o independence of God; in Him, as a nation, no less than in
Him, as individuals, "we live, and move, and have our being!" GOD SAVE
OUR AMERICAN STATES!

A VOICE OF WARNING.

From "Things that Threaten the Destruction of American
Institutions," a sermon by T. DE WITT TALMAGE, delivered in
Brooklyn Tabernacle, October 12, 1884.

What! can a nation die? Yes; there has been great mortality among
monarchies and republics. Like individuals, they are born, have a middle
life and a decease, a cradle and a grave. Sometimes they are
assassinated and sometimes they suicide. Call the roll, and let some one
answer for them. Egyptian civilization, stand up! Dead, answer the ruins
of Karnak and Luxor. Dead, respond in chorus the seventy pyramids on the
east side the Nile. Assyrian Empire, stand up! Dead, answer the charred
ruins of Nineveh. After 600 years of opportunity, dead. Israelitish
Kingdom, stand up! After 250 years of miraculous vicissitude, and Divine
intervention, and heroic achievement, and appalling depravity, dead.
Phoenicia, stand up! After inventing the alphabet and giving it to the
world, and sending out her merchant caravans to Central Asia in one
direction, and her navigators into the Atlantic Ocean in another
direction, and 500 years of prosperity, dead. Dead, answer the "Pillars
of Hercules" and the rocks on which the Tyrian fishermen spread their
nets. Athens--after Phidias, after Demosthenes, after Miltiades, after
Marathon--dead. Sparta--after Leonidas, after Eurybiades, after Salamis,
after Thermopylae--dead.

Roman Empire, stand up and answer to the roll-call! Once bounded on the
north by the British Channel and on the south by the Sahara Desert of
Africa, on the east by the Euphrates and on the west by the Atlantic
Ocean. Home of three civilizations. Owning all the then discovered world
that was worth owning. Gibbon, in his "Rise and Fall of the Roman
Empire," answers, "Dead." And the vacated seats of the ruined Coliseum,
and the skeletons of the aqueduct, and the miasma of the Campagna, and
the fragments of the marble baths, and the useless piers of the bridge
Triumphalis, and the silenced forum, and the Mamertine dungeon, holding
no more apostolic prisoners; and the arch of Titus, and Basilica of
Constantine, and the Pantheon, lift up a nightly chorus of "Dead! dead!"
Dead, after Horace, and Virgil, and Tacitus, and Livy, and Cicero; after
Horatius of the bridge, and Cincinnatus, the f