The Heathen Inexcusable for Their Idolatry [pp. 427-448]

448 The Heathen inexcusable for their Idolatry. [JULY
religious nature can only be satisfied with the truth of God's
existence, and at remarkable providences or dispensations,
when God gets a listening ear, even the most debased heathen
must feel the insufficiency of his idols. These can satisfy no
inquiry, meet no demand of an earnest soul. Man, the
highest of all beings on earth, is dependent, clings to, and
longs after, something still higher, and can stock and stone
help and comfort him. The refuge is so irrational that no
satisfactory reason can be found for its adoption other than
man's not liking to retain God in his knowledge. He loves
darkness rather than light, because his deeds are evil.
The state of the heathen, then, is one of sin as well as misfortune. The condemnation that awaits them is not only
grievous but just. It is not only for the whole catalogue of
sin and crime that they are to be.condemned, but for that
which is the root and source of them all-ungodliness; because
that when they knew God, that is, had the opportunity of
knowing him by the things that are made, they glorified him
not as God.
The heathen are under condemnation, and to them a dark
and hopeless one; they know of no escape. While, therefore,
their sin is far less than of those who know the remedy and
reject it, still their condition is one which should excite our
deepest pity and compassion. The wrath of God is abiding on
them. From the second death and all its terrors, they know of
no escape, but to us the only remedy for them and us has been
made known. It is not our object to dwell upon the practical
conclusion which the apostle draws from the fact that the heathen are under condemnation, but the more we recognize the
fact, the more important must we feel to be the inference from
it, namely, that the only hope for Jew and Gentile is in justification through faith in Christ, that his is the only name given
under heaven whereby men can be saved. "But how shall
they believe in him of whom they have not heard? And how
shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they
preach except they be sent?"