And this principle will be applied to the pagan world.  It is so applied by the apostle Paul.  He himself concedes that the Gentile has not enjoyed all the advantages of the Jew, and argues that the ungodly Jew will be visited with a more severe punishment than the ungodly Gentile.  But he expressly affirms that the pagan is under law, and knows that he is; that he shows the work of the law that is written on the heart, in the operations of an accusing and condemning conscience.  But the knowledge of law involves the knowledge of God in an equal degree.  Who can feel himself amenable to a moral law, without at the same time thinking of its Author?  The law and the Lawgiver are inseparable.  The one is the mirror and index of the other.  If the eye opens dimly upon the commandment, it opens dimly upon the Sovereign; if it perceives eternal right and law with clear and celestial vision, it then looks directly into the face of God.  Law and God are correlative to each other; and just so far, consequently, as the heathen understands the law that is written on the heart does he apprehend the Being who sitteth upon the circle of the heavens, and who impinges Himself upon the consciousness of men.  This being so, it is plain that we can confront the ungodly pagan with the same statements with which we confront the ungodly nominal Christian.  We can tell him with positiveness, wherever we find him, be it upon the burning sands of Africa or in the frozen home of the Esquimaux, that he knows more than he puts in practice.  We will concede to him that the quantum of his moral knowledge is very stinted and meagre; but in the same breath we will remind him that small as it is, he has not lived up to it; that he too has “come short”; that he too, knowing God in the dimmest, faintest degree, has yet not glorified him as God in the slightest, faintest manner.  The Bible sends the ungodly and licentious pagan to hell, upon the same principle that it sends the ungodly and licentious nominal Christian.  It is the principle enunciated by our Lord Christ, the judge of quick and dead, when he says, “He who knew his master’s will [clearly], and did it not, shall be beaten with many stripes; and he who knew not his master’s will [clearly, but knew it dimly,] and did it not, shall be beaten with few stripes.”  It is the just principle enunciated by St. Paul, that “as many as have sinned without [written] law shall also perish without [written] law."[2] And this is right and righteous; and let all the universe say, Amen.

The doctrine taught in the text, that no human creature, in any country or grade of civilization, has ever glorified God to the extent of his knowledge of God, is very fertile in solemn and startling inferences, to some of which we now invite attention.

1.  In the first place, it follows from this affirmation of the apostle Paul, that the entire heathen world is in a state of condemnation and perdition.  He himself draws this inference, in saying that in the judgment “every mouth must be stopped, and the whole world become guilty before God.”