So that this Fifth Gospel deals not only with the past, but it deals with the present and with the future, and sounds this note of warning to the Gentile nations upon the promised land of America. Notwithstanding the strength and pride and power of these nations in these days of their glory, the Fifth Gospel warns them that they hold their proud stations upon the condition of their faithfulness to God and their receiving the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is worthy of God to reveal the conditions upon which the nations of the western world in pride of place may hold their stations among the nations of the earth; and it is a matter worthy the consideration of these nations to give heed to such a warning. Let no nation think itself beyond the power of God; for it is not. Imperial Rome was as confident of her ability to perpetuate her power as any nation of the western world is today; and he who would have dared to suggest that Rome could be humbled, and pass away as a dream of the night, would doubtless have been thought wanting in patriotism; yet Rome was humbled. The half-naked hordes from the woods and plains of Germany reveled in the palaces of the Caesars. Romans in their pride were wont to say of the Coliseum in which Christians had suffered martyrdom at the hands of brute men and brute beasts, merely to grace a Roman holiday: "While stands the Coliseum, Rome stands, when falls the Coliseum, Rome falls; when Rome, the world!" The Coliseum stands in ruins. Rome, as an empire, is only a name held in memory by history. But the world fell not when Rome fell; and as it has been in the past, so, too, it may be in the future. If God's conditions are not complied with, then as a potsherd will he break that nation that rises up in proud rebellion against him. This is God's earth. It is his by right of proprietorship, for he created it; and by various means is he and not man guiding its destinies. Those who hold power and authority in it hold it in trust from him, and only in trust; and the nation that is unfaithful to that trust must account to God for it. Hence I conclude that this warning that comes from the Fifth Gospel, is important; it announces a mighty, a solemn truth, an awful warning, to which ministers of any faith, and the nations addressed, will do well to take heed.