Dissolute morals in respect to the relations of the sexes is always a symptom which precedes the ruin of an empire or the fall of a nation. It is both a sign and a cause—a sign of a general corruption, which will show itself elsewhere and under other forms; and a cause of the coming evils, as indulgence in bodily pleasures and. Sybarite excesses takes away the firmness of will and readiness to endure hardness which are necessary conditions of both soldiers and citizens doing their duty to the State. When a country is sunk in dissoluteness there is, generally speaking, no renovation for it except by the irruption of a new race, as of the Israelites in Canaan, or of the barbarous nations on the breaking up of the old Roman Empire. The moral reason of the extermination of the Canaanites was the danger of their licentiousness spreading, as has often been the case, to the conquerors (cf. Numbers 25:17, Numbers 25:18).
HOMILIES BY R.M. EDGAR