Human Governments and Their Decline
We note in the Cincinnati Post of recent date the following words of dissent from the popular opinion that human nature and human governments are progressing toward a state of peace and perfection. The dissenter is the Rev. S. E. Bowdle, who, after setting forth the retrograde tendency of all human governments which appears “at periods of prodigal prosperity” and “riotous power,” and is an “infallible, persistent, and historic symptom of the retrograde movement of man, nationally considered,” says:— Reader, how many men do you know who are above the corrupting influences of vanity, ambition, and the love of money? Blush, and honestly answer this question, and then behold in your answer the simple reason of the decline and fall of popular government. Behold a race of men, afflicted with the leprosy of self-interest, from which it can in no wise cleanse itself. Here lies the staggering difficulty, unsolvable by man; a difficulty in whose presence nineteen centuries of education stand confounded. Behold the race with teeth and claws of avarice and self absolutely unaffected by the vaunted educational processes of centuries. And in your despairing perplexity read the forty-fourth verse of the second chapter of Daniel, for there is the solution. This race has reckoned without Jehovah. It must shortly reckon with him.