both of moral blindness and moral apathy-Still he is what he is because he willed against the light, and wrought against the light. It is this which brings a direct ciminality upon his person. It is this which constitutes a clear principle for his condemnation to rest upon; and it is enough to fasten blame-worthiness upon his doings, that they were either done in despite of the convictions which he had, or done in despite of the convictions which but for his own wilful depravity he might have had.

The Bible, in charging any individual with actual sin, always presupposes a knowledge, either presently possessed or unworthily lost or still attainable on his part, of some rightful authority, against which he hath done some act of wilful defiance. The contact of light with the mind of the transgressor, and that too in such sufficiency as, if he had followed it, would have guided him to an action different from the one he has performed, is essential to the sinfulness of that action-insomuch that on the day of reckoning, when the men of all nations and all ages shall stand around the judgment-seat, there is not one who will be pronounced an outcast of condemnation there, who will not feel an echo in his own conscience to the righteousness of the sentence under which he has fallen; and who, though living in the midst of thickest heathenism, will not remember the visitations of a light which he ought to have followed, and by resisting which he has personally deserved the displeasure of God that shall then be over

him, the doom of the eternity that shall then be before him.

In the 19th and following verses, the apostle, aware that to establish the guilt of the world's unrighteousness it was necessary to prove that it was unrighteousness committed in the face of knowledge, affirms what it was that man knew originally, and how it was that the light which was at one time in them became darkness. That which it. was competent to know about God, was manifest among men. God himself had showed it unto men. He had either done so by the wisdom that shone in creation, making it plain to man's natural discernment that it was the product of a supreme and eternal intelligence; and this is one way in which we may understand how the invisible properties of the Godhead are clearly seen, even from the impress of them, stamped and evident to the reflecting eye on the face of creation itself. Or He had expressly revealed the fact to man that the world was created, and that He was the Author of it. Instead of leaving them to find this out, He had made it known to them by actual communication. It is not necessary to conceive from these verses, that the doctrines of the existence and perfections of God are the achievements of man's unaided discovery at the first. In that age of extraordinary manifestations, when God put forth the arm of a creator, He may also have put forth the voice of a revealer; and simply announced to men that the world they lived in was a piece of work

manship, and that He Himself was the builder and the maker of it. With the simple information that the world made not itself, but had a beginning, they could rise to the perception of Him who had no beginning. They could infer the eternity of that Being who Himself was uncreated. They could infer the magnitude of His power, seeing it to be commensurate to the production of that stupendous mechanism which lay visibly around them. They could infer His Godhead, or in other words His supremacy-the subordination of all that existed to His purpose and will-His right of property in this universe, and in all those manifold riches which fill and which adorn it-and more particularly that He originated all their faculties; that He provided them with all their enjoyments; that every secondary source and agent of gratification to them, was a mere channel of conveyance for His liberality; that, behind all which was visible, there were a power and a Godhead invisible which had been from eternity, and were now put forth in bright and beautiful development on a created expanse, where everything was that could regale the senses, and be exuberant of delight and blessedness to the living creatures by whom it was occupied.

It is not necessary to enter into a contest about the powers or the limits of the human facultiesthough we shall afterwards attempt to make it evident, that, debased and darkened as we are by sin, there is enough of light in the human con

science to render inexcusable human ungodliness. But let us at present confine ourselves to the circumstances adverted to by the apostle, according to the historical truth of them. He is evidently describing the historical progress of human degeneracy; and begins with the state of matters at the commencement of a darkening and deteriorating process, which took place on the character of man. And, without resolving the metaphysical question How far man without a direct communication from Heaven could have found his way to the Being and attributes of the Divinity, let us just take up with the commencement of matters as it actually stood. It was a period of extraordinary manifestations; and God made Himself directly and personally known, as the one Creator of all things; and men had only to look with the eye of their senses to these things, and to conclude how much of power, how much of wisdom, how much of rightful sovereignty and ownership, belonged to Him that framed all and upholds all. We may not be sure, in how far man could, on the strength of his own unborrowed resources, have steered his ascending way to the knowledge of a God. But the communicated fact that God did exist, and that He was the framer and the architect of all, put him on high vantage ground-from which might be clearly seen the eternal power of the Supreme, and His eternal Godhead.

We have only time to advert, shortly, to the way in which the truth respecting God was changed

into a lie. The creature became more loved and more depended on, than the Creator. He was not glorified as the giver, and the maker of all created good. But what was sensibly and immediately good, was sought after for itself, was valued on its own account, was enjoyed without any thankful reference to Him who granted all and originated all; and this too in the face of a distinct knowledge, that every thing was held of God-in the face of an authoritative voice, claiming what was due to God -in the face of a conscience powerful at the outset of man's history, however much it may have been darkened and overborne in the subsequent process of his alienation. And thus the tenure of his earthly enjoyments was gradually lost sight of altogether; and the urgencies of sense and of the world got the better of all impressions of the Deity; and man at length felt his portion and his security and his all to be, not in the Author of creation, but in the creation itself with all its gay and goodly and fascinating varieties. His mind lost its hold of a great and subordinating principle, by which he could have assigned its right place, and viewed according to its just relationship, all that was around him. The world in fact, by a mighty deed of usurpation, dethroned the Deity from the ascendancy which belonged to Him; and thus the rule of estimation was subverted within him, and his foolish heart was darkened. This disorder in the state of his affections, while it clouded and subverted his discerning faculties, did not at the same time.