The Natural History of Paganism.
I. St. Paul's first proposition is, that from the first the heathen knew enough of God from His works to render them without excuse for not worshipping Him.
II. Secondly, the Apostle declares that the heathen have culpably repressed and hindered from its just influence the truth which they did know respecting God. He traces polytheistic and idolatrous worship to its root. (1) Its first origin he finds in a refusal to walk honestly by such light as nature afforded. For this primary step in the very old and very fatal path of religious declension men could excuse themselves under no plea of ignorance. (2) The next step followed surely. That truth about God's real nature and properties, which men would not strive fairly to express in their worship, became obscured. Vanity and errors entered into human reasonings on religion. "Men became vain in their reasonings, and their senseless heart was darkened." (3) The third step downward was practical folly in religion. Nature worship involved symbol worship. Symbol worship rapidly degenerated into sheer idol worship.
III. It is in this deplorable and criminal perversion of the truth, this religious apostasy, that Paul finds a key to the personal and social vices of heathendom. When the human heart shut out the self-manifestation of the true God, refused to know Him, and worshipped base creatures in His room, it cut itself off by its own act from the source of moral light and moral strength. A bad and false religion must breed a bad and false character. It ought never to be forgotten that heathenism is not simply a misfortune in the world for which the bulk of men are to be pitied but not blamed. It is a crime a huge, next to world-wide, age-long crime, with its roots in a deep hatred of God, and bearing a prolific crop of utterly inexcusable and hideous vices. To prove this is the end for which the passage is introduced by St. Paul.
J. Oswald Dykes, The Gospel according to St. Paul,p. 25.
References: Romans 1:19. Church of England Pulpit,vol. xix., p. 303; G. Dawson, Sermons on Disputed Points,p. 49; F. W. Farrar, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xiii., p. 289. Romans 1:20. G. Salmon, Non-Miraculous Christianity,pp. 74, 94; R. S. Candlish, The Fatherhood of God,p. 1.Romans 1:20; Romans 1:21. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xxx., No. 1763.Romans 1:21. Clergyman's Magazine,vol. i., p. 20; H. W. Beecher, Catholic Sermons,vol. ii., p. 97. Romans 1:21-25. Ibid.,vol. i., p. 297.