even did awake a
moment, and recollect dimly what God was like, they hated that
thought. They hated to think that God was what He was, and shut
their eyes, and stopped their ears as fast as possible.

And what happened to them in the meantime? What was the fruit of
their wilfully forgetting what God's life was? St. Paul tells us
that they fell into the most horrible sins--sins too dreadful and
shameful to be spoken of; and that their common life, even when they
did not run into such fearful evils, was profligate, fierce, and
miserable. And yet St. Paul tells us all the while they knew the
judgment of God, that those who do such things are worthy of death.

Now we know that St. Paul speaks truth, from the writings of
heathens; for God raised up from time to time, even among the
heathen Greeks and Romans, witnesses for Himself, to testify of Him
and of His life, and to testify against the sins of the world, such
men as Socrates and Plato among the Greeks, whose writings St. Paul
knew thoroughly, and whom, I have no doubt, he had in his mind when
he wrote his first chapter of Romans, and told the heathen that they
were without excuse. And among the Romans, also, He raised up, in
the same way, witnesses for Himself, such as Juvenal and Persius,
and others, whom scholars know well. And to these men, heathens
though they were, God certainly did teach a great deal about
Himself, and gave them courage to rebuke the sins of kings and rich
men, even at the danger of their lives; and to some of them he gave
courage even to suffer martyrdom for the message which God had given
them, and which their neighbours hated to hear. And this was the
message which God sent by them to the heathen: that God was good
and righteous, and that therefore His everlasting wrath must be
awaiting sinners. They rebuked their heathen neighbours for those
very same horrible crimes which St. Paul mentions; and then they
said, as St. Paul does, 'How you make your own sins worse by
blasphemies against God! You sin yourselves, and then, to excuse
yourselves, you invent fables and lies about God, and pretend that
God is as wicked as you are, in order to drug your own consciences,
by making God the pattern of your own wickedness.'

These men saw that man ought to be like God; and they saw that God
was righteous and good; and they saw, therefore, that
unrighteousness and sin must end in ruin and everlasting misery. So
much God had taught them, but