And patriotism, also, is a mystery—­intangible, invisible, and yet eternal.  Because there has been in the past such a thing as patriotism, millions have given their lives for their country.  Patriotism could command millions of lives to-day.  Our country is not lacking in patriotism; we have as much as can be found anywhere else, and it is of as high a quality.  There ought to be more patriotism here than elsewhere; as citizenship in the United States carries more benefits with it than citizenship in any other land, the American citizen should be willing to sacrifice more than any other citizen to make sure that the blessings of our government shall descend unimpaired to children and to children’s children.  The atheist knows as little about these mysteries as the Christian does and yet he lives, he loves and he is patriotic.

But our case is even stronger:  Everything with which man deals is full of mystery.  The very food we eat is mysterious; sometimes man-made food becomes so mysterious that we are compelled to enact pure food laws in order that we may know what we are eating.  And God-made food is as mysterious as man-made food, though we cannot compel Jehovah to make known the formula.

We encourage children to raise vegetables; a little child can learn how to raise vegetables, but no grown person understands the mystery that is wrapped up in every vegetable that grows.  Let me illustrate:  I am fond of radishes; my good wife knows it and keeps me supplied with them when she can.  I eat radishes in the morning; I eat radishes at noon; I eat radishes at night; I eat radishes between meals; I like radishes.  I plant radish seed—­put the little seed into the ground, and go out in a few days and find a full grown radish.  The top is green, the body of the root is white and almost transparent, and around it I sometimes find a delicate pink or red.  Whose hand caught the hues of a summer sunset and wrapped them around the radish’s root down there in the darkness in the ground?  I cannot understand a radish; can you?  If one refused to eat anything until he could understand the mystery of its growth, he would die of starvation; but mystery does not bother us in the dining-room,—­it is only in the church that mystery seems to give us trouble.

In travelling around the world I found that the egg is a universal form of food.  When we reached Asia the cooking was so different from ours that the boiled egg was sometimes the only home-like thing we could find on the table.  I became so attached to the egg, that, when I returned to the United States, for weeks I felt like taking my hat off to every hen I met.  What is more mysterious than an egg?  Take a fresh egg; it is not only good food, but an important article of merchandise.  But loan a fresh egg to a hen, after the hen has developed a well-settled tendency to sit, and let her keep the egg under her for a week, and, as any housewife will tell you, it loses a large part of its market value.  But be patient with the hen; let her have it for two weeks more and she will give you back a chicken that you could not find in the egg.  No one can understand the egg, but we all like eggs.