Our Common Country/Chapter 1

I do not believe there is any other influence so much needed in a tumultuous world as a reconsecration to God Almighty. I rejoice that America is free in religion. We boast our civil liberty and our political independence, but when we contemplate world conditions to-day the best thing in this Republic is religious freedom.

Sometimes I think the world has gone adrift from its moorings religiously, and I know it will help if we have a revival of ​religious faith. I want a government that is just, and I don't think a government can be just if it does not have somehow a contact with Omnipotent God.

I know how some of you of the church have been quite carried away by the proposal of a new world relationship. You never stopped to think that in the conception of Versailles there was no recognition of God Almighty. Just as we of America have builded by recognizing Him, the best relationship of the world must be builded upon recognition of the same God.

I have every faith that our nation will take its fitting place in an association of nations for world peace, and I believe that we are going to be able to do it without the surrender of anything we hold dear as a heritage of the American people.

I don't like to talk about religion, just for the sake of conversation, but I do believe that we need more of it in our ​American life, more of it in government,—the real spirit of it. I think there should be more of the "Do unto others as you would be done by" spirit of service.

It might interest you to know that, while I have always been a great reader of the Bible, I have never read it so closely as in the last weeks, when my mind has been bent upon the work I must shortly take up. I have obtained a good deal of inspiration from the Psalms of David and from many passages of the four gospels, and there's still wisdom in the sayings of old Solomon.

I don't intend to come as the finest exemplar of what we ought to be, but I rejoice in the inheritance of a religious belief and I don't mind saying that I gladly go to God Almighty for guidance and strength in the responsibilities that are coming to me.