gence knows that a certain course, when pursued long enough, will bring national disaster, and it is perfectly safe to predict the downfall of any and every country in the world. In my judgment, nations, like individuals, have an average life. Every nation is mortal. An immortal nation cannot be constructed of mortal individuals. A nation has a reason for existing, and that reason sustains the same relation to the nation that the acorn does to the oak. The nation will attain its growth--other things being equal. It will reach its manhood and its prime, but it will sink into old age, and at last must die. Probably, in a few thousand years, men will be able to calculate the average life of nations, as they now calculate the average life of persons. There has been no period since the morning of his- tory until now, that men did not know of dead and dying nations. There has always been a national cemetery. Poland is dead, Turkey is dying. In every nation are the seeds of dissolution. Not only nations die, but races of men. A nation is born, becomes powerful, luxurious, at last grows weak, is overcome, dies, and another takes its place, In this way civilization and barbarism, like day and night, alternate through all of history's years. 284 In every nation there are at least two classes of men: First, the enthusiastic, the patriotic, who be- lieve that the nation will live forever,--that its flag will float while the earth has air; Second, the owls and ravens and croakers, who are always predicting disaster, defeat, and death. To the last class belong the Jeremiahs, Ezekiels, and Isaiahs of the Jews. They were always predicting the downfall of Jeru- salem. They revelled in defeat and captivity. They loved to paint the horrors of famine and war. For the most part, they were envious, hateful, misan- thropic and unjust. There seems to have been a war between church and state. The prophets were endeavoring to pre- serve the ecclesiastical power. Every king who would listen to them, was chosen of God. He instantly became the model of virtue, and the prophets assured him that he was in the keeping of Jehovah. But if the king had a mind of his own, the prophets im- mediately called down upon him all the curses of heaven, and predicted the speedy destruction of his kingdom. If our own country should be divided, if an empire should rise upon the ruins of the Republic, it would be very easy to find that hundreds and thousands of 285