Page:On the Desert - Recent Events in Egypt.djvu/149

 outlived Joshua, who had seen all the great works of the Lord, that he did for Israel. Those were the days of peace and prosperity, when judges judged justly, and rulers ruled righteously. But then began a decline. In spite of every precaution, the nation fell back. They relapsed into idolatry, and even slaughtered human beings on their altars: "They sacrificed their sons and their daughters unto devils, and shed innocent blood, even the blood of their sons and of their daughters, whom they sacrificed unto the idols of Canaan, and the land was polluted with blood." Then they reaped the bitter fruits of disregarded wisdom. Moses had foretold the greatest calamities from such apostacy, and his predictions were literally fulfilled. The decline of the nation into idolatry introduced an element of discord which tore them to pieces by civil wars, and left them a prey to their powerful neighbors. Weakened by divisions, they were subjected to a foreign yoke, and at last were transported to Babylon as a nation of slaves. The same alternate rise and fall are repeated at many successive periods of their history.

Such is the story of the Hebrew Commonwealth — a story that has its counterpart in every age, and under all forms of government — always teaching the same lesson, that the decay of religion is the decadence of the state.

Is there nothing in all this worthy the notice of the political economists of our day? Are we grown so wise and great that we can despise the wisdom of antiquity and the experience of ages? History repeats itself nowhere more unerringly than in the rise and fall of nations. Human nature is the same in all ages and all countries, and the same causes produce the same effects. Nations seem to revolve in cycles as fixed as those of the planets in their