If it be true that the pagan knows more of God and the moral law than he has ever put in practice; if it be true that the imbruted child of vice and pollution knows more of God and the moral law than he has ever put in practice; how much more fearfully true is it that the dweller in a Christian home, the visitant of the house of God, the possessor of the written Word, the listener to prayer and oftentimes the subject of it, possesses an amount of knowledge respecting his origin, his duty, and his destiny, that infinitely outruns his character and his conduct.  If eternal punishment will come down upon those classes of mankind who know but comparatively little, because they have been unfaithful in that which is least, surely eternal punishment will come down upon that more favored class who know comparatively much, because they have been unfaithful in that which is much.  “If these things are done in the green tree, what shall be done in the dry?”

The great charge that will rest against the creature when he stands before the final bar will be, that “when he knew God, he glorified Him not as God.”  And this will rest heaviest against those whose knowledge was the clearest.  It is a great prerogative to be able to know the infinite and glorious Creator; but it brings with it a most solemn responsibility.  That blessed Being, of right, challenges the homage and obedience of His creature.  What he asks of the angel, that he asks of man; that he should glorify God in his body and spirit which are His, and should thereby enjoy God forever and forever.  This is the condemnation, under which man, and especially enlightened and cultivated man, rests, that while he knows God he neither glorifies Him nor enjoys Him.  Our Redeemer saw this with all the clearness of the Divine Mind; and to deliver the creature from the dreadful guilt, of his self-idolatry, of his disposition to worship and love the creature more than the Creator, He became incarnate, suffered and died.  It cannot be a small crime, that necessitated, such an apparatus of atonement and Divine influences as that of Christ and His redemption.  Estimate the guilt of coming short of the glory of God, which is the same as the guilt of idolatry and creature-worship, by the nature of the provision that has been made to cancel it.  If you do not actually feel that this crime is great, then argue yourself towards a juster view, by the consideration that it cost the blood of Christ to expiate it.  If you do not actually feel that the guilt is great, then argue yourself towards a juster view, by the reflection that you have known God to be supremely great, supremely good, and supremely excellent, and yet you have never, in a single feeling of your heart, or a single thought of your mind, or a single purpose of your will, honored Him.  It is honor, reverence, worship, and love that He requires.  These you have never rendered; and there is an infinity of guilt in the fact.  That guilt will be forgiven for Christ’s sake, if you ask for forgiveness.  But if you do not ask, then it will stand recorded against you for eternal ages:  “When he, a rational and immortal creature, knew God, he glorified Him not as God.”