Yesterday for our home worship service, I preached a sermon by John Witherspoon, Presbyterian minister, President of Princeton, and the only clergyman to sign the Declaration of Independence. He preached it May 17, 1776, and I thought his remarks - at a time of national division, economic downturn, and war - especially applicable to our own day.

His subject was the sovereignty of God over the passions of men. God uses even the worst passions and actions of men for His own glory, and we serve the purposes of God and our nation when we bring our intentions and practices in line with His divine plan. "Nothing is more certain," proclaimed Witherspoon, "than that a general profligacy and corruption of manners make a people ripe for destruction. A good form of government may hold the rotten materials together for some time, but beyond a certain pitch, even the best constitution will be ineffectual, and slavery must ensue."

We may well be reaching that point where the forms of our federal government can no longer contain the rottenness that festers within the soul of the nation. Politics and the courts have not proven to be friends of liberty over the past generations, but supporters of the idea that law must change to fit the temper of the times. In the name of liberty the reality of it may be slipping out of our grasp.

Witherspoon continued, "On the other hand, when the manners of a nation are pure, when true religion and internal principles maitain their vigour, the attempts of the most powerful enemies to oppress them are commonly baffled and disappointed." He concludes, "That he is the best friend to American liberty, who is most sincere and active in promoting true and undefiled religion, and who sets himself with the greatest firmness to bear down profanity and immorality of every kind."

Sound words, those. Witherspoon's point was that only true and sincere Christian faith can maintain the liberties for which, in his day, good men were even then beginning to lay down their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor. Law, courts, politics, economics - these are all essential parts of our republic and way of life. But they are not the spine of this nation, merely the changeable outward fashions. Unless a revived Christian faith rejuvenates the bones and nerves of the framework of this nation, our liberties will continue to be lost to ever-expansive government and our own selfish lusts.

With Witherspoon, therefore, let us pray, "God grant that in America true religion and civil liberty may be inseparable, and that the unjust attempts to destroy the one, may in the issue tend to the support and establishment of both."

T. M. Moore