Christian revelation, whose notions respecting God and law are
exceedingly dim and inadequate; and there are others whose views are
clear and correct in a high degree. But there is not a person in this
city, young or old, rich or poor, ignorant or cultivated, in the purlieus
of vice or the saloons of wealth, whose knowledge of God is not in
advance of his own character and conduct. Every man, whatever be the
grade of his intelligence, knows more than he puts in practice. Ask the
young thief, in the subterranean haunts of vice and crime, if he does not
know that it is wicked to steal, and if he renders an honest answer, it
is in the affirmative. Ask the most besotted soul, immersed and
petrified in sensuality, if his course of life upon earth has been in
accordance with his own knowledge and conviction of what is right, and
required by his Maker, and he will answer No, if he answers truly. The
grade of knowledge in the Christian land is almost infinitely various;
but in every instance the amount of knowledge is greater than the amount
of virtue. Whether he knows little or much, the man knows more than he
performs; and _therefore_ his mouth must be stopped in the judgment, and
he must plead guilty before God. He will not be condemned for not
possessing that ethereal vision of God possessed by the seraphim; but he
will be condemned because his perception of the holiness and the holy
requirements of God was sufficient, at any moment, to rebuke his
disregard of them; because when he knew God in some degree, he glorified
him not as God up to that degree.

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