last forty years; and we have actual figures showing that the
well-to-do artisan birth-rate has declined, _in the last thirty years,
by 52 per cent.!_ Seeing that the Protestant Churches draw their
members mainly from these very classes, we have not far to seek for an
explanation of the empty Sunday Schools...."

"Under these circumstances it is not in the least necessary for
Protestant ministers and clergymen to cast about them for evidence of
Jesuit machinations wherewith to explain the decline of the Protestant
Churches in this country! Let them rather look at the empty cradles in
the homes of their own congregations!" [50]

The author of the above-quoted paragraphs thus attributes the decline both
of the birth-rate and of the Protestant Churches to the general adoption of
artificial birth control. With that explanation I disagree, because it
puts the horse behind the cart. When the Protestant faith was strong the
birth-rate of this country was as high as that of Catholic lands. The
Protestant Churches have now been overshadowed by a rebirth of Rationalism,
a growth for which they themselves prepared the soil: and diminished
fertility is the natural product of a civilisation tending towards
materialism. Although the practice of artificial birth control must
obviously contribute towards a falling birth-rate, it is neither the only
nor the ultimate cause of the decline. The ultimate causes of a falling
birth-rate are more complex, and the decline of a community is but the
physical expression of a moral change. That is my thesis.

[Footnote 35: _Evening Standard_, October 12, 1921.]

[Footnote 36: "The Declining Birth-rate" in _The Month_, August 1916, p.
157, reprinted by C.T.S. Price 2_d_.]