Home Missions in Action
Date: 2005-07-02T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Home missions

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Title: Home Missions in Action

Author: Edith H. Allen

Release date: July 1, 2005 [eBook #8427]
Most recently updated: March 21, 2015

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8427

Credits: Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Tiffany Vergon, Anne Reshnyk and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOME MISSIONS IN ACTION ***

Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Tiffany Vergon, Anne Reshnyk
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team

HOME MISSIONS IN ACTION

BY

EDITH H. ALLEN

To

MY FATHER A

Christian Patriot

FROM THE PUBLICATION COMMITTEE

The general topic for the text books for 1915-16, as first chosen by the "Committee of Twenty-eight," was "The Church at Its Task." This committee is composed of representatives from the four missionary organizations: the Home Missions Council; the Council of Women for Home Missions; the Conference of Foreign Mission Boards and the Federation of Women's Boards of Foreign Missions.

The outbreak of the great war of the nations brought new duties and questions of adjustment to the Christian church; the Committee has recognized this in changing the original topic to "The Church and the Nations."

This book is written from the standpoint of the words chosen as the key note for the year, "Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done on earth." It recognizes the fact that the Kingdom cannot come to our land, or to the world unless all social conditions are drawn within its scope; it emphasizes the desire of Home Missions and the church to work toward this great end, and the recognition of their responsibility for its accomplishment. But unless the nations of the world are trending toward the day when peace shall reign and hatred and strife cease among men, these desires cannot be realized. With this in view the portions dealing with social conditions and peace possibilities have been written.

That this book may reveal the far-reaching potentialities of Home Missions as a dynamic force for reclaiming, educating, healing, and integrating our nation into a land over which the Christ shall reign and that from Him it shall also draw its ideals and its power, is the hope and the prayer of the author and the Council of Women for Home Missions.

CONTENTS

I. A NATIONAL FORCE

II. A RECLAIMING FORCE

III. AN EDUCATIVE FORCE

IV. A HEALING FORCE

V. AN INTEGRATING FORCE

VI. SOURCES OF POWER

I

A NATIONAL FORCE PRAYER FOR THE CHURCH

O God, we pray for thy Church, which is set to-day amid the perplexities of a changing order, and face to face with a great new task. We remember with love the nurture she gave to our spiritual life in its infancy, the tasks she set for our growing strength, the influence of the devoted hearts she gathers, the steadfast power for good she has exerted. When we compare her with all other human institutions, we rejoice, for there is none like her. But when we judge her by the mind of her Master, we bow in pity and contrition. Oh, baptize her afresh in the life-giving spirit of Jesus! Grant her a new birth, though it be with the travail of repentance and humiliation. Bestow upon her a more imperious responsiveness to duty, a swifter compassion with suffering, and an utter loyalty to the will of God. Put upon her lips the ancient gospel of her Lord. Help her to proclaim boldly the coming of the Kingdom of God and the doom of all that resist it. Fill her with the prophets' scorn of tyranny, and with a Christ-like tenderness for the heavy-laden and down-trodden. Give her faith to espouse the cause of the people, and in their hands that grope after freedom and light to recognize the bleeding hands of the Christ. Bid her cease from seeking her own life, lest she lose it. Make her valiant to give up her life to humanity, that like her crucified Lord she may mount by the path of the cross to a higher glory.

—Walter Rauschenbusch.

* * * * *

Home Missions may be defined as the out-reaching of the Christian church in America to those peoples and places in our land beyond the immediate environs of the local church.

From the time the Pilgrim, the Dutch, the Cavalier stepped on these shores the church (and included in it Home Missions) has exerted a most powerful influence upon the ideals and standards of life on this continent.

While shaping and moulding the thought and life of the people, it has itself developed a content and vision infinitely greater, more inclusive, more of the spirit of the Christ's "I am come that ye might have life and have it more abundantly," than was dreamed of in the days of its beginning.

"The hidden forces of national life are instinctive and unconscious. One cannot differentiate natural influences so as to ascribe to each its value. The ideals of nations, like those of individuals, are derived from all the concrete qualities of character." [Footnote: F. H. Giddings in "Democracy and Empire."] The ideals which are a compelling force in our nation to-day cannot be ascribed to any one force, but are the result of all those formative reactions which are the product of racial, economic, social, ethical and religious forces, the latter being pre-eminently the most marked.

It will be remembered that into the new and harder life of the successive frontiers, Home Missions entered, bringing a saving power, as well as one that softened and glorified the renunciations and sacrifices attendant always upon frontier life.

Indeed, the most marked characteristics of our national life until recent years have been those born of contact with frontier conditions—courage, discipline, an austere sense of duty, a passion for work, marvelous practicality joined to a fundamental idealism and love of sentiment, an unconquerable hopefulness and an innate kindness and personal helpfulness.

Of necessity the conditions and environs of the country have reacted upon the religious ideals and life of our people. We can not enter into the fullest understanding of the present place and influence of Home Missions as a National Force, or a study of its immediate future, without pausing to review the background of the past. For we recognize that growth, organization and development are all functions of time.

The early fathers had no thought of founding a nation when they sought refuge and a new start on this continent. Jamestown, New York, Plymouth and their outgrowing settlements were intensely individualistic. They were the individual Cavalier, Hollander or Pilgrim, only in larger proportions, bearing all their characteristics.

To appreciate the characteristics and spirit of these colonists, we must consider the special significance of the age that gave them birth. They "were the children of a century in which the human spirit had a new birth in energy of imagination, in faith in its powers to dare greatly and achieve greatly." [Footnote: Hamilton Wright Mabie—American Ideals, Character and Life.]

They were inspired most strongly by religious aspirations, although combining with these impelling political convictions. In the Puritan colony, "membership in the church for some time remained a qualification for voting."

"In nearly every document which conveyed authority to discoverers, explorers, and settlers in the New World, the Christian religion was recognized." [Footnote: Hamilton Wright Mabie—American Ideals, Character and Life.]

Their faith was of heroic quality, of rock firmness; their obedience to duty as they saw it, almost absolute.

The Bible exerted a tremendous influence. It was not only their religious guide and teacher, but was also their library, daily companion and for some time their only literature. It became wrought into the very fibre of their thought.

This dominating religious attitude, while modified in the different types—the Friends, Huguenots, Moravians—gave the impulses which have had so strong a formative influence upon the life of the nation.

Recognizing fully the incalculable value of this early religious contribution, we cannot fail also to realize the limitations of the religious outlook of that period, and the effect of these limitations upon the social life of the country. Seventeenth century religion laid its emphasis upon the subjective—upon definitions of religious belief—and found expression in theological discussion and opinion. It concerned itself intensely with the individual as regards his spiritual life, but took little or no account of the outward conditions that bear so powerfully upon the inner life. Thus in its growth the church failed to exercise that commanding influence in the redemption of society and the forming of social conditions which should have accompanied the preaching of individual salvation.

It entered deeply, reverently, passionately into the spirit of the first commandment: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy might," but failed in holding with equal grasp the second, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself."

Had the church, had Home Missions, entered fully into the spirit of this second commandment, its enormous restraining, organizing, saving power would have contributed more fully to the forming of the community life before it so desperately needed _re_forming—to dealing with those great fundamental conditions which have led to the "submerged" of our civilization.

To-day we are coming to recognize the vital connection between spiritual regeneration and the bringing of the Kingdom of God on Earth. Home Missions is essentially and radically concerned with both. Rev. David Watson in his "Social Advance" says:

"Theology and sociology are closely kin and in a sense complementary. Theology deals with man's relation to God, Sociology with man's relation to his fellows. The one is the science of God, the other is the science of society.

"The goal of all real social advance, as of all Home Mission effort, should be the establishment of the Kingdom of God on earth in all its gracious fullness; and the method fourfold, by spiritual dynamics (the church and its Home Missions), moral culture, economic change and wise legislation."

First, the Gospel, with its message of individual salvation, and the Kingdom of God, this opening the way for and bringing with it education and moral culture, and the control of economic forces by legislation.

"Only through the unified action of all these forces is continued progress assured."

The church has eagerly sought to comply with the first three requisites, but its failure to recognize the specific influence it might exert along the lines of the economic and legislative have retarded mightily the better day in this land and hindered the best and highest attainment of our democracy.

The concept of the Christian ideal to-day is that it shall save the individual, but also remove that which produces crime and makes sin almost inevitable—in short, that it shall seek to redeem the environment as well as the sinner, and give more wholesomeness, more fullness, more joy to life through redeeming its conditions, as well as saving its soul.

On the church and its outreaching Home Missions as the instrument for the Kingdom-progress, rests a heavy responsibility in supplying that spiritual dynamic and inspiration which is back of all social upbuilding. It must produce the men and women whose characters are such that in their attitude toward industry, labor, legislation, in all their social capacities, they will seek to live Christ's social principle, "What ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them," and to bring the Master's Beatitudes as a working principle into life.

Before considering what we have left undone, let us review in outline the splendid record of Home Missions.

Since the early days when Roger Williams pressed into the wilderness of Rhode Island, the Christian preacher and teacher have followed the advancing line of the successive frontiers—no hardship, no denial, no scarcity of food, no privation, no want or cold so great that Home Missions hesitated to go, with its spiritual healing, its community service, bringing the very heart of Christ's love and service into these new centers. When adventurous home-seekers reached the Alleghanies, the Iowa Band soon followed. When the fate of the great Northwest hung in the balance, a missionary statesman came to its saving.

When the frozen North called men with its lure of gold, an indomitable missionary led in all that made for the better life. When a devastating war had spent its fury and a helpless Africa, bound by heaviest chains of ignorance and superstition, waited, Home Missions responded.

When the deposed Red brother suffered every form of grievous wrong, Home Missions brought him brotherly love and helped him find the Jesus Road. When the alien stood bewildered in our midst, Home Missions gave him guidance. When the dumb appeal of the isolated mountaineers was realized, Home Missions followed the lonely mountain trail. To the mines and the lumber camps, to the ancient Spanish folk of our continent, to those deluded by the false Prophet—to all of these Home Missions has carried its threefold ministry of saving, teaching and training.

Home Missions counts its lives laid down for the Christ on a hundred fields. No pen can tell of the magnitude of its influence on our national life. Its little enterprises are now the great, strong city churches of Nebraska, Kansas, California, Oregon, in fact of all the States.

It was a Congregational pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Porter, who preached the first sermon on Lake Michigan, as he held a service in the carpenter shop of Fort Dearborn in 1833. The population of what afterward became the city of Chicago then numbered three hundred. As a result of the efforts of Rev. Mr. Porter, who organized the first Presbyterian church in the city of Chicago while working also for the Congregational church, many of the present centers of Christian influence were instituted in that city.

It is instructive to note the returns from one Home Mission enterprise. On the Pacific coast the Congregational Home Missionary Society in sixty-two years spent $1,646,000. In thirty-two years the churches thus founded sent $864,000 to carry Christ's message to foreign countries, and $302,000 through other Congregational agencies for uplift in this country. This was given in addition to all the local philanthropies and social service rendered in their own communities by these organizations.

The history of the first Presbyterian Church of Portland, Oregon, is one of the outstanding illustrations of the fruitfulness of Home Mission work. "This church was organized on January first, 1854, with ten members. It was a strictly Home Mission work, dependent upon the Home Board for its existence. When it was reorganized in 1860 it had but seventeen members, and they were unable to pay the salary.

"During the next four years it received aid from the Board of Home Missions to the amount of eleven hundred dollars. Then it undertook self-support. It has been blessed in having a line of far-seeing pastors who have led it on from strength to strength.

"As its members increased in wealth they grew in their interest in the advancement of the Kingdom of God. Every enterprise which helped on that Kingdom was either begun or promoted by the First Church. The first missionary to Alaska went out from it, and her expenses were paid for six months from the treasury of the First Church.

"The steady development of the Oregon Territory engaged the eager interest of this church from the first. It is said that in all that district, including Oregon, Washington and part of Idaho, no Presbyterian church was ever erected which did not receive some aid from the members of the First Church of Portland.

"In a single year of its history it has contributed twenty thousand dollars to Home Missions, and it is because of the large share in the Home Mission work of the Presbytery of Portland taken by the First Church that that Presbytery was able to assume self-support, and so become the first self-supporting Presbytery in the great Northwest.

"This church also fostered the educational interests of the Northwest. Albany College in Oregon owes its existence in large measure to its generosity. Portland Academy was early taken over by its members, and to-day is equal to any secondary school in the country. The San Francisco Theological Seminary came into a full share of aid and care. The Ladd professorship is a lasting proof of the spirit of that church.

"The increasing numbers of Chinese attracted the attention of the
church, and the first mission to the Chinese by the Presbyterian
Church was established in 1885 on petition of the pastor of the
First Church.

"Its foreign mission work has been extensive. Not only has it sent out its own members to the foreign mission field, but it has been from the very beginning a liberal supporter of Foreign Missions. The first Foreign Mission Society of Oregon was organized in this church, and the splendid North Pacific Board of Missions, broad enough minded to see the whole task of the church, was organized here, and is to-day an eager supporter of Home, Foreign and Freedmen's missions.

"Nor has the church been unmindful of its debt to this ever-growing city of Portland." [Footnote: Rev. Charles L. Thompson, D.D.]

Illustrations of similar service might be multiplied many times from the history of other denominations.

With all this glorious, Christ-filled service, Home Missions has ministered to only a small part. Over sixty millions of the nearly one hundred of our population are non-Christian and allied with no religious organizations whatever—Catholic, Hebrew, or Protestant.

Still more than forty thousand Indians in this country are without Christian ministry. Still great districts in our Southern mountains wait the coming of opportunity and uplift. Still large numbers of Mexicans in the Southwest, ignorant and superstitious, are a retarding element in their communities. Still vast immigrant settlements remain untouched by regenerating influences and absorb, as well as contribute, much that is deteriorating.

Still the traitorous hierarchy, Mormonism, makes enormous strides almost unchecked by Christian effort. The Mormon Church officially makes the following report of its mission work in this country and abroad in one year: Tracts distributed, 10,892,122; gospel conversations, 1,744,641; families visited, 3,532,273; books distributed and standard church works, 500,614; meetings held, 92,072.

Still from our cities comes the bitter cry of the submerged and of the women and girls whom unspeakable sin is claiming. "The United States has the largest proportion of women workers to the population in the world (one in five). [Footnote: Henry C. Vedder—The Gospel of Jesus and the Problem of Democracy.] It has done less toward the regulation of this form of labor—less for the protection of its women laborers—than any other country."

The recent investigations in Chicago and other large cities show the close relation between insufficient wages and vice.

One of the greatest obstacles to the relief of these conditions is the indifference of well-to-do people who do not come into personal contact with the wrongs and sufferings of the working people.

Still we are confronted by the sad spectacle of more than a million of the nation's children at work in factories and cotton mills for their living, and helping to support their families.

"The child is the embodied future. We can never have good citizenship without protected childhood. Child labor is a process of squandering future wealth to satisfy present need." [Footnote: See report of Eleventh Conference of Child Labor held at Washington, January, 1915.]

Defrauded childhood! Children, loaded with heavy tasks beyond their strength, robbed of the light and joy of life, plead for childhood's rights and that spiritual development that should make known to them the companionship of the Saviour and the love of the Heavenly Father.

The testimony printed in the fall of 1912, concerning child labor in the canning factories of the Empire State, shows that more than a thousand children were employed in the canning industry that summer; one hundred and forty-one were less than ten years old.

An experienced manufacturer has said, "You can protect a machine, you can guide the buzz-saw, but no law that you can enact can, in a large industry, protect the heart and soul of the child."

A marked improvement has been made in the last five years in combating the evils of child labor. Many states forbid the employment of children under fourteen years of age in factories and mills—but in North and South Carolina, in Georgia and Alabama, children under fourteen are still permitted to labor in factories ten or twelve hours a day.

To reach this evil from the Federal standpoint, the powers of the
Inter-State Commerce Commission should be invoked.

A bill is now pending (February, 1915) before Congress to bar from interstate commerce the products of mills, mines, quarries, factories and workshops employing child labor.

Home Missions must also face to-day the infinitely complex and rapidly increasing problem involved in the adjustment of our population to cities and away from rural districts. Thus cities are becoming dominant factors to be reckoned with in all the elements that enter into the question of religious and moral uplift, as well as the ideals and the welfare of our nation.

Here the aggregation of immigrants focuses acutely the complex problems peculiar to them.

Here is the child laborer in factories and on the streets.

Here women and girls struggle under fearful economic pressure.

Here is the political boss—and what ex-President Roosevelt terms "organized alliance between the criminal rich and the criminal poor."

Here is the class consciousness and hatred—the cry of anarchy and socialism.

"To-day seventy-six per cent of the population of Massachusetts live in cities; of New York, eighty-five and one-half per cent; New Jersey, sixty-one and two-tenths; Connecticut, fifty-three and two-tenths; Illinois is one-half urban, and forty per cent of California's people live under city conditions." [Footnote: Frederic C. Howe—The City, the Hope of Democracy.]

Contrasted with this peculiar burden of the city, there is the country church and the adaptation needed to maintain it in any degree of effectiveness, when its very life blood has been drained for the city. It has made untold contributions of ministers, missionaries, church officers and members to the cities and distant fields, leaving the mother church childless and weak in its advancing years.

Changes that leave almost none of its former constituency confront the country church.

Old farms and village stores pass into the hands of aliens—in many instances Hebrews—summer boarders claim the attention of the faithful women of the congregation for the most favorable months of the year. Sunday sports engage the interests of the indifferent, and there are many other disintegrating elements.

In a land where progress calls to progress, where the results of hasty development create a large share of its problem—a land where the need of Christian effort is paramount, and where such effort is so vital to the world, the decadence of the country church is of far-reaching significance. Home Missions is called to direct its energizing, constructive ability to the solution of this baffling and discouraging feature of its problem to a greater degree than ever before.

Home Missions at this time also confronts a new opportunity and obligation—to make its voice heard, its influence felt, for international peace.

These winter days of 1914, in which the world has apparently lost its soul in the fury of slaughter, speak very loudly to the heart of Christianity.

No force for the upbuilding of the Christ power on earth can ignore the significance and solemnity of this time.

Has Christianity failed in these warring lands, or have they who are controlled by Christian standards and ethics in other relations, failed to apprehend that the Christ test—His principles—must be brought to bear upon all of life—upon personal, individual, national and international relations?

The fruition of Christianity must at last bring in the day when the conscience of Christian nations will hold true to the Master's teaching. "What ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them," must be wrought into national consciousness and practiced as an international principle. With the fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of man is the very heart of the Gospel message.

Home Missions must take account of the moral reactions of such carnage as is now taking place.

"Death meets those myriads whilst indulging the most appalling passions—their hands filled with weapons of carnage, their hearts with fratricidal hate. It is the sense of the moral death involved, searing of conscience, deadening of heart, blunting of moral faculty, fruits of death brought forth in the soul of the survivor, which are more horrifying to the enlightened consciousness than the dying groans of the stricken can be to the more bodily nerve. The thing to fear is not pain, but trespass; not suffering, but sin—the peculiar sin of war is that it corrupts while it consumes, that it demoralizes whilst it destroys. It is not because war kills that it is the devil, but because it depraves; and it is because it depraves that it is condemned by the religious consciousness. The damage that it inflicts upon the persons and property of men is trifling beside the damage it inflicts upon morals; and it is this that is exciting in thoughtful minds a fresh interest in the whole military conception. The ominous thing is not the body prostrate on the battlefield, but the brute rampant in the mother-land; the general lowering of ideal, the blatant materialism and defiant selfishness." [Footnote: Walter Walsh—The Moral Damage of War.]

Home Missions must consider the responsibility of our Christian nation toward the attitude of world thought that made possible this war. It was John Hay in his instructions to our American delegates to the First Hague Conference who said: "Next to the great fact of a nation's independence is the great fact of its interdependence." [Footnote: William I. Hull—The New Peace Movement.]

Through travel, cultural influences, commerce, the rapid circulation of news, the cultivation of sympathy, there is a recognized oneness of the world to-day; a solidarity which, notwithstanding all the differences arising from remoteness, race, legislation, and religion, binds together the world as never before.

The world is realizing to-day, as one of the results of this conflict, that in the largest sense its interests are one, and that all nations are interdependent.

"America must remember that the military idea and the ideal of democracy are absolutely opposed."

Dr. Josiah Strong, in a powerful presentation of the effects of the war says: "Evidently the increasing interdependence of the nations is creating new international rights and duties, but there is no world legislature to recognize and legalize them, there is no world judiciary to interpret and apply them, and there is no world executive to enforce and vitalize them.

"The economic and industrial organization of the world has far outgrown the political organization of the world." [Footnote: The Gospel of the Kingdom, January, 1915.]

Some new world organization is needed and must come to supply this deficiency.

Home Missions must use its influence to build up a Christian sentiment for the adjustment of international disagreements other than by bloodshed and slaughter.

"The following facts are significant. The European war is said to cost over one hundred million dollars a day in money, stoppage of industry, and destruction of property.

"The United States has spent in preparedness for war during the past ten years a sum six times the cost of the Panama Canal." [Footnote: New York Peace Society Leaflet.]

The European war says:

"That a world that prepares for war will get it sooner or later.

That militarism has revealed itself as an enemy to civilization and must be destroyed.

That autocrat rulers with power to make war have no rightful place in the modern world. That no more attempts at world domination are wanted, no matter by what nation or race.

That nationality and national boundaries must be respected, territories being enlarged only by the free consent of the population to be annexed, and colonization taking place only by peaceable commercial and industrial methods.

That, while military preparedness cannot preserve peace, preparedness against attack is essential.

That a league or federation of the peaceably inclined nations for mutual protection and for the preservation of international law and order has become a necessity of the immediate future.

That lasting peace may be secured through the development of international law, the extension of democracy, and the cultivation of the spirit of international justice and good will."

Home Missionary women must assume their full share in all efforts to spread illuminating information on this subject, and through their personal attitude, thinking, and praying, strive for the establishment of world relations that will make for peace.

The destruction of homes, hunger, sickness, poverty, degradation, all fall heavily upon women and their helpless little ones.

When the guns have ceased their work of death and the ruined land turns to rebuild its broken commerce and industry, it is the children who must grow up under the privations and the stunting burdens of fearful taxation. From the cradle to the grave, they must pay the billions of treasure eaten up by devastating, destroying war.

Let every Home Missionary woman, to whom this land is dear, who cherishes father, husband, son or brother, who clings to loved home and precious children, use all her influence to bring in the day when the Christ standard shall be the standard for all our national and international relations.

O bells, to-day let warfare cease!
Christ came to be a Prince of Peace.
No longer let the sound of drum
Or trumpet, campward calling, come
To vex the earth with dread, and make
The hearts of wives and mothers ache.
Leave battle flags to moths and dust—
Let sword and gun grow red with rust!
Earth groaned with carnage—let it cease—
Ring in the thousand years of Peace!

Ring out the littleness of things,
Ring in the broader thought that brings
Swift end to all ignoble creeds.
Ring in an age of noble deeds
For all things pure, and high, and good—
The era of true brotherhood.
Ring out the lust for gold and gain—
The greed that cripples soul and brain,
And open eyes, long blind, to see
What grander, better things there be!
[Footnote: Eben Rexford.]

Home Missions is one of the greatest contributors to national righteousness. Through it the higher life of the community is developed in the formative period; through it belated peoples receive the spiritual transforming dynamic that makes them reach up to the higher and better in their surroundings and gives them a developing effectiveness and efficiency.

It brings the same force with greater power into the lives of the children, giving them also a training of minds and hands that equips them for an enlarging sphere of usefulness.

It brings the most telling force possible to the upward struggle of our primitive and dependent people, patiently leading them by the road of sympathetic understanding into some strength to stand amidst the overpowering complexity of the civilization that surrounds them, in which they as yet are not advanced enough to become more than a problem.

The Negro and Indian testify to the marvelous transforming power of the Gospel of Christ brought by Home Missions—a power that gives moral fiber, a wholesome attitude of life in which work and ambition have place.

To all that is noblest, highest and best in our national life, Home
Missions has given in large measure.

Home Missions faces forward, realizing that infinitely greater responsibility and service must now enter into the mission of the church at home, if this country is to remain Christian itself and be a force for Christianity in the world.

II

A RECLAIMING FORCE

"Go ye and teach the next one whom you meet—
Man, woman, child, at home or on the street—
That 'God so loved them' each in thought so sweet
He could not have them lost through sin's defeat,
But sent you with His message to repeat That pardon
through His Son might be complete.
So shall our land be saved from sore defeat
And gather with the nations at His feet."

* * * * *

Referring to the incident when the disciples, James and John, confronted by the lame man at the gate Beautiful of the Temple, gave him restored health through the power of the Christ, instead of the alms which he solicited, Dr. John Henry Jowett said: "He, the Master, gave fundamentally to those in need. He did not attend to the symptoms, but cured the disease. He gave capacity for incapacity, ability for inability, life for feebleness. He strengthened the wills of those born impotent and gave them the power of self-control. "As Christ gave fundamentally in His earthly ministry, so He has given since. It is still the greatest mission of the church to reach and restore—to give "capacity."

Christ said, "The Kingdom of Heaven is within you." It can never come in society, it can never prevail in a nation, until it has first come into individual lives and found expression through them.

"All true progress," says the Hon. James Bryce, "has always been from the soul working outward through men's acts, and it is so to-day."

Home Missions has pre-eminently been the agent of the church in this fundamental work of reclamation. Let us go to the laboratory of the Mission fields where we may see Home Missions in action, and witness the Christ power to restore, uplift, transform, to give capacity.

* * * * *

It was a crisp day in early autumn when the visitor from the
Women's Board stepped from the train at a small station in
Northern Minnesota and was met by the Home Missionary pastor.

A pair of strong horses and a light buggy made quick work of the ten-mile drive, to the new mission church at M—— L——.

It was through what might be termed new country—so new that the stumps of the recently demolished forest were still standing, seared and slashed remnants of the splendid trees.

The first crop raised by ploughing the rich earth between the stumps stood tall and full of the promise of marvelous productiveness when suitable cultivation was possible. It was one of the crude frontier towns of the Northwest.

Several Old World kingdoms had contributed to the population.
There were Norwegians, Swedes, Hollanders, a few Poles, and some
Americans of the sort who perennially move on, hoping for better
conditions.

The lives of the people were filled with heaviest toil, for they were conquering a new country. They were renters of the land, or had bought with heavy mortgages, and so their ceaseless struggle was to gain a foothold. Little time or thought had they for the claims of the higher life.

There was no reminder of the things of God in the town save a Catholic chapel. To many of the people this faith was most repugnant. There was no Sabbath, though for some the day's toil was not quite so arduous. The saloon, with its warmth and brightness, lured the tired men with the promise of sociability at all times.

Among them, however, was a man who had been an elder in a Protestant church across the seas, and he realized what the godlessness of the little place would mean to them all, and especially its effect upon the lives of their little children.

He sought the help of a Home Missionary whose duties covered a district of hundreds of miles, and to whom was entrusted the establishing of new fields.

When his work called him to that part of Minnesota, he visited M—— L——, holding services in the little district school building, visiting in the homes and doing what he could in a brief stay to rouse and help them spiritually.

As he was able, he returned to them several times during the year. How gladly did those welcome him who in the old homes had followed after the things of God!

In the summer he arranged to have a student missionary commissioned to the field. In due time the student arrived, spending the four months of his seminary vacation among them.

He was an indefatigable worker. Soon the little schoolhouse was most uncomfortably crowded with those who were drawn by the singing and the bright go of the meetings.

Services were then held out of doors, the congregation seated on improvised benches of boards laid across tree trunks.

The student organized and superintended a Sunday-school—gathered the young people into an Endeavor Society. He formed a singing class—a portable baby organ which he played was their only musical instrument.

He arranged games, socials, and picnics; one of the latter, a berry-picking picnic, the proceeds of which, twelve dollars, was given to missions.

So close did he bring religion to these people, so desirable he made it, that they became eager for a permanent church. A very little help was given by the Board toward the purchase of the land, and the people attended to the building.

The men quarried and hauled the foundation stone; they secured and dressed the timber, and with the labor of their own hands the little church was built before the student returned, and later, beside it, the Women's Board helping, a tiny parsonage was placed.

Then came an energetic, devoted Home Missionary to live the Gospel, day by day, as well as preach it; to incorporate Christian ideals into the daily thinking of these people, and Christian purposes into their controlling motives; to make them understand that the Gospel means honesty in business, cleanness of heart and body, health and enlightenment, and whatever makes life worthy here and now and fits it for the future beyond.

Thousands of such homely frontier missions are molding the citizenship which makes the very life of the Republic.

All honor to the men and women of character and ability who, as Home Missionaries, are devoting their lives to such fields—the most difficult in the world—where no picturesqueness of scenes or people relieves the strain—where sordid sin, monotony, crudity, and newness prevail, but where the returns in character-building contribute to the life of a nation whose mission is the world.

* * * * *

The following quaint letter was written by Rev. Aratus Kent, a
Congregational Missionary at Galena, Ill., to the Congregational
Home Missionary Society under date of April 9, 1844:

"When I came to Galena (in 1829), there was not any church or clergyman within two hundred miles, and I used to say that my parish extended from Rock River to Wisconsin. Now I can count within these bounds twenty-five churches and fifteen ministers.

"Let those then who think little of the influences of the Home Missionary Society blot out of being those twenty-five churches, and drive out of the state those fifteen clergymen, and disband fifty Sabbath-schools, and burn a thousand Bibles, and recall a thousand volumes of the Tract Society, and stop the monthly visit of a tract to five hundred houses, and give back a drunken father to fifty families that are now rejoicing in the peace and plenty consequent upon their regeneration." And yet this work of vandalism is not done until you have taken back that stream of heavenly influence which has gone forth from this district to bless the heathen in our forests and the heathen beyond the ocean, and until you have recalled that company of young men who have gone away for the ministry.

"We need within this field more missionaries who can endure privations, and who, to meet their appointments, can face a prairie storm and buffet a swollen stream, and who, like their Divine Master, can take the mountain top for their study and the midnight hour for the season of their devotion.

"We want also assistance here in the West to establish literary (educational) institutions upon the right basis, and if the professors of the East would come and see what I see, they would court the honor of contribution to establish the female seminary in Galena which was yesterday projected, and which is next week to commence its existence. This church has sustained a German colporter during the winter."

* * * * *

About a little valley in the Southland stand mountains grim and forbidding in their rugged beauty—holding close within their bounds those who for generations had found their scanty living upon the sterile mountain sides and in the richer valleys, saying No! to the pressing outside world, with its progress and its change.

Many winters and summers passed over the settlement of J——, on —— creek, forty miles from all railroads, shut in by laurel-covered hills and pine mountains; its people, of fine pioneer ancestry and deeply religious, thrown back upon themselves through segregation and isolation, had lost much of the initiative and force that characterized their ancestors, and had crystallized along the lines of their peculiarities, as any people will under the same conditions.

Up the creek and into the valley one day there came two "foreign" women from the great world beyond. They were Home Missionaries, but did not use this designation for fear the mountain people might not understand that they came simply as friends to bring to the valley the opportunity America gives to her children.

They found the people simple folk, ignorant, but with no touch of vulgarity. Their eyes saw no opening beyond the blue shadows of the enveloping mountains. To a few the longing to know, or that their children might have a "chance," hung like a star afar off, but with little hope of attainment.

A dark fatalism presided over their destinies. "What is to be will be, I reckon," summed up their philosophy.

About many of them appeared an atmosphere of the unconscious moral heroism that willingly gives its all to meet whatever the day may bring of privation, hardship, suffering, or death.

The valley folk were very suspicious of the two friends at first, and curious about them in a shy, kindly way.

Why had they come? What were their real motives? Did they mean only good to the valley? It took many months of devoted service on the part of the women to answer these queries.

Did sickness ravage some home where many little ones were crowded into two or three rooms? Was some man crushed by the heavy logs while at work? There the nurse friend came with her comforts and her skill to fight for the life of the sufferers, to watch beside them during the long, chill nights of pain—to pray that the healing power of the Christ might be manifested.

The two friends found that the valley had no Sunday-school or regular preaching service to mark the Lord's day. Occasionally an itinerant preacher held meetings, but Sunday after Sunday came and went in the valley with no religious service whatever.

They found that the children received but poor schooling, and little or no training for life.

They found mothers who knew only the monotony of drudgery and were eager to share in the fuller life.

They found the wide use of corn whisky to be sapping the moral and physical strength of the men, and that everywhere among them lawlessness prevailed, even though some were anxious for better things.

Through the love-service of the two friends and those who followed them, and the co-operation of the people, the valley to-day is transformed even in its outward appearance.

Drinking has disappeared except in sporadic cases. Lawlessness is under ban. A great, throbbing, new life has come to stimulate and inspire not only the valley, but its environs.

Here the reclaiming power of Christian service meets with fullest response. A church and Sunday-school (also four outlying schools), men's Bible classes, several Endeavor Societies and King's Daughters' Circles, Boy Scouts, Girls' clubs—the ministry of a hospital, schools and dormitories, all are spreading the regenerating forces and bringing in a new day of hope, opportunity, and efficiency to this valley, and to hundreds of others throughout the Southland.

* * * * *

All along the fine military road built by Spain in Porto Rico—and still more on the bridle paths that pass for roads in much of the island—may be seen little brown shacks, or huts, made of old boards and tin cans flattened out, and thatched with palm leaves. In these the people live.

"We had sixty names on the waiting list of the Missionary Home in Porto Rico, and money had come so we could take in a few more, and we—the superintendent and I—went to try to find the most needy. Our search took us into a dreadful, slimy patio, where we found a grandmother and three little girls. We could take but two of them. The oldest was thirteen—we knew she would soon be too old to be helped at all if we did not take her now. The second was under ten, and the youngest was three and a half. We could not bear to leave the dead mother's baby, so we took the oldest and the youngest, and promised the second girl that we would come for her as soon as possible. They lived in a room nine by twelve feet in size, in which twenty-two people slept under some old clothes. Do you wonder that she fell on her knees begging 'Oh, lady, take me, too!'"

"The next day the grandmother was taken ill and had to be sent to the hospital, and on Tuesday when I went to the patio again the girl had disappeared.

"Three months later we found her, beaten and bruised from head to foot, at the door of the Home. She had been in a place where care and shelter were expected, but when the poor, home-sick girl cried, they abused her and then put her out on the street, and somehow she found her way to our Home.

"You would enjoy seeing how quickly the girls in our Home learn to help each other. Mercedes had been in the Home but ten days when Francesca came—a bit of a waif who had never worn shoes in all her life, nor seen a bed before. Of course she knew nothing about undressing and sleeping between clean, white sheets. She tried to do like the others, but got into bed with her precious new shoes and stockings on. Mercedes watched her, and when ready herself, slipped across the room, whispered to Francesca, took off her shoes and stockings, pushed her—but very gently—down on her knees for the evening prayer, and then covered her up in bed as softly and lovingly as a mother." [Footnote: In Southern Seas—Alice M. Guernsey—Women's Home Missionary Society, Methodist Episcopal Church.]

* * * * *

With soft, Insistent regularity came the beat of the tom-tom over the hills, calling the Indians to the Medicine Lodge dance. There was something weirdly fascinating in the reiterated turn, turn, that carried almost a hypnotic power as hour after hour it called through the stillness.

Wrapped in their bright blankets—men on horseback—whole families in wagons—the Indians passed round the curve of the road, to disappear in the big, open depression just beyond, where the Medicine Lodge was in camp. There was a group of rounded tents in which families and guests were prepared to live the four days and nights during which the rites of the dance lasted. It was an untidy and disorderly camp, with children and dogs tumbling about—women kneeling to arrange small strips of meat to cook over the bit of wood fire on the ground, or attending to other home-keeping matters. Dirt, flies, children, and dogs were everywhere.

A few feet away stretched the long tent where the ceremony of the dance was to take place. They had taken their places and were ready for the ceremony—mostly men, a few women, a little girl of nine years, a young mother of twenty whose baby two weeks old was held by an aged grandmother, who crouched at the end.

All were dressed in beaded finery. All wore moccasins—some men had long beaded stoles—others wonderful beaded waistcoats. The women wore long beaded hair ornaments reaching almost to the ground, as well as strings of beads and other ornaments.

The faces of nearly all were marked with spots of bright red or long streaks of yellow and red. The same color was used in the parting of the hair.

They sat on the ground in two long rows, facing each other; back of each, attached to the wood trellis of the tent, hung fur pouches of various shapes and sizes, ornamented with beads and containing the "medicine," which was some trifling article—a bit of bone, stone, seed, or whatever, through some special circumstance, had come to be accepted by them as their charm, or "medicine," to ward off sickness and evil—to bring them the good offices and protection of the good spirits.

The four or more medicine chiefs, wearing wonderfully ornamented, apron-like front pieces, stand together at one end for a few moments while one and then another addresses the audience. The medicine men then, with drum and rattle, keeping step, lead in the dance down the length of the tent and back. One by one the audience, from their crouching positions on the ground, as they are summoned or moved, join in the dance, swaying while they keep step back and forth for hours at a time, to the sound of drum and rattle. Those being initiated, as were the young mother and the little girl, were expected not to give up, if possible, until the end.

The dance is maintained for parts of four days and nights, almost incessantly, except for the interruption of the feast given by some members. The close is marked by the utter exhaustion of many of the dancers, and sad immorality accompanies its progress.

Can the Gospel of Christ lift such as these, with a thousand generations of savagery back of them?

Let another picture answer.

* * * * *

Almost half a mile from the Medicine Lodge camp, on a rise of ground, stands a little Christian church—plain but beautiful. From it seem to flow visibly those purifying and redeeming forces that are destined to transform the darkened lives of these Indian children of the great All-father.

It is prayer-meeting night. The bell is rung and the audience begins to gather. A number of alert, intelligent-looking, English-speaking young men come in together.

One of these, an earnest Christian, will interpret, sentence by sentence, the Scripture reading and the message of the speaker.

Some older men and women come next, heavy of feature and step. One is blind and feels his way to his accustomed seat.

Old women come wrapped in blankets, their faces seamed with toil and showing the hardness of heathen customs, when sickness and death, unrelieved by faith, wear the heart and waste the body.

Mothers come with bright-eyed babies tucked in their blankets, or leading children of various sizes—also some young women, beautiful and intelligent—and a few white employees from the Agency—and the workers from the Mission—until the room is nearly filled.

The meeting is opened with prayer, and a quiet fills the room as all are brought into the very presence of the loving Father.

And then follows the singing, "My faith looks up to Thee,"
"Lovingly, tenderly, Jesus is calling, calling to you and to me."
Did ever the words seem so fraught with meaning, so filled with
the yearning love of the Master?

The message that follows is one of passionate earnestness, as the missionary seeks to make clear to them the meaning of purity of life—of faith in God, of His saving, keeping power.

At its close an Indian elder, using his own soft, Indian language, pleads in prayer for the presence of the Holy Spirit to lead his people.

Another rises and says through the interpreter: "When I was away at school I learned about Christianity, but when I came back to the reservation and the old Indian life called me, there was none to help, and I went back. I did not work; I gambled, I drank; liquor, I went to the medicine dance—I was very bad. Then came the Mission and it got hold of me. The missionary brought me to Christ. Now I cut off those bad ways. I am happy. I have a Christian home with my wife and my child."

This testimony was true. All there knew him to be an industrious, upright, manly Indian, one of the two hundred members of this church, all of whom had, in a few years, been led from the old life of degradation to the pleasant, wholesome peace of the Jesus Road.

* * * * *

"Missionary work begins with evangelism. It does not end there. The people must hear the good news of salvation. So we have spent much time 'to make the message plain.' It has taken years of labor to put the gist of the Gospel into several Indian languages having no literature, that the people might get the word of God. One had to work to get a clue to a word through a crude interpreter; or by making signs or motions where, as often, no interpreter was at hand, and then guessing between several possible meanings. In this way one would in time get a knowledge of the commonplace things in a language. Then there must follow the task of finding equivalents for Christian terms in the speech of a people without Christian ideas.

"Difficult as all this work was, it is only a beginning, only elementary. The message must be applied to all phases of life. A constant educational process must be kept up to incorporate Christian ideals into the daily thinking of the people. This is to be done by the reiterated daily teachings of the schools, and the living example of the missionary, and of those he can educate to lead the people. A bare message unrelated to life is like seed scattered on the road or on a rock. After sowing one must harrow and cultivate and fight insect pests all the season to get a crop. So a constant process of education, moral, industrial, hygienic, must go on, or there will be no regenerated, fruitful characters.

"The old Indian linked his hunting and corn planting and simple arts to religion. He lived by the help of his gods. We are trying not to destroy this faith, but to transfer it to the living God, and to make it 'work by love,' instead of by selfishness. Our little girls in the Home are learning to keep house and sew and cook, because it is the work of a child of God to do these things well. We are trying to teach our neighbors by word and example to farm and build and make homes in a way that will be becoming to a redeemed man. They must understand that the Gospel means diligence in business, honesty, carefulness, co-operation, skill, cleanness of heart and body, health and prosperity, and any other virtue that makes life worth living now and always. We think our example in raising seventy bushels of oats or two hundred bushels of potatoes to the acre, garden vegetables, improved cattle and hogs, well-kept horses, small fruits and sheltering trees and pretty shrubs, in what is classed as a semi-arid land, is a part of the Gospel of Christ, who came to make all 'deserts blossom as the rose.'

"When our former Mission school boys are found taking hold of agricultural work according to present-day methods and earning a support for their growing families, building their meeting-place, and making some contributions to the church work abroad, we feel that the foundation of a Christian community is being laid.

"The clouds return sometimes. There comes a recrudescence of heathenism. Yet faith sees still the leaven at work. An old man's daughter went away to our Santee School and returned a believer in the Christian way. She taught her father what she had learned, and prayed for him. He yielded to her faith and threw away his fetishes after a hard struggle with all the past and present environment that bound him. Then at once his instinct was to make a better home for his family. He must get away from the heathen village, with its squalor, and impurity, and idolatry. It is true that environment does not regenerate the soul, but the renewed soul transforms the environment. Better conditions are evidence of the new life. On the contrary, when some fall back to heathenism, they fall into slovenly attire, ill-kept homes, and neglected fields." [Footnote: Rev. C. L. Hall, D.D., American Missionary Association.]

Alaska is a post which beyond any other in the American church demands courage and endurance, both physical and moral.

"The natives of Anvik invited the missionary to visit their village, 450 miles by water from St. Michael.

"These natives were Ingiliks, partly Indian and partly Eskimo. They lived in underground houses and were superstitious, dirty, ignorant, and degraded. Rude buildings were erected for a mission house and the schoolhouse. In 1894 the first church was erected, the money for it being a part of the first United Offering of the Women's Auxiliary. Little by little the people came out of their holes in the earth and built themselves houses. The community has been physically and morally transformed. A saw-mill, the gift of a generous Eastern layman, has been a most practical means of evangelising, not only furnishing lumber for houses, but healthful occupations for the men. This transformation has been wrought, not by legislation or civilization as such, but by the consistent teaching and example of a devoted Christian man and his splendid helpers. 'Through these long years, in the loneliness of this far-away station, the missionary has remained the kind, wise, spiritual shepherd of these native souls in the wilderness. The mission has pursued high ideals, and has ministered spiritually and helpfully to a vast region.'

"A gold strike was made at Nome, and with the first rush of eager prospectors went in a missionary, who aided with his own hands in the building of the church. Though the saloon men were bidding for the only available lumber, the bishop got it first to build a clubhouse for the men, the only competitor of fourteen saloons.

"So he goes back and forth across his great district, up and down its rivers in the short summer time—formerly by boat or canoe, but now in a launch, the 'Pelican.' In the winter he is away across the trackless wilderness, a thousand miles or more, behind his dogs, cheerily facing hardships and making light of dangers, carrying his life in his hand as he goes about his daily work.

"Particularly is he interested in the preservation and betterment of the native races, the Eskimos and the Indians, endangered by their contact with the white man and their own lack of knowledge. Everywhere his hand is raised and his voice is heard in their behalf.

"Alaska is the land of one great river, without which it could scarcely have been explored—much less occupied and inhabited. The Yukon is the great highway. Over its waters in the brief summer, and upon its frozen surface in the winter, go travelers by boat and sled, and among them the representatives of the church. Familiar to the dwellers along its banks is the little 'Pelican' bearing the missionaries, with a half-breed engineer and the faithful dogs. Everywhere along the river in the summer time may be found the temporary camps of the Indians, to whom the short fishing season means food through the long winter for themselves and their dogs. Here a stop is made at a native camp to baptize a baby—there a marriage ceremony is performed; a communion service is held or a call made at a fishing camp to pick up some boys and take them to a far-away boarding school. The work is as varied as it is far-reaching. Not a mission point along the river is neglected, and places which formerly could never be visited by the hand-paddled canoe now look forward once a year to the coming of the 'Pelican,' and wait to hear the familiar throbbing of her motor, as does the New Yorker for his morning mail, or the farmer for the postman's whistle.

"Fairbanks, the metropolis of central Alaska, was a new mining camp when the missionary Bishop secured an early entrance for the church. The log building which was a chapel on Sunday became a reading-room on week-days for the rough-clad miners. A hospital was built and it ministered to the sick through the range of a wide territory. Missions both to white men and to Indians have spread along the valley of the river on either hand, and now Fairbanks is the center of what is known as the Tanana Valley Mission, with half a score of workers, schools and missions, hospitals and reading rooms, distributing tons of literature in lonely mining camps, and carrying everywhere the message of the Master.

"Over on the coast, at Cordova, may be found the unique settlement work called 'The Red Dragon,' a clubhouse for men which on Sundays is converted into a place of worship. Missions in Alaska minister to human need as a preliminary to and accompaniment of an effective preaching of the Gospel." [Footnote: Board of Missions of the Protestant Episcopal Church.]

These pictures of the power of Home Missions to restore—to give capacity—are merely typical, and stand for the thousands of others unrecorded except as the lives of the reclaimed individuals and communities make their indelible imprint upon our national life.

Surely through the demonstration of such reclaiming power the consciousness must grow that ignorance, degradation, vice, crime, and bitter poverty need not be the inevitable accompaniment of a great civilization, but that these diseased spots in the social fabric are abnormal and curable, if to their removing is directed first the power of Christ in the inner life, and for the outer a social regeneration which will substitute physical conditions that do not menace, but make for righteousness.

"In haunts of wretchedness and need
On shadowed thresholds dark with fears,
From paths where hide the lures of greed
We catch the vision of Christ's tears.

"The cup of water given for Thee
Still holds the freshness of Thy grace;
Yet long these multitudes to see
The sweet compassion of Thy face."

III

AN EDUCATIVE FORCE

"My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge."

"After all, it is the children who are the important factors of our nation, and every one of them neglected is a reproach to every Christian, man or woman, in the churches who has a dollar or a voice. When the Spartans were demanded to give fifty children as hostages, they wisely replied, 'We would rather give one hundred of our most distinguished men.'

"It is an irrefutable fact that the work with the children pays the best dividends to the state and nation. There is a Doric oracle which says, 'If the Athenians want good citizens let them put whatever is beautiful into the ears of their sons.' If we Americanize this oracle it would read, 'If the Americans want good citizens let them put whatever is beautiful and useful into the ears of their sons and daughters.'"

* * * * *

It is instructive to note the inter-relation and interaction of forces and influences that have been powerful factors in national development, and to consider their sources.

The American passion for education had its roots far back in Holland, in the period when that country was the world's great intellectual center, as well as the world's leader in commerce and manufacturing. The most powerful single factor in shaping Colonial thought and character was the Bible. It was from Holland that England received its first Bible printed in the English tongue.

It is said that under the persecution of Phillip II and the Duke of Alva, fully one hundred thousand Hollanders crossed the channel to find homes in England.

Industrious, self-supporting, self-respecting men, and women they were, refugees for freedom and for conscience' sake—among them were scholars, bankers, merchants, and intelligent, plain people. They came from a land of free schools and universities.

The counties in England in which the Hollanders settled sent the Pilgrims and the Puritans to America. These counties also gave birth to the University of Cambridge; the Puritan movement in England was largely under the leadership of men who had studied in Cambridge, and it was that educational center of broad culture, thought, and inspiring ideals which furnished America the first scholars and leaders of New England.

The first free school of America was opened by the Hollanders in Manhattan in 1633. It was known as the Collegiate School, and though it has changed somewhat in character, it is still one of the leading preparatory schools of New York City.

Regard for education thus came to this country with the colonists, though not all the colonies attached the same importance to it.

In the Home countries of the colonists, the schools had been an adjunct to the churches. It was natural, therefore, that the impetus for the establishment of schools in this country should come from the church.

"One of the first provisions made by the Virginia company in their settlement of Jamestown was to set aside land for the use of a college to 'teach Indian children the rudiments of religion and the Latin language,' and money was collected in England to establish a school which should prepare children for this college. The failure of the company a few years later defeated these plans."

"Twenty years after the landing at Plymouth, the Massachusetts Colony ordained by law that every child should be taught to read and write and understand the principles of religion and the capital laws of the country. A little later in the same section, every township, when it numbered fifty householders, was required to support a teacher, and towns numbering a hundred householders, to establish a school to teach Latin. These were rude pioneer experiments, for the conditions which surrounded them were rude; their importance lay in the fact that they gave education a first place in public interest and accustomed people to think of education as a function of the community." [Footnote: American Ideals, Character and Life—Hamilton Wright Mabie.]

From these feeble beginnings has come that greatest bulwark of the
Republic—the free school.

It lies at the very foundation of our national life. It makes possible our democracy. A helpful government by the people is not possible if the people are ignorant and superstitious.

It is the greatest institution for citizenship. "Through it come knowledge of the meaning of our institutions, the interpretation of our national past, and a reverence for the national symbol—the flag."

It is a fusing force whereby children of many nationalities, differing in feelings, sympathies, purposes, and class, become Americans.

The forty-eight States in the year 1912 spent $450,000,000 on the public schools of the country. The nation's tobacco bill for the same period was nearly three times as great, and it spent five times as much for liquor.

Even with this large expenditure, the provision for the school population of the country is, in places, fearfully inadequate. In our large cities, if the truant and labor laws were properly enforced, the lack of school provision would be still more apparent. In New York City alone more than 100,000 children are attending school but half the time.

As we turn to study the need for Mission Schools, and their place as an educative force, it is well that we should seek to realize something of the splendid achievements of our public schools as well as where they seriously fail.

Their efficiency differs with the vision and effectiveness with which they are administered by the different states.

Many states have added incalculably to the usefulness of the schools by relating the curriculum to life through industrial and vocational training, but much remains to be accomplished in attaining a proper balance in the adjustment of the cultural and the practical in the public school courses.

The state of Ohio affords an interesting illustration of the wider relation of the public schools to the life of the school population.

"In the winter of 1914, nearly one thousand boys and girls of Ohio, in five special trains, were sent on a tour which embraced the cities of Washington, Philadelphia, and New York, as a reward for their efficiency in agriculture and domestic science. The people of Ohio have found that it pays to encourage thrift and industry in their children, for since these "corn tours," as they are termed, were started, the annual value of the corn crop of Ohio has become almost twenty million dollars more than it formerly was." [Footnote: Outlook, Dec. 16, 1914.]

Public School, No. 23, of Mulberry Bend, New York, stands in the heart of an Italian district of more than 100,000 souls, and draws also from the great Chinese section. Various other nationalities in less degree contribute their quota, so that the school ministers to the children of twenty-nine different nationalities.

This school is fortunate in having a teacher of unusual ability and magnetism for its new students in English. A visit to her room on the top floor well repays the effort of exploration in a very foreign quarter of America's greatest city, and the long climb up the winding cement stairs of the school building.

As you enter, the class is asked to bid you "Good morning," and the familiar greeting comes to you in the soft Italian accent, mingled with the higher-keyed voices of the Japanese and Chinese.

The group of ten Chinese young men impress you by their alertness, neatness of appearance, and evident eagerness to learn. An Italian boy who had been set at a trade when very young is now having a belated chance to learn to read. A number of girls of various sizes help to make up the class, with little Italian Mary, ten years old, quite new to America, beautiful and winning in spite of her unkempt appearance and poor clothing.

With the exception of two who had acquired a little English, the class entered school three months before with no knowledge of English. All are able to write their names and addresses and simple sentences in English on the blackboard.

They can go through the transaction of buying a newspaper, explaining each action involved, and making correct payment or exacting correct change.

When questioned, they give quickly and correctly the names of the President of the United States, the Governor of New York, the Mayor of New York City, and answer other questions on civic affairs.

It was deeply stirring to see a little Italian whose patois English was scarcely intelligible, step forward, with conscious pride, to be the standard-bearer and hold the flag while the class, with eager enthusiasm, saluted, touching foreheads and extending arms at full length as they repeated, the foreign tongues giving queer twists to the words:

"I pledge allegiance to my flag and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indissoluble, with liberty and justice for all."

Many night classes likewise afford opportunity for new Americans to learn English. Public School No. 95, located on Clarkson Street in the old Greenwich Village of New York, where now many Italians, Irish and a few Jews find homes, carries forward a remarkable service to its neighborhood.

Here the opportunity of helpful evening recreation is given to girls and boys. These evenings include basket ball games and athletics, Boy Scout activities, moving picture exhibits, public concerts and meetings, with such speakers on popular themes as Commissioner of Corrections Katharine B. Davis. Other public schools give carpentry training in actual shop work, qualifying the students for positions in trade. They also prepare students to pass the civil service examinations for public positions and give suitable training for positions on the Police and Fire Department.

The establishment of continuation schools in a few stores and factories is an inestimable boon to some of the toilers thrust too early into the livelihood struggle.

The employers are finding it to their interest to spare their workers for certain hours and days for such schooling because of the increased efficiency and intelligence of their service.

A peculiarly neglected group in the foreign quarters of all our cities are the older women—workers and mothers in the homes. To these Home Missions is striving to bring some knowledge of the tongue of the new country through classes arranged especially for them.

It is startling to find that the United States census for 1910 reports a greater percentage of illiteracy among native whites of native parentage than among native whites of foreign parentage. The proportion of children from five to fourteen years attending school is greater among those of foreign parentage and foreign birth than among native Americans of two or more generations.

For the entire population over ten years of age, the following table gives the percentage of illiteracy:

Foreign Foreign
Native or Mixed born Native
Parentage Parentage Whites Negro[A]

United States as a whole……. 3-7 1.1 12.7 30.4

The North…………………. 1.4 0.9 12.7 10.5
The South…………………. 7.7 4.3 18.8 33.3
The West………………….. 1.7 0.8 9.5 7.0

For the children of school age from ten to fourteen, the following table shows the percentage of illiteracy:

United States as a whole……. 2.2 0.6 3.5 18.9

New England ……………. 2.2 0.6 3.5 18.9
South Atlantic…………….. 5.0 0.8 5.3 18.9
East South Central…………. 5.8 0.9 11.4 20.7
West South Central…………. 4.1 11.2 34.6 22.4
Etc………………………. —- —— —— ——

[Footnote A: United States Census for 1910].

In some Western states the percentage of illiteracy is as low as one-tenth of 1 per cent.

* * * * *

An examination of schools in fifty-two cities representing with fairness the entire United States, shows that the majority of children who enter complete only the fifth grade; of one thousand children of school age, only one hundred and twenty graduate from the grammar school and six from the high school. [Footnote: Henry C. Vedder—The Gospel of Jesus and the Problems of Democracy.]

It is axiomatic that if children are to be spared by law the strain of enforced labor upon immature bodies and minds, and to be properly conserved because they are the most precious of the nation's resources, they must be prepared by suitable training for the life work that lies ahead—"making a living being an indispensable foundation for making a life."

Through special circumstances certain parts of our country have been slow in developing the free school so as to make possible even a most elementary education for their children. This is notably true of sections in the South. From the early days when the University of Virginia entered upon its honored service to higher education, the schools and colleges of the South have been influential, but through the force of peculiar economic condition these have ministered to the privileged classes, while the great masses of Negro and white children in the isolated regions were given few opportunities for even the most elementary schooling.

The devastation of war left an impoverished South, and as free schools depend upon the generosity of the individual states, many, though desirous, were utterly unable to make suitable school provision for their children.

Sections in the North thus neglected may also be found, as some of the islands on the coast of Maine and other more or less isolated regions of New England, New York, and other states will testify.

There have been great gaps where the government has failed to make adequate educational provision among the Indian tribes. The Spanish-speaking people are also exceptional in their educational needs. Though the government has done much, yet Cuba and Porto Rico are among the places where conditions make necessary special educational effort.

The vast number of non-English-speaking adult foreigners calls for unusual educational provisions.

As the church sent out the school in the early days to become one of its greatest contributors to our national life, so ever since, the church has earnestly sought to supply the neglected with that knowledge which is power.

It is increasingly the aim of the schools founded and maintained by Home Missions to lead to self-realization and self-help, to bring the Christ motive to the inner life, and efficiency and effectiveness to the mastery of outward circumstances through the training of minds and hands.

Among the early Home Mission schools, were those opened to give guidance and direction to the millions of Negroes in their baffling struggle upward from bondage to all that freedom means of ability toward self-direction and development.

"At Kent Home for Negro girls at Greensboro, North Carolina, the schedule of the day's activities shows the scope of such schools.

* * * * *

"The day's work begins early, breakfast being at 6:30. Busy hands have the house in perfect order, and advance preparations made for dinner by the time the chapel bell rings at 8:30.

"All the work of the Home is done by the girls under the supervision and with the practical assistance of teachers. They are marked and graded in this as in their school work. They are also making creditable progress in general cooking, plain sewing and dressmaking.

"The students in the college range in age from sixteen to sixty years. One of the latter took eleven years to graduate, keeping two girls in school and a large family at home at the same time.

"The taste for reading must needs be cultivated in most of the girls who enter our Homes. The gift of $100 from a former 'Kent girl' and her husband, provides the nucleus of a library made up of such books as girls need and enjoy; better still, it is reaching more than our girls. Neither college nor village has library opportunities for colored people, and so the supply at Kent Home was made available to those outside." [Footnote: Woman's Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church.]

* * * * *

"It was a Negro girl from Boylan Home, Jacksonville, Florida, who went back to her cabin home to find no floor but the earth, and nothing to sit on but home-made stools. But she had the equipment for producing better things, and was soon conducting quite a dressmaking business for the neighborhood.

"A frequent sign of progress is the request of a girl to buy a broom to take home to her mother. Neither mother nor girl had known in the past anything better than a bundle of twigs wherewith to sweep the rough wooden or earth floor of the cabin."

* * * * *

Spelman Seminary at Atlanta, Georgia, founded (1881) and maintained by the Woman's American Baptist Home Mission Society, has carried forward a varied and far-reaching service to Negroes.

One student referring to her own experience says—"I thought I was going to Spelman to learn books, but I soon found that sewing, washing and ironing, sweeping and dusting, cooking and all sorts of work are included in getting an education here.

"While carrying on high school work I completed the three years' course in cooking. Plain sewing had been thoroughly mastered. Basketry, practical gardening and agriculture were a part of the grade work. Now while I am completing the course in Normal training I am taking bench work, more advanced agriculture and care and raising of poultry. This knowledge will be needed as I seek to better the home conditions of the pupils in the country schools under my care.

"I have also some knowledge of nursing gained at MacVicar Hospital, which is connected with Spelman and which gives full nurse training courses to some eighteen or twenty students each year."

One of the most telling features of Spelman's community service is the sending out of a county supervisor of public schools to introduce industrial training and better methods of school work.

During the last year of Normal work each student-teacher is sent out to visit the county schools with the supervisor whom Spelman employs for the rural work in Fulton County.

There are eight rural and seven suburban Negro schools in the county. The school buildings range from an old house or a one-room building, with almost nothing to work with, up to a good school building fairly equipped.

The following is told by one of the Normal students of her work in the country schools:

"Mothers' clubs were formed and fathers were interested so far as possible in order to secure the sympathy and co-operation of the parents in introducing industrial work.

"The tools were crude. In many instances jack-knives, stones and glass were used if hammers, planes and saws could not be obtained.

"Sewing was taught to both boys and girls. At first the boys objected, but such remarks as 'Can't she see us is boys?' failed of results, and soon the boys became thoroughly interested in making good sized boys' handkerchiefs from flour sacks. Baskets were made from pine needles, reed, willow, and rushes, and mats from corn shucks.

"Early in the term the untidy, neglectful school yards were converted into gardens, farmers supplying the seed, and when no mule could be procured for ploughing, four boys were harnessed to draw the plough, while another guided it.

"Parent-teachers' clubs were organized and many mothers came for instruction."

The fact that the last census reports thirty-three per cent of the Southern Negro population above ten years as illiterate, shows a vast need here of additional educational effort of the kind that Missions are bringing—the all-round training that gives ability to earn a living, combined with the moral and spiritual qualities which alone can produce worthy citizenship.

* * * * *

In Porto Rico and the island possessions of the United States,
Mission schools have rendered the greatest possible service.

There were almost no schools for the plain people on the islands under Spanish rule. Our government, when it assumed control, addressed itself vigorously to the task of providing schools as well as giving the islands wholesome physical conditions, but there was great need of supplemental Mission schools, especially for the younger children.

In addition to the lack of sufficient public schools, there are reasons involved in the former religious control of the islands which make the Mission school most essential in bringing to the citizens of to-morrow quickening ideals and constructive training.

"Mercedes, Juanita, Pachita, Juan, Felipe—here they are, all out at play, just like American school children at recess, only that it is too hot for hard running games. Where is the schoolhouse? Why, under that cocoanut tree. Yes, that little shack, thatched with palm leaves. See the American flag floating atop it! That tells the story. If the breeze that waves it could speak to you as it does to some older people, it would say, 'In all this beautiful island outside the city of San Juan, there was but one schoolhouse when it came into the possession of the United States. Spain had kept the men and women in ignorance for more than four hundred, years. Every bright fold of Old Glory means new life, new joy, new hope to the boys and girls of Porto Rico, for now they have a chance.'"

* * * * *

The concentration of Orientals on the Pacific coast has laid a heavy responsibility upon Home Missions to interpret to them the message of Christ and the meaning of true citizenship in the Republic.

A number of the larger denominations have responded effectively to this call, and their schools and missions extend from the Golden Gate north to Seattle and south to San Diego.

Homes for girls, with kindergarten and primary schools, and evening classes for young men are most important and telling features in this service.

The story of one girl in the Home maintained in San Francisco by the Woman's Home Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church is typical of the far-reaching character of all missionary service to Orientals.

* * * * *

Miss Caroline Lee, a remarkable student, was graduated from the State
Normal School of California. She is at present (January, 1915) attending
the Training School of the Young Women's Christian Association in New
York City, preparing to fill an important position in China under the
National Board of the Association.

Her child life was filled with tragedy and hardship. Her earliest memories are of a river boat in China and of being sold and brought to San Francisco, and sold again.

Here, suffering from the result of a serious fall, she was found by a missionary and taken to the Mission Home, where she spent five months in the hospital.

In the helpful atmosphere of the Home, she developed a remarkably bright mind and a sweet Christian spirit.

Having completed her school course, she became an efficient worker among her own people, reaching heathen as well as Christian homes through the children in her kindergarten classes, who were devotedly attached to her.

The qualities of her character and service brought her an opening to a position of great importance in Christian work in China. As she returns to China, she becomes another of the many links in the far reaches of Home Missions by which it influences the ends of the earth.

* * * * *

Home Missions probably faces no greater challenge than is presented to its faith and accomplishment by Mormonism.

Through constant recruits of hardy, industrious, but uneducated immigrants, the growth of Mormonism is rapid and of immense political significance.

The Mormon church, with its great foresight, has established strong colonies in many states. In at least eight the influence of the church in civic affairs is paramount.

Because of the fundamental principle of religious tolerance in this country, and the insidious methods of Mormonism, it is most difficult for Christianity successfully to combat this menace. It is acknowledged by those whose experience in Utah and other Mormon states gives them authority, that Christian education of the Mormon young people is the surest and best method of bringing enlightenment, independence of thought, and release from church dominance.

Mormons realize the value of early instruction in religion. Forty thousand children are under regular instruction in Mormon religion classes held in the public schools at least once a week, immediately following the day-school sessions. The regular school teachers (if Mormons) instruct these classes.

"I recently made a circuit of two score towns in eastern and southern Idaho (Mormon territory) in quest of students. It was a strenuous piece of work and required traveling by rail, on horseback and foot.

"Perhaps the most fruitful work of the summer consisted in personal, intimate talks with the younger professional and business men. They do most certainly betray dissatisfaction with the old order. A few are diligently working to liberalize their church against the inertia of the membership and the alert opposition of the crafty leaders. One of these leaders I recently heard openly disparaging education as 'not quick with the Spirit,' and deploring the tendency to question the authority and validity of the priesthood. By far the larger number of younger dissatisfied men are leaving religion out of their accounts, living for personal gain, and when pressed, avowing hostility to all religion.

"The need of cultural advantages is most apparent throughout rural Utah. The work, therefore, of our academies not only fills a great need educationally, but responds effectively to the appeal for good home environment. Christian education is the leaven that Utah needs.

"The graduating classes of the New Jersey Academy for the past three years have all become Christian girls and members of the little Presbyterian church.

"I am confident that a new era is dawning—an era marked by intellectual development and religious awakening, an era of questioning, an era of intelligence. This cannot fail to be effective in breaking up the crust of dogmatism and superstition which has retarded the independent religious thinking of these people for many years." [Footnote: Rev. Mr. Wittenberger—Presbyterian.]

Probably nowhere in our country is there greater eagerness for "book learning" than among the mountain people of the South. The passionately desired schooling in the mountains is often secured only at the expense of great hardship. Booker Washington has said that the measure of attainment is not the result accomplished, but the obstacles overcome in attaining it.

There is much illiteracy among the older people, but through the Mission schools and the improved educational system of the states, comparatively few children now are lacking the opportunity of some elementary education. The training received in the district school is often very meager and the term of a few months' work much too short.

Through the many months when the schools are closed, the young people are thrown upon their own resources. They are without stimulating and helpful outside interests, and deterioration is the inevitable result.

It is interesting to note that in September, 1914, the Kentucky state legislature appointed a Commission on Illiteracy. The Commission has launched an educational campaign with the watch-word "Illiteracy eliminated in 1920."

A number of Southern states have recently made earnest efforts to reduce the percentage of illiteracy within their borders.

The story of what was accomplished in a campaign for the elimination of illiteracy in Rowan County, one of the most backward mountain counties in Kentucky, is both picturesque and instructive.

During the fall months of 1911, 1912, 1913, under the enthusiastic leadership of the County Superintendent and a corps of fifty volunteer and unpaid teachers, practically every man, woman and child in the county was taught to read and write. A special feature of this campaign was the holding of moonlight schools, making possible the attendance of the older people.

Almost all of the fifty teachers who gave this splendid service were graduates of a Mission School, the Morehead Normal School, which is under the administration of the Christian Women's Board of Missions.

Helpful and commendable as such methods are, they cannot supply the place of a Mission School giving regular educational and industrial training. These are qualified to bring to peculiarly backward communities some grasp of the larger, fuller life, and equipment for living it.

* * * * *

"The Mission teacher was making her way along the mountain trail toward a log house. As she drew near, a woman, scarcely more than a child, came to the door, looking eagerly up the creek. A tiny two-year-old boy tried in vain to pass her that he might play in the shallow water of the creek.

"A wailing cry reached the teacher's ears as the mother turned into the room and in a moment was again standing in the doorway, this time holding in her arms a smaller bit of humanity.

"As the teacher reached the house she paused, for a man was riding down the creek. At sight of him the face of the mountain woman in the doorway assumed a stolid, almost hard, look, as if life had already brought to her all the misery and trouble it could, and there was nothing now but indifference.

"The man rode to the door saying, 'Hullo, Ocie.'

"'Howdy, Alf,' was the reply.

"He swung round sidewise on the horse and remarked:

"'They had a fight up to Lef' Fork las' night. Boys been a drinkin'.
Jim, he's dead. Andy's not hurt much. They hev taken him to the
Cou't House.'

"That was all. The child-woman's expression scarcely changed. The man sat his horse quietly, then with the words, 'Yo pa'll be down some time this mawnin' afte' ye,' he turned and rode up the creek.

"The teacher crossed the foot log, lifted the fretting child into her arms and drew the mother after her into the house. The room was without light, excepting from the open door; the bare, rough-hewn floor and table were spotless. One chair, a bench and an old chest of drawers was the only furniture besides the large bed with its neat, homespun blue counterpane. The hearth of the huge fireplace was swept clean, and although the middle of May, a good fire was burning. The teacher, sitting on the bench behind the table, let the little boy play with her watch, her purse, her rings, until in a wealth of happiness and satisfaction, he fell asleep in her arms. The girl-wife shifted the sleeping babe in her arms, raised her head, and with all the pathos of a hurt and ignorant child spoke her heart to the woman whom she knew would understand.

"'I've fearn this thing for a long time. Las' winter befo' the baby come, I used to set befo' the fire all night long, dreadin', dreadin'—I didn't know what—this, I guess. We've been married nigh onto fou' years now, though I ain't but seventeen; Andy he's comin' nineteen. It's agen the law to marry that young, but pa he hed a big family and Andy, he was a mighty nice young man, so we fixed it all right.

"'We never hed no preachin' fo' more'n three year befo' yo' all come, exceptin' when Mis' Lawson's baby died and when Ben and Lizy was married, ole Brother Bonat come over an' preached a couple o' nights. Fo' more'n year now Andy an' Jim ha' been hangin' roun' Eskin's store, an' you've never know'd 'em exceptin' as the rough men they are. When yo' all come I tho't maybe yo' could get 'em back, but it was too late. Now Jim, he's dead, and Andy—cou'se he never'd tetched Jim if he'd been hisself.'

"The soft, hopeless drawl stopped, and again there was silence. Soon the sleeping children roused, the dog barked, and three men came to the doorway—the father and brothers. Without greeting, the old man said: 'Yo'd better come home, Ocie. Jim, he's dead, an' Andy'll hev to go to Moundsville, I reckon.' (Moundsville meant the state penitentiary.) The teacher helped to dismantle the poor little home and saw the few household belongings loaded on the ox sled.

"The silence which she knew was more acceptable sympathy to the tearless child-woman than words would have been, was only broken when they were standing on the steps above the creek. Then the words were interrupted by the child-mother.

"'It's too late to help this now, but ef yo' all will just see that there's a school here where my children can learn what their pa an' me an' Jim didn't know, an' will keep the meetin's agoin' at the schoolhouse so they'll know how to be good, I'll be mighty glad. These here little fellers named Jim an' Andy, too, yo' know, an' I want 'em to hev more of a chanct than we've hed. They's lots of us up here thet hed in us a great big feelin' of wantin' to be somethin' and to do some-thin' that we didn't know what nor how, 'n' I guess we get reckless sometimes thinkin' it's no use.'" [Footnote: Alma C. Moore—Christian Women's Board of Missions.]

* * * * *

The detailed and comprehensive report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, issued in January, 1915, emphasized the desirability of the attendance of Indian children at near-by public schools, to obviate the dreaded separation from parents which is entailed when they must be sent by the government to distant Indian boarding schools.

The report mentions the gratifying increase last year in the number of Indian children in attendance at the neighborhood public schools.

Some tribes are still peculiarly neglected educationally. The
Navajos are a conspicuous example.

Twenty-four thousand Indian children remain without schools.

The religious motive enters deeply into the psychology of the Indian, and no greater stimulus toward better living can be given them than Christianity affords. Therefore the Mission School is especially adopted to bring the Indians into helpful and constructive relationships as individuals and citizens.

Of great significance in the uplift of the Indians is the recent opening of several schools for training young Christian Indians for leadership in Christian work among their own people.

* * * * *

"The transition which is now going on from the old days of hunting and fishing to the new period of commercial development throughout all Southeastern Alaska must have a profound effect upon the future of this people.

"More pupils applied for admission to the Sheldon Jackson School at Sitka this year than could possibly be accommodated. The industrial departments of this institution have received careful attention. The general claim of all this work is to give full practical and theoretical training, with a view to preparing the girls for the task of home-making and the boys as wage earners." [Footnote: Woman's Board of Home Missions, Presbyterian Church in U.S.A.]

This aim holds true also for the schools of all Protestant
Missions in the far North.

Education is one of the expressions of the passionate desire and purpose for betterment of those who gave their impress to our national life. Hamilton Mabie says: "Among Americans education is not only a discipline, a training; it is also a symbol. It means living an ampler life in a larger world."

The church-Home Missions—from the beginning has been the largest factor in the spread of schools and colleges—the greatest single educative force of this country.

The record of the Home Mission activities of the various denominations tells the story of the founding of academies and colleges, throughout the length and breadth of the land. In Kansas the State Normal School, State Agricultural College and the State University were founded by Home Missionaries.

Of the great Eastern universities and colleges it will be recalled that many were established by the Christian church. Among these are Harvard, Williams, Columbia, Princeton, Rutgers, Vassar and many others.

Home Missions is still an active and deeply needed educative force. It brings the most powerful influence to the great groups of the neglected in our land, giving them visions of bettered physical conditions, yearnings after higher spiritual purposes, and determinations for a fuller realization of life in all its meaning, with the power of attaining these ideals.

IV

A HEALING FORCE

"During the spring months an epidemic of diphtheria and other infectious diseases visited a district of nine or ten villages in New Mexico. Many children succumbed to these diseases, the number of those who died being about one-tenth of the entire population of the district.

"No people in the world are kinder-hearted than the Mexican people. Everybody, even the children, visits the sick, and attends the velorios (wakes) and funeral rites of the dead, without regard to the contagious character of the disease.

"This fatal custom is re-enforced by a fatalistic philosophy. Whatever befalls one, he receives it with an 'Asi me toco' (It was my fate). Whatever comes, he says:

"'Es par Dios' (It is of God). Each man has his appointed time to die. Until that time he is safe, and when that time comes nothing can save him. There is no such thing as contagion; disease strikes when and where God will. Medicine will cure, if it is the will of God. What the medicine may be is of little importance; a glass of water will cure as well as anything else, is a frequent saying, if it is the will of God.

"She, the missionary nurse, thereupon took up her station in the sick room, kept out the numerous callers, administered antitoxin, and nursed the child back to life. She had saved the child. She gave the antitoxin treatment in other cases where the parents were willing. She thus treated fifteen cases, losing only one."

* * * * *

"The healing of the seamless dress,
Is by our beds of pain.
We touch Him in life's throng and press,
And we are whole again."

* * * * *

Of all the compelling qualities that drew humanity irresistibly to Him, the compassion of the Christ was the most winning. This constraining love was the very heart of His Gospel.

The masses of the suffering in His day knew only the ostracism of society because of their affliction.

The blind must sit idly through the glory of the day by the dusty road-side, begging bread from the passing throng; the crippled lay in their misery and impotence at the gateways of the temples, sustained by the occasional coins tossed by the more fortunate as they hurried by. Nervous and mental sufferers must range through the wilds of deserts and waste places, or share the tombs where the lepers took refuge, being judged possessed of devils and fit only to be outcasts.

The pity of Christ, as well as His power to heal, disclosed a new force in the world-a love that could tenderly share the darkened outlook as well as minister to all the needs of such as these.

The compassion of the Christ reached and lifted the hopeless heart of suffering humanity as His touch soothed the torturing agony of disease and brought hope and healing into a world hardened to pain.

It released a power the beneficence and helpfulness of which increase year by year as science adds to its ability, and a growing sense of responsibility widens its use.

The Christian era ushered in the day of hope for the sick-poor—a day that has progressed steadily, to an ever-enlarging vision of what was in the heart of Christ for the healing of the nations.

Ancient writers tell us of some efforts in pre-Christian days toward the institutional care of the sick. The earliest records mention the treatment of the sick in the Greek temples of Aesculapius in 1134 B.C.; these were probably not for the poor. Seneca very much later refers to the infirmaries established by the Romans for the well-to-do classes.

In 226 B.C., the Buddhists in India are credited with some small efforts to provide for the sick poor, as are also later the fire worshipers of Persia.

"When the example and teachings of Christ began to bear fruit, and when Jerusalem and the roads approaching it began to be crowded with pilgrims, special accommodations for the use of the sick were established. When monasteries and convents followed, they too, provided for the sick."

From the Roman word "hospitalia" (apartment set apart for guests), our word hospital is derived.

In the writings of St. Jerome, who established several, the word "hospital" is first used for a curative institution.

It is of interest to know that the oldest hospital now in use in
Europe, the Hotel Dieu, was founded in Paris, in 600 A. D. by the
Bishop of Paris.

All the early hospitals were church institutions, and the wards were clustered about the chapel, as may be seen to-day in the arrangement of beautiful St. Luke's hospital in New York City. Thus we find that religion, not medicine, gave birth to hospitals.

An accelerating influence in their growth came through the necessities of war, which threw large numbers of the injured and suffering upon communities quite unprepared to receive and minister to them.

It was to meet such a need that the first hospital was established in the United States on Manhattan Island in 1658.

The "New Netherland Register" says "This hospital was established at the request of Surgeon Hendricksen Varrevauger for the reception of sick soldiers—who had been previously billeted on private families."

In 1679 the hospital consisted of five houses.

Early in the eighteenth century pest-houses were established at Salem, Massachusetts, at New York, and Charleston, and in 1717, a hospital for contagious diseases was built in Boston.

The teachings and writings of Benjamin Franklin were of marked importance in promoting sanitary science and in securing the building of the first chartered hospital in the United States, which was erected in Philadelphia in 1755. The record shows four hundred and thirty-five patients treated in this hospital in the year 1775.

That year was also marked by the building of the New York Hospital, which was destroyed by fire almost as soon as completed, and rebuilt in 1791. It owed its origin to two professors of King's College (now Columbia), which at that time was a church institution.

The necessities of war have from early times had a marked effect upon the development of hospitals. Dr. James Tilton, in presenting recommendations to Congress in 1781, says of his experience in the Revolution: "It would be shocking to humanity to relate the history of our general hospitals in the years 1777 and 1779, when they swallowed up at least one-half of our army, owing to the system of placing nearly all the sick of the army in the general hospitals, where crowds and infection wrought a fearful mortality, and where more surgeons died in the American service in proportion to their number than officers of the line—a strong evidence that infection is more dangerous than weapons of war."

The death rate of the English and French soldiers was so fearful, and the neglect and condition of the wounded men so appalling in the Crimean war (1854), that the entire English nation was aroused. It was a woman, Florence Nightingale, who was sent out by the nation and given full authority to act in the emergency upon which hung the fate of the armies.

Not only did this noble woman, with her band of thirty-seven nurses, bring healing instead of death in those army hospitals, but she instituted reform in sanitation which was adopted by hospitals throughout the world.

To her also humanity owes the inestimable boon of the trained nurse of education, refinement and ability. Before Florence Nightingale gave herself and initiated the movement for the training of young women of standing as nurses, such work had been left to the rough, uncouth, and often low-lived men and women, of whom the unspeakable Sairey Gamp, immortalized by Charles Dickens, is a fitting type.

As the Christian church was the first to give healing to the needy, so it has carried this ministry wherever in the world its banners have been set up.

Throughout this land, from Alaska to the Gulf, may be found hospitals established by the Christian church—the greater number the product of Home Missions.

The Home Mission nurse, or deaconess-nurse, is an important factor in connection with nearly every mission station.

In lumber sections, in mining camps, on Alaskan river boats, in far back mountain settlements, in the patios of Porto Rico and our island possessions, with the Negroes of the South, the Orientals of the Pacific coast, the backward peoples, the Mexicans and Indians, the depressed of our great cities, at the gates of the nation—wherever the cry of human need in our land has been met by Home Missions, there these ministers of healing have carried their blessed service.

If the nurse, or deaconess, is to fulfill her mission to the sick, she must have training. There must be deaconess homes and hospital's for this, where also the sick poor who can rarely be properly cared for in their dark, crowded, unsanitary homes may find help. In answer to this double need, deaconess hospitals have been established.

"The deaconess nurse goes into the homes of the poor, bringing the skilled touch of the nurse and the loving heart of Christian womanhood to the service of the neediest. Contagion has no terrors for her; Filth, vermin, and dangerously unsanitary conditions are matters of every-day occurrence. No service so quickly opens the heart to good influences as that which comes in hours of deepest need and helplessness, to lead the heart through human tenderness to the Source of all goodness and love. Whole families have been won to Christ through the services of a Christian nurse.

* * * * *

"Babies first! The wee folk, doomed to the ill's to which tenement life is heir, must have safe food; a luxury unattainable, or it would be if the House did not have a dispensary from which over a thousand bottles of milk, modified by the doctor's prescription for each individual case, are given out each month.

"It is worth while to visit the Medical Mission at 36 Hull Street, Boston. There will be found a dental clinic, opened in the spring of 1912, and the school nurses send the children there to get acquainted with the pleasures of the dental chair, and, most important of all, to learn how to care for their teeth. Then there are the orthopedic, and the regular surgical and medical clinics.

"Soon after lunch I went with a nurse to make call's on a few of the out-patients. We read of dark stairways, but I had no conception of such dark and crooked ways. Why the children do not have broken limbs all the time I cannot imagine.

"We entered three places—I suppose the people who live in them call them homes; each has two or three rooms, with one or more beds in every room, even the kitchen. If there were three rooms, one was window-less. A mother, with a three weeks' old baby, was scrubbing the stone steps. The babies were bound up like papooses, and the nurse had to unwind the little living mummies to care for them.

"Later, returning to the Mission, we attended the 'Italian Mothers' Club.' How they luxuriate in their weekly treat! They sing, sew on garments which are theirs when completed, listen to talks from visitors and workers, and always close the hour with the Lord's prayer. Children cling to their skirts or lie in their laps as they discuss their personal problems, and all look up when spoken to with the never-failing Italian courtesy.

"Some of the year's statistics are a revelation as to the work done: Dispensary treatments, indoor, 12,522; outdoor, 1536; new patients, 4649; operations, 329; obstetrical cases, 151; calls made by nurses, 3075.

"In one week at the morning and evening clinics, ninety-seven patients were treated at the dispensary besides the vaccination cases." [Footnote: Woman's Home Missionary Society, Methodist Episcopal Church.]

* * * * *

"She was an epileptic. The sadness that is bound up in the word only those who have experienced it can know. She worked with her needle as long as she could. At the warning cry of one of the terrible attacks, her mother tenderly cared for her.

"'There is only one thing that rests on my heart,' said the mother, as she lay on her death-bed. 'I am satisfied about everything else and ready to go, if only there was some friend to care for my poor epileptic girl.'

"A friend promised to place the daughter in the Lutheran Home for Epileptics, and the mother died praising God for those who, in following His Son, had provided for those who were afflicted." [Footnote: The Women's Missionary Society, Lutheran General Council.]

* * * * *

Nowhere is the twofold service of the Mission hospital more needed than among the Negroes of the South, where the unsanitary conditions in and about the homes, and the widespread ignorance of the simplest laws of health are so pronounced. A number of the Boards maintain hospitals providing care for the sick Negroes and the training of colored girls as nurses for their own people.

Among these MacVicar Hospital is outstanding in the character and efficiency of its service.

This hospital is a department of Spelman Seminary, maintained by the Woman's American Baptist Home Missionary Society at Atlanta, Georgia. Its workers are members of the school faculty and they are paid from the school fund. A small charge, to outside patients, is made.

The trustees have set aside one-half of the annual income of a small endowment in order to provide free operations and treatment for those to whom even a small payment is impossible.

Negro women and children from the city have the privileges of the hospital, and patients also come from various parts of the state for medical and surgical treatment.

The hospital is able to take adequate care of the health of Spelman's large family of six hundred people. When smallpox is in the city, vaccination day is held and every boarder, day pupil, teacher, and workman must report to the hospital.

The doctors from the city co-operate in the work at MacVicar, giving their services freely.

One of the most valuable features of the institution is the training course for nurses, to which those in training must give their entire time for three years. They must have completed the eighth grade in school before beginning.

* * * * *

Of those in dire need of physical as well as spiritual regeneration in our land are the Mexicans, of Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, California, and the large colonies in some of the cities of Texas.

The prevailing ignorance, untidiness, and superstition of the homes call insistently for more missionary nurses to teach cleanliness, sanitation, and economy, and the training of mothers in the care of their little ones and in the preparation of wholesome food.

* * * * *

The latest report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs states that the Government maintains fifty-one hospitals (six additional are under construction), with a combined capacity of 1432 patients, to care for a population of 331,250 persons. In view of these figures, it is not difficult to realize the urgent need of the field workers and nurses in connection with Christian Missions among Indians.

The report shows also the estimated number of 21,980 Indians suffering from tuberculosis, and 35,769 afflicted with the highly contagious eye disease, trachoma. The death rate per thousand among the Indians last year was 30.76. The percentage of deaths due to tuberculosis was 31.83, while the birthrate was 38.79 per thousand.

The Commissioner of Indian Affairs says:

"I am fully aware of the fact that to perpetuate the Indian race, the inroads of tuberculosis must be stayed. To do this it is essential that better sanitary conditions be instituted in the Indian homes, and cleanliness, better ventilation, and sufficient and nourishing food be secured."

Realizing the importance of these matters, a study has been made of the physical conditions of the government Indian schools. An effort has been made to detect incipient tuberculosis and trachoma and segregate and treat those infected, so that healthy families may not be infected through the return of a child who has been infected at school. Regular talks are given to the children on sanitary matters.

There is vital necessity for more hospitals to care for the children and other members of the family in the early stages of disease.

Fully sixty per cent of the Indians under the supervision of the Indian service are still entirely dependent upon the government for medical assistance. The medical staff employed by the government comprises one hundred and twenty-eight regular physicians, devoting their entire time, and fifty-nine contract physicians giving part time service.

A unique and most helpful feature of the Indian Missions maintained by the Women's Board of Domestic Missions of the Reformed Church in America are the separate buildings known as lodges, set apart for the use of the Indians.

Here the specially needy sick find care and shelter until other provision can be made for them.

Here when the journey has been long, or necessity compels, mothers bring their little ones for rest, or to spend the night.

Young girls pressed by temptation or needing shelter can find security and safety at the lodge.

The lodge sewing machines and laundry facilities are greatly appreciated by the women who seek the help of such conveniences from time to time.

Here mothers are taught many helpful lessons in sanitation, the care of babies, and the preparation of food for the sick.

Occasionally Indian feasts and celebrations connected with the Mission are held or prepared in the lodge by the Indians themselves under the supervision of a worker.

The lodge matron knows the Indians and how to help them, and is loved and trusted by them because they realize her sympathy and appreciate what her kind hands do for them in the care of the sick, and often, also, in the preparation of their dead for burial.

Many a sick and needy one at the lodge has turned from the old Indian road of darkness, pain, and dread, and found rest, and help, and light in the Jesus Way.

* * * * *

"Here in Alaska the hospital boat was launched this summer, and will be of great use.

"One of the important results of my visit, I trust, will be a report of a medical survey made of the natives in Haines and Kluckwan. A number of estimates of the amount of tubercular and other infectious diseases among these people have been made, but, so far as my knowledge goes, no careful, exhaustive, complete medical survey of any one village has ever been made, or put into suitable form for presentation. I fear that this will disclose a most appalling condition (unless it should prove that the estimates hitherto available have been very carelessly made). Whatever it may show, I feel sure that it will help us in presenting to the United States Government the medical needs of these people in such a way as to compel the serious attention of Congress, and result in an appropriation annually for the introduction of such sanitary measures throughout Alaska as will eventually eradicate the dreadful source of contagion now existing.

"It seems almost inconceivable that while so much has been done for the Indians of the plains, for the people of the Philippine Islands and for Porto Rico, in the way of sanitation, these natives who have been wards of the nation for forty-seven years should have been almost entirely neglected in this respect. According to the information which I have, there is not a single government hospital in all Alaska, and only one hospital of any kind—our own at Haines—that is being maintained for the benefit of the natives; nor are there any homes for the aged, the incurables, or orphans, though these are sadly needed. While the church has been ministering to their spiritual needs, and the government and church together have been supplying educational facilities, all agencies have failed to meet the fundamental problem of physical regeneration.

"The question may be asked, as, indeed, it has been, 'What is the use of attempting to save a dying race?' and secondly, 'Can the race be saved?' I have little patience with Christian men and women who ask the first question, but shall reply most emphatically that on commercial grounds alone we should save these people. They ought to become a very valuable asset in the new economic development of the entire territory of Alaska. When properly trained and disciplined they make excellent workmen. Their natural adaptation to the climatic conditions should prove a valuable commercial asset. In the name of a common humanity; in the name of the gospel of the brotherhood of man, as well as for commercial reasons, I do not hesitate to say that they should be saved.

"Can they be regenerated physically? Possibly not as a race; but as individuals without hesitation I answer in the affirmative. The introduction of proper sanitary measures by the government; the development of educational systems by both church and state; and the ministry of spiritual advisers working hand in hand, would form a combination of agencies that in ten years would completely transform, rebuild and place on the sure road to health and prosperity, this people." [Footnote: Rev. M. C. Allaben, Woman's Board of Home Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A.]

* * * * *

The mountain made a steep descent to the road except for one shelving bit of level ground upon which rested, as if it had alighted there, a one-room cabin, for which an end of a tree trunk served as a doorstep. A loosely-hung wooden door provided the only light by day, except that given by the flickering of the flames from the burning logs on the old open fireplace.

On a big bed in the corner, the only one the home afforded, lay a little baby girl, burning with fever. Over her bent her young mother, widowed, though still in her early twenties.

Pretty fair-haired children of two and four years of age crouched in sleepy misery on the foot of the bed, sharing in their childish way their mother's anxiety.

An older girl of six, pretty, but already womanly in her busy household ways, heaped another log on the fire and hovered over it for warmth. She was barefoot and, like the others of the household, including the sick baby, wore the scanty day-time clothing, having no other, for they were of the very poor of the mountains.

It was the lonely, desolate hour between midnight and morning. The watchers in the cabin listened intently for the sound of hoof-beats which would mean that the Mission nurse had been home when the summons came, and would soon be with them.

Hark! Yes!—through the night came the beat, beat of the hoofs of old "Bess" as she struck the road in a swift steady trot.

Emma, the oldest girl, is down in the darkness at the road to meet the beloved nurse and help her dismount. She holds the lantern while the saddle-bags are swung off and old "Bess" is blanketed and tethered.

As she enters the cabin Miss M—— goes immediately to the bed, and holding the lantern for light, examines her little patient and finds a bad case of pneumonia. The Mission hospital is not yet completed, and there is no doctor within many miles. She must fight alone for the little life.

Swiftly the saddle-bags are unpacked, yielding the "wonderful salve" (antiphlogistine) and other medicines—a small wash basin, soap, wash cloth and towel, flannel and a change of clothing for baby.

Emma is bidden to heat water, which she does by filling an old black kettle and standing it on the blazing embers of the open fire.

How the nurse worked, and watched, and prayed as the hours passed, and no improvement! The day came and went, and another night brought closer the shadow—the little one seemed hardly to breathe. Then the mother fled out in the darkness to rock back and forth in an agony of weeping, which was hushed only when the quiet voice of the nurse said: "You make it harder. Pray instead."

At last the waiting nurse feels the little body relax under her touch. Sleep and restoration begin to steal back the ebbing vitality—the little life is saved.

To-day within reach of this home, and many like it, the Mary
Isabel Alien Memorial Hospital at Gray Hawk, Kentucky, stands with
open doors and inviting beds for all who suffer. [Footnote:
Women's Board of Domestic Missions, Reformed Church in America.]

Whatever equipment and loving service can do to provide healing may be found here.

* * * * *

"The military occupation of Porto Rico drew the attention of the Christian churches of the United States to their opportunity and responsibility for sending the light of the true Gospel to that island where it had never penetrated. Soon after this the investigations of a military surgeon demonstrated the important fact that ninety per cent of the working population of the island were affected with the hook-worm disease. Apart from other diseases which were present, here was a great economic and humanitarian problem. The government had done much, but as elsewhere, other agencies were needed if the physical ills of the Porto Ricans were to be healed. In response to this need Dr. Grace Atkins went to Porto Rico in 1900 as the first medical missionary under the Woman's Board of Home Missions of the Presbyterian Church. She started a clinic in a room of her rented house, and treated many sick people in their homes. Being impressed with how little she could do in this way for many who were seriously sick, or who needed operations, she urged upon the Board the erection of a hospital. In response to her call to the church, in February, 1904, the present hospital buildings in San Juan were opened to receive patients. There were forty-five beds and, at that time, this was the only hospital on the island in which the sick could be properly treated.

"That there is need for the work and that the hospital is meeting that need is shown by the number of those who come for treatment. This has increased from seven thousand in 1907 to over nineteen thousand in 1914. The majority of these naturally are treated in the dispensary, where a clinic is held daily, except Sunday. On Monday all day is required to treat those who come, the number reaching almost two hundred at times. Many come in from the surrounding country, often walking from ten to thirty miles. All classes of diseases are seen. Besides the more common ailments, with which all are familiar, there are many cases of hook-worm anemia and a number of other diseases peculiar to the tropics. Then there are many who need surgical treatment. Blind men come in led by little boys; some are brought in rocking chairs by their friends; others are carried in hammocks, while still others arrive in coaches or automobiles. One woman may have a piece of a needle broken off in her hand and another a large tumor which needs a major operation for its removal. Each one must be examined, a diagnosis made and the proper treatment and instructions given. The most serious cases are admitted to the hospital when there are beds available. On an average six to eight cases a week have to be refused admission because the beds are filled.

"In the private rooms are treated many Porto Ricans and many Americans. The latter not only receive medical attention needed, and much appreciated, on a foreign shore, but also an education in practical Christianity which in many cases proves a great surprise as well as a benefit to themselves and the hospital. Practically all the patients in the wards are Porto Ricans. A few of the more serious medical cases are admitted, but the majority are those who need operations. Able to pay nothing or very little, there is no other place where most of them can receive treatment which will enable them to support themselves and those dependent upon them. The blind have been made to see and the lame to walk. So many apply for admission that there is always a waiting list. Many lives have been saved in the children's ward by taking in babies who have become sick from improper or insufficient food due to ignorance or poverty. Tuberculosis of bones fend joints is common and many little sufferers have been restored to health and strength.

"That the work done in the hospital is not only helpful to individuals but that it could be done by no other institution present or projected is the testimony of the head of the Department of Health, who is an American and has resided many years on the island.

"One of the most important departments of the hospital is the training school for nurses. There were practically no trained nurses on the island and no provision for their training when our school was opened. About sixty have graduated and are doing faithful and efficient work as head nurses in our own and other hospitals, and in the homes of their own people. There are usually about fifteen pupil nurses. In addition to the regular hospital work a department of district, or visiting, nursing has been started and each one is trained to do actual practical work in the home. Not only is this valuable for the nurse, but it makes it possible to follow up many of the cases from the clinic, or hospital, and supervise their diet and care and so try to keep them well, which is especially important for the babies. One of the graduates is doing this in connection with the settlement work of our church in San Juan. Her work has suggested to the local Board of Health the desirability of establishing a similar work on a larger scale. This is an illustration of the indirect benefits of missions throughout the world.

"But men are souls and merely have bodies, so that, however important it is to heal the body, our Master came to save the soul and our duty is to point them to Him. Every day in the wards and in the clinic the Bible is read and prayer is offered. On Sunday a service is held in which the Gospel message is explained. They have never had the Bible and know nothing of the true Gospel. The are either entirely ignorant of religion or their ideas are erroneous. By the spoken word in the hospital and by giving them the written Word to carry to their homes, the way is prepared for the entrance into their hearts and lives of the divine Healer and Saviour.

"The three years' course affords opportunity for the thorough religious instruction of the nurses in a weekly Bible class and in the church services which they attend on Sunday. With very few exceptions they have become members of evangelical churches before graduation." [Footnote: Presbyterian Hospital, San Juan, P.I.]

* * * * *

"Of first importance in the physical well-being of the boy or girl is the knowledge that will lead to a wholesome development of body and mind.

"One of the most important phases of Home Mission medical work is instructing the students in Mission Homes and Schools in health and home sanitation, bringing to them something of the ideal for their older lives that Dr. David Starr Jordan expresses in "The Call of the Twentieth Century," where he speaks to the boy of to-day:

"So live that your after self—the man you ought to be—may in time be possible and actual. Far away in the twenties, the thirties of this century, he is awaiting his turn. His body, his brain, his soul are in your boyish hands. He cannot help himself. What will you leave for him? Will it be a brain unspoiled by lust or dissipation, a mind trained to think and act, a nervous system true as a dial in its response to the truth about you?"

The place and need of Home Missions as a present day healing force can be more fully realized when we consider the conditions peculiar to our country, which call urgently for greatly increased facilities for physical regeneration.

Pre-eminent among these are the constant influx of aliens from southern Europe and others of a dangerously low standard as regards sanitation and health—and the economic pressure which produces appalling congestion in living conditions.

"People are already living on certain portions of Manhattan Island at a density which, if continued throughout the entire city, would give New York a population of 197,372,635."

There is, on the other hand, the isolation and neglect of large groups of people who are uninformed of sanitation and have only precarious access to medical attendance, and whose needs call insistently for help, as well as constitute a menace to the health of these communities; such are found among Alaskans, Indians, Mexicans, and others.

As the enlarging view of spiritual regeneration has come to include the redemption of the environment so that it shall be an aid to better living instead of an almost insupportable hindrance, so also a newer and infinitely greater scope is daily coming to the realm of healing science—that of prevention of disease and stamping out of scourges rather than merely the healing of individuals after disease has claimed them.

This wider vision of physical regeneration, Home Missions is seeking earnestly to promote, that the better day for which humanity yearns may be hastened, when His Kingdom will come on earth.

V

AN INTEGRATING FORCE

"Then let us pray that come it may,
As come it will for a' that,
That sense and worth o'er a' the earth
May bear the gree and a' that,
For a' that and a' that,
It's coming yet, for a' that,
That man to man, the world o'er
Shall brothers be for a' that."

"Have we not all one father? hath not one God created us?"

"There is neither Greek nor Jew, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free; but Christ is all and in all."

"One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all, and through all, and in all."

* * * * *

A prominent American clergyman lecturer and writer was traveling through inland China a short time before the outbreak of the Boxer rebellion, when the feeling toward foreigners was intensely hostile.

Through a misadventure he became separated from the party with which he traveled and found himself alone with his Chinese driver and courier in a village, when a suspicious crowd quickly assembled which refused to permit him to proceed.

Passports and letters from prominent Chinese officials were of no avail with this prejudiced crowd which grew constantly more excited and revengeful.

Suddenly through the threatening mass a man forced his way to the side of Dr. P.——, exclaiming in English, "You Melican man?" "Yes," came the reply. Turning to the crowd he explained the friendliness of American foreigners, and turning to Dr. P. again said, "Me Melican man, too, I live San Francisco seven years." Then he said, "You Jesus man? Me Jesus man, too; Mission, San Francisco, made me Jesus man."

Turning again to the crowd he succeeded in persuading them, though protesting and reluctant, to allow Dr. P. to proceed on his way unharmed.

This incident stands for the myriad influences in the ebb and flow of immigration that carry the impulses, the ideals, and the new life of America into the heart of the old world civilizations.

To the great inert masses of people in these lands have thus been brought the germs of free thought and action and the sustaining, impelling faith that these might sometime be attained by them and their children. That to them through unceasing struggle might also come the better day when government would stand for freedom, opportunity and progress, rather than the sword, prison, banishment and oppression.

America has been the great inspirer of the world.

Since the dawn of the twentieth century more than 10,500,000 immigrants have entered the United States. Through the pressure of economic conditions a large proportion of immigrants and their children are forced into the centers of poverty, crime and disease, the slum districts of our great cities, and into huge colonies in industrial centers where they both receive and contribute to conditions that have become pathological for the community, real sources of infection, both mental and physical. It is therefore not surprising to find that the children of immigrants reared in American cities contribute twice as many criminals as the sons of native whites of native stock. Our great industrial centers show an enormous aggregation of foreigners. It is said that these contain seven millions of the Slavs, the Latins, and the Asiatics, and those whose racial background makes difficult the conception of a democracy and their assimilation into it.

We confront a condition of grave peril to industrial interests as well as to our national well-being when, in addition to the overcoming of racial background, we must add the retarding effect of the segregation of large foreign colonies in mining and industrial centers. Great numbers of these aliens do not expect to become American citizens, but are here only to accumulate sufficient capital to return. "Of all the immigrants now comingone-third return to Europe and two-thirds of all those who return remain there." These constitute largely a mobile migratory and disturbing, unskilled wage-earning class.

They therefore are unfavorable to assimilative influences and tend to establish in modified forms the standards and customs of the communities from which they have come. "The town of Windber, in Western Pennsylvania, has a population of 8000 persons and is the center of twelve mining camps. It was founded by the opening of bituminous coal mines, for which purpose 1600 experienced Englishmen and 400 native Americans were brought into the locality. At the present, eighteen races of recent immigration are numbered among its mine workers. The Southern and Eastern Europeans among them have their churches, banks, steamship agencies and business establishments in the town to which they go to transact their affairs and to seek amusement." "Another illustration is the recently established iron and steel manufacturing community at Granite City and Madison, Illinois, which has the distinction of being the largest Bulgarian colony in the United States. These two cities join each other and for practical purposes are one. Fifteen years ago its site was an unbroken stretch of corn fields. The original wage-earners were English, Irish, Germans, Welsh and Poles; then followed Slovaks, Magyars, a few Croatians. Mixed groups came next, Roumanians, Greeks and Servians, and later Bulgarians, until that group alone numbered 8000; later still, the foreigners were augmented by the arrival of 4000 new immigrants—Armenians, Servians, Lithuanians, Slovaks, Magyars and Poles. Under normal industrial conditions the population of the community is estimated at 20,000 Here the various racial groups live entirely apart from any American influence."

The New York Tribune states: "It is a somewhat startling announcement that more than one-third of the adult male inhabitants of New York City are unnaturalized aliens. There are, according to the census, 1,433,749 males in the city, of twenty-one years or more, and of these more than 500,000 have not become naturalized. In the whole state there are 718,940 foreign-born white men of voting age who have not become citizens. It needs no argument to prove that this is not a desirable state of affairs, and that if perpetuated it would be mischievous, if not disastrous."

From the figures collected in an investigation of four months in New York City Night Court, it appears that 7.7 per cent of the women arrested and convicted for keeping disorderly houses and solicitation were foreign-born.

In New York City all the conditions created by immigration are enormously accentuated, for within itself and its suburbs it has a foreign population exceeding the whole population of Chicago.

"It is at once the largest Catholic city of history and the largest Jewish city of history."

Statistics furnished by the industrial department of the Y.M.C.A., based upon the census of 1910, give the proportion of two out of every three of the inhabitants of the following cities as foreign-born or of foreign-born parentage.

181,511 Columbus 104,402 Spokane
233,650 Indianapolis 213,381 Denver
116,577 Dayton 207,214 Portland
248,381 Kansas City 558,485 Baltimore
319,198 Los Angeles 168,497 Toledo
237,194 Seattle 423,715 Buffalo
100,253 Albany 267,799 Jersey City, N.J.
124,096 Omaha 347,469 Newark, N.J.
137,249 Syracuse 224,326 Providence
687,029 St. Louis 102,054 Bridgeport
1,549,008 Philadelphia 465,766 Detroit
150,174 Oakland 104,839 Cambridge
112,571 Grand Rapids 560,603 Cleveland
218,149 Rochester 670,585 Boston
533,905 Pittsburgh 125,600 Paterson, N.J.
301,408 Minneapolis 373,857 Milwaukee
129,867 Scranton 2,185,283 Chicago
214,744 St. Paul 106,294 Lowell
145,986 Worcester 4,766,883 New York
133,605 New Haven 119,295 Fall River

This tabulation suggests all that these dominant cities represent of congestion of industrial and social pressure, and their powerful effects upon new Americans in their most impressionable period.

"The significant feature of the situation of which the foregoing illustrations are typical," say such authorities as Prof. Jeremiah W. Jenks and W. Jett Lanck, "is the almost complete ignorance and indifference of the native American population to the recent immigrant colonies and their condition. This attitude extends even to the native churches. Comparatively few agencies have been established for the Americanization and assimilation of Southern and Eastern European wage-earners.

"Not only is a great field open for social and religious work, but vast possibilities are offered for patriotic service in improving these serious conditions which confront a self-governing republic."

That the crowding, struggling foreigner of many races and tongues may take his place as a voting American, in whose hands rests a predominating influence upon the present and future of this nation, it is essential that he catch the vision of those fundamental, inspiring ideals which have made America the hope of the hopeless, the very land of promise, to the oppressed of the world.

He must be touched by an integrating force, a dynamic power, capable of revealing and developing the inherent best in him and contributing to him of the essential best in America.

"Religion alone answers this need in fullest measure. It is the great quickening power which can resolve ancient inheritance of personal and race antagonisms and hatreds into a struggle for higher individual and community welfare."

Eternally true are the Master's words, "Man cannot live by bread alone"; he must have the spiritual communion which can give to him and to society the uplifting conception of the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. This is the great integrating, harmonizing power that the church of Christ must bring to the solving of America's insistent immigrant problem.

* * * * *

Before taking up in detail the study of what Home Missions is actually accomplishing as an integrating force, let us turn briefly to consider some of the powerful disintegrating factors operative among immigrants and their children.

Second to the great fact of labor and its demands in our cities is the need and demand for recreation. The reaction from the monotony of factory life, with its exacting, fatiguing tension of machine-tending, and the crowdedness of the tenement home, sends the laboring multitudes into the streets at night seeking diversion and amusement. This is pre-eminently true of the young, who find commercialism waiting at night to "extract from them their petty wages by pandering to their love of pleasure" after having utilized their undeveloped labor power in its factories and shops by day.

Jane Addams says, "The whole apparatus for supplying pleasure is wretchedly inadequate and full of danger to whomsoever may approach it.

"Who is responsible for its inadequacy and dangers? We certainly cannot expect the fathers and mothers who have come to the city from farms or who have immigrated from other lands to appreciate or rectify these dangers of the city.

"We cannot expect the young people themselves to cling to conventions which are totally unsuited to modern city conditions, nor yet to be equal to the task of forming new conventions through which this more agglomerate social life may express itself.

"The mass of these young people are possessed of good intentions and would respond to amusements less demoralizing and dangerous, if such were available at no greater cost than those now offered.

"Our attitude toward music is typical of our carelessness toward all these things which make for common joy."

The vicious, sensuous music of the dance hall, with accompanying words, often indecent and full of vulgar, suggestive appeal, are permitted a vogue throughout the entire country.

No diagnosing of the immigrant city problem or understanding of the task of securing civic righteousness can be obtained by Home Mission women without realizing the place and influence of amusements upon the lives of the young people of our land.

A noted English playwright stated that "the theatre is literally making the minds of our urban population to-day. It is a huge factory of sentiment, of character, of points of honor, of conception, of conduct, of everything that finally determines the destiny of a nation."

Hundreds, yes, thousands of young people attend the five-cent theatres every night, including Sunday, receiving the constant effect of vulgar music and a debased and often vulgar and suggestive dramatic art.

"Many immigrant parents," says Jane Addams, "are absolutely bewildered by the keen absorption of their children in the cheap theatres.

"One Sunday evening recently an investigation was made of four hundred and sixty-six theatres in the city of Chicago, and it was discovered that in the majority of them the leading theme was revenge, the lover following his rival, the outraged husband seeking his wife's paramour, or similar themes. It was estimated that one-sixth of the entire population of the city had attended the theatres on that day."

The same would generally be true of other large cities.

Nor is this low and vicious standard of cheap amusements confined to large cities; it is bound to prevail also where our backward people come into contact with white villages and communities. The cock fights and other demoralizing amusements of Spanish-speaking peoples and the dances of the Indians must be superseded by entertainment that is wholesome and helpful.

Through its own agencies and as it co-operates with others for betterment Home Missions must take into account the urgent demand for wholesome amusement for those who, on account of the conditions of their environment, are so much in need of the cheer and joy of attractive and elevating forms of entertainment.

Home Missions responds to the cry of the city's need through the ministry of the deaconess, who in turn is nurse, or visitor, or leader of kindergarten, day nursery, rescue home, or orphanage.

* * * * *

A gentle-voiced Italian mother it was whose ten children filled to overflowing the three-room tenement home, one room of which was without means of light or air. She lifted to her arms the youngest child of less than a year, clad in one ragged little garment, while she seated herself to tell in broken English and with many gestures her story to the deaconess who came to see if she could help about the oldest boy, who was giving trouble. The woman said she had been married in Italy when only fourteen years of age and was now thirty-one. She had come to America when her second child was a baby. Her husband was a longshoreman and earned twelve dollars a week for the support of the family of twelve. They were looking forward soon to the help of the earnings of the oldest child, a boy not quite fourteen. This boy was the problem! To escape the uproar and confusion of the crowded rooms he spent his time when he could escape from school, on the street. A gang adopted him. He was ill-nourished, and his teachers suspected him of receiving and using cocaine. Poor little scrap of humanity! with a hungry, craving body and no room for soul, mind or body to develop but the corrupting street, with its saloons and its gangs! From such a childhood he is destined soon to join the ranks of labor. Will he add to the number of America's criminals or can he possibly enter the ranks of good citizenship? If he were simply an individual case it would still be inexpressibly sad, but, alas, he stands for thousands in our land.

The deaconess will do her utmost for his rescue, but we cannot wonder at her feeling that great fundamental, preventive measures must be taken by the church and society to wipe out the city slums and all that they stand for of pestilential evil.

Of great significance are the disintegrating efforts of certain groups of socialists and anarchists who by means of Sunday-schools gather children of immigrants largely to inculcate in them the peculiar principles and doctrines of anarchism and their brand of socialism, as well as to crush out of their thought all idea of God and love and obedience to Him. These Sunday-schools, so destructive of all that is best and highest in the child soul, flourish in New York, Brooklyn, Chicago and other large cities.

* * * * *

The foreigners who stand perhaps in greatest need of the understanding sympathy and the harmonizing influence of the church are those isolated in the great mining regions, where the conditions of living are so hazardous and where maladjustments of every sort contribute to an atmosphere which breathes of hatred and discontent. It is estimated that our present industrial system, through criminal negligence, takes the huge toll of 45,000 workers killed every year.

One miner of every hundred dies because his employer cares less for the lives of his men than for the few extra dollars, the cost of proper safety arrangements.

"In the course of the Pittsburgh survey it was discovered that by industrial accidents Allegheny County alone loses more than five hundred workmen every year, sixty per cent of whom are young men who have not yet reached the prime of life. This loss falls not upon the people who determine the degree of protection from injury and decide about the introduction of safety devices, but upon the widows, the orphans and the aged parents."

Here the resourceful Home Missionary is an inestimable help. She is often a Slavish or Bohemian girl, knowing from actual experience all the sordidness, the monotony, the tragedy that envelop the mine and its workers, for in many cases she herself has been a part of it, herself Christianized, educated and trained by Home Missions. She speaks the language of the mines, she knows its innermost life. When the frequent accidents, throw their desolation and fearful economic burdens upon the homes, she comforts and sustains. She helps the stricken wife and children to keep to decency and right. She teaches night classes in English, and mothers' classes, sustains reading and club rooms with games and wholesome amusements to hold the boy miner from the lure of the saloon. She conducts the Sunday-school and is herself a peripatetic Christian settlement, with all that it implies of sacrifice, service and the salvation of soul and body.

A commentary on the need of Home Missions in the mining sections is forcibly presented in the following testimony.

Before the Commission of Industrial Relations (February, 1915) Mrs. Dominiki from the Colorado mines, speaking of the general labor conditions in the district in which she lived, said:

"I never saw a church in any of the coal camps except Trinidad. There were no halls where people might meet but there were always plenty of saloons.

* * * * *

"Hotels, boarding houses of many descriptions, stores, saloons and gambling dens, are visible on every street. Everything suggested money-making and money-spending." [Footnote: The Outlook—February 17, 1915.]

This typical mining town does not pretend to have any sacred days or sacred hours. Business, money-making and sporting are the great aim of life. The mines work seven days each week and twenty-four hours each day. The great concentrators know no pause; the cables are ever busy transporting the mineral from the tunnels to the mills.

The streets are full of busy teams on the Sabbath, just as on any other day; the same is true of all the stores but one, the proprietor of which put out as his first advertisement, "This store will be closed on the Sabbath." The saloons and gambling dens boom in iniquity on the Lord's Day as well as on any other day.

The first service was held on the street. A wagon answering for pulpit, platform and choir-loft, the noble few, interested and willing-hearted, were organized for Christian work; and after a long, severe, self-sacrificing struggle, with help of friends here and there, a comfortable meeting house was completed, even to a bell in its tower. The Sabbath bell is now heard, What a message it declares! What memories it awakens! Who can tell what its influence shall be?

"'The next thirty-five miles is an American Sodom,' said the conductor.

"What did the converted coal miner find, when he accepted this difficult trust? Saloons in abundance—in one town eleven in a row—each saloon with its attendant gambling den, dance house, etc. He found this region a hotbed of infidelity. He saw multitudes of young people of all nations under the sun making holiday of the sacred hours of the Sabbath, and, saddest of all, knowing no better. There were no gospel services, nor Sunday-schools, for there was no place to hold them.

"While I have spent much time in visiting the five towns of this neglected field, I selected one place as a center for extra effort, and here I commenced a series of gospel meetings. The result is a church of seventeen members and a Sunday-school of fifty scholars. As all these towns are dreadfully cursed with saloons, we are trying to create a temperance sentiment. Fifty have already signed the pledge, among them some of the worst drunkards in the town. Forty-five children have joined the 'Children's Band' and are trying to keep their lives clean. We have bought half an acre of ground, whereon to build a church and parsonage. Work is already commenced in good faith."

* * * * *

"With the opening and development of the hard coal mines of Pennsylvania in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, a large migration of Welsh miners began to arrive in the state. They were Protestants and fervently religious. Immediately the organization of religious life began. In 1831 different denominational elements gathered together and began Sunday-school and church life in Carbondale, Pa. The Congregational Church there has been a steady factor of religious life ever since, first among the Welsh exclusively, but later among all classes.

"In similar manner churches were organized all over the anthracite district. To-day fully two-thirds of the churches of the Congregational faith in the state are of Welsh origin, and barring a few in agricultural regions all are among miners or mill hands, joyfully affording the privileges of the Gospel to the poor.

"These churches have made a large contribution to the religious life of the state; they are fervently and effectively evangelistic. It is probably true that the Welsh people are the most thoroughly evangelized of any in the state to-day. Twelve churches have received one hundred or more members each on confession of faith within a year.

"In these later months these Welsh Christians are pressing into the evangelization of other nationalities, which constitute a very large part of the population in the anthracite regions, and their splendid zeal helped to make the 'Billy Sunday' campaign in Wilkes-Barre and Scranton the most wonderful, even that spectacular man has ever conducted. As personal workers they are unsurpassed, and since the revivals they have organized workers' bands and Bible classes, and have gone out into all the country for fifty miles around holding meetings in which singing, personal testimony and prayer have been made marvelously effective, while their earnest labors in local churches which they have joined as members, have in many cases verily revolutionized the life and multiplied the power of the churches." [Footnote: Rev. A.E. Ricker, Congregational Home Missionary Society.]

* * * * *

The Italian immigrant is perhaps more widely distributed throughout our land than any of the other nationalities composing the immigration of the past twenty years.

From New Orleans, with its 60,000, to New York with its nearly half a million, scarcely a city is without an Italian colony, and even villages and rural districts show a quota of these ubiquitous, hard working, promising new Americans.

Italy, the land of art and beauty, contributes to us citizens with an enormous capacity for industry and economy, warmth of nature, response to beauty and openness to religious appeal, with a tendency to crimes of passion and, in general, a most un-American attitude toward the child, using him at the earliest possible age as a commercial asset for the family.

Physically they are of marvelous vitality and strength, and like other hardy peasant stock have great endurance and are very prolific. Early marriages, arranged by the parents, and large families, are the rule among them.

All of these factors are of greatest significance to us as a nation, though we can not here enter into a discussion of the grave potentialities involved in the absorption by our nation of a virile, prolific, though not highly intelligent class.

We cannot, however, fail to be impressed with the urgent necessity of imparting to such a people the ideals and standards essential to their adoption into our body politic.

The church is qualified beyond all other agencies to accomplish this end, and to give spiritual direction to the Italian-Americans who are turning from the superstition and inadequacy of the religion which is fast losing its hold upon them in Italy, as well as America, and from which they are rapidly drifting into indifference and unbelief.

In a late investigation made by the Italian government into conditions in southern Italy the beneficial effect of the returning immigrant was expressed in the strongest terms.

In effect this report said that "greater than the benefit any laws that the government could pass, better than any training which the government could give the people was the beneficial influence of the returning immigrant. Not merely did he bring new wealth into the country, but what was of still greater importance than the imported wealth, he brought with him the American spirit of intelligence, and enterprise which made of him a much worthier and more helpful citizen." [Footnote: The Immigrant Problem—Jenks and Lanck.]

* * * * *

He came of generations of Waldensian Protestant ancestry in Italy, this alert, efficient, cultured Italian pastor. He found the parish to which he was assigned composed of several thousand of his countrymen in a Hudson river town; the building to be used for church purposes a dirty, run-down old hall, a part of the most disreputable corner of the town.

There was not one Italian Protestant, or sympathizer, so far as he could discover, in the community and there seemed to be the greatest apathy to the Mission on the part of the old aristocratic church of the town.

Several blocks away a fine new brick church was in process of construction, to be used for Italian Catholics. Truly the prospect was not encouraging for the Protestant Mission.

However, generations of those who endure and overcome had written deep within him an unfailing courage and a conquering faith.

He began to cultivate Italians in their stores, on the streets, in their homes, wherever he might. His charm and sincerity opened the way and won true friends. In his discussions with them he found those who were questioning the authority of their former faith; it seemed out of harmony in this new land, and they were turning from it to unbelief.

Here was the opportunity for him to offer them the new faith and the One who said "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life," and compellingly he did it.

The story that follows is of absorbing interest, but we can only touch it in outline and record-how the groups of converts joined the pastor in repairing, painting, electric lighting of the building, until it became truly inviting.

How there came to be a library with books in English and Italian, and evening classes, and meetings, and wholesome amusements to compete with the dance halls and saloons for the young people. There were at times stereopticon lectures on things historic and civic, and dramatic presentations of the Prodigal Son and other Bible stories which the pastor himself prepared and trained the people to present.

How a wonderful Sunday-school grew and glowed with happiness and enthusiasm, even though threatening priests sometimes pressed in ordering out the children and shaking excited fists in the faces of the teachers.

How beyond all else in depth and influence were the beautiful church services, reverent and meaningful, bringing close to waiting hearts the burden-lifting, life-giving Jesus the Christ.

Did ever the precious hymn, "What a Friend we have in Jesus" seem quite so fraught with joy and sweet companionship as when the familiar music was sung by this Italian congregation.

Quale amico abbiaino in Cristo!
Sempre pronto a compatir
Ogni nostro pensier tristo
Tutto il nostro gran fallir!
Ma qual pace noi perdiamo,
Quali pene noi soffriam,
Sol perche non confidiamo
Tutto a Lui mentre preghiam.

Already from this Mission sixteen earnest Christian members have returned to Italy, each having two Bibles, one to give away.

Who can measure the leavening force of the gospel carried by the many who return and who are scattered up and down throughout all the lovely land of Italy.

Home Missions is not bounded in its results by the seas surrounding the home land, but reaches far away into the heart of the old world across the seas.

It is not possible here to differentiate the various races and peoples in our land, each of whose particular circumstances and need and reaction upon our national life makes an urgent claim upon the integrating power of Home Missions and the church.

* * * * *

Passing mention only can be made of the special needs of the Mexicans in the United States, thousands upon thousands of whom are voting citizens and yet are quite unable through deep ignorance, and lack of standards of life to take their places as part of the people who govern.

El Paso, Texas, shows 40,000 permanent Mexican residents; Southern California, 80,000. They form one-half the population of Arizona and more than half of New Mexico and are found in other Western and Southwestern states.

Home Missions is giving a very valuable and varied service to these Americans from old Mexico.

* * * * *

The Orientals of America form a distinct group. Marked racial differences and their background of the mystic, age-old East leave them separated and apart in a conglomerate civilization whose assimilative power is the wonder of the age. They form thus far the largest body of "irreconcilables," to use Prof. Lowell's term, found in our land.

"It is indeed largely a perception of the need of of homogeneity as a basis for popular government and the public opinion on which it rests, that justifies democracies in resisting the influx in great numbers of a widely different race.

"One essential condition to a democracy is that people should be homogeneous to such a point that the minority is willing to accept the decisions of the majority on all questions that are normally expected to arise." [Footnote: Public Opinion and Population Government—A. Lawrence Lowell.]

The German poet, Goethe, a most penetrating thinker, declared that the prime quality of the real critic is sympathy. There is no other realizing and understanding approach to a man or a race. "The significant ideals, the organized energy, the sustaining vitality of an alien people must be sought and understood in order to come into sympathetic touch with them." This is the only key to mutual understanding and respect.

It is especially needful that the Oriental should be considered from this standpoint: in varying degrees, according to their race and standard, they lay a grave responsibility upon Home Missions. By the tens of thousands they are here, Hindus, Chinese, Koreans, and Japanese, bringing their ancient faiths, raising their temples in our Christian land. Mohammedanism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Brahmanism, and many other alien and heathen faiths count their adherents by the thousands, while many one-time Christian folk are turning to the modern forms of these religions.

The fact that rescue homes for Chinese slave girls are a feature of Home Mission work among Orientals tells its own story of degrading customs transplanted to America's shores.

Through colporteurs, evangelists, deaconesses, schools, homes, hospitals and churches, Home Missions is giving the Christ to the Orientals; and they, returning, carry the "new life" gained in America to their great awakening lands where rests so much of the world's future destiny. A great international evangelism is being poured out by Home Missions; for these Christians that are "scattered abroad go everywhere preaching the gospel."

A noted Japanese evangelist, Rev. Kiyomatsu Kimura, for six years pastor of the Congregational church of Kioto, known as the Moody of Japan, because of his great power as a soul winner, has been visiting this country, preaching to his own people (January, 1915).

In Hawaii, as a result of his three months of labor, one thousand
Japanese and Koreans accepted Christ.

In New York City his brief stay admitted of only three evening meetings, when twenty decided for the Christian faith. Probably just as remarkable results will attend his efforts in Chicago and the far West.

Rev. Mr. Kimura received his training in personal and evangelistic work in the Moody Institute of Chicago.

"An American artist on the wall of a library building has striven to represent the spirit of America by a procession of men, women and children.

"They are all marching together with eager expectation on their upturned faces and the morning light shines on them."

Yes, America offers hope, a future, the upward path, to the crowding millions, but only as the light of God illumines and makes clear the way and His voice stills the hate of race and class, saying "Come unto Me," and "Bear ye one another's burdens."

VI

SOURCES OF POWER

Lover of souls, indeed,
But Lover of bodies too,
Seeing in human flesh
The God shine through;
Hallowed be Thy name,
And, for the sake of Thee,
Hallowed be all men,
For Thine they be.

Doer of deeds divine,
Thou, the Father's Son,
In all Thy children may
Thy will be done,
Till each works miracles
On poor and sick and blind,
Learning from Thee the art
Of being kind.

For Thine is the glory of love,
And Thine the tender power,
Touching the barren heart
To leaf and flower,
Till not the lilies alone,
Beneath thy gentle feet,
But human lives for Thee
Grow white and sweet.

And Thine shall the Kingdom be,
Thou Lord of Love and Pain,
Conqueror over death
By being slain.
And we, with lives like Thine,
Shall cry in the great day when
Thou comest to claim Thine own,
"All hail! Amen."

—W.J. Dawson.

* * * * *

"Thy kingdom come—Thy will be done on earth."

Fundamental in all projects for the upbuilding of a worldly or a spiritual kingdom, or an individual character, lies the ideal. Action, growth, conduct, spring from the creating ideal and in the process of development they advance and enlarge together.

"The ideal is the primary moving power in the human spirit," Professor Gidding says; "into his ideal enter man's estimate of the past and his forecast of the future—his scientific analysis and his poetic feeling, his soberest judgment and his religious aspiration."

Our ideal then for our country, for the work and place of Home Missions in it, for ourselves as Christian patriots and believers in Home Missions, is essentially a basic source of power. Into the ideal for our country must enter the inspiring conception of the nation which will include the background of its yesterday.

America means not only the cultural institutions, the multiplied industries, the vast wealth of farms (four crops in the year 1915 were valued at $4,770,000,000), mines and forests, but the genius of an Edison, a Burbank, a Goethals, a McDowell, the devotion of a John R. Mott, a Frank Higgins, a Jane Addams and the long honor roll of men and women made great through their service. America also embodies all that was wrought by those early comers who endured hunger, disease, suffering, that they might conquer a wilderness and make it a land of opportunity. It holds the fruits of service and sacrifice purchased by those later ones who willingly faced death "that government for the people and by the people" might replace tyranny and oppression, and the imperishable glory of those others who counted not their lives dear but laid them down that sweet freedom might be the right of every man, of whatever race or color. Beside all these stood the strong, true women who suffered, endured and triumphed with them.

The rich heritage bestowed by a Washington, a Lincoln, a Lee, a John Eliot, a Charles Sumner, a Marcus Whitman, a Sheldon Jackson, a Harriet Beecher Stowe, a Frances Willard, and a host of others, constitutes the infinitely precious treasury of our national life.

Bayard Taylor expresses the peculiar genius of America in his national ode:

From the homes of all, where her being began
She took what she gave to man.
Justice, that knew no station,
Belief as soul decreed,
Free air for aspiration,
Free force for independent deed.

She takes but to give again
As the sea returns the rivers in rain
And gathers the chosen of her seed
From the hunted of every crown and creed.

In one strong race all races here unite.
Tongues meet in hers, hereditary foemen
Forget their sword and slogan, kith and clan.
'Twas glory, once, to be a Roman:
She makes it glory, now, to be a man!

Our ideal for America is summed up in this—that it may increasingly become the kingdom of God. What do we mean by "kingdom"? St Paul says "the kingdom is righteousness and peace and joy" which being interpreted might read, the kingdom—Christ's rule on earth—will bring to all the Father's children the opportunity of knowing Him and His saving love expressed through Jesus Christ; it will mean the transforming of human society so that ignorance, greed, disease and injustice shall be overthrown; so that "the bitter cry of the children" shall no longer be drowned by the whir of the wheels of industry; so that the sisterhood of women shall be established and that through the dominance of righteousness men shall cease to invoke war and strife, and, released from crushing burdens, into life and labor shall come joy and an increasing sense of spiritual values.

Another source of power is to know the factors that enter into our problem and the facts of our undertaking. That we may intelligently synthesize the influences that bear powerfully upon the church as it seeks to meet its present day task, apprehend the effect of these influences upon the religious ideals and thought of our young people, and realize the atmosphere which Home Missions must permeate with its saving faith, we must take account of the moulding thought-life of our day.

It is always difficult to separate the apparent from the underlying and more subtle causes and influences. Within the outer and more obvious is usually hidden an inner current of thought and movement that must be sought and realized in order that the whole content may be obtained. Until quite recently—and we are still feeling its effects—the tendency of our time strongly emphasized material accomplishments. The world has been "intently and almost exclusively occupied with subduing natural forces and material matter to humanity's growing physical and mental needs." Thus have been given us the wonders of scientific triumph which make possible the civilization of our day.

In America, especially, material development has appeared to receive an exalted value and place. We have become familiar with the charge made against us by Europe of being a nation of materialists.

The transforming of a continent from a wilderness to a land of homes and highly organized industry in the brief space of three centuries; the marvelous and rapid development of the vast material resources of our land; the hastening here of eager recruits from other lands, passionately seeking and needing material betterment, have magnified in this country the feverish acquisition of material wealth and accentuated the hard, calculating business spirit; and has seemed to place undue value upon the worth of material success and the things of which it is made.

John Burroughs from his quiet vantage point of observation says—"The present civilization arms us with the forces of earth, air and water, while it weakens our hold upon the sources of personal power.

"It gives us great intellectual riches but it deadens our finer spiritual faculties, our clear conception of the higher values of life. Where there is no vision, no intuitive perception of the great fundamental truths of the inner spiritual life, the best and the highest must perish."

Before seeking to discover the hidden ethical motives and forces that animate and elevate our national life, let us consider the very real effect of the apparent predominance of the materialistic upon our college students.

Our young people are exposed not only to the pressure of the materialistic atmosphere which throbs and beats about us all, but they must also meet the same force from a different and very direct contact in their classrooms at college, and in the universities.

Few of us realize the difficult adjustment of mental and spiritual outlook young people of Christian training must face as they enter college and university, or the shock to their Christian faith received through the contact with rationalistic and materialistic philosophy.

The professors presenting these subjects speak from a large experience and wide information to those of limited experience and immature thought, who are unable to give a mental margin for faith and all that it implies; though this wider understanding may lie in the mind of the lecturer mitigating his personal view point, it is not presented to the student.

Without intention often, and because the subject lies in the realm of speculative thought, the presentation apparently leaves no room for faith or for those vital qualities which lie beyond the realm of reason and deduction and can be apprehended only through spiritual perception, and which are infinitely precious because they constitute the soul life. Here is found the source of those finer feelings and impulses—love, faith, reverence and the response to the Divine.

Of greatest value in the promotion of the spiritual life among the students taking these subjects, is the fact that the later philosophers, of whom William James, Josiah Royce and Henri Bergson are prominent, give place to the spiritual and to the power and inspiration of the unseen. [Footnote: The following, which appeared in the Outlook of March, 1915, though recording a special occasion at one university, is true in showing the tendency which obtains in varying degrees at many others:

"To understand the significance of this religious awakening at Yale (February, 1915), there is needed a brief explanation of the genesis of this 'new evangelism' of the second decade of the twentieth century, which is transforming our colleges, and which makes it natural and normal for students to desire a period set apart for special meetings each year when they can 'come across,' as they put it.

"The teaching of Professor William James, of Harvard, showed how useless it was to get men to listen to appeals if they were not energized to act on them. This gave a scientific basis for registered decisions. As soon as John R. Mott and G. Sherwood Eddy dared act on this the results were so remarkable that the conservatives no longer opposed it."]

Very wisely must the Christian influence of the home and the church be exerted during this period so as not to seem or wish to limit the freedom of thought and research, yet at the same time to hold the eager, questioning young life true to the highest and best, that with the development of the mental life may go also a deepening and widening of the spiritual.

Home Missions, too, must be watchful and efficient in its attitude toward the student body and recent graduates, that it may offer the special presentation of its scope and appeal, and the concrete objects of interest to which the students may contribute service best fitted to meet their peculiar requirements.

With the superficial dominance of the materialistic in our civilization has come also a marked relaxation of standards in social and religious life.

Into both have crept a lenience toward tendencies that are vicious and destructive. In social life certain dances, amusements, styles of dressing, have been tolerated even by Christian women, that savor only of the lowest and most vulgar practices and places. As we desire the triumph of what Home Missions stands for, our influence as Christian women should be exerted powerfully to maintain standards in these matters that will be helpful rather than hurtful to the ideals and Christian development of our young people. We can not escape a heavy responsibility along these lines.

The relaxation of standards in religious matters invites the growth among people of Christian up-bringing of the many modern forms of ancient non-Christian faiths which are gaining wide acceptance in our land. Mormonism, Theosophy, Bahaism, New Thought and other cults because of their apparent intellectuality, mysticism and spirituality appeal to hundreds and thousands of women who do not think deeply, and who are carried away by the seeming depth and power of the appeal of these new faiths.

If devotees declined to accept the literature furnished by these organizations for their delusion and would go to the libraries and ascertain for themselves the origin, beliefs and accomplishments of these religions and their ancient prototypes as they flourished in India, Persia, Arabia, they would learn the facts as to the faith to which they are giving their allegiance.

A sample of the destructive teaching to which many indifferent, thoughtless and curious people are exposed was furnished to the writer at a crowded Theosophist meeting in New York City where one of their lecturers spoke on the theme of sin.

With many variations and much eloquence he said in brief, "There is no such thing as sin. The doctrine of vicarious atonement is ridiculous. There was nothing sublime in Calvary. Many an unknown miner has done all that Calvary suggests in giving life to save others. Those whom we term sinful, sensual or criminal are simply young souls which have not evoluted far enough. When they have passed through the seven or more incarnations they will have attained beauty and perfection of character."

Some of the leaflets and literature distributed were dangerous in their suggestiveness. This was one meeting only, and hundreds of the same order were held throughout our land that day. What of the need of the pure standards and ideals of which Home Missions is the exponent!

The inner and true spirit of America can not be found, however, in the emphasis upon material wealth and welfare, however dominant that may appear to be in our civilization.

The spirit of America is expressed in the passion for liberty and opportunity, in the "sense of moral order and responsibility, faith in God and man, love of home, courage and hope, and in the ineradicable and controlling idealism which have been the strongest elements in America since the first colonists braved the dangers of a new world for conscience sake" [Footnote: Hamilton Mabie—American Ideals, Character and Life.] and gave to this country the impulses that have held true through all its national history.

The ships carrying America's gifts of food to starving Belgians, the ship laden with the Christmas gifts of America's children to little sufferers across the seas, the hospital and Red Cross ministry given to mitigate the devastation of a war in which America has no part, express the real spirit of America. Whether a controlling Christian impulse is to continue in this land, the church of Christ—Home Missions—must answer.

We can not fail, also, to recognize the significance, for national righteousness of the urgent demand of to-day that business, social conditions and politics shall conform to an ethical standard.

This eager effort toward a standard of social righteousness is not regarded by people generally as having its source and power from within the church, though we of the church know that the impulse which gave birth to this movement and the ideals and standards sustaining it are the product of the church of Christianity. More and more, organized Christianity is realizing its obligations along these lines and is seeking to render the fullest social service. Emile de Laveleye, the Belgian economist, says, "If Christianity were taught and understood conformably to the spirit of its founder, the existing social organism could not last a day."

A source of power necessary to the effectiveness of missionary service is found in organization.

In all lines of human activity the eager effort to-day is toward efficiency through highly developed organization. This is shown in the realm of philanthropy in the great Sage and Rockefeller foundations, and in the splendidly equipped charitable societies and multitudes of others.

In the business world the Standard Oil Company, the United States Steel Company and the Ford Automobile Company are conspicuous examples. The past ten years has also witnessed combinations of religious and missionary organizations, such as the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America, The Home Missions Council, The Council of Women for Home Missions, The Federation of Foreign Missions Boards, and a number of others which exist for the purpose of obtaining the fullest information on all aspects of their particular fields of activity and to secure the execution of important lines of endeavor which can not rightly be undertaken by one Board.

"The Council of Women for Home Missions, formed in November, 1908, was organized that there might be a medium through which National Woman's Home Mission Boards and Societies might consult as to wider plans, and, co-operatively, do more efficient work for the Homeland." [Footnote: Annual Report, Council of Women for Home Missions.] Seven standing Committees are the direct agencies through which most of the work of the Council is done. These committees are Home Mission Study Courses and Literature, Home Mission Summer Schools, Home Mission Interests in Schools, Colleges, and Young People's Conferences, Home Mission Interests among Children, Home Mission Comity and Co-operation, Home Mission Interests among Immigrants, Home Mission Day of Prayer. The Council is a greatly needed clearing-house for the multitude of matters of first importance to efficiency of service and to all Home Mission Boards, which are not the particular responsibility of any.

Another important source of Home Mission inspiration and information are the interdenominational study classes which have been formed "to bring the local Women's Home Missionary Societies into united service for Christ and our country; to encourage devotional fellowship and mutual counsel concerning the spiritual life and Home Missionary activities among women's Home Missionary organizations in local communities."

The Home Mission summer schools are also valuable in promoting the study of the textbooks from year to year and in providing the opportunity of hearing from missionaries concerning their service and fields. A background of prayer, Bible study, and Christian fellowship adds much to the helpfulness of these special summer assemblies.

"Let us try to realize the significance of the fact and in these eight summer schools that are affiliated with the Council and in the Home Missions institute conducted by the Council itself at Chautauqua, nearly 5000 women devote a week or more of their precious summer vacation to perfecting themselves as leaders in missionary work in the local churches. We should never cease to feel the inspiration of this, and to welcome the promise of great things for the spreading of the kingdom of God held out in the full consecration of the highly developed powers of such a goodly company of Christian workers."

Women's national Home Mission Boards and Societies are of primary importance, for upon them rests the responsibility of the administration of all women's Home Mission activities. The earnest, prayerful planning of the Boards provides the methods of work for societies, the literature and the effective forwarding of the many lines of service on the field.

The Boards with painstaking, loving care seek to meet the constantly growing requirements of the fields committed to them, many times attaining almost the impossible in erecting buildings and responding to the appeals from people and places lacking the gospel ministry, and needing desperately the provision of a school or a hospital. Let us remember that the Boards can be strong and effective for the kingdom only as the societies and churches through their vitalizing prayers and their strengthening gifts make it possible.

The most important and basic place in all this organization structure must be assigned to the women's, young women's and children's missionary society, auxiliary, or mission band, in the local church. Here in the local society each one finds her particular place and work. Here loyalty for the denomination of our choice finds scope and nourishment. Here through prayers, letters, leaflets, the presence of missionary speakers, we come into close fellowship with those consecrated ones of our own household of faith who stand in the lonely, difficult places as our representatives, ministering of the things of Christ to those in need. Here our responsibility for maintaining the special work committed to our society is found.

To obtain a renewal of purpose, a vitalizing vision either of a personality or an enterprise, to create a fresh enthusiasm, we must turn from the familiar aspects of the subject to a first-hand thought, or view. We need to be freshly introduced, as it were. For this purpose let us renew our thought of the essential task of Home Missions. It is to Christianize our home land-Christianize, shorn of the formal services and forms of activity with which we associate the word means simply to reproduce in our own lives and strive to bring to others as accurately as possible the spirit and method of the life of Jesus, the Christ.

The source of power which will make possible the Christ-life in us, and the dynamic for all missionary service and power will be found only in Him; "Ye in me and I in you"—"That ye may be witnesses unto me," are His words.

Let us then each seek Christ afresh, that we may know and realize Him as if finding Him for the first time. Let us read the Gospels as if we had never before heard the story of His life. Let us come again to Calvary. Let us by prayer and communion open all the avenues of our being to His presence and spirit.

Let us seek a new realization and understanding of His character and purpose. For what did Christ live? Ringing in His every word and expressed in his every deed is the key note of His life—Love. He lived to express, to incarnate love—the love of the father for His children. We see Him turn from honor, riches, from what others value and strive for, that he might manifest His love and teach others how to love. The love of Jesus embodied more than it is possible for us to comprehend in the height and depth and fulness of its meaning.

His love expressed perfect understanding and sympathy. "Your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things."

His love was filled with compassion and tender pity for the needy and suffering. "Jesus, moved with compassion, touched him and saith unto him, Be thou clean."

His love felt human sorrow. At the tomb of Lazarus "Jesus wept."

His love shared human joy. "These things have I spoken unto you that my joy might remain in you and that your joy might be full."

His love held redemption—was a saving love. "He that cometh unto me I will in no wise cast out."

His love knew fullest forgiveness. He said to the woman taken in sin, "Neither do I condemn thee; go and sin no more."

His love brought friendship. "Ye are my friends."

His love gave new meaning to justice. "Her sins which are many are forgiven-for she loved much."

His love gave inspiration, "If ye abide in me and my words abide in you ye shall ask what ye will and it shall be done." "Greater works than these shall ye do."

His love held the promise of eternal companionship. "All mine are thine and thine are mine. I will come and receive you unto myself, that where I am ye may be also."

"Outlawed men, criminals and lepers and madmen, became as little children at His word, and all the wrongs and bruises inflicted on them were healed beneath His kindly glance. This is how He lived and this Gospel was the Gospel of a life He lived in such a way that men saw that love was the only thing worth living for—that life had meaning only as it had love."

O Love that wilt not let me go,
I rest my weary soul in Thee.
I give Thee back the life I owe
That in thine ocean depths its flow
May richer, fuller be.

This many-sided, all-embracing love is the type of love His followers are pledged to yearn for and to seek earnestly to express. The love of Christ found three great expressions—in giving, in service, in sacrifice.

If we, Christian women, are to reproduce Christ's spirit of love, then giving, service, sacrifice must be dominant in our lives.

How wonderfully and fully the Christ gave of all that He had—Himself. He needs our gifts to-day, ourselves, our talents, our money. Home Missions means a life to be lived, the full, glad giving of thought, prayer, money, that His love may be made known to all the weary, oppressed, ignorant, waiting, suffering ones in our land.

"Christ gives the best.
And in His service as we're growing stronger
The calls to grand achievement still increase.
The richest gifts for us, on earth or in heaven above,
Are hid in Christ. In Jesus, we receive the best we have."

The Christ-love was expressed in service. From the time that He went forth to be "about His Father's business" we see him always serving to the utmost of His strength with no thought of rest, or comfort. We recall the long, hard day in Capernaum when after having spent Himself in teaching He came to Peter's house; the news of His presence there spread through the city; quickly were brought unto Him the sick, the crippled and possessed; forgetful of His weariness He healed and ministered unto them until the shadows lengthened and night closed in. All along the way, as He journeyed in Galilee, Judea or Samaria, he gave help and healing to the sick and sinful. When He heard the sad cry of the lepers, He drew near them and gave them cleansing. Those possessed of evil spirits, the blind, the soul sick, the unrealizing, hardened woman at the well, the beautiful, loving Magdelen, all found in Him a response to their utmost need. He said truly, "The Son of Man came not to be ministered unto but to minister." He says to us, "As the Father sent me, so send I you."

"The final purpose of knowledge is action."

Grant us the will to fashion as we feel;
Grant us the strength to labor as we know;
Grant us the purpose ribbed and edged with steel
To strike the blow.

Knowledge we ask not—knowledge Thou hast lent,
But, Lord, the will—there lies our bitter need.
Give us to build above the deep intent
The deed, the deed.

—John Drinkwater.

Knowledge must find expression in action or it is harmful and vicious in its reaction. Having learned of Home Mission conditions and needs, "word and deed must become one witness in action," else our knowledge will mean a hardening of sympathy, the atrophy of some spiritual impulse. The Lord calls us and sends us forth to serve.

Let us also remember that now is the time to begin a larger service. "To-day is your day and mine, the only day we have, the day in which we play our part. What our part may signify in the great whole we may not understand, but we are here to play it and now is the time."

"Whittier tells us the story of the day in Connecticut in 1780, when the horror of great darkness came over the land, and all men believed that the dreaded Day of Judgment had come at last.

"The legislature of Connecticut, 'dim as ghosts' in the old Statehouse, wished to adjourn to put themselves in condition for the great assizes, Meanwhile Abraham Davenport, representative from Stamford, rose to say:

"This well may be
The Day of Judgment which the world awaits;
But be it is so or not, I only know
My present duty and my Lord's command
To occupy till He come.
So at the post where He hath set me in His Providence
I choose for one to meet Him face to face,
Let God do His work. We will see to ours."

[Footnote: David Starr Jordan—The Call of the Twentieth Century.]

The Lord's love found its supreme expression in sacrifice. He walked not only the Via Dolorosa—the way of pain and sorrow—which led through Gethsemane to the green hill far away beyond the city wall; and to Calvary—the pathway of His life was marked by daily, hourly sacrifice.

He knew the full measure of loneliness, of misunderstanding, of cruel malignity. He of the most sensitive perceptions and feelings suffered from the brutality and coarseness of those who hated Him. He knew the anguish of homelessness. Listen to the cry that escaped Him: "The Son of Man hath not where to lay his head." If we are following Him we too will share in the sacrificial life. "He that would come after me let him take up his cross and follow me." But there is joy in sacrifice, deep and true, and things highest and best come to us only through the life laid down.

Out of the deep of sacrifice The pillars of the future rise.

It was a regiment that had volunteered for sure-death service at Port Arthur, and the Japanese captain addressing them as they were about to march said, "I send you forth as my loved children. If as you discharge your duty, you lose your right hand, fight with your left; if your left, too, is lost, serve with your feet; if your feet also are lost, you can help with your head, giving cheer and encouragement to others. Do not be reckless of your lives for they are needed."

Joyously seventy-seven earnest, willing ones went to live that message—gloriously they did their part and won the day, though not one of them ever returned to tell of victory.

God calls us to live for the saving of America.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ethics of Force H.E. Warner
Future of War Jean de Bloch
New Peace Movement William I. Hull
War Inconsistent with Religion of Jesus
Christ David Lowe Dodge
American Addresses at the Second Hague
Conference Edited by James Brown
Scott
Moral Damage of War Walter Walsh
Newer Ideals of Peace Jane Addams
Bethink Yourselves Leo Tolstoi
Blood of the Nation David Starr Jordan
The Gospel of the Kingdom (Magazine) Edited by Dr. Josiah
Strong
The Call of the Twentieth Century David Starr Jordan
Social Forces Edward T. Devine
American Ideals Theodore Roosevelt
The New Humanism Edward Howard Griggs
The Gospel of Jesus and the Problems
of Democracy Henry C. Vedder
Home Missions and the Social Question M. Katherine Bennett
Social Advance Rev. David Watson
Poverty Robert Hunter
A New Basis of Civilization Prof. Patton
Jesus Christ and the Social Question F.G. Peabody
The Social Teachings of
Christ Shailer Matthews
Sin and Society Prof. Ross
The Influence of Jesus Phillips Brooks
(Bohlen Lectures)
Ideals and Democracy Arthur H. Chamberlain
Democracy and Empire Franklin Henry Giddings

Hospitals W. Gill Wylie, M.D.
The Christian Ministry and the Social
Order Charles S. MacFarland
Christianizing the Social Order Rauschenbusch
Horizons of American Missions I.H. McNash
Missions from the Home Base McAfee
Missions Striking Home McAfee
The Church and the New Age Henry Carver
American Social and Religious
Conditions Charles Stelzle
The Church of To-morrow J. II. Crooker
The Social Task of Christianity Samuel Zane Batten
The Christian State Samuel Zane Batten

The Indian Dispossessed Seth K. Humphrey
The American Indian on the New Trail Dr. T.C. Moffett
The Indian and his Problem Francis Leupp
In Red Man's Land Francis Leupp

Under the Prophet in Utah Cannon and O'Higgins
Story of the Mormons Linn
Riders of the Purple Sage Zona Gale
Mormonism, the Islam of America Bruce Kinney

Southern Mountains S.T. Wilson Southern
Highlanders Kephert
Blue Grass and Rhododendron John Fox
Sons of Vengeance Malone
The Shepherd of the Hills Wright

The Day of the Country Church J.O. Ashenhurst
The Country Life Movement L.H. Bailey
The Country Church and the Rural
Problem Kenyon L. Butterfield
Rural Denmark and its Lessons H. Rider Haggard
The Rural Life Problem of the United
States Sir Horace Plunkett
The Church of the Open Country Warren H. Wilson
The Evolution of the Country
Community Warren H. Wilson

The Souls of the Black Folk W.E.B. Dubois
Following the Color Line Ray Stannard Baker
The Negro, the Southern Problem Page
From Darkness to Light Mary Helm
In Black and White L.H. Hammond

The New Home Missions H. Paul Douglas
Parish of the Pines Whittles
Spiritual Conquest along the Rockies Sloan
The Story of Panama Gause and Carr

Alaska, an Empire in the making John J. Underwood
A Study of the Thlingets of Alaska Jones
Life of Sheldon Jackson Stewart
Alaska, the Great Country Higginson
Alaska and its Natural Resources Dall
Kindashon's Wife Willard

Cuba and Porto Rico Robert Hill
Due South M.M. Ballou
Cuba and her People To-day Forbes Lindsay
American Bride in Porto Rico Marion Blythe
The American Mediterranean Stephen Bonsal
Our Island Empire Charles Morris

The Immigration Problem Jenks and Lauck
Races and Immigrants in America John R. Commons
Our Slavic Fellow Citizens Emily Balch
The Immigrant Invasion Warne
Immigrant Forces Shriver
On the Trail of the Immigrant Steiner
The Cup of Elijah Steiner
The French Blood in America Lucian J. Fosdick
The New America Mary Clark Barnes and
Dr. L.C. Barnes

End of Project Gutenberg's Home Missions in Action, by Edith H. Allen

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Table of Contents

- HOME MISSIONS IN ACTION

- FROM THE PUBLICATION COMMITTEE

- CONTENTS

- I. A NATIONAL FORCE

- I

- A NATIONAL FORCE PRAYER FOR THE CHURCH

- II

- A RECLAIMING FORCE

- III

- AN EDUCATIVE FORCE

- IV

- A HEALING FORCE

- V

- AN INTEGRATING FORCE

- VI

- SOURCES OF POWER

- BIBLIOGRAPHY

- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE