262 EVOLUTION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 



profiteering. It is always the same dull thing, 

 under different names, and adapted to different 

 times, which the Scripture calls "the world," that 

 world for which Christ said that He would not 

 pray, the world of the three concupiscences which 

 must first be idolized, under the title of some god- 

 head or some science, and thus be suitably dignified 

 before it can be proposed for worship. 



But the pride of "the world" passes while the 

 Word of God remains. An arch is left as we 

 return to our painting which shows where stood 

 the massive bridge across which poured the 

 mighty pageant in the day of triumph, when all 

 ambitions had been achieved. Stray pillars, here 

 and there, stand out from the bare landscape and 

 white stones project from the brown earth. In a 

 broken basin the fountain gurgles, as it flowed of 

 old at the dawn of human life, and close before 

 us, in desolate magnificence, a solitary column still 

 remains, last mournful token of the vanished 

 splendor's. On its broken capital a black heron 

 broods over her nest of straws, while amid the 

 fragments at its base the shrubs and ferns are 

 growing, and the venturous ivy climbs up to the 

 broken acanthus leaves that crowned it in the day 

 of its glory that has passed away forever. 



And what of the descendants of those men and 

 women who had once populated this solitude, of 

 the few who in that night of horrors sought safety 

 in the hills or were dragged away into barbarian 



