This verse gives us a vivid picture of the desolating and disorganising power of war. The 25th and 26th verses of the previous chapter say "Thy men shall fall by the sword, and thy mighty in the war. And her gates shall lament and mourn, and she being desolate shall sit on the ground." This righteous chastisement has come. So often have the men been called into the field, so exterminating has been the carnage, as that now few men remain. The natural proportion of the sexes is disturbed. This disorganisation invades woman's nature. Her natural modesty departs. With violent importunity seven women press marriage on one man. They will be no expense to him; they will earn their own food and raiment, if he will only give them his name in marriage. The writer of this outline has recently travelled in a land [Mexico] whose revolutions during the last fifty years have been so frequent as that he found parts of the country where the prophet's words are true to-day. The men have been killed in battle. In some districts there are seven women to one man. +I. The tendency of sin is to produce war and to degrade women.+ The apostle James has described the generals of war (iv. 1). Nations are but the aggregate of individuals. If the lusts of selfishness, greed, malice, &c., nestle like vipers in the hearts of individual men, they will be manifest in the nation. 1. _Sin deteriorates man's intellectual faculties._ In its present unpurified condition, the human intellect is not inventive enough to discover those commercial relationships which will eventually bind in bonds of amity the nations of the world together. 2. _Sin intensifies human selfishness._ One of the most desolating wars of modern times originated in that gross selfishness which was too blind to see that it was a sin to hold property in man. 3. _Sin intensifies human greed._ "Cursed be he that removeth his neighbour's landmark," is a despised threat. Again and again his war originated in greed of territory and lust of plunder. 4. _Sin intensifies human ambition._ In the heart of all great conquerors, from Nimrod to Napoleon, has lain the lust of unholy ambition. Their motto has ever been "Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven." 5. Side by side with these lusts of selfishness, greed, ambition, &c., there has _been a lack of justice and mercy._ No mind having these latter sentiments healthily developed could "cry havock and let slip the dogs of war." When the leaders of nations learn "to do justly and love mercy," wars will be less common. 6. _With war have come numerous evils to woman._ The text describes some of them. Others come to the surface every day. Her husband has been forced from her side, or her sons have died on the battlefield; very bitter have been woman's sorrows,--"Yea, a sword hath pierced through her own soul also." And always where soldiers are multiplied in a land, and taken away from useful employment, women have been polluted and degraded. War and womanly