d, even though broken. But commonly the
conditions are not changed. The differences found in different
civilizations to-day are differences only of _degree_. In the most
advanced cities of Christendom to-day may be found every bit of this
chapter's awful details, _but properly cloaked_. In European lands the
cloaks are sewed with the legal-stitch, which is considered the proper
finish. In lands where our Christian standards are not recognized the
thing is as open as in this chapter.

In four short paragraphs containing sixty-six lines in the American
Revision, Paul packs in his terrific philippic. He swings over the ground
four times. Nowhere does he reveal better his own fidelity to truth, with
the fineness of his own spirit. Here, delicacy of expression is rarely
blended with great plainness. No one can fail to understand, and yet that
sense of modesty native to both man and woman is not improperly disturbed,
even though the recital be shocking.

Here is paragraph one: Man knew God both through nature and by the direct
inner light. But he did not want Him as God. It bothered the way he wanted
to live. The core of all sin is there. All its fruitage grows about that
core. He became vain in his reasonings. He gave himself up to keen,
brilliant speculation. Having cut the cord that bound him to God,
unanchored, uncompassed, on a shoreless, starless sea, he drifts
brilliantly about in the dense gray fog.

Then he befooled himself further by thinking himself wise. He preferred
somebody else to God. Whom? Himself! Then--birds; then-beasts on all fours
with backbone on a line with the earth, nose and mouth close to the
ground; then--gray-black, slimy, crawling, creeping things. He traded off
the truth of God for a lie; the sweet purity of God for rank impurity. He
dethroned God, and took the seat himself. He bartered God for beasts and
grew like that he preferred. God's gracious restraint is withdrawn when he
gets down to the animal stage. Only here man out-animalled the animals.
The beasts are given points on beastliness. The life he chose to live held
down by the throat the truth he knew so well. That's the first summary.

The next two paragraphs are devoted to that particular sort of unnatural
sin first suggested to man after his disobedience, and which in all time
and all lands has been and is the worst, the most unnatural, the most
degrading, and the most common. It came first in the imagination. It came
early in the