d the epitaph of nations and individuals is the record of their
defeat in this struggle to be masters and not slaves of their
material and intellectual attainments. Greece, the most intellectual
of all nations of all times, died in mental senility of moral
paralysis. Of Socrates's and Plato's "following after truth" nothing
remained but the gossipy curiosity of a second childhood, living
only to tell or to hear some new thing. And the schools of
philosophy were closed because they had nothing to tell which was
worth the knowing or hearing. All the wealth of the world was poured
into Rome, the home of Stoic philosophy, and it was smothered, and
died in rottenness under its material prosperity.

A family, race, or nation starts out fresh in its youthful physical
and mental vigor and strict obedience to moral law and in its faith
in God. For these reasons it survives in the struggle for existence.
It grows in extent and power, in intelligence and wealth. But with
this increase in wealth and power comes a deadening of the mind to
the claims of moral law, and an idolatrous worship of material
prosperity. The new generation looks upon the stern morality and
industry and self-control of its ancestors as straight-laced and
narrow. Morality may not be unfashionable, but any stern rebuke of
immorality is not conventional. Strong moral earnestness and
whole-souled loyalty to truth are not in good form. Wealth and
social position become the chief ends of men's efforts, and, to buy
these, unselfishness and truth and self-respect are bartered away.
Luxury, enervation, and effeminacy are rife, and snobbery follows
close behind them. The ancestral vigor, the insight to recognize
great moral principles, and the power to gladly hazard all in their
defence have disappeared in a mist of indifference, which beclouds
the eyes and benumbs all the powers. The race of giants is dwindling
into dwarfs. They say, when the time comes, we will rouse ourselves
and be like our fathers. And the crisis comes, but they are not
equal to it. The nation has long enough cumbered the ground, it has
already died by suicide and must now give place to a race and
civilization which has some aim in, and hence right to, existence,
and which is of some use to itself and others. If we would learn by
observation, and not by sad experience, we must remember that man is
above all, and must be a religious being conforming to the
personality of the God manifested in his