America's Great Need by Editor

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jan 23, 1913

America's Great Need

By Editor

THERE is much discussion to-day as to the great needs of the human family, and of the conditions that are making for spiritual degeneration among the masses. Many remedies are proposed. The phrase “civic righteousness” has become a popular one in speaking of the work of national regeneration which should be carried forward. Many methods are suggested for the regeneration of the body politic. Various measures are proposed, and with many of these we heartily sympathize, for the suppression of some of the great moral evils which in their cancerous and malignant growth are eating at the very vitals of social life.

We favor the suppression of the liquor traffic; we are in accord with every effort made to suppress the so-called white slave traffic. We believe that the great moral lepers of society who by the sale of strong drink dethrone the reason or by seductive methods debauch virtue, should be taken severely to task for their evil and nefarious work in the destruction of their fellows. We sympathize with the spirit of some of the social settlement work being done, and the great philanthropies which seek the relief of the human family. These great movements afford palliative measures. They may bring relief from temporary suffering; but after all, they do not reach the root of the evil. What the masses need to-day, what the church of God needs to-day, is a revival of old-fashioned religion. This is emphasized by an article in the Religious Telescope of Dec. 18, 1912. We quote as follows:—

What America needs more than railway extension, and Western irrigation, and a low tariff, and a bigger wheat crop, and a merchant marine, and a new navy, 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’s what we need now to 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.