What America Needs

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Sep 30, 1915

What America Needs

THE editor of the Wall Street Journal believes that the great need of the United States is not greater railway extension, or Western irrigation, or lower tariff, or a bigger wheat crop, or a merchant marine. He is of the opinion that the great need of the people of this country “is a revival of piety—the kind mother and father used to have—piety that counted it good business to stop for daily family prayer before breakfast, right in the middle of harvest; that quit field work a half hour early Thursday night, so as to get the chores done and go to prayer meeting; that borrowed money to pay the preacher’s salary, and prayed fervently in secret for the salvation of the rich man who looked with scorn on such unbusinesslike behavior.”

He believes that the possession of this personal piety will “clean this country of the filth of graft, and of greed, petty and big; of worship of fine houses and big lands and high office and grand social functions.”

The days of wealth and national prosperity, ease and comfort, were days of danger to Rome, to Greece, and to the great nations of the past. This led to crime in high and low places; it corrupted the home, the foundation of society and the state. The result was national disintegration. Heaven can save nations only as it saves the individuals composing the nation. It is right that we should have laws against crime, and that offenders shall be punished; but society can be regenerated only as the individual members of society are transformed by the grace of God, and changed into new men and new women.