in it--by HIM it consists--by Him, the Life and the Light who
lighteneth every man that cometh into the world. From Him come law,
and order, and spiritual energy, and loving fellow-feeling, and
patriotism, the spirit of wisdom, and understanding, and prudence--
all, in short, by which a nation consists and holds together. It is
not constitutions, and acts of parliament, and social contracts, and
rights of the people, and rights of kings, and so on, which make us
a nation. These are but the effects, and not the consequences, of
the national life. THAT is the one spirit which is shed abroad upon
a country, whose builder and maker is God, and which comes down from
above--comes down from Christ the King of kings, who has given each
nation its peculiar work on this earth, its peculiar circumstances
and history to mould and educate it for its work, and its peculiar
spirit and national character, wherewith to fulfil the destiny which
Christ has appointed for it.

Believe me, my friends, it takes long years, too, and much training
from God and from Christ, the King of kings, to make a nation.
Everything which is most precious and great is also most slow in
growing, and so is a nation. The Scripture compares it everywhere
to a tree; and as the tree grows, a people must grow, from small
beginnings, perhaps from a single family, increasing on, according
to the fixed laws of God's world, for years and hundreds of years,
till it becomes a mighty nation, with one Lord, one faith, one work,
one Spirit.

But again; God said to Abraham, when He had led him into this far
country, "Unto thy seed will I GIVE THIS LAND." This was a great
and a new lesson for Abraham, that the earth belonged to that same
great invisible God who had promised to guide and protect him, and