Social morality grew exceedingly lax; marriage became unfashionable and was avoided; many of the more ambitious and accomplished women were avowed courtesans, and consequently infertile; and the mothers of the incoming population were of a heterogeneous class."[38] What was it that made the Egyptian civilization one of the longest-lived of ancient civilizations?
Was it not, as we now find by her monuments, that the position of women was high; the wife was enthroned by the side of her husband, and impurity was condemned by the moral sense of the nation?
What was it that enabled our barbaric ancestors, the Teutons, to overthrow the whole power of civilized Rome?
On the authority of Tacitus, we know that they were singularly pure.

Their women were held in the highest reverence, and believed to have something divine about them, some breath of prophetic insight.

Their young men were not allowed to marry till they were five-and-twenty--in other words, till their frame was thoroughly matured.

Impurity before marriage was strongly discountenanced in both sexes.

Therefore the whole power of Rome, honeycombed as it was by moral corruption and sexual vice, could not stand before these pure barbarians.
And if these mighty civilizations have perished from moral causes, do we really think that the moral law--will "Of which the solid earth and sky Are but the fitful shadows cast on high"-- suspend its operation out of compliment to the greatness of the British empire or of the American Republic, if they, too, become morally corrupt; or will not those old vanished nations, in the magnificent words of the Hebrew prophet, greet the phantom of their departed greatness in the land of shadows: "What, art thou, also, become weak as we?
Art thou also like unto us?
Thy pomp is brought down to the grave; the worm is spread under thee, and the worms cover thee." "We talk of our greatness," says Mr.Froude; "do we really know in what a nation's greatness consists?
Whether it be great or little depends entirely on what sort of men and women it is producing.