Often may we ask ourselves what it is that constitutes a nation, and we need not search long for the answer, which comes very naturally. It is, Men! It of course goes without saying that until we have men worthy of the name, the nations of the earth will fail to express any high ideal, though they may ofttimes turn their gaze toward that which all must admit to be the one thing worth striving for. The American people have had more than one mighty struggle to reach and express the true ideal of national existence, which means freedom to work out the great ends of life with equal rights and privileges granted to all in so doing.
At the present hour the American people may ponder with profit these words of Moses to the children of Israel: "Did ever people hear the voice of God speaking out of the midst of the fire, as thou hast heard, and live? Or hath God assayed to go and take him a nation from the midst of another nation, by temptations, by signs, and by wonders, and by war, and by a mighty hand, and by a stretched out arm?" In many ways the people of this country have had repeated in their national existence the experiences of the Hebrews in seeking to found a nation upon the righteousness which God's law demands, and which alone provides for human progress and prosperity.
Many have been the temptations which have assailed this people in working out the problem of national existence and at the same time making it possible for individuals to prove to themselves the divine possibilities of manhood and womanhood. It need hardly be said that the temptations did not come from the stern vicissitudes of the earlier years of this nation's existence, but rather did the temptations come when men trusted in materiality rather than in God and in the power of divine law to perpetuate and extend the ideals which gave them their place among the nations of the earth.
