Not in relation to this or that earthly factor has this question to be
considered. It is in relation to the Moral Order of the universe that
we must face it. The unseen Power that reigns is a Moral Power.
Somewhere in this universe, Righteousness is throned. Whatever race in
the past surrendered to evil and made degeneracy its god--upon that
race the judgment of the consuming sword fell. Though the {52}
judgment often tarried, it always fell. As one considers the moral
condition to which we have come, the worse condition to which we are
hastening, the destruction which befell those of old in whose footsteps
we are now treading, the dust accumulated on buried cities and vanished
races who made their pleasure their god, and the flaming of the sword
wherewith God removed in all ages the cankerous growth from the body of
humanity,--the question leaps forth: How can we escape the righteous
judgment of God? Will there be found a place of repentance for us who
have sacrificed the child of flesh and blood to the calf of gold[7] and
have surrendered ourselves to the sensuous delights of worshipping at
our chosen idol's shrine? Unless the nation finds the place of
repentance, it needs no prophet to foretell the end. For we have been
living for more than a generation a life 'such as God has never
suffered man to lead on earth long, which He has always {53} crushed
out by calamity or revolution.' And the startling fact is this--that
when the judgment of God befell, it was on men unconscious that they
were being judged. They came to the Great White Throne and never
discerned it; they reached the end and never knew it to be the end.
Thus they perished--Babylon and Rome alike. And we are as they. The
judgment-seat is visible in the heavens, but our eyes never turn to it;
amid the crash of the world's civilisation we hear no voice calling to
repentance.

[1] _The Declining Birthrate_, p. 90.

[2] P. 125.

[3] _Report of Royal Commission on V. D._, p. 23.

[4] _Ibid._, p. 55.

[5] _The Nineteenth Century and After_, April 1916.

[6] _The Declining Birthrate_, p. 248:--

Deaths in antenatal period . . . . . . . . . 138,249
Fewer births owing to reduced birthrate . . 467,837
-------
Total loss for 1914 . . . . . . . . . . . . 606,086

[7] See pp. 85-88.

{54}

CHAPTER III

THE EMPTY COUNTRYSIDE

In the past the decay of civilisation h