We have been deeply impressed with the thought that, in our search for the cause of the present moral confusion, we need to go further back than the influence of high-placed military officers and ladies of the aristocracy. There have arisen occasions in the past when the Christian public have been able to successfully resist the invasions of materialistic and immoral counsels, although they were advocated by the rich and mighty. Only the blind can be led by the blind: those who have clear vision will not follow such leadership. Whence this far-reaching influence, then, which has blinded the eyes of so many? Alas! these are the days of a paralysed faith, and faith is as indispensable a faculty of the human mind as is reason.
The re-enthronement of faith is the need of the hour. Science we have, and scholarship: but hesitancy and doubt rule the scientific spirit, and timidity is the vice of the scholar. The soldier who hesitates and doubts and grows timid will not win a single battle. His must be the prophetic spirit of faith which "laughs at impossibilities, and cries, It shall be done." But the Church militant has been ridiculed out of the warrior spirit, and has laid aside its mightiest weapon, faith; and as to leadership, many are pointing to science and scholarship and crying, "These be thy gods, O Israel!" Science and scholarship have their place and their power, but they are not the Christian's mightiest weapons. Learning cannot take the place of the inspiration of faith; statistics can never teach morals as forcibly as "Thus saith the Lord." More than this: statistics can never overturn the "Thou shalt not" of an Almighty God.
David has essayed to go forth to meet Goliath, well loaded down with Saul's armour, and David will meet with the defeat he deserves if he does not repent of the folly of matching such weapons against one who defies the armies of the living God. The warfare is a spiritual not a carnal one. What wonder that with such weapons courage has failed, the citadel is imperilled, and "counsels of despair" are urged. But these shall not prevail. That unrepentant soul shall not go unpunished by the wrath of a just God, who enters into complicity with the vice of fornication by consenting to the proposal for its State management.