It will be noticed that eternal life depends on the infallible element of conscience, while stupendous, yet only mundane, interests depend upon its fallible element. This is a mystery that perplexes a great many people. Is ignorance an excuse? Does it not matter what you believe, just so you are honest? The highest and best thing anybody can ever do, is to follow his conscience, or the voice of his highest moral and spiritual nature. This the teaching of Scripture from Genesis to Revelation. To teach that God would damn a soul for doing this is destructive of all moral distinctions, and is as abominable as the old doctrine that God elects certain people and damns others irrespective of their thoughts and conduct. Ignorance is an excuse if it is _innocent ignorance_. What about those who are willfully ignorant? or those who have a seared conscience? They are not following their conscience at all. Conscience insists that we make every possible effort to get the truth. By a seared conscience we mean a person who does not follow his conscience at all, and he knows it. We know that ignorant innocence is an excuse in the sight of God, but we do not know who is innocently ignorant. The former fact is revealed to us in the Bible, but the latter is known only to God. Therefore in these matters we should "judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come, who will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and make manifest the counsels of the heart; and then shall each man have his praise from God" (I Cor. 4:5). Nothing has ever been revealed more clearly in the Bible than that innocent ignorance is an excuse in the sight of God. The cities of refuge and the entire ceremonial law were based upon this fact. Christ said, "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do" (Luke 23:34). James says, "To him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin" (Jas. 4:17). In Acts 17:30 we read, "The times of ignorance therefore God overlooked." In the second chapter of Romans Paul makes it clear that each person shall be judged by the light that comes to him, whether in or out of the law or of the gospel. Heathen people, who never heard the gospel, will not be condemned for rejecting the gospel, but for rejecting the light that came to them through their conscience and through other sources. "For this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil" (John 3:19). But we will be condemned if we do not do all in our power to bring the gospel to the heathen.