Part 13 (2/2)

SOURCES OF POWER

Lover of souls, indeed, But Lover of bodies too, Seeing in human flesh The G.o.d s.h.i.+ne through; Hallowed be Thy name, And, for the sake of Thee, Hallowed be all men, For Thine they be.

Doer of deeds divine, Thou, the Father's Son, In all Thy children may Thy will be done, Till each works miracles On poor and sick and blind, Learning from Thee the art Of being kind.

For Thine is the glory of love, And Thine the tender power, Touching the barren heart To leaf and flower, Till not the lilies alone, Beneath thy gentle feet, But human lives for Thee Grow white and sweet.

And Thine shall the Kingdom be, Thou Lord of Love and Pain, Conqueror over death By being slain.

And we, with lives like Thine, Shall cry in the great day when Thou comest to claim Thine own, ”All hail! Amen.”

--W.J. Dawson.

”Thy kingdom come--Thy will be done on earth.”

Fundamental in all projects for the upbuilding of a worldly or a spiritual kingdom, or an individual character, lies the ideal.

Action, growth, conduct, spring from the creating ideal and in the process of development they advance and enlarge together.

”The ideal is the primary moving power in the human spirit,”

Professor Gidding says; ”into his ideal enter man's estimate of the past and his forecast of the future--his scientific a.n.a.lysis and his poetic feeling, his soberest judgment and his religious aspiration.”

Our ideal then for our country, for the work and place of Home Missions in it, for ourselves as Christian patriots and believers in Home Missions, is essentially a basic source of power. Into the ideal for our country must enter the inspiring conception of the nation which will include the background of its yesterday.

America means not only the cultural inst.i.tutions, the multiplied industries, the vast wealth of farms (four crops in the year 1915 were valued at $4,770,000,000), mines and forests, but the genius of an Edison, a Burbank, a Goethals, a McDowell, the devotion of a John R. Mott, a Frank Higgins, a Jane Addams and the long honor roll of men and women made great through their service. America also embodies all that was wrought by those early comers who endured hunger, disease, suffering, that they might conquer a wilderness and make it a land of opportunity. It holds the fruits of service and sacrifice purchased by those later ones who willingly faced death ”that government for the people and by the people” might replace tyranny and oppression, and the imperishable glory of those others who counted not their lives dear but laid them down that sweet freedom might be the right of every man, of whatever race or color. Beside all these stood the strong, true women who suffered, endured and triumphed with them.

The rich heritage bestowed by a Was.h.i.+ngton, a Lincoln, a Lee, a John Eliot, a Charles Sumner, a Marcus Whitman, a Sheldon Jackson, a Harriet Beecher Stowe, a Frances Willard, and a host of others, const.i.tutes the infinitely precious treasury of our national life.

Bayard Taylor expresses the peculiar genius of America in his national ode:

From the homes of all, where her being began She took what she gave to man.

Justice, that knew no station, Belief as soul decreed, Free air for aspiration, Free force for independent deed.

She takes but to give again As the sea returns the rivers in rain And gathers the chosen of her seed From the hunted of every crown and creed.

In one strong race all races here unite.

Tongues meet in hers, hereditary foemen Forget their sword and slogan, kith and clan.

'Twas glory, once, to be a Roman: She makes it glory, now, to be a man!

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