1863 J. C. STILES. National Rectitude: An Appeal to the Confederate States. Plea for Repentance.

A very unusual sermon preached by a Confederate divine in the midst of the Civil War. In it, he argues that greed, filthy lucre, avarice, etc., will be the downfall of the South. One cannot help wonder whether this is all a euphemism for slavery, or whether he sees these as the core problems, and the plight of the slave as secondary, etc,. It is notable that he lays responsibility for the continuing war on the heads of the Southern plantation owners and demagogues. 

Extract: 

If righteousness exalts a nation, her entire moral and social condition would hasten to bear witness that crimes and sorrows, wars and rumors of wars, and all the associated ills of society were rapidly disappearing; while industry, prosperity, benevolence, and peace at home, and general respect, admiration, and emulation abroad combine to indicate that universal amelioration our return to God had induced.

And if our national christianity brings the God of providence to stand by our secular interests so vigorously, what think you will the God of the church do for our religious welfare? Most admirably does it fall in with his own great perfections, predictions, promises and purposes, by the sanctifications of his grace to lead along his faithful people in a yet more triumphant course of spiritual prosperity. That precious blood of the Cross, so long trampled under foot by the masses of our people, by those masses shall, ere long, be taken up and laid away in their hearts and enshrined there; and the blessed Jesus, so long rejected and despised, shall now be raised to the mediatorial throne and crowned "Lord of all," while our happy people, on every hand, break forth in grateful strains, "Unto Him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto God and his father, to him, be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen!" The welcome of the spirit, the worship of God, the salvation of souls, and the conversion of the race so long and deeply buried under the worldliness of the whole earth shall now experience resurrection and find a glorious elevation and progress through all our borders. And surely, the life, and the peace, and the faith, and the prayer, and the liberality and the zeal of such a people could not be long confined within their own territorial limits. Through the laws of influence, by the promises and purposes of heaven, the Spirit would soon fling the benign power of the country over the nations of the earth. After a long, dark night the day would begin to break, the millennium to dawn; darkness would gradually disappear and our blessed christianity would shine around the earth, and hallow the nations, and brighten through following ages, brighter and brighter still to the end. Nor let thoughtless man suppose that all this secular and spiritual elevation of our country and the world must bound the power of her national rectitude. Far, far from it! Her very act of national consecration, by its legitimate, sacred force, in due time, shall work to take us, and our seed, and our seed's seed to the latest generation, high up to the land of the blest, and there fill us all with an exceeding and eternal weight of glory, and press out from every beating pulse of our immortality the hearty shout: "Everlasting thanks unto the Son of God our Redeemer! Fulness of joy! and pleasures forevermore!!"

        Oh the power! the POWER of national rectitude!! Secular and spiritual, social and universal, temporal and eternal!!

Stiles, J. C. National Rectitude the Only True Basis of National Prosperity: An Appeal to the Confederate States. Petersburg. Evangelical Tract Society. 1863. 45pp.

A good + copy, bound in wraps, generally solid, with light foxing and handled pages. Unevenly toned on wraps with ex library stamps.