world will run amuck.  We believe that God is the only intelligence capable of governing the world, and God must act through the Church or outside of it.  If the Church is not big enough to act as the mouthpiece of the Almighty—­not in the sense that the Church ought to exercise governmental authority, but its members, seeking light from the Heavenly Father through prayer, should be able to act wisely as citizens—­if, I repeat, the Church is not big enough to deal with the problems that confront the world, then the Church must give way to some more competent organization.  Christians have no other alternative; they must believe that the teachings of Christ can be successfully applied to every problem that the individual has to meet and to every problem with which governments have to deal.  I have in another lecture in this series called attention to Christ’s all-inclusive claim set forth in the closing verses of the last chapter of Matthew, but I must repeat it here because it is the basis of what I desire to say on this branch of the subject.  Christ declared that all power had been given into His hands; He sent His followers out to make disciples of all nations; and He promised to be with them always, even unto the end of the world.  If the Church takes Christ at His word and claims to be His representative on earth it cannot shirk its duty.

If Christians are as grateful to God, to Christ, and to the Bible as they should be, they will give attention to every problem that affects the individual, the community, and the larger units of society and government.  They will consider it their duty to carry their religion into business and politics and to apply the teachings of Christ to every subject that affects human welfare.  In another lecture I call attention to the Church’s duty to reconcile capital and labour, and to teach God’s law of rewards.

The third gift to which I would call your attention is the form of government under which we live.  Ours is a government in which the people rule from the lowest unit to the highest office in the nation.  Nearly all of our officials are elected by popular vote, and those appointed are appointed by officers who are elected.  The tendency is everywhere more and more toward popular government.  Some people are afraid of Democracy but a larger number of people believe that “more democracy is the cure for such evils as have been developed under popular government.”  The Christian is a citizen of the republic as well as a member of the church and must practice his religion.  I have not time to speak of our government in detail; it is rather my purpose at this time to call attention to the gift of popular government as we find it in the nation.

Let us begin, then, with a presidential election.  I shall not yield to the strong temptation to describe a presidential election; suffice to say that our campaigns begin with the election of delegates to a National Convention (I hope they will some day begin with the nomination of presidential candidates at primaries held by all the parties, in all the states, on the same day).  The campaigns last long enough to make the candidates so weary that they gladly resign themselves to any result if they can only live to election day.