“The Branch that Grew Over the Wall” Excerpt

America stands as the one nation on earth whose origin was wholly spiritual. It went forth with the one spiritual purpose to worship God. Then what constituted America? It was “the seed within itself,” that inborn spiritual craving in each individual which seeks Mind as the needle seeks the pole. The seed was not only the recognition of the right, but also the determination to worship God without interference; the understanding that nothing has the right to, or can, intervene between God and His idea. In other words, America stands for that union of Principle and idea which is forever one and indissoluble. This country typifies, and its origin proves it to be, the spiritual idea of Mind and the nearest approximation to a nation founded by Mind, and so it stands alone.

America was in no way merely a political experiment; it was the answer to the deep spiritual necessity of man’s oneness with Principle. That every step of the unfolding nation was leavened by the recognition of dependence upon Mind, is verified by utterances of that time. Benjamin Franklin said in his address of 1787 before the Constitutional Convention when, at the end of weeks of stress and effort, failure seemed to face them, “If a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid? We have been assured in the Sacred Writings, that ‘Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it.’ I firmly believe this; and I also believe that without His concurring aid we shall succeed in this political building no better than the builders of Babel.” Nothing animated the founding of this nation except the one purpose to be alone with God and worship Him after the dictates of a conscience untrammeled by ecclesiastical or other tyranny.