“The reason for the decline in America is said to be that women are becoming neurotic, and will not face the dangers and responsibilities of motherhood. No doubt that is true to a certain extent here also, and it is quite certain that among intellectual and highly-educated women, such as are trained at our universities in increasing numbers, the maternal instinct, the capacity for love, if you like to put it in that way, is apt to be destroyed. “Then, among the middle classes thousands of young women, who not many years ago would have looked to marriage as their natural career, are earning their own livings, and are less eager to rush into matrimony.” I have taken these extracts from the words of a few people crying in the wilderness. All of the dicta are at least eighteen months old. I am writing now, in November 1906, and three days ago the apparently inevitable paragraph again made its appearance:-- “RECORD LOW BIRTH-RATE. “The births registered in England and Wales during the three months ended September 30--234,624, or 26·9 per 1,000 of the population--was the lowest rate recorded in any third quarter since civil registration was established. “The average in the same quarters of the past ten years was 28·8.” These opinions as to the reasons for the terrible decadence of England are doubtless all true. They are all contributory causes, and I do not think we can put a single one of them aside. Nothing could be more dismal or more hopeless reading. As one goes on, one experiences a sense as of a chill, deepening shadow. Few people who read will be able to adopt the average man’s attitude towards unpleasant and disturbing matters--to sidle by with a deprecatory shrug of the shoulders. Where then do we stand? So far I have endeavoured to show (_a_) the entire indifference of the ordinary man and woman to the fall in the birth-rate; (_b_) the only light, in which, as I understand it, one can see the problem as a whole--in the light of the Incarnation; (_c_) the fact that the Christian Sociologist to-day is inclined to condemn the theory that the limitation of population is necessary at all, even by legitimate methods of abstinence and control; (_d_) the varied reasons which, in the opinion of those who have studied the question deeply, contribute to the one central and shocking fact-- _That incredible numbers of English men and women many of them professing themselves Christians, are constantly using methods to prevent the birth of children._