or-saving
inventions. When the awards were made, it was discovered that all of
them were bestowed for inventions in the United States.

3. The public school. It is generally acknowledged that whatever may
be the faults and imperfections of our intellectual life, the American
public school has demonstrated to the world on a larger scale than
ever before the possibility of the education of the masses. Japan was
quick to see that this was one of the secrets of the power of Western
nations. Nowhere is there a more marvelous example of an entire nation
going to school than in recent years in Japan, where probably a larger
percentage of children of school age are actually in school to-day
than in any other country in the world. It is generally acknowledged
that America has set the pace for the world in her system of common
schools. Education, not ignorance, is everywhere the mother of devotion.

4. The character of the home missionary. The United States and Canada
have produced a great race of home missionaries, such as Robertson,
who helped to dot the land with Presbyterian churches, and whose name
is a household word in Canada, or John Eliot, who wrote the first book
published in America, of whom the poet Southey says, "No greater man
has ever been produced by any nation;" David Brainard, whose life of
prayer has been an inspiration to many thousands of students of
missionary history; or Sheldon Jackson, with his eye ever on the
horizon, but with practical zeal, not only preaching the gospel
throughout the vast regions of the West but introducing the reindeer
into Alaska, thus making a great economic contribution to the blessing
of mankind. These men are typical of those intrepid heroes, who on the
prairies of western Canada, in the mining sections of the United
States, or in the heart of great cities, are the founders of empires
as well as the builders of churches; as Dr. C. L. Thompson has well
said, "The march of our civilization is to the music of our religion."

When the historian correctly interprets the story of national progress
in the nineteenth century, he will first of all take account of the
home missionary. No one has helped more than he to make the nation
great and strong. As J. Wesley Johnston puts it, "The home missionary
was a founder of schools, a builder of churches, a maker of states, a
signer of treaties, an unfurler of flags, and always and everywhere a
genuine American."

5. The home of great worl