public opinion with the powers of deity, while he is the slave of all the weaknesses of humanity.  But such, as an historic fact, has been the last stage of every civilisation—­even that of Rome, which ripened itself upon this earth the last in ancient times, and, I had almost said, until this very day, except among the men who speak Teutonic tongues, and who have preserved through all temptations, and reasserted through all dangers, the free ideas which have been our sacred heritage ever since Tacitus beheld us, with respect and awe, among our German forests, and saw in us the future masters of the Roman Empire.

Yes, it is very sad, the past history of mankind.  But shall we despise those who went before us, and on whose accumulated labours we now stand?

Shall we not reverence our spiritual ancestors?  Shall we not show our reverence by copying them, at least whenever, as in those old Persians, we see in them manliness and truthfulness, hatred of idolatries, and devotion to the God of light and life and good?  And shall we not feel pity, instead of contempt, for their ruder forms of government, their ignorances, excesses, failures—­so excusable in men who, with little or no previous teaching, were trying to solve for themselves for the first time the deepest social and political problems of humanity.

Yes, those old despotisms we trust are dead, and never to revive.  But their corpses are the corpses, not of our enemies, but of our friends and predecessors, slain in the world-old fight of Ormuzd against Ahriman—­light against darkness, order against disorder.  Confusedly they fought, and sometimes ill:  but their corpses piled the breach and filled the trench for us, and over their corpses we step on to what should be to us an easy victory—­what may be to us, yet, a shameful ruin.

For if we be, as we are wont to boast, the salt of the earth and the light of the world, what if the salt should lose its savour?  What if the light which is in us should become darkness?  For myself, when I look upon the responsibilities of the free nations of modern times, so far from boasting of that liberty in which I delight—­and to keep which I freely, too, could die—­I rather say, in fear and trembling, God help us on whom He has laid so heavy a burden as to make us free; responsible, each individual of us, not only to ourselves, but to Him and all mankind.  For if we fall we shall fall I know not whither, and I dare not think.

How those old despotisms, the mighty empires of old time, fell, we know, and we can easily explain.  Corrupt, luxurious, effeminate, eaten out by universal selfishness and mutual fear, they had at last no organic coherence.  The moral anarchy within showed through, at last burst through, the painted skin of prescriptive order which held them together.  Some braver and abler, and usually more virtuous people, often some little, hardy, homely mountain tribe, saw that the fruit was ripe for gathering; and, caring naught for