Man's fall was due to an attempt to acquire knowledge at the expense of heart culture. Here, amid the bowers of "paradise lost" is found the root of all false culture, and from that root the world has ever been filled with a noxious growth. True culture consists in a correction of the process which "Brought death into the world, And all our woe." Man in his spiritual nature must be educated back to the divine image from which he fell. No culture comprehending less than this has ever proved a permanent blessing to the race. The highest culture hitherto attained apart from Christianity was incapable of saving its devotees from ruin. Greece and Rome were never more cultured, in a popular sense, than when they began to go down in death. Materialistic culture was their winding-sheet, and "A Religion of the Flesh" should be their epitaph. As Christlieb has truly said: "Wherever civilization is not made to rest on the basis of moral and religious truth it can not attain to any permanent existence, and is incapable of preserving the nations possessed of it from spiritual starvation, to say nothing of political death." It is idle to boast of Liberty when the foundations of her temples are not laid in divine truth. Of this, Greece and Rome have furnished the world examples. In Greece freedom had a field peculiarly her own; she breathed her inspiration into the people, and her spirit into their literature; she lived in the deeds of their youth, and was sung by the muse of their bards. This spirit was diffused in Rome. Plato, Aristotle and Homer were transplanted to the Rhine, the Seine, and the Thames. Their land was full of liberty and culture, but not the liberty nor the culture of the soul. When we learn from Tacitus that "in the first century, in a time of famine, all the teachers of youth were banished from the city, and six thousand dancers were retained," we have an example of that culture which made Rome a sink of iniquity. It is not impossible that the fatal mistake of Greece and Rome should be repeated in our own country. We are venturing to some extent on the slippery places from which they fell. The evil star of their national ruin is that on which the eyes of many of our political leaders are fixed. The godless spirit that animated the Roman senate is being nursed into new life in American politics, and this nursing is not simply in the halls of legislation, but in the homes of the people. Here lies the trouble. If the American republic ever goes down in ruin, the power that hurls it from its high position will be enthroned in the family circle.