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Antichrist. Blame not the preachers; 'tis useless to break the bread of life when men have lost their appetite. The real culprits were the original mutineers on Peter's bark — the authors of religious privateering and piracy. That bark was moored while Jesus taught; they weighed anchor only when He ordered them to let down their nets for a draught. Though progressive in her methods, the Church in her teaching is necessarily conservative. The so-called reformers, on the contrary, hauled up the anchor of conservatism, and drifting, suffered shipwreck of their faith. Their followers to-day are only nominally Christian. The natural part of Christianity — humanitarianism — remains, but the supernatural virtues are practically unknown. Purely natural virtue will never save a soul, much less a people, from God's anger. Herein among other respects our nation much resembles the ancient Romans. They had many good and noble traits, but the patrician's religion was culture and refinement, while the worship of the gods was left to freedmen and to slaves. Lax marriage laws resulted in the degradation of their womankind and the shattering of the nation's corner-stone— the family. Verily, at no distant day, America bids fair to out-Roman the Romans, for, over and above the other evils we have copied from her, we have accomplished a dangerous something Rome never attempted — the divorce of religion and education. But the acme of Rome's guilt was her hostility to Christianity. For that, God crushed her, and so suddenly that Vespasian, with all his glory,