The Need of a Revival of Piety

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Oct 3, 1907

The Need of a Revival of Piety

In a recent issue of the Wall Street Journal, New York, appeared the following editorial utterance, especially striking because of the place of its appearance:—

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 father and mother 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.

The appearance of such expressions in worldly journals is taken by some to indicate the growth of moral aspirations and religious sentiment on the part of the people generally, heralding better days and greater things. The need is real, but the world generally does not sense it or seek to have it supplied.