Thus, with the frightful decay of Christian, and even manly virtue--alas! too plainly visible all around us--and the entire divorcement of morality or religious ideas from politics, what fate is in store for us but the inevitable triumph of anarchy, and through it of despotism? Herein lies our real danger. The great struggle is _not_, as many assert, between aristocracy, or monarchy, or despotism and democracy. But it is between despotism or absolutism and constitutionalism. It is the struggle of the pagan system (revived by the renaissance), based on the idea that 'man is his own end,' with the Christian system based on the idea of mediation, involving the idea that the true end of man is God. It is not true, therefore, that democratic institutions are now on trial in the United States. Democracy, pure and simple, precisely in the form it is assuming or has assumed in this country, was tried long ago. It was tried in ancient Greece, and found wanting. It was tried in Rome, and ended in the dissolution of the empire. And in both these trials it had, to begin with, a much more highly finished, fresh, robust, and whole-souled manhood to work with and to work upon than that of modern democracy. More recently it was tried in France, and for the present is blooming in the despotism of Napoleon III. The question, then, I repeat, is whether constitutionalism, as originally developed in England and embodied and reproduced by our fathers--who, perhaps, 'builded wiser than they knew'--can come safely through this crisis and triumph over the two ideas which, thus far, have predominated in the American mind, and driven us with fearful strides toward absolutism. 'Every man for himself' is the first idea. In the family, in church, in politics, in commerce, in all social and political relations, every man striving, pushing, scrambling, straining every nerve to advance himself, regardless of his neighbor or the public interest--such everywhere is the confused and hideous picture of American society. Selfishness predominates, and selfishness is repellant. So it was before the ages were, when Lucifer, in the pride of self, refused obedience to the Word. So it is even yet, and its inevitable tendency is to hostile isolation and final dissolution. Its logical consequence is anarchy. But anarchy is intolerable, and a civilized people, yea, even barbarians, will submit to anything rather than social and political chaos. Then comes the iron band of despotism to hold together the antagonistic fragments.