knowledge." The primary difficulty was in their affections, and
not in their understandings. They knew too much for their own comfort in
sin. The contrast between the Divine purity that was mirrored in their
conscience, and the sinfulness that was wrought into their heart and
will, rendered this inborn constitutional idea of God a very painful one.
It was a fire in the bones. If the Psalmist, a renewed man, yet not
entirely free from human corruption, could say: "I thought of God and was
troubled," much more must the totally depraved man of paganism be filled
with terror when, in the thoughts of his heart, in the hour when the
accusing conscience was at work, he brought to mind the one great God of
gods whom he did not glorify, and whom he had offended. It was no wonder,
therefore, that he did not like to retain the idea of such a Being in his
consciousness, and that he adopted all possible expedients to get rid of
it. The apostle informs us that the pagan actually called in his
imagination to his aid, in order to extirpate, if possible, all his
native and rational ideas and convictions upon religious subjects. He
became vain in his imaginations, and his foolish heart as a consequence
was darkened, and he changed the glory of the incorruptible God, the
spiritual unity of the Deity, into an image made like to corruptible man,
and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things (Rom. i. 21-23).
He invented idolatry, and all those "gay religions full of pomp and
gold," in order to blunt the edge of that sharp spiritual conception of
God which was continually cutting and lacerating his wicked and sensual
heart. Hiding himself amidst the columns of his idolatrous temples, and
under the smoke of his idolatrous incense, he thought like Adam to escape
from the view and inspection of that Infinite One who, from the creation
of the world downward, makes known to all men his eternal power and
godhead; who, as St. Paul taught the philosophers of Athens, is not far
from anyone of his rational creatures (Acts xvii. 27); and who, as the
same apostle taught the pagan Lycaonians, though in times past he
suffered all nations to walk in their own ways, yet left not himself
without witness, in that he did good, and gave them rain from heaven,
and fruitful seasons, filling their hearts with food and gladness. (Acts
xiv. 16, 17).

The first step in the process of mutilating the original idea of God, as
a unity and an unseen Spirit, is s