"There are three things that will endure - faith, hope and love. And the greatest of these is love." 1 Corinthians 13:13 

The Dominion of Canada stands today because nation builders have lived the realities of faith in God in every walk of life. In the 1840's, a New Brunswick businessman, Sir Leonard Tilley, used the sciences to create a fortune in his apothecary and like most Canadians he faced the question of what is the purpose of the power and influence in my hand. 

He found the answer not in his money, but in a passion to immerse himself in the truths of God. Like people of active faith, he committed to becoming a steward of the opportunities that crossed his path, translating them into a greater good for humankind. No one but the Divine could have planned that it would be trauma and injustice that would launch Sir Tilley into nation building. 

Screaming children in a Gagetown murder so haunted Sir Tilley that historians marked the crime as the catalyst for his entrance into public life. "There lay the mother withering in her blood, her little children crying around her, and the husband and father under arrest for murder, and rum the cause of it all," wrote Tilley. 

On a platform for temperance, he entered government and political storms eventually landed him as premier of New Brunswick. Worried that Canadian provinces would fall one by one to the influences of the United States he went on to help write the British North America Act and entered into negotiations for a new union. 

On day two of discussions about what to call the United Canada, Sir Leonard practised his morning routine of asking God to direct his decisions. God is best found in the Bible, and that day Sir Leonard read Psalm 72, the biblical passage which teaches power on earth should reflect the rule of God. When reading verse eight of the Psalm, "He shall have Dominion from sea to sea", Sir Tilley believed he'd found the name for the new Canada. 

The Bible was read into the minutes of our founding conference and Dominion was agreed upon. The letter that established our name to Queen Victoria is signed by John A. Macdonald and explained that Dominion was "a tribute to the principles they earnestly desired to uphold." 

So it was that our first Prime Minister laid his hand on the Bible to be sworn in as member of the Privy Council, and to this day, every Prime Minister has done the same with cabinet shuffles also making the visible acknowledgement that the rule of God is the ideal model for how nation builders care for this land. 

Dominion may stand silently in our consciousness, much like the Bible verses inscribed in stone over the public entrances into the Houses of Parliament, but with the surrender to Dominion, we said yes to the power of the supernatural on our land. 

It's helps explain the mystery of some of the things we cherish most, like The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, created, as you can read in it's minutes, because a young mother said "she was led by the Spirit of God to found the Hospital for Sick Children and that having accepted the work as from God, she could never resign it." 

The operation was financed supernaturally, as founder Elizabeth McMaster explained in a negotiating letter with a heating contractor. "We get our money only as the Lord sends it, and that only in answer to believing prayer. The Lord seldom sends us a surplus, but has never left us want any necessary thing. We consider it right to make this statement to you before you commence work, that you might either work, trusting God for the money, as we do, or not at all. We'd like to hear from you by Wednesday noon ...." 

Who would think that on such a financing principle the hospital would birth the first milk pasteurization plant in Canada, and go on to establish 400 life giving research projects in 75 fields. 

Meanwhile, Elizabeth's uncle by marriage, Senator William McMaster, bequeathed his estate to endow a "Christian school of learning" and to this day the supernatural hangs in the motto of McMaster University in Hamilton. "In Christ all things hold together" Colossians 1:17. 

Christ's command that light should shine for all to see illuminated other halls of learning and early academic Benjamin Davies created the Classics department at McGill University because he believed that a learned clergy was "Canada's chief asset in establishing a moral climate for a new nation." 

This kind of radical nation building comes from Canadians who take seriously the supernatural promise that God will direct their steps if their hearts are in tune with His rule in their lives. 

People like Nellie McClung who argued in Britain that Canadian women deserved to be declared persons. Motivated by biblical commands of equality, she explained, "How very glad I would be to exercise my religion in a peaceable, blameless, mellow way, to sing hymns, read my Bible, teach dainty, little dimpled, darlings in Sunday school, carry Jellies to the sick, entertain strangers, and let it go at that. Then I would have the joy of hearing people say, 'She is a very sweet woman.' But here is the trouble. God demands our love, not just our amiability." 

Love for the poor saw Salvation Army founder William Booth seek a spiritual solution to the overcrowding of London's slums. He saw Canada as one of the richest parts of God's earth, and today millions of Canadians can trace their belonging in this country to the immigration scheme the Salvation Army prayed into existence in 1905. This Canada Day, the Army is still praying over it's nation building while it continues to be the largest dispenser of social care in our land, with over 20,000 employees and millions of volunteer hours operating under the mission of being an army "interested in one war only, the one against the powers of darkness and the sin which ruins people." 

In all categories of the Globe's discoveries of leaders in our land, you can find people of faith, giving evidence to the latest religion polling in Canada. Last month a Strategic Counsel and Focus on the Family survey found that 88 percent of Canadians identify themselves with the Christian faith tradition. 

It explains why millions of Canadians are in church each week, or why a stock broker like Tom Caldwell uses his profits to hire a Christian chaplain for Bay and King Street workers, or why former hockey champion Paul Henderson has parlayed his 1972 winning goal into leadership of over 70 Christian discovery groups among business leaders in Canada. It explains why a former street girl from Vancouver's Eastside, Catharine Williams Jones, in the spirit of Elizabeth McMaster, opens three recovery homes for prostitutes and their children or why world renowned tenor Ben Heppner is singing at benefit concerts this week. Christian conviction explains why native leader Matthew Coon Come is opposing the recent changes to the Native Act, and why Preston Manning created a new political voice to reform government. The rule of God's dominion explains why thousands of teenagers are converging to meet the Pope this month, and then on August 24 they throng again to Parliament Hill to pray for national revival. The examples of expressions of faith lived out in nation building could go on and on. 

"God keep our land, glorious and free" is well underway.