sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned." In chap. v, 19," By one man's disobedience many were made sinners:" St. Paul says, "the many," i.e., all; but this is one of those imperfections which disfigure our version, to which no man must shut his eyes who, before all things, loves the truth. In vi, 17, "Ye were the servants of sin, but"-of course ye are so no longer. In vi, 20-22 (to quote but one passage further), "When ye were the servants of sin, ye were free from (void of) righteousness. What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed? (for the end of those things is death.) But now, being made free from sin and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life." It will help us much in apprehending the full force of this, and similar language, if we bear in mind that, wherever the word "servant" occurs in our version, it is in the Greek "slave." But the two words are essentially distinct. A servant is a free man, who voluntarily undertakes to serve for reward, and who is dishonest if he fall short in his duty. Having undertaken, he is, of course, no longer free, but is under obligation, moral and legal. But a slave does not voluntarily enter his servitude. He has no choice in the matter. For, although a slave may grow to love his master, and to serve him with pleasure, yet no

And

slave begins his slavery of his own free will. this is exactly the state of man by nature of a heathen man. He is a slave born of a slave. "By one man's disobedience" (not his own) he has been "made" a sinner. He is that "creature" spoken of further on in this epistle (viii, 20) who has been "made subject to vanity, not willingly." He is the slave of sin; not merely its servant, but under its dominion. Satan makes this "bondage of corruption " as pleasant as he may. The iron that enters into the soul is wreathed with many flowers, and the Circean cup of poison is made sweet to lips of flesh and blood; but yet man, sprung from the loins of him whom God made in His own image, does not altogether, even in the depths of heathendom, forget that high lineage, but frets impatiently for the "glorious liberty of the children of God." The history of his efforts after that freedom from sin, in various ages among various races, is a fine, though melancholy, chapter in the annals of human kind. Those efforts were, of course, vain. "The desire of all nations" was He whom as yet they knew not.

Christ Jesus alone is their Saviour-their Deliverer from the slavery in which they are born: literally, their Redeemer. This, I say again, in resuming the thread of the argument of this epistle, is the apostle's great thought throughout it. The Gospel of Christ alone is

"the power of God" exerted with a view to man's deliverance from that bondage in which he is by

nature.

Now let us, with the apostle, take a rapid view of the heathen men in his times. The only heathens he knew lay within the limits of the old Roman empire, and not all of them probably. Those at any rate, of whom he had most intimate knowledge, were the Greek-speaking people of the then civilized world.

These were the most cultivated races on the face of the earth. In literature, both poetry and prose, and in many of the arts, we flatter ourselves when we assert our equality with them. Yet, remember, these are the very people whose moral character is sketched out in the first chapter of this epistle. The apostle had no knowledge of the heathens whom we know-those six hundred millions of our fellow-men-Mohammedans, Hindoos, Buddhists, and others, who are still outside of the fold of Christ. But there is so much general resemblance between all heathens, past and present, in all climates, that the description in the main holds good still. Every heathen that was, and is, on the earth, was, and is, "under sin." The Prince of this world sits on their thrones and his foot is on their necks. The exact method and degree of each man's service to that master may have differed. Each race, age, climate, may have had vices peculiar to itself.

But, speaking of all heathendom in the mass, the moral difference between different races is unappreciable.

Satan, like other masters, sets his slaves to various tasks-each to that in which he is most apt. But the work they do is all his. And they are all declared in the sacred Scripture of Truth to be "dead in sins." (Eph. ii, 5.) Now, there are no gradations in death. It is one, the same, absolute. For changeless uniformity there is nothing like death, whether temporal or spiritual.

But, to the apostle's picture of the spiritually dead in his days-The first four verses of this passage, beginning with verse 18, are an affirmation that the heathens had law, or such knowledge of God as left them "without excuse.'

"For the wrath of God"-I speak of deliverance from sin-"for," because "the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness." "The wrath of God from heaven" is St. Paul's expression: Divine vengeance from the hand of the God of heaven "is revealed;" how? mainly by or through that inner voice called " conscience." So the apostle says in ii, 15: The heathens "show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the meanwhile accusing or else excusing one

another." It is manifest, throughout their literature, that they felt the heavenly wrath against crime. The fearful picture which their most tragic poet has drawn of a criminal, lashed by the Furies through the world, is but his conception of Conscience doing her pitiless work. And this is not a solitary picture. I know no description of the horrors of an evil conscience at all equal to one written by a heathen* about fifty years after Paul wrote this epistle. God has never permitted any race of mankind so far to lose sight of His supreme will as to account all actions indifferent and know no distinction betwixt good and evil. All heathens have known what is "ungodliness," or "sin against God," and "unrighteousness," or "sin against man." They have known, further, that "the wrath of God from heaven is due to sin. They have known (i, 32) "the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death." But the apostle calls these heathens

men who hold the truth in unrighteousness." Here there is diversity of interpretation, some understanding the apostle to be speaking of those philosophers or wiser men among the heathens who, knowing some Divine truth themselves, unrighteously withheld it from the people (for the word which is rendered "hold" in our version may also be rendered "withhold "); others supposing his meaning to be "men who, through un

*Juvenal, Sat. xiii.