nces, 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