ne consideration which simplifies the problem is, that it is not so
much the place of the minister to intervene in special questions as to
beget in his people a public and patriotic spirit, and to teach them
to look upon the discharge of the duties of citizenship as a part of
Christianity. When our people have been brought to recognise that the
public weal is their concern, and that they are responsible for the
state of society and the conditions of life, they can be left to
themselves to choose the right men to support the right measures.[21]

Here we can build on a natural foundation. It is natural for a man to
be attached to the place of his birth or the town in which he lives.
The roots of his life are in its soil; his interests bind him to it;
and, if he be at all divinely-souled, its traditions and notable names
cannot fail to lay hold upon his heart. The chances which a city has
of getting its affairs well attended to are measured by the number of
its inhabitants who are animated with such sentiments. In the same
way, it is natural for a man to love his country. Some countries
especially have the power of casting such a spell over the hearts of
their children as binds them to their service. Of my country this
might be said. Small as it is, its beauty, its history and its
romantic associations wield over the hearts of its inhabitants an
extraordinary attraction. Perhaps part of the secret may lie in its
very smallness; for feeling contracts a passionate force within narrow
limits, as our Highland rivers become torrents within their rocky
beds. Of your country also it might be said for different reasons.
America stirs patriotic sentiment, not by its smallness, but by its
largeness and wonderful variety; not by the memories of the past, but
by the boundless possibilities of the future.

These sentiments exist in the minds of our people already; and we only
need to foster them and impregnate them with a Christian element, in
order to produce convictions about public duty which would have the
most blessed results. We might train our people to feel keenly the woe
of mankind and especially the moral blots on the fair fame of their
own city or country. We might get them to cherish a high ideal of what
the place of their abode should be, morally and spiritually, and of
what their country might do in the world. In Scotland there was such
an ideal once: the eye of the dying Covenanter saw, painted on the
mist of the moorla