iumph of energy and skill, when the
moral health was completely undermined? A world therefore as fair and
glorious as our own must needs crumble away. There were no powerful
conservative forces; the poison had descended to the extremities of the
social system. A corrupt body must die when vitality has fled. The soul
was gone; principle, patriotism, virtue, had all passed away. The
barbarians were advancing to conquer and desolate; there was no power to
resist them but enervated and timid legions, with the accumulated vices
of all the nations of the earth, which they had been learning for four
hundred years. Society must needs resolve itself into its original
elements when men would not make sacrifices, and so few belonged to
their country. The machine was sure to break up at the first great
shock. No State could stand with such an accumulation of wrongs, with
such complicated and fatal diseases eating out the vitals of the
empire. No form of civilization, however brilliant and lauded, could
arrest decay and ruin when public and private virtue had fled. The house
was built upon the sand.

The army might rally under able generals, in view of the approaching
catastrophe; philosophy might console the days of a few indignant
citizens; good Emperors might attempt to raise barriers against
corruption,--still, nothing, according to natural laws, could save the
empire. Even Christianity could not arrest the ruin. It had converted
thousands, and had sowed the seeds of future and better civilizations.
It was sent, however, not to save a decayed and demoralized empire, but
the world itself. Not until the Germanic barbarians, with their nobler
elements of character, had taken possession of the seats of the old
civilization, were the real triumphs of Christianity seen. Had the Roman
empire continued longer, Christianity might have become still more
corrupted; in the prevailing degeneracy it certainly could not save what
was not worth preserving. The strong grasp which Rome had laid upon the
splendors of all the ancient Pagan Civilizations was to be relaxed.
Antiquity had lived out its life. The empire of the Caesars was doomed.
Retributive justice must march on in its majestic course. The empire had
accomplished its mission; the time came for it to die. The Sibylline
oracle must needs be fulfilled: "O haughty Rome, the divine chastisement
shall come upon thee; fire shall consume thee; thy wealth shall perish;
foxes and wolves shall d