an epidemic of
faithlessness, when the social bond seems loosened, when men's hands
are raised against each other, when confidence is paralyzed, and people
hardly know whom to trust.

The prophet Micah, who lived in such a time, expresses this state of
distrust: "Trust ye not any friend, put ye no confidence in a familiar
friend. A man's enemies are of his own household." This means
anarchy, and society becomes like a bundle of sticks with the cord cut.
The cause is always a decay of religion; for law is based on morality,
and morality finds its strongest sanction in religion. Selfishness
results in anarchy, a reversion to the Ishmaelite type of life.

The story of the French Revolution has in it some of the darkest pages
in the history of modern civilization, due to the breakdown of social
trust. The Revolution, like Saturn, took to devouring her own
children. Suspicion, during the reign of terror, brooded over the
heads of men, and oppressed their hearts. The ties of blood and
fellowship seemed broken, and the sad words of Christ had their horrid
fulfilment, that the brother would deliver up the brother to death, and
the father the child, and the children rise up against the parents and
cause them to be put to death. There are some awful possibilities in
human nature. In Paris of these days a man had to be ever on his
guard, to watch his acts, his words, even his looks. It meant for a
time a collapse of the whole idea of the state. It was a panic, worse
than avowed civil war. Friendship, of course, could have little place
in such a frightful palsy of mutual confidence, though there were, for
the honor of the race, some noble exceptions. The wreck of friendship
through deceit is always a step toward social anarchy; for it helps to
break down trust and good faith among men.

The wreck of friendship is also a blow to religion. Many have lost
their faith in God, because they have lost, through faithlessness,
their faith in man. Doubt of the reality of love becomes doubt of the
reality of the spiritual life. To be unable to see the divine in man,
is to have the eyes blinded to the divine anywhere. Deception in the
sphere of love shakes the foundation of religion. Its result is
atheism, not perhaps as a conscious speculative system of thought, but
as a subtle practical influence on conduct. It corrupts the fountain
of life, and taints the whole stream. Despair of love, if final and
complete, would be d