Beacon Lights of History, Volume 02

ters on tiles. With all this material progress, however, there had been a steady decline in spiritual religion as well as in morals,--from which fact we infer that men if left to themselves, whatever truth they may receive from ancestors, will, without supernatural influences, constantly decline in those virtues on which the strength of man is built, and without which the proudest triumphs of the intellect avail nothing. The grandest civilization, in its material aspects, may coexist with the utmost debasement of morals,--as seen among the Greeks and Romans, and in the wicked capitals of modern Europe. "There is no God!" or "Let there be no God!" has been the cry in all ages of the world, whenever and wherever an impious pride or a low morality has defied or silenced conscience. Tell me, ye rationalists and agnostics! with your pagan sympathies, what mean ye by laws of development, and by the necessary progress of the human race, except in the triumphs of that kind of knowledge which is entirely disc