimpressible as marble to all religious ideas and
influences. In both of these instances, it was the aversion of the heart
that for a season (not for _eternity_, be it remembered) quenched out the
light in the head. These men, like the pagan of whom St. Paul speaks, did
not like to retain a holy God in their knowledge, and He gave them over
to a reprobate mind.
These fluctuations and changes in doctrinal belief, both in the general
and the individual mind, furnish materials for deep reflection by both
the philosopher and the Christian; and such an one will often be led to
notice the exact parallel and similarity there is between religious
deterioration in races, and religious deterioration in individuals. The
_dislike to retain_ a knowledge already furnished, because it is painful,
because it rebukes worldliness and sin, is that which ruins both mankind
in general, and the man in particular. Were the heart only conformed to
the truth, the truth never would be corrupted, never would be even
temporarily darkened in the human soul. Should the pagan, himself,
actually obey the dictates of his own reason and conscience, he would
find the light that was in him growing still clearer and brighter. God
himself, the author of his rational mind, and the Light that lighteth
every man that cometh into the world, would reward him for his obedience
by granting him yet more knowledge. We cannot say in what particular
mode the Divine providence would bring it about, but it is as certain as
that God lives, that if the pagan world should act up to the degree of
light which they enjoy, they would be conducted ultimately to the truth
as it is in Jesus, and would be saved by the Redeemer of the world. The
instance of the Roman centurion Cornelius is a case in point. This was a
thoughtful and serious pagan. It is indeed very probable that his
military residence in Palestine had cleared up, to some degree, his
natural intuitions of moral truth; but we know that he was ignorant of
the way of salvation through Christ, from the fact that the apostle Peter
was instructed in a vision to go and preach it unto him. The sincere
endeavor of this Gentile, this then pagan in reference to Christianity,
to improve the little knowledge which he had, met with the Divine
approbation, and was crowned with a saving acquaintance with the
redemption that is in Christ Jesus. Peter himself testified to this,
when, after hearing from the lips of Cornelius the account of his
previous life, and of the way in which God had led him, "he opened his
mouth and said, Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of
persons: but in every nation, he that feareth him and worketh
righteousness is accepted with him" (Acts x. 34, 35).[3]
But such instances as this of Cornelius are not one in millions upon
millions. The light shines in the darkness that comprehends it not.
Almost without an exception, so far as the human eye can see, the
unevangelized world holds the truth in unrighteousness, and does not like
to retain the idea of a holy God, and a holy law, in its knowledge.
Therefore the knowledge continually diminishes; the light of natural
reason and conscience grows dimmer and dimmer; and the soul sinks down in
the mire of sin and sensuality, apparently devoid of all the higher ideas
of God, and law, and immortal life.
We have thus considered the truth which St. Paul teaches in the text,
that the ultimate source of all human error is in the character of the
human heart. Mankind do not _like to retain_ God in their knowledge, and
therefore they come to possess a reprobate mind. The origin of idolatry,
and of infidelity, is not in the original constitution with which the
Creator endowed the creature, but in that evil heart of unbelief by which
he departed from the living God. Sinful man shapes his creed in
accordance with his wishes, and not in accordance with the unbiased
decisions of his reason and conscience. He does not _like_ to think of a
holy God, and therefore he denies that God is holy. He does not _like_ to
think of the eternal punishment of sin, and therefore he denies that
punishment is eternal. He does not _like_ to be pardoned through the
substituted sufferings of the Son of God, and therefore he denies the
doctrine of atonement. He does not _like_ the truth that man is so
totally alienated from God that he needs to be renewed in the spirit of
his mind by the Holy Ghost, and therefore he denies the doctrines of
depravity and regeneration. Run through the creed which the Church has
lived by and died by, and you will discover that the only obstacle to its
reception is the aversion of the human heart. It is a rational creed in
all its parts and combinations. It has outlived the collisions and
conflicts of a hundred schools of infidelity that have had their brief
day, and died with their devotees. A hundred systems of philosophy
falsely so called have come and gone, but the one old religion of the
patriarchs, and the prophets, and the apostles, holds on its way through
the centuries, conquering and to conquer. Can it be that sheer imposture
and error have such a tenacious vitality as this? If reason is upon the
side of infidelity, why does not infidelity remain one and the same
unchanging thing, like Christianity, from age to age, and subdue all men
unto it? If Christianity is a delusion and a lie, why does it not die
out, and disappear? The difficulty is not upon the side of the human
reason, but of the human heart. Skeptical men do not _like_ the religion
of the New Testament, these doctrines of sin and grace, and therefore
they shape their creed by their sympathies and antipathies; by what they
wish to have true; by their heart rather than by their head. As the
Founder of Christianity said to the Jews, so he says to every man who
rejects His doctrine of grace and redemption: "Ye _will_ not come unto me
that ye might have life." It is an inclination of the will, and not a
conviction of the reason, that prevents the reception of the Christian
religion.
Among the many reflections that are suggested by this subject and its
discussion, our limits permit only the following:
1. It betokens deep wickedness, in any man, to change the truth of God
into a lie,--_to substitute a false theory in religion for the true one_.
"Woe unto them," says the prophet, "that call evil good, and good evil;
that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for
sweet, and sweet for bitter." There is no form of moral evil that is more
hateful in the sight of Infinite Truth, than that intellectual depravity
which does not like to retain a holy God in its knowledge, and therefore
mutilates the very idea of the Deity, and attempts to make him other than
he is. There is no sinner that will be visited with a heavier vengeance
than that cool and calculating man, who, because he dislikes the
unyielding purity of the moral law, and the awful sanctions by which it
is accompanied, deliberately alters it to suit his wishes and his
self-indulgence. If a person is tempted and falls into sin, and yet does
not change his religious creed in order to escape the reproaches of
conscience and the fear of retribution, there is hope that the orthodoxy
of his head may result, by God's blessing upon his own truth, in sorrow
for the sin and a forsaking thereof. A man, for instance, who amidst all
his temptations and transgressions still retains the truth taught him
from the Scriptures, at his mother's knees, that a finally impenitent
sinner will go down to eternal torment, feels a powerful check upon his
passions, and is often kept from outward and actual transgressions by his
creed. But if he deliberately, and by an act of will, says in his heart:
"There is no hell;" if he substitutes for the theory that renders the
commission of sin dangerous and fearful, a theory that relieves it from
all danger and all fear, there is no hope that he will ever cease from
sinning. On the contrary, having brought his head into harmony with his
heart; having adjusted his theory to his practice; having shaped his
creed by his passions; having changed the truth of God into a lie; he
then plunges into sin with an abandonment and a momentum that is awful.
In the phrase of the prophet, he "draws iniquity with cords of vanity,
and sin as it were with a cart-rope."
It is here that we see the deep guilt of those, who, by false theories of
God and man and law and penalty, tempt the young or the old to their
eternal destruction. It is sad and fearful, when the weak physical nature
is plied with all the enticements of earth and sense; but it is yet
sadder and more fearful, when the intellectual nature is sought to be
perverted and ensnared by specious theories that annihilate the
distinction between virtue and vice, that take away all holy fear of God,
and reverence for His law, that represent the everlasting future either
as an everlasting elysium for all, or else as an eternal sleep. The
demoralization, in this instance, is central and radical. It is in the
brain, in the very understanding itself. If the foundations themselves of
morals and religion are destroyed, what can be done for the salvation of
the creature? A heavy woe is denounced against any and every one who
tempts a fellow-being. Temptation implies malice. It is Satanic. It
betokens a desire to ruin an immortal spirit. When therefore the siren
would allure a human creature from the path of virtue, the inspiration of
God utters a deep and bitter curse against her. But when the cold-blooded
Mephistopheles endeavors to sophisticate the reason, to debauch the
judgment, to sear the conscience; when the temptation is addressed to the
intellect, and the desire of the tempter is to overthrow the entire
religious creed of a human being,--perhaps a youth just entering upon
that hazardous enterprise of life in which he needs every jot and tittle
of eternal truth to guide and protect him,--when the enticement assumes
this purely mental form and aspect, it betokens the most malignant and
heaven-daring guilt in the tempter. And we may be certain that the
retribution that will be meted out to it, by Him who is true and The
Truth; who abhors all falsehood and all lies with an infinite intensity;
will be terrible beyond conception. "Woe unto you ye _blind guides_! Ye
serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of
hell! If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the
plagues that are written in this book. And if any man shall take away
from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part
out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things
that are written in this book."
2. In the second place, we perceive, in the light of this subject, _the
great danger of not reducing religious truth to practice_. There are two
fatal hazards in not obeying the doctrines of the Bible while yet there
is an intellectual assent to them. The first is, that these doctrines
shall themselves become diluted and corrupted. So long as the
affectionate submission of the heart is not yielded to their authority;
so long as there is any dislike towards their holy claims; there is great
danger that, as in the instance of the pagan, they will not be retained
in the knowledge. The sinful man becomes weary of a form of doctrine that
continually rebukes him, and gradually changes it into one that is less
truthful and restraining. But a second and equally alarming danger is,
that the heart shall become accustomed to the truth, and grow hard and
indifferent towards it. There are a multitude of persons who hear the
word of God and never dream of disputing it, who yet, alas, never dream
of obeying it. To such the living truth of the gospel becomes a
petrifaction, and a savor of death unto death.
We urge you, therefore, ye who know the doctrines of the law and the
doctrines of the gospel, to give an affectionate and hearty assent to
them _both_. When the divine Word asserts that you are guilty, and that
you cannot stand in the judgment before God, make answer: "It is so, it
is so." Practically and deeply acknowledge the doctrine of human guilt
and corruption. Let it no longer be a theory in the head, but a humbling
salutary consciousness in the heart. And when the divine Word affirms
that God so loved the world that he gave his Only-Begotten Son to redeem
it, make a quick and joyful response: "It is so, it is so." Instead of
changing the truth of God into a lie, as the guilty world have been doing
for six thousand years, change it into a blessed consciousness of the
soul. Believe_ what you know; and then what you know will be the wisdom
of God to your salvation.
[Footnote 1: "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.]
[Footnote 2: PLUTARCH: Numa, 8; AUGUSTINE: De Civitate, iv. 31.]
[Footnote 3: It should be noticed that Cornelius was not prepared for
another life, by the moral virtue which he had practised before meeting
with Peter, but by his penitence for sin and faith in Jesus Christ, whom
Peter preached to him as the Saviour from sin (Acts x. 43). Good works
can no more prepare a pagan for eternity than they can a nominal
Christian. Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius could no more be justified
by their personal character, than Saul of Tarsus could be. First, because
the virtue is imperfect, at the best: and, secondly, it does not begin at
the beginning of existence upon earth, and continue unintermittently to
the end of it. A sense of _sin_ is a far more hopeful indication, in the
instance of a heathen, than a sense of virtue. The utter absence of
humility and sorrow in the "Meditations" of the philosophic Emperor, and
the omnipresence in them of pride and self-satisfaction, place him out of
all relations to the Divine _mercy_. In trying to judge of the final
condition of a pagan outside of revelation, we must ask the question: Was
he penitent? rather than the question: Was he virtuous?]
THE NECESSITY OF DIVINE INFLUENCES.
LUKE xi. 13.--"If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto
your children; how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy
Spirit to them that ask him?"