We must go even farther than this, and concede that here and there among these crowds of worshipers there may be one who is a sincere seeker after God and, according to the light that he has, is trying honestly to serve him. I do not mean a selfish service of ignorant and earthly passion, but a service prompted by some elementary knowledge of the true God, gained by contemplation of his works in nature or from the needs of his own soul revealed in conscience. Surely there was truth and sincerity in the worship of Socrates, of Epictetus, of Marcus Aurelius. The patriarchs had knowledge of God and walked with God, long before Christ came. And Scripture itself declares that in every nation he that fears God and works righteousness is accepted by him. David Brainerd found among the American Indians a man who for years had separated himself from the wickedness of his people, and had devoted himself to doing them good. Now and then our missionaries find a heathen whose strivings after God have been prompted by a sense of sin, and whose worship must have been accepted by the God of love. Though there is "none other name given among men whereby we may be saved," we cannot doubt that every man who feels himself to be a sinner, and casts himself upon God's mercy for salvation, does really though unconsciously cast himself upon Christ, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, and so joins himself to Christ by the teaching and power of Christ's Spirit, as to be saved in some measure from the dominion of sin here and from the penalty of sin hereafter. I am a believer in the unity, the sufficiency, and the authority of Scripture--in its unity, when the parts are put together in their historical connections and with the key to their meaning furnished us in Christ; in its sufficiency, as a rule of religious faith and practice; and in its authority, when rightly interpreted with the aid of the Holy Spirit. So I am prepared to find in the first chapter of Paul's Epistle to the Romans the true philosophy of heathenism, and the reconciliation of the otherwise seemingly conflicting utterances of Scripture with regard to the religious nature of man. I learn that God made man upright, and endowed him with at least a childlike knowledge of himself. But early humanity sought out many inventions, did not wish to retain God in its knowledge, and substituted for the true God creatures of its own imagination. In other words, the scriptural explanation of heathenism is found in an original ancestral sin, in which the human race departed from the true God and gave itself up to the worship, first, of impersonal nature-powers, and then, of the polytheistic personifications of these powers which naturally followed.