Romans 1:22

22. Wise In discarding the primitive belief in God the first proud pretenders claimed credit for great worldly wisdom.

Fools As the idolatrous and depraving results showed. When the Psalmist said, The fool saith in his heart there is no God, we have the same profession of superiority over the poor pietists who worship the Creator, and the same fact of the being a fool.

And precisely as this proud destitution of the religious sentiment grows, either atheism or idol-worship is asserted. In our own day it is affirmed by some would-be philosophers that even a religion may exist in the mind of an atheist; and others claim that the being an atheist is no depreciation of a man’s moral worth. Doubtless a man can exist with a purpose of obeying the law of right who does not positively believe in the existence of God. Yet, as before said, the non-acknowledgment of God is not merely an intellectual defect, but a moral delinquency in itself. It renders prayer and communion with the Holy One impossible; it destroys all view of a divine moral government, all trust in the rule of an omnipotent reason, all firm hope of an immortality and retribution beyond the grave. The spiritual and religious sentiments and emotions are lost, and the moral sentiments and purposes fed and sustained by these become withered and dead. Theories of sensualism, animalism, and base development succeed, and though a few philosophers may act the part of sages, statesmen, or philanthropists, yet the masses will plunge into lawlessness and bestiality. Thus professing to be wise, even the philosophic few will be found to be false philanthropists and fools.