It is doubtless impossible to estimate with entire
correctness the relative value of the different forces that advance or
retard civilization, but we believe the weight of historic evidence
goes to prove that religious skepticism was the actual cause, as it
has always been the inevitable precursor, of national decay. Coleridge
in _The Friend_ quotes the historian Polybius as attributing the
strength of the Roman republic to the general reverence of the
invisible powers, _and the consequent horror in which the breaking of
an oath was held._ This he thought the _causa causarum_ of Roman
grandeur; and he attributed the ruin of the Greek states to the
frequency of perjury resulting from the atheism taught by the
Sophists. Goethe says somewhere that "all epochs in which faith has
prevailed have been the most heart-stirring and fruitful both as
regard contemporaries and posterity; whereas all epochs in which
unbelief obtains its miserable triumphs, even when they boast of some
apparent brilliancy, are not less surely doomed to speedy oblivion."
This assertion is notably true of the histories of Judea, Greece,
Rome, and Spain.
Pages:
318
319
320
321
322
323
324
325
326
327
328
329
330
331
332
333
334
335
336
337
338
339
340
341
342