is quite awful enough without our making it worse. It is not
for us to judge who is outside the pale of salvation nor to limit the
love of God by our little shibboleths. It is on a man's WILL, not on
his knowledge or ignorance that destiny depends. God only can judge
that. All the subtle influences which go to make character are known
to Him alone. He alone can weigh the responsibility of the will in any
particular case. And surely we know Him well enough humbly to trust
His love to the uttermost for every poor soul whom He has created.

II

But this hope must not ignore the solemn thought that in a very real
sense the probation of this life seems the determining factor in human
destiny--even for the unthinking--even for the ignorant--nay even for
the heathen who could never have heard of Christ here. Rightly
understood all that we have said does not conflict with this. It may
seem strange at first sight to think of the heathen as having any real
probation here. Yet, mark it well, it is of this heathen man who could
not consciously have accepted Christ in this life that St. Paul implies
that his attitude in the Unseen Life towards Him who is the Light of
the World is determined by his attitude in this life towards the
imperfect light of Conscience that he has. "If the Gentiles who have
not the Law do by nature the things contained in the Law, these having
not the Law are a law unto themselves, which show the works of the Law
written in their hearts, their Conscience bearing witness" (Rom. ii.
14).

We may assume that St. Paul means that the heathen man who in this life
followed the dim light of his conscience is the man who will rejoice in
the full light when it comes and that the man who has been wilfully
shutting out that dim light of conscience here is thereby rendering
himself less capable of accepting the fuller light when he meets it
hereafter. In other words this life is his probation, he is forming on
earth the moral bent of his future life.

We may assume the same of men in similar conditions in Christian lands,
men brought up amid ignorance and crime, men brought up in infidel
homes, men to whom Christ has been so unattractively presented that
they saw no beauty in Him or even instinctively turned away from Him
impelled by their conscience. They all have the light of God in some
degree and by their attitude towards the right that they know are
determining on earth their attitude towards Go