Edgefield advertiser. [volume] (Edgefield, S.C.) 1836-current, 1921-09-28
A Lay Sermon.
BY Richard H. Edmonds, Editor
Manufacturers' Record.

Manufactusers' Record.
We constantly hear that the world
is looking to America for spiritual
leadership. This is not wholly true,
but if it were the world would look
in vain until America ceased to be
pharasiacal as to it's own righteous
ness and realize that sin and crime
and irreligion r rampant through
out the land.
Until America has a new baptism
of righteousness, until the protesting
Christians of the land realize their
own shortcomings, and c~onsecrate
their lives, their time, their talents
of brain and money to the service OF
God and man, until politicians and
business men, employers alike, give
full heed to the Divine Command to
love the Lord thy God with all thy
heart and with all thy soul and with
all thy mind, and thy neighbor as thy
self. and do unto others as they
would that they should do unto them,
there will be no righteousness OF a
nation fit to lead the spiritual forces
of the world to higher ground.
There is spreading over u iand
the accursed atheistic teachings OF
German philosophy, more powerful
for evil than were all Germanys
armies and navies, and if America
does not give heed to this menace Its
downfall will be as certain as was
Germany's. The lift of the nation, its
every business interest, in the bank,
in the factory, or on the farm is
staked upon a new and powerful call
to righteous living and Christian SER
vice. When moral rottenness exists
unblushingly in places of great imam
cial power ,as~ recently shown in New
York, without loss of caste, when men
lie and cheat in business, when men
seek to wreck others for their own
personal gain of aggrandizement, or
power, when men murder others be-
cause they are Wiling to work with
out the domination of alien radical
labor leaders, and go UNPUBLISHED for
their crimes and are commended by
their fellow members; when a great
government institution year after
year seeks by blackmailing or bull
doing to force others into its power
or else to destroy them and no ma
tional protest is made, and thousands
of business men stand by, either from
cowardice or indifference, and refuse
to fight against this immortality; when
the voluptuous dances that would
have disgraced even corrupt Rome
and Ephesus at their worst sweep
over the land; when men of position
and influence proclaim that some
laws cannot be enforced because the
criminal power is greater than the
Governments and that the criminal
element must therefore be given full
sway, by repeating the laws the Grim
inals do not like, what right has our
country to claim the spiritual power
to lead the world?
On a monument erected in n OF
the highest passes of the Andes to
commemorate a peaceful settlement
of a threatened war between Chile
and Argentine, are carved the words:
Sooner shall these mountains
,crumble into dust than Chill and Ar
gentine break the peace which at the
feet of Christ the Redeemer they
have sworn to maintain"
Until America in the spirit of that
pledge puts aside all self-righteous-
ness, sets 1t own shortcomings DIS
Almighty God sees them, and numbly
seek Divine forgiveness and Divine
wisdom, it cannot become a real splr-
itual leader of the world, for it can
not hold aloft the uplifted Christ as
the only salvation of the world from
sin and wars. The welfare Of bust
ness, the safety of u country and
of the world from wars and endless
crimes, are staked on this, and woe.
betide our future if we fail to read
the signs of the times and call the ma
ton to a revival of religion, pure and
undefled. In vain will we talk disarm-
ament, in vain will we decry war and
expect peace while the world is ruled
by sin and while America fails to fit
itself TO become a moral and spirit