"As far as man's reason has applied itself to the discovery of truth or _duty_ it has generally gone astray."[372] "Questions of morals do not, for the most part, lie level to the minds of the populace."[373] "Their conclusions have no _authority_, and place them under no _obligation_."[374] And, indeed, man without a revelation "is without _moral control_, without _principles of justice_, except such as may be slowly elaborated from those relations which concern the grosser interests of life, without _conscience_, without hope or fear in another life."[375] [Footnote 372: "Institutes of Theology," vol. ii. p. 470.] [Footnote 373: Ibid., vol. i. p. 15.] [Footnote 374: Ibid., vol. i. p. 228.] [Footnote 375: Ibid., vol. ii. p. 271.] Now we shall not occupy our space in the elaboration of the proposition that the universal consciousness of our race, as revealed in human history, languages, legislations, and sentiments, bears testimony to the fact that the ideas of right, duty, and responsibility are native to the human mind; we shall simply make our appeal to those Sacred Writings whose verdict must be final with all theologians. That the fundamental principles of the moral law do exist, subjectively, in all human minds is distinctly affirmed by Paul, in a passage which deserves to be regarded as the chief corner-stone of moral science. "The Gentiles (ἔθνη, heathen), which have not the written law, do by the guidance of nature (reason or conscience) the works enjoined by the revealed law; these, having no written law, are a law unto themselves; who show plainly the works of the law written on their hearts, their conscience bearing witness, and also their reasonings one with another, when they accuse, or else excuse, each other."[376] To deny this is to relegate the heathen from all responsibility. For Mr. Watson admits "that the will of a superior is not in justice binding unless it be in some mode sufficiently declared." Now in the righteous adjudgments of revelation the heathen are "without excuse." The will of God must, therefore, be "sufficiently declared" to constitute them accountable. Who will presume to say that the shadowy, uncertain, variable, easily and unavoidably corrupted medium of tradition running through forty muddy centuries is a "sufficient declaration of the will of God?" The law is "written on the heart" of every man, or all men are not accountable. [Footnote 376: Romans, ch. ii. ver. 14-15.]