not commit to God with complete confidence. To-day we have this confidence.
This, I venture to say, is not merely the beginning of a new era, but of a new epoch. At this moment a great nation, well skilled in self-sacrifice, is standing by with deep sympathy and bidding Godspeed to another great nation that is making its act of self-dedication to God. That altar upon which we Americans are to-day laying our lives and our fortunes is already occupied. After three years Great Britain and her allies have been fighting not merely for their own laws, their own homes, their liberty, and all they hold sacred, but for the great commonwealth of mankind.
To-day, when the United States avow their intention of giving themselves wholeheartedly to this great cause, the battle for the right assumes new proportions. A new power and victory—aye, a victory that is God's is in sight. We Americans have never been oblivious to the fact that the people of this country have been standing for the same principles which we love and for which we live. England, thank God, is the mother of democracy, and England's children come back to-day to pour all their experience, the experience of a century and a half of independent life, with gratitude at the feet of their mother.
