--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 analysis
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 institutions, 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