Therefore, in order that men may be trained and educated and perfected, they are placed amid such scenes, experiences, and trials as shall draw out the moral powers of the soul, shall strengthen and confirm the will in goodness, and establish them in the law of their being, so that their moral future is secure. "Life, thus ordered, is a magnificent scheme to bring out the value of law, and teach the necessity of right as the only conserving principle of order and happiness; teaching the more powerfully, if so it must, by disorder and sorrow." Suffering is a chastisement which is wholesome: it teaches the blessedness of purity and the sinfulness of sin; and it may develop into "a godly sorrow" which shall heal and purify the soul. The moral government of God is an equitable administration, in which responsibility is graduated on the scale of available light and opportunity. "This is the condemnation that _light_ is come into the world." Light is the symbol of knowledge, because it _reveals_ the right and clearly manifests what duty is. Light is consequently the exact measure of responsibility. Our knowledge of what we ought to do, or ought not to do, determines the degree of our accountability. An absolute and involuntary ignorance would be the most perfect plea of innocence. The imputation of sin in such a case would be made void, but thereby the completeness of human nature be destroyed. That which would relegate man from the sphere of responsibility would also banish him from the sphere of rationality. St. Paul distinctly recognizes an alleviation of responsibility and guilt in the "ignorance" of heathen life, and speaks of a Divine "overlooking of the times of that ignorance"--a non-imputation of sins committed in ignorance. But he does not by any means account the sinning heathen as free from _all_ guilt. He shows that they were not in utter ignorance, and that much of their ignorance was voluntary. He refers to the original consciousness of God, and to the fact that this consciousness is kept alive by the revelation of God in nature; and he shows that the disorder of their religious and moral life resulted from the voluntary suppression of this consciousness--"When they knew God, they glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened." He also appeals to the no less definite power of conscience in the heart of the heathen, "which shows the works required by the law to be written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness to this law, and their thoughts approving or condemning each other," and their civil laws "adjudging their crimes as worthy of death." So far as their ignorance was involuntary it was an alleviation of guilt, though not an excuse for all sin. Whatever light they had, be it little or much, it was the standard and measure of their accountability.