The classic idea is that the Golden Age lies in the past, but the Stoic doctrine of recurring cycles in the ages of the world seems to suggest that the Golden Age may return.
There are people to-day who ask, "Is this the end of the world?"
More probably it is the end of an age. The harvest may be ripe for the sickle to be thrust in. The opposition of good and evil may have reached their fullest manifestation. It may be the hour in eternity for a complete readjustment of the little ant-hills we call great nations.
We know the rise and fall of nations to be an historical fact, apparently based on an immutable law. This recurring phenomenon cannot be explained, though there are theories. Possibly the true one may be found in the failure or compliance to respond to the challenge: "Advance to a higher spiritual plane or perish." It may be that the right of continuance depends upon the answer to that challenge.
What brought about the decline of those mighty civilizations whose monuments of antiquity seem to mock our pride? What insidious disease brought about the fall of Rome? The beauty and inspiration of Greece was arrested by some swift decay, and the giant temples and Pyramids of Egypt, and the Mounds of Mesopotamia, testify to a grandeur far surpassing ours.
In the world's morning time, before the mists began to clear, we can trace the rise and fall of a score of mighty Empires. From out their present tombs of tragic silence arise figures, colossal sculptured figures, with faces and forms of commanding power. Assyrians, a mighty race, leaving behind whole libraries of record, chiseled upon indestructible pages. The lost arts of three thousand years ago.
Earlier still the earth resounded to the thunder of Xenophon's thousands, and the chariots of Persia sweeping after them. Lying deeper still in the shroud of antiquity the Pharaohs emerge as mighty conquerors, and we can dimly discern in the Empire of the Chaldeans the movement of a gorgeous civilization, and the majestic figures of men versed in mystic, and, to us, unknown lore. In Italy, memorials of a refined people, who were precursors of Roman power, have been found, forms of perfect grace in delicate vases and coins of gold and silver. The old Etruscan art is traced back to the Assyrians' sculpture. The snowy crown of ancient Greece budded and bloomed in the mighty halls of Assyria's splendor, hundreds of years before Christ. No phantom world could furnish a mightier or more resplendent host.
Reading of those proud and mighty civilizations brings the simple life of the Nazarene very near to us in years, it also shows us how quickly great splendors are sanded over by the hands of time. The British Museum holds the sculptured records of twenty-five hundred years. Whilst the flames, kindled by the mob of Christian monks, from the great Alexandrian library rose to Heaven, the temple fronts of the Pharaohs, the Pyramids, the Sphinx, loomed out of the conflagration. The impotent torches of the fanatics were powerless against such imperishable records. What of our records? Will these ancient civilizations be remembered when the fame of modern nations has vanished utterly? Which has the best chance of enduring in the future? The paper and pasteboard of to-day, or the monuments of stone, to which the Monarchs of bygone Empires entrusted the history of their unsurpassed grandeur?
"If thou hadst known in this thy day, even thou, the things which belong to thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes."
This is the epitaph written across the tombs of all nations now crumbling into dust.