ciency, and the authority of
Scripture--in its unity, when the parts are put together in their
historical connections and with the key to their meaning furnished us in
Christ; in its sufficiency, as a rule of religious faith and practice;
and in its authority, when rightly interpreted with the aid of the Holy
Spirit. So I am prepared to find in the first chapter of Paul's Epistle
to the Romans the true philosophy of heathenism, and the reconciliation
of the otherwise seemingly conflicting utterances of Scripture with
regard to the religious nature of man. I learn that God made man
upright, and endowed him with at least a childlike knowledge of himself.
But early humanity sought out many inventions, did not wish to retain
God in its knowledge, and substituted for the true God creatures of its
own imagination. In other words, the scriptural explanation of
heathenism is found in an original ancestral sin, in which the human
race departed from the true God and gave itself up to the worship,
first, of impersonal nature-powers, and then, of the polytheistic
personifications of these powers which naturally followed.

Modern heathenism is the result of an abnormal and downward evolution.
Many students of comparative religion have forgotten that evolution is
oftener to lower forms than to higher. Many a species in the history of
life has first become degenerate, and then has become extinct. The
shores of time are strewn with wrecks, and one of these wrecks is human
nature. Paul gives us only the logical and moral interpretation of a
biological fact, when he declares that in consequence of man's departure
from God, God gave man over to the dominion of his own passions, in
order that the shame and guilt of his vile affections might awaken his
conscience and lead him to cry for mercy and redemption. Modern
heathenism, still surviving in this age of enlightenment, shows how sin
can blind the intellect and harden the heart. When men worship demons of
cruelty and lust instead of God, they reveal the depravity as well as
the ignorance of human nature in its downward evolution. The candle has
been lighted indeed, but it has been touched with the flames of hell.

When God made man in his own image, it was only wheat that he sowed in
his field. The evil decision of man has furnished the tares, and their
history has been a history of downward evolution. But side by side with
this downward evolution there has been an upward evolution of div