ere inevitable
wherever the sentiment of pity found room in a human heart, because the
guilt of those in the darkness of unbelief, without God, without hope,
would certainly doom them to eternal misery; and this was a thought so
dark and awful, men could not go their way, one to his farm, and another
to his merchandise, and leave them to perish.

The simple and unquestioning conviction with which the preacher began to
prove to his congregation that the heathen were guilty, because Adam,
their federal head and representative, had sinned, perhaps hid from them
the cruelty with which he credited the Deity. No one thought of disputing
his statement that the wrath of God rested upon all unconverted souls,
and that it would, unless they burst from their darkness into the
glorious light of revealed truth, sink them to hell.

Some of the older Christians nodded their heads comfortably at this, and
looked keenly at the sinners of their own families, trusting that they
would be awakened to their danger by these trumpet bursts of doctrine. To
such hearers, it was unnecessary that John Ward should insist upon the
worthlessness of natural religion, begging them remember that for these
heathen, as well as for more favored souls, Christ's was the only name
given under heaven whereby men might be saved, and appealing to God's
people, as custodians of the mercies of Christ, to stretch their hands
out into the darkness to these blind, stumbling, doomed brothers. He bade
them be quick to answer that cry of "Come and help us!" and to listen for
that deeper voice beneath the wail of despair, which said, "Inasmuch as
ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done
it unto me."

The possibility of being saved without a knowledge of Christ remained,
he said, after eighteen hundred years, a possibility illustrated by no
example; and we could only stand in the shadow of this terrible fact,
knowing that millions and millions of souls were living without the
gospel, the only source of life, and dying without hope, and pray God for
the spirit and the means to help them.

Link by link he lengthened the chain of logic till it reached to the
deepest hell. He showed how blasphemous was the cry that men must be
saved, if for lack of opportunity they knew not Christ; that God would
not damn the soul that had had no chance to accept salvation. It had had
the chance of salvation in Adam, and had lost it, and was therefore
conde