BANCROFT LIBRARY MISSIONS STRIKING HOME Missions Striking Home A Group of Addresses on a Phase of the Missionary Enterprise By JOSEPH ERNEST McAFEE NEW YORK Young- People's Missionary Movement of the United States and Canada 1908 Copyright, 1908, by FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY SECOND EDITION New York: 158 Fifth Avenue Chicago: 80 Wabash Avenue Toronto: 25 Richmond Street, W. London : 2 1 Paternoster Square Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street AN INTRODUCTORY WORD THERE is no formal unity among the sections of this little book. There is an essential unity, however, and the central idea is put as concisely and as comprehensively as has been found pos- sible in the title. The day has happily passed when a church can save its missionary face be- fore a needy world by an ado over the discovery of "so much to do at home." There will be a day, please God, when no church can derive its missionary satisfaction from the glamours of a distant horizon. The Kingdom will come some day the world 'round, and the triumphant home- liness of the enterprise will be the church's su- preme glory. J. E. M. New York City. CONTENTS I. THE CALL OF THE HOMELAND ... 9 ' II. THE SPIRITUAL CONQUEST OF THE WEST . 25 III. THE LATEST IN THE IMMIGRATION BUSINESS 42 IV. THE GOSPEL FOR AN AGE OF PROSPERITY . 58 V. THE HOME PRINCIPLE IN MISSIONS . . 79 VI. THE REFLEX OF MISSIONS . . 97 VII. THE AMERICAN " E PLURIBUS UNUM " OF GRACE 1 1 1 I THE CALL OP THE HOMELAND 1 IT is not altogether in flippant mood that I re- mind you of the New Englander, who, upon be- ing asked by some greenhorn or wag, " Where is Boston ?" replied with severe dignity, not to say indignation, "My dear sir, I shall have you understand that Boston is a state of mind, and not a locality ! " I could not bring myself so far to belittle the call of the Homeland, as to spend all our time prattling of geographical boundaries and the limitations of topography. The United States of America is actually a section of the earth's surface, and its boundaries are accurately defined upon the map. But the call of the Home- land is not the appeal of sectionalism ; it is rather the insight upon a great truth. From the van- tage of present outlook, the Homeland is not the residence of me and my wife, my son John and his wife, us four and no more ; it is rather the familiar base of world-reaching operations. There is to feel the thrill of patriotism, a patriot- ism which overflows, and floods the seas, and laves the continents and islands beyond. There 1 An address delivered before the Triennial International Convention of Young Men's Christian Associations in Theo- logical Institutions of the United States and Canada. 9 10 MISSIONS STEIKING HOME is to harness a spiritual world-energy to a world- need. There is to grip the leverage of a world uplift. The call of the Homeland is at once a philosophy of salvation, an interpretation and realization of the divine saving efficiency, the wisdom of God in adjustment to an age-long pur- pose, and then the spring of divine forces to a world-compelling emergency. Tortuous rivers and sinuous coastlines, girdling meridians and parallels of latitude might prove but the en- tanglement of thought. The final sit-down to the problem of the Homeland will not be a study of geography. This is a big land of ours ! But after boasting is done, I suppose we must allow that it is not quite all outdoors. There are a lot of people in it, and the numbers are increasing at such a rate as to establish a precedent of world history. Yet the total of to-day's eighty-five millions is but a drop in the bucket of the world's billion and a half. He who is out taking census need pause no long time in the United States of America. The broad fields for his enterprise lie beyond these bounds. Nor is the final cogency of the appeal re- vealed in the variety of soul-saving opportunity, marvellous as is that variety. One must needs travel far to find that people or nationality not represented in our poly-psychy population, but we doubtless do not include them quite all. Our primitive peoples are many, and are esteemed of great importance by the ethnologist. But there THE CALL OF THE HOMELAND 11 are probably others on earth more primitive, and perhaps some more entertaining to the ethnolo- gist. The American negro is not the world's black man. It is our social shame that he is not more black than he is. And with all of the magnitude of the problem, social and spiritual, which he creates for himself and has been cre- ated, he is but a slight factor in the world's dusky composite. With all the savage outrage upon his helpless person, which constitutes our national crime, the hair-raising, blood-curdling tragedy of the sons of Ham is to be sought in myriad-peopled Africa, where Leopold, the prince ogre of inhuman history, has, within the past twenty years, systematically murdered more black men than all the negro population of the United States. Our national honour is blotched with outrage and neglect, but the call of the Homeland is not the shriek of horror. Nor is the call the outcry of stark need. The American plain man holds in unrestrained per- sonal possession larger values of material property than any other the world over. He is the world's nabob. He eats better food and wears better clothes and smoothes his way by easier conveni- ences and daudles more extravagant luxuries than any other mortal who breathes. I could open the door upon revolting hovels and reeking cellars, could uncover spectacles of squalor and sheer starvation in this land of plenty ; but I will not. It is all horrible enough, but while famine is rav- aging whole empires abroad, one cannot content 12 MISSIONS STRIKING HOME himself with hearing in the call of the Homeland the plaint of the indigent and the wail of the pauper. Nor is it the call of the unchurched, of those barred from the institutions of pure religion. I could, if I might pause, tell you eye-opening tales of such need, of thousands grown to maturity and gone down to death in a far old age, having never seen the inside of a church, and not a few who have not even seen the outside. But the great masses of the world's unchurched are not in this land. They must be sought in Patagonia and the mountain fastnesses of Tibet. The tales are true of the shameful, almost shameless, over- churching of insignificant country villages here and there by the denominations of Christians which you and I represent. And I may suggest in passing that if those which you represent would get out and leave the field to mine, the disgrace would be removed at once and all would be lovely. The statistics are no doubt correct, which assign to each ordained minister in this land a parish of a few hundred souls, and to each one abroad a parish of thousands and hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions. The call of the Homeland is not the call of churchlessness. Nor, I advance to say, is it the call of untinc- tured moral and spiritual destitution. Striking averages and taking them by and large, it could doubtless be demonstrated that the American people are among the cleanest and most saintly of the human race. There are few common- THE CALL OF THE HOMELAND 13 wealths which can boast a more complete police system, and there are few which need so little policing. There are nowhere in the world more conspicuous examples of saintliness and superb spiritual triumph. Not even Keswick can outdo Northfield. For hosts the summers are one long love-feast of spiritual intake, and the longer win- ters are for many souls a very harvest time of good works and spiritual fruitfulness. The pub- lic conscience never was dead, and just now it is very much and very blessedly alive. It cries out lustily against extortion and greed and inhu- manity. And it speaks a sterner language than a cry. It is graciously bringing its muscles into play ; it clarions forth the majestic and peremp- tory tones of outraged law. There is nowhere that righteousness has grown more militant. There is nowhere that the light shines more brightly and men and women bathe more lavishly in the light. I could, if I chose, cast shadows through that path of light. I could match and overmatch this brightest brightness of the world's illumination with blotches of the world's blackest blackness, all of it right here in this land. I could tell how Alexander Duff, who certainly knew the abysses of human vice in vice-ridden India, if any observer might be said to know, I could tell how Duff came to this fair land in 1854, and, after a visit to the slums of Philadelphia, left this testimony on record : " Anything worse I have never seen. Such vileness, such debasement, such drunken- 14 MISSIONS STBIKING HOME ness, such beastliness, such unblushing shame- lessness, such glorying in their criminality, such God-defying blasphemousness, in short, such utter absolute hellishness, I never saw surpassed in any land, and I hope I never shall. Indeed, out of perdition, it is not conceivable how worse could be." I often comfort others and even seek to comfort myself at times with the reminder that that testimony is dated 1854. But there come moments of the full shock of present revelations. I tremble under the conviction that I might lead you by the hand this very night, and show you here and there in sections of our large cities, what would wring from the most travelled of you simi- lar testimony to that of the much travelled and ever-observant Duff in 1854. It might not be unreasonable to affirm that some of the black spots in this bright land are the blackest in the moral universe outside of hell itself. I could tell tales of unrestrained, savage rapacity suffered by the neglected and outraged of this God-favoured land, the Indian, the Eskimo, the Negro, the under-dog in the inhuman conflict here and there and many wheres. Such facts are not negligible ; I simply do not press them as the unrelated quantities of the final equation. Slums and rav- ished tribes and imprisoned souls in whatever numbers, few or many, must count in the rough- est reckoning of human need. I ask you to pass, however, to calculations too refined for mere nu- merical ratios and comparisons. Counting noses or scratching at plastered sores or searching out THE CALL OF THE HOMELAND 15 black spots in the field of light, is not the process by which a great spiritual world crisis is to be met. I wish you to believe that the call of the Home- land expresses itself in universal terms and sounds out an age-compelling demand. That call is this : First, the appeal to a yearning, heart- wrench- ing passion against sin and for sinners at close quarters. It is the immediate tug of sinning hu- manity's need. It is sallying forth in search of the Holy Grail and reining up the steed at the plaint of the beggar crouching at the palace gate. It is the plain putting of the question, Do I care ? have I the sense of brotherhood which will set me to brothering my own brothers? There is a ring of sincerity and the peal of immediate reality in the call of the Homeland. The true Saviour- man cares ; not theoretically, not distantly, not professionally, but actually, vitally, through the immediate impact of need and with an immediate outrush of love. He that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, what warrant is there for concluding he will discover a love for those whom he hath not seen? Love does not resort to the multiplication table to calculate its re- sponses. The man who cares is not careful to count noses in estimate of how much he cares. The true heart is not pried open by the leverage of multitudes. A soul-yearning is not fed upon columns of figures and mathematical demonstra- tions, or, if it is, it is a miserable starveling. 16 MISSIONS STEIKING HOME Jesus Christ, the Saviour of men, did not know how many men there were in the world to be saved. Mathematics, I venture to believe, was the least of His accomplishments. He came to save men not because they were so many, but because they were so dear. He yearned after the men He knew, not those represented by Arabic figures in columns of statistics. It does not alter the inwardness of the case, though we must be- lieve that He drew upon omniscience to build up His statistical tables. In no case did omniscience make the Man of Galilee the Saviour of men. It was rather the human-divine yearning of a divine-human soul, so great that it could con- sciously include all men through a direct ministry of life and of death to men whom He could reach forth and touch. You will not misunderstand what I am saying. I believe with all my heart in the romance of missions. Bobbed of its divine romance the mis- sionary enterprise would be too insipid a pastime to hold for a day a man with red blood tingling in his veins and a backbone to furnish the current for zeal thrills. There is naught on earth or in heaven so romantic as the mission of redemption flung afar. But I dare speak up for any one of the Foreign Mission Boards of our several de- nominations to say that the man who applies for work in distant lands because he has found the spiritually impoverished at home not sufficiently interesting, I venture to tell such applicant for foreign work what he will be told officially, and THE CALL OF THE HOMELAND 17 perhaps not over politely, that he is not wanted. The Homeland calls for a yearning for the broth- ers for whom Christ died, where those brothers live and by the immediate outrush of that yearn- ing. Our whole missionary enterprise greatly needs the heeding of that call. And shall we not calculate the world's needy multitudes f Oh, aye ! Count them to the last chick and child, and announce them all to yearn- ing men, that all may know and feel. But away with your figures in the definition of the soul pas- sion ! There can be no definition of soul passion ; love is I do not say, unlimited j I call it illimit- able. Your calculations do not calculate. Shall not men go to the uttermost parts to minister to the needy of the soul-saving truth? Oh, aye, aye ! Eun, you men who are to run j run so eagerly that winged ships cannot carry you fast enough and the utmost conveyance of man's in- ventive arts cannot carry you far enough. But do not go because American sin is not sufficiently picturesque. And if you go fleeing from Ameri- can spiritual deadness, then is your mission much that of a cowardly flight. Do not go where more souls can be saved because there are more to pick and choose from, where more culls can be thrown away without feeling the loss. Before you go any- whither learn more than that of the genius of the soul passion and of the soul need. Thus much for the expression of the saving passion. There is to note the expression of the saving purpose. 18 MISSIONS STRIKING HOME The clearer meaning of what I have said, and in no sense the contradiction, may appear in what I nominate next as the call of the Home- land. I say, secondly, it presses for a true and vital definition of God's salvation. Is this land evangelized? If it is, then there is a bold, abysmal difference between evangelization and salvation j for this is not a saved land. This is not a saved land ; God forgive us the travesty upon His saving grace involved in the supposi- tion that it is. Evangelization and salvation are two different words, and they stand for two dif- ferent ideas 1 Very well, so they do, then ; and the true Saviour-man should have no doubt of it, nor doubt which is the true goal of the saving process. With complete cogency it may be insisted that it is man's business to evangelize, and that it is not within his power or prerogative to save. If there is any one in all this company who is about setting forth to save men, he may well bethink himself at once of his folly. You cannot save men ; God saves men. But now that the distinc- tion is made and insisted upon, we have got no great distance towards any truth of immediate importance. Man cannot save ; but God can, and He means to. And I make bold further to say that it is our business so to evangelize that His intention shall be realized. If we are hiding behind our definitions of evangelization to con- ceal and justify our lame putting of God's saving message, then we are reduced to an ignoble shift THE CALL OF THE HOMELAND 19 indeed. The God who can save men, and can make them willing in the day of His power, only awaits the ministry of His evangelists to usher in that day of power. I submit that we have not shown ourselves such evangelists ; we have not done our part. We have not done it here where a longsuffering God has given us our best chance. I submit further, that we do not know how. I submit again, that we would best learn how, that the coming of the kingdom waits upon our learn- ing. I submit finally, that here is where that knowledge is to be best gained, and the demon- stration made. We contend with much vehemence that men are saved one by one, that the saving ministry reaches this man and this man ; and the conten- tion is of obvious cogency. Men are not saved in lumps and masses, nor by townfuls and city- blockfuls. Charlemagne 7 s soldiers, in their zeal for the propagation of the faith, are said to have driven the barbarians into pens, where, from the lofty vantage of the stockade, they dashed water over the bewildered hordes by the bucketful, and then reckoned them baptized into the saving faith. We sprinkling Presbyterians must com- mend their orthodox mode of baptism. But their psychology was distressingly erroneous, and their spiritual appreciations were hardly short of blasphemous. Men are not saved by the herd and they ought not to be baptized so. But with all the truth of that truth it is no less true that none ever saves a stark, individual man, not 20 MISSIONS STKIKING HOME even God Himself. He does not make such in the first place to be the subjects of such a salva- tion. No man lives to himself in any capacity of life, and in aught so vital as his soul's salvation, it is not possible that he should be saved to him- self. There is to learn this age-compelling lesson : that in our saving ministry we are dealing with a vast spiritual organism. It is a lesson utterly bewildering to some of our theories of missionary enterprise, but it is a truth which our compli- cated, congested life is forcing upon the attention of the thoughtful. And because it is such an eternal truth, it is true not alone for the mission to the Homeland, but at last for that to every land. It is a world-lesson the Homeland is teaching us. Here in our crowding, jostling pop- ulation we have not a mass of disjecta membra from which we may with more or less eagerness snatch out singular fragments here and there, and congratulate ourselves upon the salvage. We have here rather a spiritual organism, and as such our land needs saving, and only as such will it finally be saved. It needs not a half sav- ing, a partial saving, a smattery saving, not a helter-skelter, hit-and-miss saving ; but a saving, a setting up of the spiritual kingdom of God. I face the implications of such a pronouncement, and I hope you do also, though there is danger of their being misunderstood. There is not the time to elaborate and discuss those implications. I only presume to say now that the saving mis- THE CALL OF THE HOMELAND 21 sion in the Homeland is graciously forcing us into a truer definition of God's salvation. It is teaching us what it means to be saved. We are learning how insufficient in the final demonstra- tion is a voice crying in the wilderness, and how vital is a persistent Christ-life lived among men. The final message of salvation is not a proclama- tion, but a life. The third heaven-sent call of the Homeland is the appeal of world-capturing spiritual strategy. This vast spiritual organism is masterful, and is designed to be used masterfully of the Divine Strategist. A saved America holds the key to the world's saving. Eight here, from this or- ganism of moral and social forces, projects the mightiest spiritual leverage at the hand of God or man for the uplift of the human race towards God and heaven. There is a fallacy which ought not to be far to seek, in the contention that the sending upon a foreign mission necessarily reacts to the saving of the sender. It does not necessarily, because it frequently has not actually. Her foreign mission did not save Christian Africa of the early cen- turies ; hers did not save Syria ; hers did not save Eome. It is a begging of the question to protest that these did not prosecute their foreign mission with sufficient vigour and purity of motive. Of course they did not. A true-motived foreign mission reacts as a powerful saving factor, adding grace to grace. But precisely in that adjective lies the point of insistence. The profound truth 22 MISSIONS STBIKING HOME for all our missionary enterprise near or far is that the saving mission is and can only be the welling forth of the saved life. The unsaved man cannot be a true saviour, and the impact of the unsaved spiritual organism, such as is this land of ours, cannot in the truest sense be that of a saving power. Unsaved America must remain at best a lame foreign missionary agent. The Church of Jesus Christ has not its grip upon the spiritual forces of this masterful spir- itual organism of our American life. And it ought to have. By God's grace it is going to have ! The Church does not and cannot now direct those forces in its world- conquest of grace. In many places one half of its energies are wasted, and worse than wasted in combating the very forces of our Americanism which ought to be its most potent instrument of aggression. Nay, more, the Church is encountering an in- creasingly strenuous struggle for its own exis- tence in broad sections of our own land. Its work abroad is being undone by its shortcoming at home ; and in some sections of our own Amer- ican life its existence in the community is simply a negligible factor, or next to it. And what is the demand of the hour ? Not a policy of for- eign missions, nor of home missions, not any- thing content barely to express itself in the terms of a policy. The Church needs the spirit which inspires all wholesome missions and without which any mission must at last be a failure. The Church needs for its mission of salvation THE CALL OP THE HOMELAND 23 itself a saved life. It needs first to know what it means to be saved and then the courage to be that. The call of the Homeland is therefore to God's prophets of this latter day, whose souls burn with the conviction that God can save and means to save this vast spiritual organism ; who are will- ing to accept the divine commission to marshall the forces of our society in a triumphant spiritual conquest ; who believe that the Church, the or- ganized agency of spiritual aggression, can cap- ture these forces, and ought so to capture, re- maining not less the spiritual agency it ought to be ; men who scorn to allow that a pure Church can dwell complacently in a rotten social order ; who cannot imagine that a Church has any busi- ness slopping through its own reek in a slovenly ministry to the world's cleansing ; who are them- selves so charged with spiritual forcefulness that they can spiritualize a grossly material civiliza- tion and convert it into the instrument of spir- itual uplift for the world ; who believe so whole- heartedly in the Church of Jesus Christ, that they will shape its ministry into a power vitaliz- ing all our life. Prophets! Prophets! Prophets! God calls aloud to His prophets to whom He may reveal the way out, and whom He may commission to lead the way on. This is not the time for the division of field, to set the claims or attractions of one phase of a world-need over against another. This is a time 24 MISSIONS STKIKING HOME to hearken to the call of God, each for himself. The call of the Homeland is not for some men ; theirs must be the call of the farland. The virtue of any does not lie in whither he goes, but only in his going where he ought to go. If any had expected me to set forth in severalty the appeal of the Indian, the Eskimo, the Mexican, the Morman, the mountaineer, the neglected of any rank, he has of course been sorely disappointed. You must know that these importunate appeals have not been out of mind for a moment. They are all merged in the one deep-toned call to the capture of the stupendous forces of our Ameri- can life, the mightiest spiritual organism in God's world. Such a prophet an awakening Church is ready to follow. The Church is awakening, is shaking itself out of its torpor. The signs are gloriously unmistakable. There is a ministry awaiting the prophet of to-day such as an Isaiah or a Daniel might passionately covet. The Church of Christ waits to follow, the forces of American life wait to yield, God waits to commission the prophet of to-day to a world-embracing ministry to the Homeland. / n THE SPIEITTJAL CONQUEST OF THE WEST THE story of the West is not the tale of desti- tution. On the contrary, it is the story of abound- ing material opportunity. I have recently re- turned from a journey through broad sections of the West. I fear I have caught the fever. How a Westerner can lie ! To those who have never seen with their own eyes and felt the tug in their own consciousness of the passion of things, the Westerner appears to lose his conscience when he opens his mouth to tell the story of his land of marvels. Once having seen it is difficult to resist the passion. I must confess to have seen, have laid my own eyes on the trees of the forest which require a man and a boy to see the top ; the orchards where big red pumpkins grow on the apple trees ; the ranches of such grand propor- tions that the husbandman sets out with his plow in the spring and turns about by autumn to harvest back along his furrow. A few weeks ago when I was being presented to an audience in the far Northwest, the chairman of the even- ing turned to urge that I do not fail to bring back to the East the tale of the West's destitu- tion. He charged me particularly to say that 25 26 MISSIONS STEIKING HOME the labourer receives a wage of but four dollars per day, that fruit land thereabouts was selling at the mere pittance of eighteen hundred dollars per acre, that an apple grower of the region had shipped abroad his crop of a particular species of the fruit and could secure but eight dollars per bushel-box for his entire crop of four hundred boxes. A few days thereafter I was sitting at the table of an amiable host when he casually read aloud a paragraph from the daily paper to the effect that ranchman So-and-So had that week hauled in his season's crop of wheat, and had been paid in a check of $70,869.17. I asked my host how much of that amount he supposed was net profit. He drew his pencil from his pocket, figured a moment on the margin of the newspaper, and finally replied, "Oh, I suppose, about half.' 7 The railroads are now rounding up the rolling stock required to haul out the 31,000 carloads of oranges constituting the surplus crop of the ex- treme Southwest this season. I could not muster the conscience, nor could I any more the desire to tell the story of the West in a lament of ma- terial destitution and distress. There is not a state west of the Mississippi Eiver which is not the biggest thing out in its line. Each of them is setting the standard for the world and all time in the development of some money-producing enterprise. That season is accounted lost in which some record is not broken. Now, it is wheat, the biggest crop which ever was, or again, CONQUEST OF THE WEST 27 it is corn, or alfalfa, or copper, or petroleum, or dried prunes, or sugar beets, or oranges, or gas, or lien's eggs, or canned salmon, or pine logs, or grapes, or gold, plain, undiluted gold. But, whatever it is, it speedily coins up into gold, and it heralds the West as the Eldorado of the fortune- seeker since the beginning of time. Do not put yourself to the pains of questioning any of the stories you may hear. They may not be exact in all details, but they cannot be fabulous enough to miss the truth far. Now that I am set agoing allow me to run on a moment still. Some have expressed alarm lest our territory should on account of immigration and from other causes become overcrowded. If we might only calm ourselves ! We have only be- gun to occupy our territory. Kemember that, including Alaska, five-sevenths of the superficial area of our country lies west of the Mississippi Eiver, and that as yet but a scattering twenty- two or twenty-five millions of people reside in all that vast expanse. Great tracts which it is now reasonable to conclude will some day support immense populations have not even been sur- veyed nor yet explored. Oregon with its chief city of 200,000 people and other cities coming on by leaps and bounds, is still peopled only in narrow fringes, along one side and one end and a part of the other end. Its area is almost ex- actly twice that of the state of New York. Far the most of it is practically void of population, only waiting for railroad extension and develop- 28 MISSIONS STBIKING HOME ment. You have probably often noted those two black dots on the map made to represent respec- tively the cities of San Francisco and Portland, and you may have wondered, since they appear to lie so close together on the ragged edge of the continent, whether the trolley-service between them is half-hourly or every fifteen minutes. Allow me to assure you that it required thirty- six hours for some of the most powerful steam locomotives ever constructed to haul me from one city to the other. Not that the train was run for my special benefit, you understand ; the conductor and several others were along at the time. The point is that thirty-six hours were consumed in the passage, the time allowed for the journey between New York and Kansas City. It is true, to be sure, that the Southern Pacific Eailway does not move with the celerity of the Pennsylvania and the Burlington, yet the actual distance in miles would carry one from New York well out into Indiana. When I awoke in the morning we were de- scending the mountain gorge of the Sacramento Eiver into the Sacramento Valley, a part of the vast level plain lying in the midst of the state of California, of an extent, in itself, equal to the territory of the state of Pennsylvania, and lying as level as a floor. The day long as the train sped on the straight track down the valley my athletic soul was grieved within me at the spec- tacle of so much good baseball ground going to waste. An imperial territory lying in the lap of CONQUEST OF THE WEST 29 the mountains. Vastly fertile. From the car windows there were to be seen a few of the pres- ent products, wheat, alfalfa, prunes, almonds, olives, peaches, some oranges and lemons, almost anything else one might choose to name. And so few people as yet that they seemed positively lonesome. A pocket of soil, as pockets go in the West, into which the present seven millions of Pennsylvania might creep and produce the substance to support ten times their number, and then be left idle to pine for relief from their ennui. As I rode down the valley I was conscious that towards the right beyond and among the moun- tains there stands to-day upon the stumps in the forest in two or three counties of northern Cali- fornia enough lumber to permit the hauling out of 500 carloads each week for the next 150 years. Two different lumber companies announce each of them that it holds already the stumpage rights upon sufficient timber land to enable it to cut out 200,000 or 300,000 feet of lumber each day for fifty years. Further north, accessible from the Tillamook Bay in Oregon, there are said to be seven and a quarter billions of feet of lumber still uncut. That was to wave my right hand at. On the left, beyond the Sierra Kevadas, lay the territory which the Synod of California of the Presbyterian Church, to whose meeting I was then hastening, was soon to erect into a separate Presbytery. Theretofore it had been embraced in the territory of a Presbytery of still greater 30 MISSIONS STRIKING HOME expanse. Later I stood in the group of keen- eyed, sturdy young ministers who with their churches constitute the new Presbytery, and hearkened while they settled upon the location of the first meeting. When the most advanta- geous point had been decided upon it transpired that the nearest minister must travel 300 miles to attend the meeting, and for those farthest away the journey was seven and eight hundred miles ; the expense of which, it is fair to note in passing, is met by the men themselves out of their exceedingly skimp salaries. And the territory embraced in that Presby- tery, if you will drop in at the next railroad ticket office you may happen to pass, and secure the folder of the new Tonopah and Goldfield Railroad Company, you will learn something of the character and prospects of that section. Laud- boomers' stories are rarely prosy, and certainly there is nothing prosy in this folder to which I refer, but it would be impossible to make the story of Nevada's recent development tame. Cities of three and four and seven thousand inhabitants on sites which only a few years or even months ago were as bare as the palm of your hand. These are not ramshackle mining camps, which, like the grass of the field, to-day are and to-morrow are abandoned to the flames. They are at an inconceivable pace assuming the permanence of cities. Even the wilderness is rapidly coming into its own. The consciousness is dawning upon the thoughtful that the great CONQUEST OF THE WEST 31 American desert is in fact the great American treasure-house. There is inconceivable mineral treasure through the most of our desert domain. Yet even that is telling but a slight portion of the full tale. The notion still prevails in some quarters that the most of the vast tracts of terri- tory still unoccupied is hopeless desert. There is to assure all that no part of our domain is waste henceforth. The stupendous irrigation enter- prises of the government and private capital are seeing to that. Even for those tracts which can- not ever be reached by the floods of the irrigators, some Secretary Wilson or a Luther Burbank will develop a forage grass which will thrive even upon an ash heap, and will cover the wastes with such herds of cattle as shall turn the Beef Trust green with envy. And those tracts standing so straight up and down that they are profitless, either for irrigated crops or for range land, are still worth all they cost for scenery. There is no grander in the world. There is no portion of our vast domain hopelessly waste, and our science, though still lame enough in the handling of the problems of advanced agriculture, has yet con- verted this hollow of the desert into the garden spot of the nation. A short memory carries one back to the time when the sages united in affirming that only a narrow strip on the eastern boundary of Kansas would ever be available for the pur- poses of agriculture. Yet the other day as I rode into the extreme western portion of that state, I beheld from the car window a million-and-a-half- 32 MISSIONS STKIKING HOME dollar beet sugar refinery erected during the past year or two. At one of the small stations along the road I counted thirty-one beet sugar wagons, each carrying from two to four tons of beets, drawn up in line waiting to load the cars for that re- finery. The same spectacle was duplicated at other small towns along the way. The orange you ate at breakfast this morning probably was grown upon land which only a few years ago was pronounced as hopeless for the husbandman as Sahara itself. No section of the great West need remain permanently waste. The West is not destitute and cannot in any human reasonableness become so. Wall Street may raise flurries and then new flurries and do its worst, and the West must suffer, of course, along with the rest of the country. But sub- stantially the West will continue to be prosper- ous and, increasing every day in wealth, will in- sure the wealth of the nation while generations come and go. But, now, have I not spoiled the missionary appeal ! Have I not said too much ? Some will wonder how a land so represented can be set forth in the call to missionary activity. In the con- ception of many, perhaps, it is only the physically destitute who can be regarded as the fit objects of missionary solicitude. Then indeed must the West prove distressingly uninviting as a mission- ary field. There are numerous populous cities in the West, and some shame on them ! already know somewhat of the slum, but if you seek the CONQUEST OP THE WEST 33 slum at its sluinmiest you must seek it in the East. In the refined art of slum-making, the West is as yet backward. Please God ! may it never learn fully that art ! There is probably no more difficult or needy missionary field on the globe than Alaska, but it is hazardous to men- tion in some missionary presence the twenty-one millions of gold coming out each year. The fabulous resources of mining and lumbering in- terests may not be becomingly mentioned in con- nection with the missionary appeal. A single tale of physical destitution and squalor, which certain localities in Alaska abundantly justify, will sometimes call out a fuller missionary re- sponse than might a cyclopedic recital of the vast opportunities of grace in a vast continent. Again, if the Church of Jesus Christ shall con- ceive itself as committed only to the task of pluck- ing brands from the burning, then were it wiser far to pass the West by and hasten whither there are vastly larger numbers of brands to be plucked. There are at the most but a paltry twenty-two or twenty -five millions, in all the vast bound west of the Mississippi Eiver. If the problems of sal- vation are simple matters of arithmetical addition and subtraction, then does the West present no inviting field to missionary ambition, for the numbers to conjure with are small. But if the Church of Jesus Christ conceives itself as committed to the charge of setting up of the kingdom of God here in God's world, the bringing of the kingdoms of this world under the 34 MISSIONS STBIKING HOME sway of God and of His Christ, the pouring of the vivifying life of the Son of God, the Saviour of men, into the life of the great human brotherhood the world 'round, the giving back to the redeeming Christ the satisfaction of His soul travail in the redemption of men to God, if the Church con- ceives itself as committed to anything like that programme, then is the five-sevenths of the United States lying west of the Mississippi Eiver the very campaign-ground of the world's spir- itual conquest. If the Church aspires to shape the forces which are to control the spiritual des- tinies of this new century, why, out there is where they are forming, and there must the Church bend her energies. If the Church means to mould with the divine potencies the civiliza- tion of the continents, why, out there is the moulding trough and there must she thrust in her hand. If the Church would touch the very nerve-centre of the new-world spiritual organism, she must reach out there. If the Church really understands the genius of the kingdom of God among men, then, depend upon it, she will not mistake the importance of this ever-expanding ministry. Does any one doubt for a moment the validity of the prophecies, not to mention the accomplished verities, just proclaimed? Does any doubt the importance of our Western domain in the shaping of the spiritual destinies of the human race ? The children in our schoolrooms understand that the forces of the world's civilization are concentrating CONQUEST OF THE WEST 35 about the Pacific. And it is a truism of the schools and of the market-place, of the stock ex- change and of the streets that the forces of our American life will shape the destinies of that civilization. It will be a dull-witted church in- deed which does not comprehend her proper place and her incomparable mission in con- tributing to those forces. With the plain facts and even plainer prophecies of history before her, what attitude do you suppose a great church, conceiving herself as commissioned of God with a serious task, your church and my church, what attitude do you suppose such a church will take to to-day's Western mission? If a ghastly object-lesson is demanded to quicken thought and give the spur to endeavour, one is amply afforded in the city of San Fran- cisco. On the morning of the 18th day of April, in 1905, when the entire population were shaken out of their beds, and driven destitute from their homes by the fire, it is said there were actually fewer Protestant Christians in the population of the city than there were in the previous decades, though that population had during the period multiplied fivefold. Can any one fail to believe that there is a direct connection between that fact and the spiritual and moral obliquity in that city which have for this long time been coming to light ? How many duplicates of San Francisco do we wish to construct in the West ? What will be the nature of the civilization of the Pacific if its impacts upon the future are controlled by the 36 MISSIONS STKIKING HOME forces which have been at work in San Francisco f What sort of spiritual vitality will the American Eepublic contribute to the civilization of the Orient if it must flow out of the slough of moral obliquity through which grand juries and prose- cuting attorneys have been wading for these many months ? What is to give stability and perma- nence to the triumph of civic honesty and self- respect which was achieved at the last election, even in a vice-besotted San Francisco? What force does the West need in its moulding civiliza- tion? What force does the Church of Christ think it needs I There is no room for any of us to ascend to high dudgeon and talk in horrified condemnation of the wild and woolly and godless West. The West comes all too legitimately by whatever of wickedness may be charged against it. The West has got its badness from the East. We are one nation. The bonds of the spiritual unities are holding us more firmly every day. The question is sometimes asked with some impatience, Why should the East still be burdened with appeals for help from the West ? Is not the West able to take care of itself? To be sure the West can take care of itself, is already to-day more than taking care of itself. It is becoming increasingly busy taking care of the East, for that matter. You scarcely sit down to a meal but your table is laden with a delicacy or a staple for which you are indebted to the West and must be so. Fi- nancial experts are testifying that what little of CONQUEST OP THE WEST 37 stability inhered in the financial structure of the Eepublic during the recent panic was contributed by the inexhaustible material resources of the West from which such large draft has been and is being made. But the churches, how comes it that they still require financial aid, why cannot the churches hold their own ? Hold their own ! They more than hold their own. The churchmen of certain sections of the denomination with which I am most familiar, gave more money on the average to the combined enterprises of the Church last year than did any others anywhere in the land. Indeed they fairly doubled the per capita average of most sections of the Eastern Church. Hold their own f To be sure they hold their own ; but far the larger share of their burden is not their own. What and who are causing the Church problem of the West, and imposing such a perpetual and increasing strain upon the spiritual resources of these imperial commonwealths ? Who but your own sons and daughters? if you live in the East ; what but the perpetual stream of immigration from every East- ern state? We are indeed building a common- wealth. Every man, woman and child in this Eepublic is indissolubly linked in all of his vital interests with the life of each community however apparently remote, and his spiritual destinies are bound up with its spiritual condition. I met a virile young pastor the other day in one of the leading coast cities who eight months ago 38 MISSIONS STRIKING HOME stood on a bare lot in the city's suburbs. To-day he may stand in the entrance of a six thousand dollar church property, paid for and dedicated, and sweep his eye over the near-by community where one hundred homes are in process of erec- tion, not one of which is paid for and not one of which will be rented. Which means plainly enough, you understand, that hundreds of families have settled to build up a community without re- source except the inexhaustible raw material in their hands and the superbly indefatigable West- ern spirit in their breasts. The Western churches holding their own ? Is not that young minister and the community which he serves making good the investment for the Church of the few hundreds of dollars demanded partially to support that en- terprise for a year or two? The city of Port- land, mark the prophecy will never reveal to an astonished world the abysses of moral obliquity which San Francisco has presented. For one thing, there are already twenty Presbyterian churches among its less than 200,000 population, not to speak of the splendid work of the other denominations and of other vital institutions, in- spired by the Church, already long established. How long will the West remain a missionary field ? That depends much upon what one means by the question. If it is inquired how long the West will wring tears from the eyes of the chari- table and claim pittances in the relief of physical destitution, there is to reply, Never ; the West makes no such appeal now, nor in reason or the CONQUEST OF THE WEST 39 economy of Providence will it ever present such an appeal. The West is prosperous, enormously prosperous j not all the follies and worse of the jugglers of finance can more than momentarily cripple its prosperity. But if it is inquired how long the West will continue to be a field for the investment of funds and forces guaranteeing in- comparable returns in the kingdom of God for the Eepublic and for the world, there is to reply, Indefinitely ; for you and me, Always. Though population pour into that vast region at the present almost incredible rate, you and I will long be dead and gone, before the West's incal- culable, and as yet unimagined resources shall be more than scratched. The missionary question is, Will the Church match its spiritual opportunity with a spiritual investment, far-seeing, prophetic, princely, an investment commensurate with the prophecies of the most superbly forceful civiliza- tion now being shaped anywhere on the globe. There need be no blinking the fact that if the Church of Christ shall be content to go gingerly, limpingly, simperingly at this business, it is the most difficult missionary proposition the Church now has before it. It is so difficult as to be prac- tically hopeless. It is easy to patronize the in- digent into the benefits of salvation ; at least we often suppose the task easy, and congratulate our- selves upon the marvellous apparent success of the proceeding. But it is a very different propo- sition so to reveal vitalities of the Christly re- demption, and the essences of His spiritual con- 40 MISSIONS STEIKIKG HOME quest of the human life, that this most aggressive and puissant people will feel the quickening of that redemption and will yield their splendid en- ergies to that conquest. This latter is precisely the opportunity presented the Church of Christ in the West. If she really understands her mis- sion in the world, this is the supremely inspiring task. Our lame spiritual forces are often lament- ing the terrible materialism of our age, and espe- cially of our Western civilization. Let me assure you that the Westerner is not a materialist ; there is no more exuberant idealist in the world than he. The missionary problem of the West is not, as some may be inclined to think, the eradication of the Westerner's materialism. There is rather the revelation, to the world's prince of idealists, of an ideal fit for so splendid a striving as that of which he has already showed himself capable. I hope you understand, therefore, that we of the Church of Christ have committed to us not merely the evangelization in the West of twenty- five millions, more or less, of human beings. For their own sakes and as mere human beings, the people of the western five-sevenths of the United States are no better than any other human beings ; of course not. And if we are out to count noses, there are at the most only twenty-five millions. A paltry handful, as numbers go. But the im- portance, the eternal sanctity of the Church's mis- sion in the West appears rather in this ; that here she has the chance to touch and shape the forces bound to be the most potent in the world for CONQUEST OP THE WEST 41 hastening or retarding the kingdom of God. Here is the chance to redeem those who shall in their turn be in very truth the world's redeemers or who shall live and strive to curse the world. The West, the biggest portion of this great land of ours, uncovers the question as to whether the Church of Christ conceives itself large enough and vital enough to make the kingdom of God a reality in the most potent civilization in the world. You and I have the spiritual vision and energy to be sure how that question will be an- swered. Have we not f HI THE LATEST IN THE IMMIGKATION BUSINESS THE latest in the immigration business is emi- gration. That may sound like an Irishman 7 s way of putting it, but if the pedigree of some of us were examined it might reveal justification for our talking Irish. An exceedingly interesting development of immigration is this new phase. The tide is moving in the other direction ; those who crowded in are crowding out ; those who were in such a hurry to get over are in no less a hurry to get back. It was President Harrison, was it not, who set one of his most brilliant periods of oratory to scintillating with the asser- tion that the gates under the torch of the Statue of Liberty swing always in and never out ? "Well, they have been swinging out of late. The crowds going out have been larger than those coming in. What is it the papers have been announcing? Seventy-five thousand steerage passengers em- barking for European ports in a week's time? Two hundred thousand already been transported abroad during the past month or two? Some good authority estimates that 300,000 will go be- fore the present season is over. Perhaps that is a conservative estimate and there will be more 42 IN THE IMMIGKATION BUSINESS 43 still. 1 Whatever may be made of the statistics of the business, the phenomenon is interesting, even for those of us who have the least taste for statis- tics. And each of us is philosopher enough to enjoy mulling over the facts a bit. The fact is, the foreigners are going back home in astonishing numbers. But after all it is only the numbers which are astonishing. So are you going back home, to New England, say, or some- where else, going back home about this time to help eat the Christmas plum pudding in the old home- stead. Why should not these neighbours of ours do the same ? They, too, want to see the old folks, and it is likely that they will enjoy a Christmas dinner as much as anybody. And, on second thought, the numbers are not so astonishing. These numbers at the largest are only a few com- paratively. Cold weather has come on. Some 1 The following paragraph is from the Outlook for January 11, 1908 : "At the present time the only exact information on the subject of immigration within the reach of the people of the United States is contained in the annual reports of the Commissioner-General of Immigration and the last census. The former leaves the immigrant at the exit of the immigra- tion station, and the latter is inadequate and antiquated so far as the subject of the effects of immigration are concerned, for its statistics were gathered before the full force of the present wave was felt. The flow of immigration also reached a new mark last year ; a fact which we have already reported and commented upon. The phase of the subject which presented itself in the course of the year that will probably attract the most attention, was the volume of the eastward flow, in the course of the last two months, of those 44 MISSIONS STEIKING HOME of the industries have shut down, partly on ac- count of the financial stringency and partly be- cause it is winter, and exposed work is difficult if not impossible. This is the most convenient time of year for those who have recently left fathers and mothers and wives and children on the other side to go back and pay them a visit. Great numbers do that thing every winter j only more than usual are doing it this winter. Per- haps more are temporarily out of employment, but that fact does not altogether account for the increased migration. They got started : that is the most moving fact ; and they are keep- ing at it. It is a psychological phenomenon. It is the contagion of a thought. Going back home has got popular. It is like wearing rats or side- whiskers : people get started and of course then it is all the go. The bare attractions of Newport or Atlantic City do not account for the summer migration in those directions. The crowd gets moving and everybody goes who can. It is be- coming quite generally pleasant for those who styled "emigrant aliens." This was so abnormal that it is causing much apprehension regarding its effect on the coun- tries to which they have been and are returning. It is pos- sible to obtain a good idea of the volume from the data com- piled by the Transatlantic Steamship Conferences. The record shows that 103,848 persons sailed for Europe from United States and Canadian ports in the third or immigrant class between November 22d and January 1st. The number who turned their faces eastward in the course of the year, the same statistics being used as a basis of computation, was 550,045, or more than two-fifths of the westward movement." IN THE IMMIGBATION BUSINESS 45 like that sort of thing, and. fashionable even for those who don't, to take a trip to Europe. These multitudes are caught in the grip of fashion as well as wrought upon by the yearnings for home, and this is not the first time fashion has precipi- tated a stampede. Now, the thoughtful will have observed that only Mr. Astor and a few others remain in Europe after once having been in America. By far the most get back here sooner or later. What has been so common in the past there is peculiarly strong reason to believe will be again. The winter emigrants have in former years proved the spring immigrants. And even those who linger longer than the following spring usually find their way back at length if they are not too old or otherwise incapacitated for the journey. Instead of this emigration to Europe meaning a decrease in immigration into the United States, it rather indicates that we are to prepare for such an influx from Europe in the near future as shall shatter these astonishing records which we have for this long time past been compelled to make over every month or two. 1 I stood at the elbow of one of the guards at Ellis Island not long ago as the stream of newcomers was surging by. Along came a sturdy Slovak staggering under a great burden of baggage, followed by his wife, as heavily laden, and a troop of children. "See 1 As this goes to press the newspapers are reporting an renewed pressure already commenced at soma of the Euro- pean ports for passage by steerage to America. 46 MISSIONS STEIKING HOME that fellow," exclaimed the guide. "Been to America before. See that collar f ' J Next spring or later the multitudes now going to Europe will be returning, wearing collars this time, and ac- companied by their wives and children. These are not deserters ; you must not conclude that too hastily ; they are rather recruiting agents, all the more ardent that they are self-appointed. If there is anybody anywhere in the remotest com- munity of the old world who has not heard of America and high wages, he will not be left in ignorance long. Three hundred thousand can scatter themselves over a great deal of territory. If after the opening of the new calendar year there shall be a return all along the line of finan- cial and industrial confidence, of which there is promise, and if those enterprises which have here and there in all parts of the country only been projected, shall take advantage of returned confi- dence for their immediate development, there will be such a demand for labourers as not even this army of recruiting agents can muster, and high wages and every other influence will co- operate to draw in such multitudes as we have not quite conceived of as yet. To be sure, the supply is being exhausted in some quarters of Europe. It is stated that south- ern Italy cannot continue the present output of people much longer since babies are not being born fast enough to meet the demand. A few years ago I was wandering through a section of southern Ireland, and fell into conversation with IN THE IMMIGEATIOX BUSINESS 47 an Irish peasant. I asked him if many from his community had emigrated to America. ' i Ach ! " l exclaimed he, "you might say all.' 7 The pro- portion of Irish among the immigrants is not so great as a generation or a half a generation ago. I suppose the truth is Ireland is still sending us all who can get away, but there are not such masses to draw from as in other countries. But Europe is not exhausted yet, and will not be for some considerable time. The multitudes will continue to come while the attractions offer. And our wonderful continent has only begun to offer attractions. We have only begun to learn how to do things and to teach other people how to do them. The tales about the outgoing multitudes may so far have absorbed the attention of many that they suppose the stream of incomers has been clogged or perhaps altogether stopped. Do not imagine it. During the past six months the immigration has increased at the rate of twelve thousand a month over the record of the corre- sponding period of last year, which was then the high-water mark of immigration. The other day the inspectors examined over three thousand and just as they were finishing the word came that new cargoes were putting in at the harbour. Com- missioner Watchorn says that these who are re- turning to Europe would not think of going if they did not know that the educational and other tests are so slight that they can readily make 1 If this exclamation looks German, the reader is to under- stand that it is also good Irish. 48 MISSIONS STRIKING HOME their way again into this country. It will require more than a financial flurry to rid us of the im- migration problem. To do that it will be neces- sary to kill our national prosperity dead and bury it deep. This time it has not even been killed ; at the worst it has so far suffered only an indisposition. Secretary Wilson announces that henceforth a crop failure is in the United States a virtual impossibility, and surely it can be naught but the sheerest folly or perfidy which might blight our industries. I fear we are in for a permanent case of prosperity, and prosperity carries with it an immigration problem, and will continue to do so, so long as present world con- ditions prevail. It must stretch the imagination of the most thoughtful to compass the meaning of present tendencies. For the most part we have consid- ered this immigration business as a matter of our own concern. Here is New York City increasing in population at such and such a rate ; a remark- able thing ! and we have Oh-ed and Ah-ed our- selves hoarse over the astonishing phenomenon. Here is Jersey City, swarming with newcomers and emitting fumes of garlic till we flee before them. That is wonder enough for many of us, and our powers of philosophizing are exhausted with the nausea of smelling garlic and sweat. Some of us, more thoughtful, ponder the in- fluence of all this multitude upon our free and unrestricted suffrage. What sort of voters will such people make ? we wonder ; as well we may. IN THE IMMIGBATION BUSINESS 49 "We are alarmed for our institutions. Will these newcomers be true to them? Shall these louts and bumpkins, held under for the generations by a harsh autocracy, have safely committed to them the delicate sanctions of democracy? Can we assimilate these ? We look farther still and spec- ulate, perhaps in horror, as to the amalgam which will be produced by the social intermingling of all the races which are here met. That is the way we talk and that is the question which gags and stops the breath of the most of us. But, bless our hearts, is that the limit of our vision, and does our imagination stretch no farther than that? At the largest, perhaps, immigration has in the thought of most of us exhausted itself with being an American problem. This season's spec- tacle must lift upon our horizon the universal, world-marked phases of this business. One of our popular magazines recently in- cluded an article on what was styled the Human Side of Immigration. Under that caption the writer from a broad knowledge of actual facts and conditions centred attention upon what our Amer- ican immigration business is doing for Europe. Such facts as these already stand out where he who runs may read. The standard of living all over Europe is being raised. A day's labour in many sections brings twice the wage to-day it brought only a few years or months ago. The labour congestion has been relieved by American immigration. American money is pouring into all sections. They report that in one week these 50 MISSIONS STEIKING HOME who have been recently going back carried along with them five million of our precious currency dollars and as much more money in other forms. This makes no mention of the vast sums which are sent by our foreign population to relatives in Europe through the mails. All this has had a wholly natural effect of making it easier and more wholesome living all over Europe. Further, social and civic ideals are being re- moulded by the free passage back and forth such as we are now witnessing. It is said that there is almost no community of Europe whose life has not been tinctured if not revolutionized by this process. The mails are laden every day with letters interpreting a gospel of higher and freer living. Visitors are more effective ministers still of such a gospel. It is a gospel to put faith in. The demonstration is conclusive to the people however simple-minded and unbelieving they may be. Many return to live out their days in the old European home, after sojourning in America for a long enough period to have ac- cumulated a competence. Depend upon such as preachers of the new gospel, they have learned during their sojourn. Better houses, more to eat, finer to wear, fuller freedom and capacity to think and enjoy the simple human liberties, all that has already made over many a community in Europe, the energies for such a transformation being carried bodily by those who have in one way and another been constituting what we sup- posed was our American problem of immigration. IN THE IMMIGBATION BUSINESS 51 We surely begin to discover by this time that here we are concerned with world business, such world business as the imagination can scarcely compass. Does your mind comprehend this fact : We have just now, during the last month or so, sent over to Europe 200,000 missionaries. How is that for missioning ? That is doing the business on a scale which boards do not undertake. Just a month or so 200,000 of them. And such mis- sionaries ! missionaries to whom attaches no taint of professionalism. Nobody can throw it back at them that they are preaching their gospel for pay. They preach their gospel because they cannot help it, because their faith has found its assurance in what has been wrought in their own experience. The root of the matter is in them- selves, in their pockets? no! no! not alone in their pockets ; the roots have run far deeper. What if the roots had run to the perennial depths ? What if these had been given to see the best, the very best in American civilization? What if they had found a real Christian civilization ? What if the Church of Christ had been equal to its task here, and the spiritual forces which she wields had run through and through, and satu- rated the lives of these 200,000 missionaries? What sort of missionaries would they be ? What could they not achieve on this mission which they have set about ? And a second flight of the imagination carries one far beyond Europe; the plain, published 52 MISSIONS STEIKING HOME facts carry one further without the aid of the imagination. What is this we are reading in the newspapers of the pouring of Hindus into our vast West to build its railroads and till its illimit- able ranches? What will be the effect when India sets the migrating currents to surging in and out of her sluggish, swampish, fathomless seas of humanity ? What quickening and fresh- ening of life will that induce ? Oh, but we shall not risk that issue. We have shut out the Chinese ; we are shutting out the Japanese as rapidly as possible ; and public sentiment will demand the prevention of all oriental immigration. The problem Europe has imposed is bad enough. We cannot endure the load Asia might impose. Well, so be it. The most of the American people, perhaps, believe that strict laws against oriental immigration are wise and necessary to our na- tional health and existence. But the people of the world have learned the trick of emigration, and no artificial barriers can stay them now. It must be wise to restrict immigration, else so many people would not be so sure of it, but altogether to hinder it by legislation ? one would as well seek to hold back the tides of the sea with a fish-net ! We are doomed to be a mis- sionary people. It is not simply that we are accorded the privilege ; we are doomed to it. Prosperity and boundless material resource and the temperamental knack of doing things to enrich the human life, have all doomed us, they and the God of those forces, who moves in IN THE IMMIGEATION BUSINESS 53 and through and above them all to the fulfillment of His high purposes. It is elemental fate and kindly providence rolled into one, and we would as well square ourselves for the business. This method of missionary activity certainly presents its novelties to us traditionalists. These missionaries have not been put through the rigours of a theological seminary and been charged to the eyes with the latest and correctest in doctrine. (Pardon mej the most ancient is the correctest in theology, do they not tell us ?) The most of these are probably short on theories of the faith they have set out to preach. They have not applied for examination by ecclesiastical councils and been passed with honour or even approval. They have not waited to be commis- sioned by a board and been taken over by a mis- sionary society as their ' l special object ' J and per- sonal i i substitute. ' ' Their setting forth is uncon- ventional in the extreme, and unconstitutional, and knocks the missionary traditions to slivers. They did not give us the chance even to enquire of their orthodoxy or say whether we wished them to represent our missionary societies. It is not impossible that some neglected to sign the volunteer pledge before setting sail, and maybe some of them will be so careless as not to return their quarterly reports promptly. I fear these 200,000 have knocked the traditions of the mis- sionary business into chaos. Now I suppose none of us is disposed to go back on these traditions or to animadvert against 54 MISSIONS STEIKING HOME methods of doing the missionary business which the wise men of our boards and other evangeliz- ing agencies are so eagerly pushing, but we shall be blind indeed if we do not discover in the spec- tacle before us a method which for prophetic potency and for sheer inevitableness of grace must in the end quite relegate our traditions to the antiquities. Here is the missionary method of the new day, the inevitable method of to-day's surging populations. Peoples are on the move ; we cannot stay the movement if we might choose. And what signify our theories, or even our most persuasive preachers of theories I The American Church of Christ preaches its final doctrine in the demonstrations of American civilization and American life. As I just now remarked these who have gone out from us are probably very short on the theories of any formulated gospel, but they are long on the realities, depend upon that. They know what they have seen and heard and felt during their sojourn, and the stamp of it all has stamped their souls. They have gone to tell what they have heard, to show what they have seen and felt. The whole world knows, is learning anew every day, how Chris- tian the United States of America are. A good share of the world has come over to conduct a personal investigation, and these surging multi- tudes are telling the rest out of the knowledge of eye- and ear-witness. The spectacle here dis- played is only an index of a universal fact, that the time has passed when we can hope to save IN THE EMMIGEATION BUSINESS 55 the world by preaching theories. The world is judging us and our doctrine by what it sees of an applied gospel. And it will be our applied gos- pel which will carry the finally convincing mis- sionary message of the American people and the American Church of Christ. And what most distinguishes this new- day mis- sionary method is its immediacy and intimacy. We have reduced our traditional method to the most elaborate and accurately adjusted science. We catch a man young, put him through the rigours of a theological course, turn him out just so, get him thoroughly well groomed spiritually and intellectually; we set apart a certain pro- portion of our scant benevolences, just such a percentage and send him to the antipodes whence it is so interesting to receive voluminous letters describing the odd and amusing customs of the natives ; and so are redeeming the world. And so we are, to be sure. It seems almost incon- ceivable that it is true, but the Holy Spirit of God is potent enough to achieve wonders of grace even by such methods. But here is a method which admits of no such indirections. This job cannot be farmed out and hired done. I sat in a council of missionary experts not long ago where was proposed the policy of sending to some almost unheard of province of Europe bodily to import ministers whom we should set up to preach the gospel to their countrymen who have migrated to this land. The policy was seriously considered and some were zealously 56 MISSIONS STRIKING HOME casting about for means and measures by which, it might be set in operation. Is not that saga- cious missionary enterprise ? By the provisions of this new-day world-mis- sionary business the job cannot be hired done at long range. The most thrilling feature of the enterprise is the absolute immediacy of the task. We could not use a pitchfork at this business even if we had one ; people are so close up we could only jab somebody in wielding it. I wonder how we are going at the business. Going to call in theological alchemists and mis- sionary experts who will " study " the " prob- lem " and define a " method"? Going to call in expert accountants to estimate how much the business will cost, and finally the most expertest expert of them all to squeeze out the money which is to do the business ? Will you permit me to suggest that for the most part we shall have our trouble for our pains. The experts do not know how to handle this proposition ; the truth is there are no ex- perts at this method, none, that is, except common-sense people here and there who have simply reached out and taken hold. There is no method of going about this business except that simply of going about it. Here are Hans Blinker and Ikey Snigglefritz and Ivan Ivanoffski stump- ing along the street, reading the signs, or star- ing at them in the default of an ability to read them. They are going to be American citizens ; perhaps they will hurry back to their old homes IN THE IMMIGKATION BUSINESS 57 to tell what they have seen and heard and felt. In any case here they are with the soft side of their souls turned out ready to be stamped. Here is the heart of humanity laid bare under our hand, here are world eyes filled with a world spiritual wonder looking out at us. What are we going to do about it ? The proposition is reduced to those simple terms. The method? Well, now what is the method in such a case? Suppose we set up a sign in proper English, " Strangers welcomed to the sanctuary"? . . . We might at least start a subscription list. . . . How would it do to organize a study class on the rise and fall of the Eoman Empire ? ... It looks to me as though this new-day missionary method had brought us at last snug up against the realities, and that there is no artificially prescribed proc- ess quite applicable. All I know who are suc- ceeding at the business and there is an enlarg- ing number are simply reaching out and taking hold. rv THE GOSPEL FOB AN AGE OF PROSPEBITY I STAND only to remark that we would best find one, since that is the sort of an age we have on our hands needing a gospel. I shall not be at pains to define in all details the sort of gospel demanded. Maybe I do not know how. But I am full of hope, indeed of as- surance, that one altogether adequate to the de- mands is to be found. This demand imposes the most pressing and perhaps least understood obli- gation of the moment. There are many signs to indicate that the Church at large, and in our home missionary enterprise, is bewildered by the lavish material prosperity of the American peo- ple. We know how to preach a gospel of adversity. We have had considerable experience. Perhaps a large proportion of the people of our Christian communions would fail to recognize any other sort as a gospel. They expect and value its ministrations in woe, and have scarcely discov- ered the use for a gospel otherwise. You have seen the matter tested again and again. The fetching sermons, at least those which "fetch" the ordinary occupants of our church pews, are 58 FOE AN AGE OF PEOSPEEITY 59 those designed to show how the gospel can admin- ister consolation. Our hymn-books are a further witness. Thumb through any of them, in com- mon churchly use, and note the testimony they bear to what the most of us take the gospel of grace to be for. In the estimate of many, a hymn is not a hymn unless it outbreathes the sentiment of a soul in distress. Much of our evangelism, the evangelism which, in the popular conception, claims most conspicuously the name, frankly announces that its gospel has a message only for the man who is down and out. And of course its appeals reach mainly that class. Are we prepared to proclaim a gospel of pros- perity, or, to put the phrase more precisely, a gospel to fit an age of prosperity. It is a matter of exceeding importance that such a gospel should be forthcoming, since, as I remarked at the start, that is the sort of an age which, in spite of fluctu- ations of markets and industries, appeals to the American Church for a gracious redemption. Our age is not blind enough, or gluttonous enough, or in any manner so insensible as to sup- pose that it has no need of a gospel. It desper- ately needs one gracious enough to redeem it, and that our age knows right well. What that gospel is which will meet this need is the pressing concern of the Church at large ; it is no less, and perhaps I may say it is even more, the concern of our missionary enterprise. I hope to have you believe before we are done, if you do not already, that we are facing here one of our livest mission- 60 MISSIONS STKIKING HOME ary problems. As already remarked, I do not undertake to solve it, certainly not in the next fifteen minutes. It will be something to analyze its factors and see the demand of the solution. You must permit an extended parenthesis here to afford some slight tribute to a gospel precious enough to administer comfort to humanity's sor- rowing heart. It is well that we have found a gospel for adversity. We would best keep it around, handy for emergencies. Dire experiences have revealed the demand. Humanity without consolation in distress would be in a sad way, in- deed. What more flagrant crime could there be than to rob the weeping, the bereft, the unfor- tunate, the stricken, the heart-broken of their stay and comfort f We need a gospel for tears, for humanity is much in tears. Without com- fort for the bereft our estate would be miserable indeed, for who escapes bereavement? Who wants a gospel more than the mother standing beside the narrow open grave f Who needs God more than Job, destitute, bereft, berated and reproached, forsaken of his closest and dearest? He is a criminal who would rob Job of his trust in God. It is his last and his best. Our evan- gelism does well that it bears its message of rec- lamation to the man who is down and out, for the name of the man is multitude. Van Dyke has revealed the exquisite torture of the l i lost word." The last distress of the distressed soul is that in his multiplied distresses he cannot find and look up to God. A gospel which could not administer FOE AN AGE OF PEOSPEEITY 61 comfort and consolation would be no gospel at all. No one can be so foolish as to suppose that we can dispense with our gospel for adversity. Humanity finds the need wrung out of too many direful experiences ever to be unmindful of the boon. Not knowing that message we should be foolhardy, indeed, to venture forth in response to the appeal of our age, or of any age. But without a gospel for a prosperous age, we shall be no less inadequately equipped, for it is prosperity which has been afflicting us this long time, and there is really little prospect of our get- ting permanently over it. After the exposures of consciencelessness in high financial circles, pros- perity seems far beyond our deserts, but the aroused conscience of the American people will finally cleanse even the Augean stables of frenzied and brigand financiering. Some of us seem de- termined to make ourselves believe that a state of material abundance is abnormal and necessarily fleeting. We have grown so accustomed to the rhythmical pendulum-swing from hard times to hard times, that we accept the phenomenon as fate, and never stop to question its necessity. We have gone so far as to measure off these peri- ods in precisely defined cycles of years. And, to be sure, reverses of fortune for the individual and for the community are always to be feared. The swaggerish ways of prosperity are always unbecoming, and lead at last to embarrassment and distress. But there can be absolutely no cogent reasons 62 MISSIONS STRIKING HOME why the American people should anticipate a disastrous slump in their material prosperity, outside the contingencies of human folly and perfidy. The jeopardy from those causes only reveal the more clearly the need of a redeeming gospel. Under our present system one or a few financial demagogues or brigands can induce commercial ruin at almost any time they may choose. If the railroads do not like the rough- handed manner in which the Federal and State governments seek to squeeze the water out of them, they might take out their dislike upon the public until we should all be very sorry, and our prosperity would be squeezed out of the public, at least temporarily, along with the water from the railroads. The masses may turn spendthrift and waste their substance in riotous living. Certain hot-headed individuals, abetted by innumerable newspaper editors with so little wit that they must exploit each latest manufactured rumour to fill their columns, might precipitate the entire nation in a foreign war. But there can be no ra- tional cause in any quarter outside of such manifes- tations of our own perfidy or folly, for the anticipa- tion of aught but a prosperous age still to succeed. A wide-spread famine is rationally impossible. Secretary Wilson says a crop failure in the United States is henceforth practically inconceivable. The entire fruit crop of the middle West was only last season a failure, perhaps the most complete failure on record. The financial loss was stupen- dous. In addition river floods were terrible. FOE AN AGE OP PEOSPEEITY 63 During the summer I saw from the car windows thousands of acres of wheat already in the shock and corn of a superb stand, just ready to tassel, turned into vast lakes, and doomed to complete devastation. Yet in spite of all that, no one even imagined that wide-spread financial calamity would be the result. There are other resources of the field and of the mine, and the forest which had not failed, nor been destroyed. The gravest calamity in one section cannot check our national prosperity, much less impoverish the American people. Even the district last year most directly stricken did not pause to wail over its misfor- tunes. On the contrary, reports of rapidly devel- oping commercial interests and of expanding business have come from practically every quar- ter of that very section. Considering the wide diversity of our national resources, and the intimacy of association part with part in our national life, it is altogether in- conceivable under any rational sanction that any natural calamity should reverse the present tend- ency of our national prosperity. Surely it is not the will of providence that we should be any- thing else but prosperous. If a reverse of present tendency is to be charged in any sense to provi- dential dictation, it can only be on the principle of the proverb maintained by the ancients, that whom the gods would destroy they first make mad. It must be sheer madness on the part of the American people themselves if they become aught else but prosperous. 64 MISSIONS STEIKING HOME Such considerations make it vastly important on every account, that a gospel for an age of prosperity be preached to the American people. They are prosperous in spite of foolish and wicked setbacks, and there is no adequate reason in the world or in heaven why they should not remain so ; why they should not become steadily and 1m- mensely more so as the years roll on. A Christian nation ought to be prosperous. Material abundance is the legitimate issue of a genuine Christianity, or at least, it is an unfailing by-product. Eighteousness exalteth a nation, exalts it in material estate j it ought to and it ac- tually does. When it does not, there is some- where a flaw in the righteousness. Christ did not preach a gospel of poverty, though He presented a well-defined doctrine for the poor in spirit ; a very different thing, it ought to be remarked. One of our popular story-writers makes his hero exclaim, i i I could lick the man who invented pov- erty!" Doubtless the Christian attitude is not precisely that. Poverty has its benign uses when controlled by a wise and beneficent Providence. It was a man of deep insights who discovered that whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth. But there is no ground either in reason or in grace to be- lieve that God means this great Christian Ameri- can people impotently to become destitute. There is a superb power in prosperity which He wishes these people to have permanently at their command. He wishes to use a prosperous and increasingly prosperous people in His age-mould- FOE AN AGE OP PEOSPEEITY 65 ing business ; and it must retard the fulfillment of His designs when the ministers of His purpose sacrifice for some irrational or accidental cause this tremendous power. Be sure, therefore, that the God of all grace, has a gospel for such a people. And be equally sure that He wishes that gospel discovered and faithfully preached to a people of such need. It lies upon the heart of God, this demand for a gospel for an age of pros- perity. Now, there are two distressingly common, and distressingly false attitudes towards the facts of material abundance. The former makes the fact the for-all and to-all of human existence. Some men live to get, and account life somewhat less than worth the living if they do not get in super- fluity. Such conceptions creep into the Church, find root and flourish in the minds of Christian people. At least, we hear a deal nowadays about the blight upon the Church of materialism. If it is true that such conceptions prevail in the Church, the Church is certainly in a lamentably bad way. A Christian who has found nothing to live for more compelling or more satisfying than perpetual and monumental getting of material possession, is least worthy the name Christian, as he must be of all men most miserable. If our age has made a god of material prosperity, it has gone a far limit astray from the Christian's God. It is my firm conviction that our age, as an age, has not done that thing, has not committed the folly and sacrilege of making a god of ma- 66 MISSIONS STRIKING HOME terial prosperity. And that conviction makes me sure that this prosperous age needs a gospel of grace, and that it will hearken to such a gospel when it hears it intelligently preached. The American people are not materialists. I quite resent the charge for them. There may appear superficial warrant in their deportment for the charge. Surface critics may be sure that they are gone dollar-mad. But even this madness which manifests itself in disgusting fashion here and there is the evidence of a passion which yearns for something spiritual enough for its satisfaction. Materialism is not what ails the American people, but rather they are burning up with a feverish, ungratified passion for a gospel fine enough and potently spiritual enough to redeem a prosperous people, and sanctify them, prosperity and all. The other distressingly false and prevalent attitude towards material prosperity is that which gratifies a certain defeated spiritual bitterness by sneering at the instrument of the defeat. There is a deal of spiritual indolence which excuses itself by declaiming against materialism. With the disciples of old, it hearkens while the Master exclaims, How hardly shall they that are rich enter the kingdom of heaven, and turns a deaf ear when He vouchsafes the assurance, All things are possible with God, and, finding the task hard, indolently gives up the job as too much for both man and God. The Church has too often frankly confessed that it has no moving gospel to preach till men can be shocked by physical FOE AN AGE OF PEOSPEEITY 67 calamities into hearkening to its formulas. An immense deal of the holy zeal let loose upon un- holy materialism is essentially spiritual indolence or cowardice. Prosperity is too much for the lame forces of our spiritual equipment, and there- fore prosperity is somehow awfully bad. The only way some parents have of bringing under a strong-willed youngster, is to break the young- ster's back. At least, his will must be broken. The method is effective to a certain end, but it is born of laziness, sheer laziness. It may be feared that the reason some spiritually minded people hate materialism so ferociously is because they have not the spiritual vigour to bring the splendid forces of material prosperity under a spiritual dominion. It is hard to be good and prosperous at the same time. Feeling the com- pulsion to be good and dreading the strain of being prosperous also, it is concluded necessary to dispense with the prosperity. I do not pause to say how cowardly and inadequate is such a philosophy as that I wish there were time to add my philippic to the scathing rebukes meted out by preachers of righteousness in all ages upon men who will seek to serve God and mammon at the same time, men who will squeeze gain out of their fellows, will get and get, by fair means and by foul, and then will bombard the gates of heaven with their ill-gotten and more shamefully withholden gain. Neither this age nor any other needs a gospel which will teach it how to serve God and mammon, how to 68 MISSIONS STKIKING HOME straddle the fence into the kingdom of heaven. Such a gospel must always remain a vain hope r even for those deluded enough to long for it. Nor am I merely pleading for such sterling personal righteousness as shall qualify men to be rich and Christian, each and both. Being per- sonally possessed of material abundance is simply a function, an isolated feature in the general scheme. Some of us in this prosperous age have no anticipation of nor desire for being personally endowed with wealth. The life is well-nigh pes- tered out of me by a certain company of pro- moters who insist by every means at their com- mand in forcing upon my attention what they allege to be unprecedented opportunities for the investment of money. I might be readily in- duced to believe that their offers have all the virtues they claim for them, but I have again and again assured the persistent promoters that I have no money to invest with them or with any- body else, and do not so long as I may live expect to have any. I heartily wish they would quit pestering me. There are perhaps others of us who cherish the same ambition with Mr. Car- negie ; we, too, hope to die poor ; and some of us stand in much more flattering prospect of realiz- ing the ambition. But here is one, at any rate, who, in spite of his personally impecunious con- dition, yearns for a gospel of grace fine enough and brave enough and spiritual enough to re- deem a prosperous age. Illustrations of what I am seeking to impress FOE AN AGE OF PEOSPEEITY 69 and of the demand for this gospel crowd in from every side. I select some which show the issue to be live for the home missionary enterprise. It needs but a cursory observation to show that the home missionary appeal is, in the considera- tion of large numbers of people, weakened to practical impotence by tales of prosperity. Only the destitute are fit objects of missionary solicitude. There is probably no needier or more difficult missionary field in the world than Alaska, but the missionary appeal for Alaska is quite killed among many missionary audiences by the mention of the twenty-one millions in gold dust coming out each year. The fabulous resources of fisheries and lumbering interests may not be mentioned with profit to the missionary cause. A single tale of extreme destitution and squalor which the conditions in certain locali- ties in Alaska justify, will often call out more missionary money than might a cyclopedic re- cital of the vast opportunities of grace in a vast continent. Why is this true? There may be several reasons lying upon the surface which you may discern at a glance, but a broadening ex- perience deepens the conviction in my mind that the bottom reason is that many have no gospel which they dare altogether risk among such con- ditions. We think we know how to save a degraded, superstition-sodden Alaska, but an Alaska riotous in rapidly developing material resource, an Alaska smart enough to dig out gold by the million, is a different proposition. 70 MISSIONS STBIKING HOME "We have a sort of a subconscious realization that our gospel will not fill the bill. In the consideration of much of the Church the great Northwest is not nearly so interesting a missionary field, since the intelligence is abroad that the Northwest is growing fabulously rich. Why? Because, if the Northwest is so rich, it can take care of itself. That is the way the falling off in interest is most often explained. But to one who looks deeper that explanation often fails to explain. I know a number of churches who cannot quite believe they are doing missionary business unless they pour money year after year into the same destitute field. In the estimate of some of our missionary force it is a sort of a missionary crime for a missionary field to grow prosperous. Some way the gloss seems taken off. If the missionary on the ground can- not furnish unlimited tales of physical destitution the field ceases to be interesting to the supporting agency and the Board is appealed to to designate a more " inspiring" field. There may be vari- ous contributory causes for such an attitude, but among them, and I am convinced the bottom cause, is the lack of a gospel with sufficient spir- itual vigour to stand the strain of prosperity. I have further in mind the case of a theologue who last summer assumed the charge of a West- ern home missionary field. He returned to protest his amazement over what he found. He says the summer's experience has robbed him of his interest in home missions. He found the FOE AN AGE OF PEOSPEEITY 71 e well-to-do, enjoying conveniences and even luxuries in their homes, of which many who contribute to the missionary funds deprive them- selves. He later appealed to the Board in some- thing of this strain: "I had dedicated my life to a ministry in the uttermost parts, but a provi- dence prevents my carrying out that ambition, and now I appeal to the Home Board to know if there is not some really hard field even in this land where I may carry the gospel of grace to the needy. I aspired to minister in a hard field, and I hope Providence has not closed the door finally against this ambition. Has not the Home Board a hard field for me ? " Yes, a good and hard one ; it would seem too hard. It is that very field where last summer he so missed the point of his gospel ministry, and where he flunked so dis- tressingly in revealing to an exceedingly needy people a gospel which would bring them to spir- itual self-respect and self-dependence. A gospel of sufficient spiritual vigour to meet the needs of a prosperous community vast numbers who think themselves most eager simply do not know, have never discovered. They cannot interpret God's grace to people with a full stomach and warm clothing on their backs, though the very food and the very clothing are provided by that same grace. Here is a bit of Kansas history. It is at least certified to by a prominent Kansas churchman. The years 1880 to 1895 are often styled the period of depression. Kansas suffered terribly from 72 MISSIONS STEIKING HOME various causes during that period. There was drought year after year. The Western section which began to fill up at such a marvelous rate was deserted at an even more astonishing rate. The great canvas-covered wagons which had gone out placarded with the confident legend " Kansas or Bust," returned to the states further east with the addition to the legend in more flaming letters. " Busted." The occasional adventurer whose sense of humour had survived the shock would placard his wagon with the announcement, " Goin' back to wife's folks." One county, typ- ical of others, lost half its population during that period, its 12,000 being reduced to 6,000. The collapse of the famous Wichita boom occurred then, as did that of numbers of other towns and cities. Yet during that period, in spite of the enormous loss of population, and the terrible financial depression, the Presbyterian churches of Kansas increased their membership from 12,000 to 25,000, a gain of more than one hundred per cent. In contrast with that record stands now the record of the twelve years since 1895. The pros- perity of Kansas has known no bounds. 1 No 1 The following editorial paragraph appeared in pendent, December 26, 1907: "The value of the agricul- tural products of Kansas in 1907 would give $280 to each man, woman and child in the state if divided equally among the inhabitants. And the fine thing about it is in Kansas wealth is pretty equally distributed. Paupers are as rare as millionaires, and the jails are as empty as the poorhouses. FOE AN AGE OF PKOSPEEITY 73 story is too fabulous to recite. I heard a citizen of Kansas remark the other day that if any one is destitute in Kansas to-day, his indigence is due to criminal incapacity. It is reported that there lie in the savings banks at this moment one hundred dollars for every man, woman and child in the entire state. The profits during last season from the agricultural products alone are said to have amounted to the inconceivable sum of two hundred and forty -six millions of dollars. That makes no mention of the returns from the gas fields and the oil fields, the cement works, and the varied manufactures for all of which Kansas enjoys a national reputation. Yet after this period of astounding prosperity, the membership of the Presbyterian churches in the state now stands at 35,000, an increase for the twelve years of somewhat over thirty per cent., as against the increase of more than one hundred Multiply $280 by the number in the home not so small a number in Kansas as elsewhere and you have a very re- spectable family income. The population has increased twenty per cent, in the last ten years, the value of the prod- ucts of the state has increased ninety per cent. This year the crops and live stock foot up to $463,648,606, which is $39,313,739 more than in any previous year. This is wealth that will not shrink fifty per cent, at the threat of a presi- dential prosecution of illegal financiering. Kansas can get along without Wall Street at least as well as Wall Street can get along without Kansas. If the people of the state can- not sell their wheat they can eat it, and if they cannot buy anthracite coal they can burn corn, which is a much better fuel." 74 MISSIONS STEIKING HOME per cent, during the preceding fifteen years of depression. Kansas appears to need a gospel for her age of prosperity. A further illustration lies in the South, on some considerations, the most important home missionary field now presented to the church. The South is about to break the record of our brilliant American history by its rapid material development. And yet, by open confession, some of our missionary forces stand helpless and almost hopeless in the prospect. The first and foremost, though not doubtless the last and most efficient agency of the South' s regeneration, is the railroad. Many a dead community has found its pulse only with the letting in of life by that means ; and many another dead community still waits for that infusion. The material and moral and every other sort of regeneration of the South waits upon the railroad development. And yet missionary workers here and there are to my own knowledge bewailing the entrance of this very force. One zealous man assured me that the railroad in the South is the greatest curse upon our missionary enterprise. One and another have cited instances of where our mis- sionary workers have conducted a patient and protracted ministry of spiritual uplift, and the entrance of the railroad has by its demoraliza- tions destroyed in months the patient labours of years. Are not such complaints justified by the facts f Is it not true that many a community has been FOE AN AGE OP PKOSPEEITY 75 grossly demoralized by the railroad's unholy vio- lations of its seclusion ? Instances of such viola- tion every one has in mind doubtless, who has the slightest acquaintance with the South, or, for that matter, with the North or East or West. That is a surface fact patent to all. But the forces of spiritual conquest have no business con- tenting themselves with the diagnosis of surface facts. A fact which lies more nearly at the bottom is that our gospel, which can cope with the com- paratively easy conditions of seclusion and isola- tion, does not muster the spiritual vigour for the splendid spiritual conquests of the era of material progress. The railroad is a Christian institution. It will do more to Christianize and redeem the South than any other one agency we can call into the field. But do not the railroads ship in vice like dry goods, and in quantities pound for pound ? I am informed that they do ; but I insist that the railroad is a Christian institution, and if its influences cannot be captured for Christian- izing purposes, our gospel has not the spiritual vigour to stand the strain of the missionary en- terprise to-day, or any long day. Do not the railroads actually tear down and desecrate our most precious Christian institutions I Many of us may have seen them doing it ; but I insist again that the railroad is a Christian institution. It has historically and practically been made possible by the forces which have emanated from the Christian religion, and a genuine Christianity will never prove a house divided against itself, 76 MISSIONS STEIKING HOME builded at great pains only to fall. The problem, before the missionary forces of the South is the discovery and the working out of a gospel of suf- ficient spiritual vigour to capture the splendid spiritual forces of the South' s splendid material prosperity. Those who are interested in the evangelization of the South must not blind their eyes to the fact that its material development will greatly injure the missionary cause in the consideration of many missionary helpers. Some who have been most zealous in this interest will find their missionary zeal cooled to the zero point by a perusal of (say) the June (1907) number of the World's Work. The very wonders of the story there told will make it disappointing missionary reading to some. The myriad vibrating shuttles of cotton mills, the roar of blast furnaces, the feverish in- dustry of the artisan, and the chaste and sub- stantial decorum of a well-developed school sys- tem, will prove cruelly deadening to a missionary zeal which has all this time been feeding upon tales of cracker shiftlessness and indolence, has gained a sort of spiritual inspiration from the quaint and garbled dialect of the mountains, has reached a degree of spiritual revelry in the ver- min- and children-infested cabins of the secluded valleys. There will henceforth be a serious fall- ing off of that sort of missionary interest in the South. You mark it. We would as well make up our schedules with reckoning made of that inevitable issue. FOE AN AGE OF PEOSPEEITY 77 The bottom failing underneath all surface ap- pearances is that we like to have our gospel patronize, but we have poorly learned how to make it fraternize and democratize. We have not really discovered the secret of power in the Man of Galilee. We know how to reach down to need, but we have poorly trained ourselves in the art of reaching out. We can patronize, but it is a different proposition genuinely to spiritu- alize. We recite our philippics against the gross and grossening materialism of our age, and sup- pose we have done God and man much service. Now, materialism as a philosophy or a guiding scheme of life deserves, to be sure, all our feeble philippics, and the scorching of hell besides. But merely to lambaste the things which make up the elements of material prosperity is sheer spiritual cowardice. God never designed that there should be essential antagonism between the material and the spiritual. It is the business of the spiritual forces to permeate and glorify the material till spiritual potencies scintillate from it. Our age and our home missionary enterprise de- mand a gospel which shall be able to achieve that sort of a thing. It is cheap business repressing and suppressing, winning a conquest over de- generated and pigmy forces, reckoning men fit for the spiritual conquest only when they are otherwise forceless. It is a finer thing, it is the very essence of God's gospel of grace to redeem the utmost of human powers, to bring the most splendid of human forces under a spiritual do- 78 MISSIONS STKIKTtfG HOME minion. Our age needs a brave gospel. Our age, too, will heed such a gospel and will gladly submit all its splendid powers to such a gospel's conquest. THE HOME PKINCIPLE IN MISSIONS WHATEVER may have been Shakespeare's con- elusion, there is much in a name. Our word mis- sions is derived from the Latin, mitto, I send. A prevalent interpretation of the missionary enter- prise satisfies itself with a strictly literal deriva- tion not only of the word but of the idea. Mis- sions is sending. Which it doubtless veritably is, but a il missions 77 which does not settle down and make itself at home once it has arrived will serve very ineffectively in setting up the king- dom of God. It may be proper enough for indi- viduals, whose religious predilections prompt them, to sing, " I' rn a pilgrim, and I 7 m a stranger, 7 ' but a missionary enterprise which regales itself with that sentiment, by that very token foredooms itself to defeat. All missions worthy the effort are at last home missions. And their real ef- fectiveness will begin just when they become home missions. Not long ago on an occasion when I had been set to present a phase of the home mission enter- prise, I pleaded with all my might for the deeper significance of the idea embodied in this princi- ple. The chairman immediately after I had taken my seat suggestively remarked that the 79 80 MISSIONS 8TBIKING HOME day has passed when right-minded people dis- cover any antagonism between home and foreign missions. I suppose he intended that I should accept a mild rebuke for the vehemence with which I had prosecuted the pleading. Whether I was inclined to accept the rebuke or not, I cer- tainly was much disappointed that I had not ap- parently succeeded in bringing even the chair- man to see the point of my insistence. No ; to be sure there is no antagonism between home and foreign missions. It is the very beauty and power of the Christian religion that it belongs everywhere, that no land is foreign to it, and it is foreign to no land. There can be no antag- onism between home and foreign missions since the prime condition of the success of any mis- sions is that it shall forthwith make itself at home. The home principle runs through all missions. If my sister is to carry the real Christ message to Korea, whither she has gone to teach and live the gospel, she must not fail to make herself and her ministry at home and a home mission among the Koreans. The reason a friend of mine is succeeding in his mission to Japan is because he has done that very thing. The reason a certain other Mend is foiling so distressingly elsewhere is because he has not done that thing, but has persistently harboured the notion and has every- where given the impression that he is on a mis- sion, that he belongs somewhere else and that he is there to ladle out what he has been generous THE HOME PBINCIPLE IN MISSIONS 81 enough to bring along. It is the prime requisite of any and all missions that they be and confirm themselves home missions. There is wholesome warrant for this assertion in the example of the chief exponent of the mis- sioning enterprise, Jesus of Nazareth. We often speak as though we supposed this supreme mis- sionary belonged somewhere else, and that it was quite by accident if it is not indeed an anomaly that He was Jesus of Nazareth, the Man of Galilee, the familiar of the towns and cities of Judea. We magnify the condescension of the Son of God in leaving the bosom of the Father for His earthly ministry until we sometimes make it seem that Jesus did not ever quite grow accustomed to being what He was and living and serving where He did. By which course we take the most vital meaning out of the gospel scheme. Wherever Jesus came from and whithersoever He went, He vitally belonged where He was while He was here. There was no one more genuinely at home. He saved the world by being a home missionary, and His method of salvation is the only really effective one which has ever been devised. He certainly meant what He said when He charged His followers to go into all the world and disciple the nations, but certainly did not mean that His own example and His method should be lost upon them when they should address themselves to the task assigned. There is no more daring deed recorded of this high Master of the missioning enterprise than 82 MISSIONS STEIKING HOME that on the occasion of His one foreign mission, as it is sometimes erroneously styled. Only once seems Christ voluntarily to have set foot out of the bounds of Palestine proper, and that was when He passed into the region of Tyre and Sidon, on what errand it does not precisely ap- pear. At any rate while He was there, it is recorded that He was encountered by a woman, native of the locality, who appealed to Him pit- eously for help. Turning upon the suppliant He seemed almost to scorn her by saying, It is not meet to take the children's food and cast it to the dogs. By which attitude and speech Jesus did not mean to style the poor woman and any other human being a dog, nor did He mean that only a Jew was worth saving, nor did He mean any other foolish or ungodly thing. But whatever He did not mean or whatever else He did mean, even at the risk of being grossly misunderstood by those of slight insight, He must have meant to emphasize this essential quality of His saving ministry, its vital and indefeasible homeliness. And He must have meant that His example and precept should not fail of its effect when His dis- ciples set about the fulfillment of His pressing charge of discipling. The home principle in missions does not culti- vate narrowness and selfishness. A friend says he frequently encounters people who decline to interest themselves in the foreign missionary enterprise, pleading that there is so much to do at home. I am rather surprised to hear him say THE HOME PKINCIPLE IN MISSIONS 83 that, for I had supposed that sort of people had disappeared or had learned some other excuse. I do not meet them any more. Such have never really helped on the home missionary enterprise with all of their professed eagerness. Their solicitude for the home cause is only an excuse, and usually a cloak of selfishness. This principle which I seek to set forth is vital for missions irrespective of the accident of its locality. It is that without which missions anywhere lose their meaning and become vapid and ineffective. This will partially illustrate what I mean. A while ago I visited a town where the church was making a great showing of missionary interest and activity. The elaborately organized socie- ties were going through the customary motions with irreproachable precision. Missionary funds were not lacking. Men and women were banded together to give regularly and systematically in the support of an enterprise in Persia or some- where else safely on the other side of the globe. Their so-called home missionary enterprise was actually a thinly disguised imitation of their for- eign and was safely established in some remote section of our vast national domain. Altogether the Church bears a flattering reputation for mis- sionary zeal. In the course of a conversation with one of the most faithful workers in their widely extended activities I chanced to comment upon the evidence of the rapid growth of their own town, and asked if my impressions were not correct. She responded with quite a distinct 84 MISSIONS STEIKIKG HOME sigh, "Oh, yes, large numbers of people are moving into the town, but, you know, they are not the sort who take to the Church." And that was all. It was then time to change the subject. What the Church is trying to do is wholesome for and desperately needed by the people away off somewhere, but the people who are moving into our town : it closes the discussion to dis- cover that they do not take to the Church. It seems not to have occurred to us that the Church might take to them, and that, at last, the very essence of the missionary enterprise is in making the Church do that very thing. The home principle is absolutely essential in missions to redeem them from artificiality. There is a deep and ineradicable insincerity in foisting upon some other community what proves insuffi- cient and ineffective in our own. Why should we proclaim with an inflated zeal to a community fifteen hundred or fifteen thousand miles away a gospel which is disregarded if not tacitly repudi- ated in our own community f One is sometimes led to wonder if much of the apathy in the mis- sionary cause is not after all prompted by a kind- hearted unwillingness to inflict upon other people an institution which in the case of their own church is proving so deplorable a failure. A church which is not gripping the life of its own community and is not preaching and working out a gospel which renovates the life immediately about must always make a poor success of bear- ing an effective gospel message to communities in THE HOME PEINCIPLE IN MISSIONS 85 the distance. The palpable insincerity of a pro- gramme which encourages or permits such a travesty must always cripple any enterprise. Surely such insincerity and artificiality can never fit into a system which calls itself Christian, and presumes to draw its inspiration from Him who poured forth His scorn upon pretense. This and this alone will make the missionary en- terprise invincible : the conviction that we have got a good thing, and then the enthusiasm of pass- ing it on to others. Without that enthusiasm missions will prove too vapid and flatulent to be worthy of serious concern. First, and absolutely essential is the conviction that we have got a good thing. A church which is not gripping the life of its own community is simply bluffing, however zealous it may be in sending to the uttermost parts. An unsaved America zealously saving the nations beyond the seas, simply shows its in- capacity even to comprehend the saving mission for anybody. A programme which permits a so- called missionary church to welter in the reek of its own community's moral disease cheapens dis- tressingly the gospel it presumes to preach, and at the same time casts disgraceful reflections upon the distant community to which it presumes to bear its gospel message. Such a church as much as announces, Here is something which will do you poor folks a lot of good. To be sure, it is not do- ing us much good ; we are not successful in mak- ing it work, but it will serve for you, at any rate. 86 MISSIONS STEIKING HOME It is to save any church from such a ridiculous and humiliating predicament that what I call the home principle in missions intervenes. There is no call for the discussion of the propo- sition, Are we advancing or retrograding I As for that, of course we are advancing ; that is the way God has of running things in this world, for the most part. One need not turn pessimist to discover a solicitude over the conditions of our Church life. Statistics demonstrate that there are more church -members in this country to-day than there have ever been before, and those of us who are seeking the satisfaction of being apprized of that fact are welcome to all the satisfaction to be got from it. But if there is any one who has given our Church problems an intelligent and sympathetic study and is satisfied with what he finds, I have yet to meet him. On the contrary there comes up from every quarter the lament that the Church has lost its grip upon the life of our times and our society. I do not pretend to say how much ground there may be for the la- ment, nor how much truth there may be in the assertion. I am sure, however, that nothing will be gained by taking out our chagrin in lamenta- tions. The Church has no business losing its grip on its own life and its own times. Just in so far as a church does that, does it reveal its in- capacity for the real mission business. Some- times a church or an individual is galvanized into what seems life by a missionary zeal though disregarding this demand for the close grip, but THE HOME PKINCIPLE IN MISSIONS 87 such a life is only seeming and is, of real spiritual power, forceless. Perhaps the most common plaint taking a con- crete form under this head is the oft-expressed desire that we might get back to the old ways, the old zeal for religion, the old gospel, as it is often phrased. I passed a tent the other day, where evangelistic services were being held, which was placarded in large letters with such legends as these : The old Bible. The old Faith. Come in and hear the old gospel preached in the old way. I suppose the song most commonly sung was " The old-time religion's good enough for me." Such inducements were presumably of- fered to attract people in. As a matter of fact there were very few attracted. Now, our age is supposed by many to have gone daft upon the new and the fantastic, is con- sidered to have developed an inordinate and dis- eased passion for the latest-out and the bizarre. In my opinion such a judgment is exceedingly superficial, and comes of a superficial reading of the signs of our times and the ways of our age. Surely there never was a time when flimsiness in the latest-out so quickly cheapened it, when the fantastic and the bizarre so speedily ceased to satisfy. It is not to be supposed that antiquity has a monopoly on religion. I venture to believe that there never was a time in the history of the world nor is there anywhere a people where the agencies of religion have had so superb a chance as in our day and among the American people. 88 MISSIONS STRIKING HOME Religion? why, religion bursts from the pores of the American people. They make creeds while they wait on the corners and talk Bibles as they hurry down the street. They do it very un- intelligently, but they would be doing so intelli- gently and wholesomely if somebody would tell them how. Their religion is, to be sure, in a terrible bungle, but that is perhaps not altogether their fault. It is not surprising perhaps that those who are tenacious of the precise old forms of religion should be dissatisfied with the pros- pect, and should feel that religion has failed and lost its hold upon the American consciousness. That is a vain, and almost comical lament. Re- ligion will never fail or lose its vitality. And no church ever had a finer chance than has our American Church in its own day and among its own people. Some are pining for a return to Apostolic tri- umphs and conditions. If we only had the Apos- tles back among us ! To do what, pray ? Why, if the Apostle Paul were to drop in among us to-day he would have to learn his business all over again. An Asia Minor ministry would not touch our problems. I believe Paul would be equal to the prodigious task of learning his busi- ness all over again, since that was the sort of man he was. And I confess I sometimes wish he might happen along. I should enjoy witnessing that spectacle. How surprised the good man would be to find what he is sometimes made sponsor for, the reactionary methods and the THE HOME PBINCIPLE IN MISSIONS 89 impossible notions for which he has been made to stand. The manner and the language in which he would defend his good name and repudiate the imputations would be a sight to see and oratory to hear. If there was anything for which the Apostle Paul did stand it was for carrying the gospel into the very heart of the life of his time, and no one would be quicker than he to see how impossible would be the methods he chose in the vitally different conditions of to-day. Yes, I should like to see the Apostle Paul drop in among us, merely for the fun of it, if for noth- ing else. I should enjoy witnessing the vehe- mence with which he would set about convincing us of the fruitlessness and the folly of pining for his old Apostolic ways. It always hurts me, and, I must add, though I hope in a wholly Christian way, it often greatly angers me, to hear the word " modern" spoken with a sneer. I am a modern ; I live in modern times ; I belong to my age and my age belongs to me. This is God's age; He has set it in the midst of His eternities ; He has moulded it by a matchless wisdom ; He has crammed it with in- comparable potencies ; He is leading men into new visions of Him, of His grace and of His power. God and I do not like to have men curl their lips and speak of our age with a sneer. I do not believe God means we shall be perpetually harking back ; I am confident He means we shall be striding forward. New things and new ideas are not per se bad, and by the virtue of their 90 MISSIONS STBIKING HOME newness to be condemned and sneered at. On the contrary there is a presumption in their fa- vour by virtue of their newness. They deserve to be accepted as good until they are demon- strated to be the opposite. The very fact that they have superseded some old thing or notion entitles them, until they show their insufficiency, to the respect of being considered the best. , To say that a thing or a method or an idea is mod- ern ought to be a passport to honour. Perhaps some will suppose that I am getting ready to exploit or approve some fancy and hifalutin method of church enterprise. I wish there were time to do the subject full justice in assuring you that I am not. Nothing of the sort is necessary to carry the point at issue. In- deed my age and your age, our modern age would repudiate the attempt. If there is any church worker who does not know the folly of trying hifalutin and bizarre methods on this age and the American people, only let him make the experiment. There is nothing which our age has so clearly demonstrated than that cheap, sensational devices for making the kingdom of God a, reality do not work. The church which turns itself into a dancing school or a raffling agency simply does not know its business, and there is nothing our modern age delights more in doing than in telling it so. The only reason our age accords even tolerance to some church meth- ods which many bewildered people think to be so promising is because it recognizes the sincere THE HOME PEIKCIPLE IN MISSIONS 91 purpose back of the ill-considered and bungling ways. The deeper consciousness of the age knows well enough that a lot of our elaborate iustitutionalism is only lumber, not capable of being worked up into a construction of perma- nent value, and it is alone the evidence of a sin- cere desire to get something done which insures for it even a modicum of respect. I have not been getting ready to advocate any new-fangled method guaranteed out of hand to solve all the problems of our modern church life. But this I have been getting ready to say : That a church which does not know its own age, whose heart does not throb in a deep and con- stant sympathy with its own age, which does not believe unfalteringly and invincibly in the eternal religious responsiveness of the heart of its own age, which cannot frame its message in such language that its age will hearken and go on its way with a deepening joy, which does not speak for God to its own age and whose age does not recognize God's message in its speech, a church which cannot and does not do all that has no worthy title to the distinction of being mission- ary, and apparent missionary activity is only the semblance, lacking the vitality of the real thing. Money will never do the missionary business, neither fifty cents per member, nor five dollars per member nor five thousand per member, though it be forthcoming every year till the end of time. Dollars may only blind our eyes to the 92 MISSIONS STBIKISTG HOME real demand. Money is about the cheapest and most abundant commodity of our times. If money would do the business the world could be saved by to-morrow night. Aye ! I was about to say, it would be. I believe it. If men who have the money could be made really to believe that money would do the business the thing would be done. Neither will the missionary enterprise be achieved either by sighing inar- ticulately for a spiritual awakening. What some people mean by the spiritual quickening in the church for which they so fervently pray is quite what the church does not need. What the church does need is the readiness to take hold, to take itself seriously as the ambassador of God to this age, not a made-to-order age, but this age ; not some people of antiquity or of futur- ity, but these people ; to be confident, almightily, eternally, invincibly confident that this age, these people need God, want God, are searching for God in their blindness, are weltering in their sin, moaning for God, and then like those God has inspired with His own commission convey that message to people who are languishing for it. Here is not an occasion for indirections, and spiritual incantations ; it is a plain demand for inspiration which goes straight to the heart, a sanctified ingenuity in finding out what is to be done, and then a hearty, exuberant doing that. The spiritual conquest of our age and of our American life is not a problem ; it is out and out an inspiration and then an achievement. THE HOME PEINCIPLE IN MISSIONS 93 All who are interested in the missionary enter- prise are sure that it depends vitally upon prayer. True, to be sure. And prayer will not be failing. An inspired and achieving church will not slight the praying. Their every exultant breath will be a prayer. The apostolic idea will at last be real- ized and there will be prayer without ceasing. The ministry of such a church will itself be the utmost sublimity of prayer. It is often my business to plead for the support of a missionary agency which gains head and makes progress every day by the inflow of money. When that flow fails, it fails. There must pour into its treasury alone this fiscal year one million, one hundred thousand dollars or it has failed, the missionary cause has been stag- gered by the blow. Does any one suppose I am not solicitous for the money of the missionary cause ? But I am willing to trust the missionary cause for its financial backing to a church which is gripping the life of its own times and its own community. And the truth is, a broadening experience makes me tremble for the cause when committed to any other kind of a church. It is my business among other pleas to put in an im- portunate word for the poor Indian and the neg- lected mountaineer, the frontiersman and the distant outcast. But I will risk that plea before a church which is sure it has found a good thing for its own community and has found it will work to the redemption of the life of its own people. That is just the sort of church I am hunting for 94 MISSIONS STRIKING HOME to talk missions to. A genuinely efficient church in its own community is bound to be a mission- ary force, and no artificial forcing of artificial fervour will be needed to make it that. I ven- tured to say something like this to a gathering of churchmen not long ago, and afterwards the pas- tor warmly assured me that I was right, that the truth had been demonstrated in his own church. A church which has not its own conscience clean can never be a world-saving force. Missionary power is an overflow ; nothing can stop it once it has back of it the divine impetus of conviction and the grace of demonstration. A moral earnestness which is above all else sincere and does not dodge the direct issues of the redeeming mission is the only missionary equipment which will do the business. And that will do it. That power will save the world, for it is God's power. VI THE EEFLEX OF MISSIONS A Paper A Critique IT is commonly maintained that missions to the distance reflect upon the life of the Church at home. One of the arguments most often ad- vanced for missions is the invigoration of the home life of the Church which is sure to issue from activity abroad. And the point is well taken. The reflex of missions is to be reckoned with. Missions have a double interest. This much is true, at any rate, that the state of the home Church is the accurate index of the ef- ficiency and wholesomeness of its missionary activity. The principle involved finds its clearest em- bodiment in the statement last made. The point is well taken, but the real point must not be missed. There is an immediate connection be- tween the life of a church or of a people, and their ministries. There is that scattereth and yet increaseth. Bread cast upon the waters will return after many days ; and in our bustling times it is perhaps not unreasonable to expect the return after a few days. The modern reality often goes the ancient proverb one or two better. But in the application of the law of the reflex in missions, it makes all the difference in the world what sort of missionary activity is prose- 95 96 MISSIONS STEIKING HOME cuted. Unwholesome missionary activity re- flects upon a church unwholesomely. The law operates inexorably ; the principle sometimes seems to hold too firmly. The soundness of the principle is the more apparent when the terms of the statement are turned about : an unwhole- some church life cannot prosecute wholesome missionary activity. Sweet waters do not issue from a bitter fountain. There are numerous prov- erbs to illuminate this putting of the proposition. The notion often prevails that a dead church can galvanize itself into life by turning fussily missionary. And so it can galvanize itself. But galvanism only sets the muscles to twitch- ing. The appearances may easily delude the onlooker ; there may be no real life. A little poking and prodding may keep the tail of a dead snake wiggling "till the sun goes down." A mission to the antipodes is in itself no panacea for the spiritual ills of the American Church or the American Eepublic. Our mis- sionary enterprise shows some evidence of con- fusion at this point. Missionary arguments would often make it appear that the delusions were being entertained, and that we were confi- dent of our calling and election at home through our activities abroad. But as a matter of fact, it would be an astonishing reversal of the proprie- ties both of logic and of grace, for a church to expect its missionary activities in the distance to work out its own home salvation. The impetus and incentive are got from the wrong quarter ; THE KEFLEX OF MISSIONS 97 cause and effect are transposed ; the cart is got before the horse. The only process by which life can be put into a dead church or into the spiritual life of a peo- ple, is for the church or the people to get born and actually to set about living, and the process of living is not summarily comprehended in mooning the horizon. Missionary activity is an index of a church's life, is not the thing itself, and can create the real thing only as exercise contributes to the more exuberant life of a healthy organism. Oftentimes exercise is the most dead- ening liberty which a half -dead man can indulge. It depends entirely upon the nature of the malady. Activity sprung from an artificial stimulus often hastens the process of dissolution in the organism, rather than infuses real life. Sacrifice for others is the noblest virtue, human or divine, and the practice feeds the passion. But all which as- sumes the garb is not sacrifice, and assuming the semblance of virtue is often the surest blight of character. The large writ. of history is instructive, though the text is far too voluminous for the reading of even the large print under this title. But each reader doubtless has in mind some outstanding instructive chapters. Syria was once the seat and centre of mission- ary activity. The cataclysms, which have rolled over and left Syria the debilitated spiritual de- pendency it is to-day, have been very various. Some of them have involved world movements 98 MISSIONS STBIKING HOME which, it might be esteemed, Syria, with what- ever spiritual vigour it might have mustered, would have been impotent to control. But Syria is to-day one of the neediest of the lands which lie in spiritual darkness. Genuine and com- pletely wholesome spiritual forces survive even such cataclysms as the break up of the Eoman dominion or the overflow of Saracenic conquest. Yet Syria's spiritual forces were not proof against such shocks. There is much evidence that Syria did not purify her own spiritual life even through her missionary activity, but, parallel with it, she was weakened by false emphasis in her interpre- tations and absorption in non-essentials, if not in positive errors, until the inward decay of her own Christianity was in itself one of the potent in- fluences of her degradation. Northern Africa stands forth in the light of the present thought. Few sections of the Christian Church and few epochs of Christian grace have revealed so aggressive missionary activity as did Northern Africa in the early Christian centuries. Africa is pretty dark all over to-day, except where Nineteenth and Twentieth century agen- cies have let in the light. It may be insisted that politics meddled here also, as they did in the case of Syria. But politics everywhere and always have a way of meddling, and if spiritual forces cannot reckon in the interferences of politics and still win conquests, such forces are too weak to deserve serious acknowledgment among the ele- ments which live and move in the world. The THE EEFLEX OF MISSIONS 99 story of North African missionary activity is not a chapter of wholesome spiritual development. It rather reads to the contrary effect. Such instances are musty with age, and may be thought to lack meaning for to-day. All of to-day is before us, and there perhaps do not fail more striking instances still, in more modern times, of the break-down of the missionary " re- flex," as a regenerating force. The Moravian Church is a church of a thrilling career, as its history has often with some justice been interpreted. Indeed, it is the touchstone by which missionary excellence has perhaps most often of late been tested. Almost all of our mis- sionary audiences have listened with rising en- thusiasm to the statistics of its wonderful mis- sionary propaganda. The fact is often pointed out as an evidence of the Church's devotion that it has more members and ministers abroad than it has at home. I have not taken the trouble to verify this statement, since the detail is of no great importance. I suppose there are few of us who know any- thing of Moravia beyond the cyclopedia an- nouncements, of its comprising a territory of eighty-five hundred square miles, and such other slightly interesting details. I confess that my knowledge of its spiritual condition is exceed- ingly meagre. The most vivid impressions come from the letters of a Mend who has gone to the country to do missionary work after the comple- tion of his training in America. His reports cer- 100 MISSIONS STEIKING HOME tainly reveal great need. The country is said to be, by large predominance, Romanist, and the Protestant population quite inconsiderable by comparison of numbers. It is well known that Moravia and Bohemia have contributed to our American population some of the most bitter " infidels " who have ever defiled the speech and literature of a Christian people. Indeed, but for such u nests" as that in Chicago, inhabited by this class of immigrants, blatant " infidelity '* is practically unknown in the United States. Of course it is unreasonable to hold the Mo- ravian Church accountable for such facts and con- ditions, except on the principle of the mission- ary < l reflex. ' ' The Moravian Church has ach ieved some remarkable and very gratifying results in this country, since its implanting here more than a century and a half ago. But the reaction of its foreign propaganda upon the parent Church and upon the spiritual conditions of Moravia have certainly not been remarkable, at least not re- markably wholesome. It is a question whether we are justified in setting forth its missionary achievements with the enthusiasm which we usually discover, when the spiritual condition of Moravia remains what it is to-day. If the Moravian Church abroad still claims its parent- age from the native Moravian Church, and if the missionary reactions count for anything, is it not rather a demonstration of weakness than of strength, that the conquests should have been more THE EEFLEX OF MISSIONS 101 noteworthy in the easier fields abroad, than in the stagnant spiritual life of the mother country f It might seem invidious to make example of any of our American churches, and the detailing of facts and conditions might seem to assume the nature of controversy for no worthy purpose. Yet time enough has elapsed even here to demon- strate with some cogency to the thoughtful, the potency of the "reflex" upon our American churches. It must not have escaped the attention of those most eager for the advancement of the kingdom, that the denomination of our American Church which has often, perhaps usually, been recognized as proportionately the most forward in the foreign propaganda, is proportionately, perhaps actually, dwindling at home. Its young people are deserting it, or at least not incorpor- ating themselves actively into its life, and in large measure the denomination is recognized by itself and by others as most conspicuously an agency of protest among our American spiritual forces, rather than an aggressive and constructing agent. A more complete analysis of this, and of any other case like it, certainly would reveal other causes for decadence than an active foreign prop- aganda. Nobody in his senses believes for one moment that missionary activity abroad is in- consistent with or inimical to the most whole- some and efficient spiritual enterprise at home. The two lines of activity are complements of each other. The point at issue is simply the testing of 102 MISSIONS STBIKING HOME the potency of the l i reflex. ' ' It must appear pos- sible, at least possible, for a church to be re- markably active abroad and at the same time de- cline at home. Such cases as those mentioned hardly manifest the glory of the " grain of wheat thrust into the ground to die," from whose death new and more life is attained. In the case of the deathless Death which gives meaning to that parable, there was the prophetic insight which made self-renun- ciation voluntary, hearty, glad, certainly wholly conscious. He did not die protesting, but rather conquering, and eternally confident of His victory. But it is likely that none of these instances, nor the process of thought involved in setting them in array, have occurred to the most who discovered the alleged potency in the missionary " reflex." The evidence appears in the individ- ual church for the most part, and I have been assured by more persons than I could begin to catalogue, that the principle works infallibly in the individual church. Many assert that they have never known the result to fail, namely, that a church, become active in missionary interest, should quicken and enlarge its activities at home. It has come to be the commonly accepted formula, among newly installed and especially young ministers, for waking up a dead church : start missionary subscriptions, organize mission- ary societies, arouse the people's interest in the world-wide movements. Many a pastor or other is thoroughly convinced by the demonstration of THE EEFLEX OF MISSIONS 103 personal experience and observation that here has been found a panacea for churchly ills. To deny these remarkable and cheering phe- nomena, which each one of us has seen and felt, would be idle even if it were not wicked. But a careful analysis of the facts is all the more de- sirable and needful, by the very reason of the enthusiasm which the method excites. I have a friend who declares in public well- nigh every day, that out of a broad experience, he has never known of a case, where increased giving for the foreign propaganda has not been matched by an increased zeal in home ministries at the same time. His experience has been dif- ferent from mine, or else he has peculiar stand- ards by which comparisons are instituted. I am about prepared to say that the most common method I know of to-day, by which a church draws itself away from the homely ministry im- mediately at hand and encloses itself in an imper- vious and complacent sheathing of aloofness, is the discovery of a fussy zeal for the propaganda at the distance. That fussy zeal is not in the last analysis missionary activity, to be sure, but it often passes for it ; too few carry the analysis to " the last. 7 ' The up-to-now quite prevalent attitude of many of our missionary churches towards the foreigner, crowding into every nook and cranny of our eastern cities, is not distant illustration. Some of the most bitter and un-Christly declamations against the foreigner which have come to my 104 MISSIONS STKIKING HOME ears, have come out of the mouths of men and women, who have the reputation for being, and who actually are, untiring in their zeal for the mission to the antipodes. It is no indignity to such missionary activity to say that it is fussy. And its "reflex" is not wholesome, cannot pos- sibly infuse the true spiritual tone in the Church's ministries of the close encounter. How far it really aids the mission to the distance the future alone will demonstrate. It does not make to the present point, of course, merely to direct attention to the shortcomings of the Church. With the accumulated results of the Church's critics before us, that would be simple enough. Our senses are blunted by gen- eralities. Perhaps even the generalities are not entirely pointless, however, when it is observed that the notorious mal-adaptations of our church life to the demands of our times, have appeared and grown more and more notorious, during our most remarkable epoch of activity abroad. Our missionary era has not found altogether incon- sistent with the foreign propaganda, the aliena- tion of a whole class like the labouring people. The Church's mal-adjustment to the conditions created by the immigration movements, is still so common as to constitute itself a generality, and gains point, in the present connection, by the very virtue of its being a generality. And the fussiness of many of the attempts at adjustment appear in the persistence with which the mission to the foreigner is construed as a "foreign" mis- THE EEFLEX OP MISSIONS 105 sion, in the diligence we so often use to treat the late-comer as a " foreigner." Some, even of the active churches, have not gotten beyond conduct- ing this supremely "home" mission as a " for- eign" mission. Our shortcomings cease to be generalities and reveal the fallibility of the " reflex" method, when individual churches discover no inconsist- ency between an ardent zeal for the propaganda in foreign lands and a practical passivity towards the crowding foreigner in the community. There are such individual churches. And before the glaring inconsistency shall be relieved, there will need to transpire a reformation in not alone the method of church endeavour, but also a regener- ation of the spirit which actuates it. The reason for such tendencies is not far to seek. Now that the Church's ministry to the dis- tance has been crystallized into a " system," that ministry is easier and simpler than the ministry close at hand, requiring, in these piping times of progress, an exceedingly agile and strenuous church life. A church which really keeps abreast of its own life nowadays, is compelled, to em- ploy an Hibernianism and a vulgarism rolled into one is compelled to hustle to keep up with itself. For a church integrated with such a throbbing organism as is our American life, growth is as necessary as breath, is a synonym for existence. And growth is always severely straining business, though it be true that healthy growth is exuberant and glad business. 106 MISSIONS STBIKING HOME Now, supporting the mission to the distance, is as simple as writing checks. At least many an individual or church unconsciously contents himself or itself with so concluding. There is, for example, a certain city where the Presbyterian churches, to make the illustration specific, are strongholds of missionary endeavour, so far as the treasury reports and other evidence show, and where no new Presbyterian church has been added to the force while the city has extended in broad suburbs and one hundred thousand people have been added to the population. Founding new churches in growing suburbs is often diffi- cult and delicate business. It is far easier to fall into the ruts of the old churches, filling coffers fuller and fuller with benevolent funds, and de- riving missionary satisfaction from that exercise. As a matter of fact about the only palpable and active participation people can assume in the mission to the distance, is contributing money towards it. There is no other way usually possible. And that is about the easiest and simplest process in the whole range of missionary activity. Money is the cheapest thing an Amer- ican knows. The mission to the distance offers him, therefore, the line of the least resistance, and it is easy to satisfy oneself with having dis- charged one's missionary responsibility by fol- lowing that line. On the face it is plain, and experience has abundantly demonstrated the fact, that it is far easier to delegate some substitute to preach the THE EEFLEX OF MISSIONS 107 gospel in Africa, than it is efficiently to grapple with the nasty problem of the negro quarter five or ten blocks down the street. For eight hundred or a thousand dollars per annum, any church can have the satisfaction of instituting and prose- cuting the simpler process ; and back come the letters each month reporting the triumphs of grace through that church's ministry. There is involved in the method no strain of the nerves, no knitting of the brows over problems, no dis- tressing discovery that cherished plans are dismal failures, nor the pain and confusion of correcting mistakes by beginning all over again. The most of these strains and stresses, which are real enough where the work is being done, are ob- scured in the periodic reports, in which the mis- sionary church finds such satisfying spiritual reward, or else the recital of them only contrib- utes a new spice to the romance of the story. All of these joys in the work, any church can gain by the contribution of $800 or $1,000. The raising of such a sum, in spite of the ado which must usually attend the operation, is really very simple and easy for the average American con- gregation. But the immediate grapple with the problem of the negro quarter five blocks away is a very different proposition. It presents a situation of such delicacy and difficulty as to make it well- nigh impossible even to hire any one, at any price, who will give satisfaction in performing it. So that there is not forthcoming even the exhilara- 108 MISSIONS STRIKING HOME tion of contributing money to ensure the work's being done. Consequently some churches have become so deadened to the conditions, that the spiritual incongruities of their missionary pro- gramme do not occur to them ; and some others, more thoughtful, have philosophized themselves into the contention, and the contentment, that the problem is so complicated by economic and social entanglements, as to draw it out of the range of so "purely spiritual' 7 an institution as the Church. The mission to the distance in- volves none of these complications, or at least the supporting church encounters none of them. It is always easier to pass around the hat or keep the subscription list moving, than it is to adjust first hand the ministries of grace to weak and volatile and slippery human nature. There is nowhere that the spiritual test is so severe as it is right here in this maddening Amer- ican rush of circumstance and swift shifting of spiritual emphases '; nowhere that sanctified in- genuity and quick insights upon the verities are so essential. Even those who are personally en- countering the problems in the mission to the distance, are not always appreciative of the de- mands. Not long ago I heard an energetic mis- sionary, who has achieved a notable success in a distant land, stormily assure an audience of peo- ple, that what the American Church needs for the solution of its present day problems, is "the plain preaching of the pure gospel." He came dangerously near pronouncing the word "gos- THE EEFLEX OF MISSIONS pill," as though, indeed, the diagnosis were so simple, and a "pill" were the panacea. More than one foreign missionary, compelled to return and assume the duties of the difficult American ministry, has openly expressed his longing to get abroad again, if he might, to the less compli- cated ministry of simpler spiritual exactions. The spiritual strain upon the home church in its home ministry is often intense j it is always direct and can never be delegated : it furnishes the final test of a church's spiritual efficiency. This in short is the reason the " reflex" of mis- sionary activity is not always effective, even in appearance, as a real regenerating force. Some- times, perhaps a close observation will justify saying oftentimes, a church can muster the com- paratively slight spiritual vigour, to follow the line of comparatively slight resistance, when that church may balk at the more difficult exactions of the close grapple with the severe and compli- cated mission at the door-step. Here is revealed the short-sightedness and unwisdom of accepting the missionary " reflex" as an infallibly whole- some force in a church's life. The truth is that we have converted an effect into a cause. Some of our theories contemplate the regeneration of the home church through a foreign mission. If our theories carry us no further, we shall be caught in a distressing and inexcusable delusion. The " reflex" has no such potency. The mission to the distance if it is genuine and wholesome, is an effect; it must 110 MISSIONS STEIKING HOME spring from a life in the Church, which transmits energy as steadily and as inevitably as the heart pumps the life-blood into the healthy organism. To provide for the infusion of blood by some ar- tificial device, from a source outside the organ- ism, is simply to protract decay. Her foreign missions will never save the American Church ; under the normal developments of her life the foreign propaganda will be rather the spon- taneous, inevitable expression of her inherent vitality. If it shall ever transpire that the u evi- dences" appear in spite of unhealth, the case will be the more distressful, since the appear- ances are so easily capable of deceiving. vn THE AMEEICAN "E PLUEIBUS UNUM" OP GEACE PEOPLE are the most interesting things in the world, and, what is more to the present point, they are the most valuable. All other things are in the final reckoning mere ciphers. People are the only real figures. A row of ciphers a yard long when summed up amount to just nothing. Ciphers count only when a real figure is placed before them. Things are of value only when at- tached to and reckoned in relationship to people. That is good mathematics and good philosophy and it is certainly good religion. Now, among all the peoples of the earth there is none which can quite compare, in your estima- tion and in mine, with the American people. Not that they are better than anybody else, un- less they just are. The test by which values are measured, is that of serviceableness, not mere utility, to be sure, but serviceableness. Such a test is not crude nor artificial nor arbitrary. We say, and we say truly, that God is no respecter of persons. God does not make artificial or arbi- trary choices. And because that is so true we may reasonably expect God to adopt in His deal- ings with men this divinely reasonable standard. As do men, so does He apply the test of service- Ill 112 MISSIONS STBIKING HOME ableness ; only He must often have very different notions about what constitutes serviceableness. But, accepting what one must believe is God's standard of judgment, it need not appear egotistic in us to maintain that God has just now about the biggest and broadest and most eternally impor- tant use for the American people among all the peoples upon the earth. He has given them the finest opportunities to do the things most worth while for the whole world ; has put them in a po- sition where what they say and what they do count for the good or the bad of the whole world ; has made it vital to the interests of all the rest of the people what sort of people they are and how well prepared they are to do their part in the universal economy. There is nothing in all that to become egotistic about. The swelled head is no essential feature of Americanism. Indeed it will essentially incapacitate Americans from do- ing the service which God evidently has designed for them. The situation rather suggests being humble, feeling the incomparable responsibility and getting ready in the fullest degree to be ser- viceable. A great deal depends upon what we mean by that expression, the American people. It is worth while putting ourselves at some pains to reckon up who all and what all are included in the category. Who are the American people! I and my friends, my neighbours and their friends, and that is all, if we are bumptious enough to be the swelled-head sort of Americans, " E PLUKIBUS UNUM OF GRACE 113 or little enough to be jingo Americans, or blind enough not to see what service God means to put Americans to. To guard against any such blind- ness or littleness or bumptiousness, it is well to be at some pains to analyze that composite, kaleidoscopic idea which the expression, the American people, represents. It makes a great difference, that they are so many, and it perhaps makes an even greater difference, as God reckons differences that they are so various. A rough catalogue of them will help us to understand how true it is that God is no respecter of persons. To make the sweep of the field the more complete we may well begin farthest away, and move in, so to speak, from the outer edges to the centre. There are the Indians off there, 285,000 of them. Some of us may have forgotten them, or are of the notion that they do not count. But there they are, so many, and they are growing no fewer all the time. They are not all American citizens, but all are moving in that direction. They are moving by the way of amalgamation, if one will take reckoning of no other way. In Oklahoma there are 100,000 of them, and only 25,000 are of pure blood. If you like that figure of speech, it will do to say that they are being woven into the warp and woof of Americanism. They are scattered quite over the whole country. They live in New York, Pennsylvania, the new state of Oklahoma, the Dakotas and the central north, Idaho and the northwest, Arizona and the southwest, Alaska. The government's expendi- 114 MISSIONS STRIKING HOME ture of four or five millions annually upon their education, and well about ten millions a year on all lines of service, puts them on the cash books, if you fancy searching for them there. They have considerable money of their own. Indeed they are the wealthiest Americans amongst us. The per capita personal holdings of real estate among some of the tribes are greater than through any other cross section of our population. They are no longer savage ; none dangerously so. There will never be another Indian war, not even a skirmish. Some of the tribes are besotted. Yet they are not hopeless pagans nor degenerates. Sane educational and missionary effort has al- ready demonstrated capacities which demand only more and better of the same treatment to insure their ample development. The spirit which made them doughty warriors in the past and their very capacity for far extremes of vice to-day, only await sanctification to make them splendidly pure and forceful in the reckonings of the king- dom of God. There are 6,000 Presbyterians among them, I have reason to know, and some are remarkably fine specimens of that order. Two hundred and eighty -five thousand Indians. There are some American people. Three hundred and fifty thousand Mexicans. Call them American Mexicans to distinguish them from the Mexican Mexicans across the Southern boundary of our national domain. Se- clusive, suspicious of our Americanism, back- ward in civilization. Sired of the Spaniard of "E PLUKIBUS UNUM" OF GEACE 115 Castile, and Cordova, and Madrid; claiming as mother the sisters of the Montezumas and Aztecs of ancient glory. Inheriting vices, doubtless, from both father and mother. Awaiting a re- deeming power which shall bring out and sanc- tify the rich virtues of both father and mother. Needing the illumination of God's truth to re- deem them from pagan ignorance ; needing the energy of a Christly redemption to lift them out of their shiftlessness ; needing the large liberty of the Sons of God to make them good American citizens. Needing and already gaining much in that line. Needing more and better of the same. Three hundred and fifty thousand Mexicans. There are more Americans. A mountain range in the central South of hitherto such peculiar inaccessibility as to con- stitute itself a distinct section of our national domain. Beached now to a limited degree by the forces of the industrial awakening and gen- eral rejuvenescence of the South. Extending from near the Atlantic seaboard to well-nigh the centre of the continent. Inhabited by a million and a half, three millions, five millions of people ; estimate them few or many according as you extend the section westward. That many more American people ; people in whose veins courses the good blood of the covenanter and cavalier. The purest Anglo-Saxon stock on the continent. Original Americans, if the Indians will allow them the use of the term. So original indeed as to have remained stagnant. Many of 116 MISSIONS STEIKING HOME them 100 years behind the times in the material arts of civilization ; some of them 2,000 years be- hind the times in the enlightening benizons of religion. Yet a people who have already af- forded Church and State many of the finest, stur- diest characters and most illustrious statesmen of our history, and who have many more of the same sort to furnish for the going after them. The mountaineers of the South, a fine lot of peo- ple, several millions of them. More American people. Mormons. Shall we say Mormon Americans t Yes, they are that, though they may not in their present disloyalty altogether fancy being called so. A whole state full, and other states going that way. One of their statesmen occupying a seat in our federal congress, and since the recent action of the United States Senate, settling down to occupy it more comfortably still. Multitudes of people so far deluded as to support a reaction- ary hierarchic despotism, a perpetual clog upon our advancing civilization, an alien imperium in imperio. A system which subsists upon ignorance if not upon vice. A system which needs only the enlightenment of the Mormon people themselves for its destruction ; a system which is not in the last analysis, a political issue, however politics may now be entangled, but is rather an educa- tional issue, and an opportunity for the gospel of the great Liberalizer, and Enlightener of men's lives. A state full, two states, three states, par- tially filled with superstition-bound Mormon "E PLUBIBUS UNUM" OF GEACE 117 people, who, once unbound, have it in them to become the flower of our liberty-loving American citizenship. More American people. Negroes ; ten millions of them. Presenting the most complicated social and industrial and moral and religious problem of all of our many. A down- trodden race, yet rising. Eising to vio- lence here and there. Eising also to nobler ideals and fuller appreciation of their rights and duties as freemen. Producing an increasing number of eminent orators and educators and bankers and men of letters. Developing a remarkable race pride, in spite of their slave history. A short time ago I heard him who is often styled the Moses of the race declare before an audience of five or ten thousand people, * l If after my experi- ence in living the human life, I were to be born again upon this earth, and the Great Spirit should offer me the option of what race of all the races I should choose to be born into, I should say, 'Make me an American Negro.' 7 ' That may seem astonishing for any one to say, but that eminent man said it, and seemed to consider it much of a commonplace in the saying. A great problem, the negro is, doubtless, on every ac- count, but plain human in all his essential needs, and altogether human too in the grand possibili- ties of his future. The Afro-American ; ten millions of him. Mixed Spanish and other elemental races. Islands full of them. The Philippines so far- distant that for the most part the religious work 118 MISSIONS STKIKING HOME is carried on as a foreign missionary enterprise ; and, in many deplorable ways, our federal con- gress treats the Filipinos as foreigners. Cuba, close at hand, full of people so eager to become Americans that they will allow no government of their own to stand, and in some quarters threaten deliberately to create riot if self-government is thrust upon them. All the other islands of recent acquisition clamouring for American things and imitating American ways, good and bad. You and I know what makes Americanism really great. Surely these newly-awakened, inquiring people should not be permitted to remain in doubt as to what those ennobling elements are. We cannot afford to offer them the form without the substance. The islands of the near seas and the Isthmus of Panama, full of people, and soon to be on the very highway of the world's com- merce and international enterprise. But there are more yet, a lot more. Immi- grants trooping in from the other side of the ocean, from over every sea, from every continent and island under heaven ; trooping in, crowding in, crushing each other and the rest of us in their eager stampede. One million two hundred and eighty-five thousand, three hundred and forty- nine of them in one year's time 5 more than a hundred thousand each month, and still coming. Representatives of twenty-five different races, come from forty different countries. Yesterday they were Italian, Bohemian, Bulgarian, Croatian, Slovenian, Dalmatian, Buthenian, Norwegian, "E PLUEIBUS UNUM" OF GEACE Armenian, Eounianian, East Indian, West In- dian, Lithuanian, Hertzogovinian, Scandinavian, Eussian, Servian, Syrian, African, Austrian, Polish, Turkish, Irish, Finnish, Flemish, Eng- lish, Spanish, Swedish, Danish, Chinese, Portu- guese, Japanese, Polak, Slovak, Eussniak, French and German, Dutch and Welsh, Magyar and Scotch, Korean and Montenegrin, Greek and Hebrew. To-day they are Americans, or are trying to be. They have heard the great Ajner- ican eagle screaming out his E pluribus unum, and they have come over to give him something really to scream about. They have all come after at least some of the things which Americanism is prepared to supply, but millions of them have the meagerest conception of the best thing to be found. It would be wretchedly bad for them and for all the rest of us if they should be permitted to return whence they came or should lie down and die here, never having learned that best thing for which American civilization stands, and which has endowed it with its greatness. People, and people, and more people; millions of them ; and a new million coming each twelve- month. But that is not all. We have all this time been skirting the boundaries, toying with the fringes, so to speak. These we have fallen into the habit of styling the exceptional classes of our population. There is now the rest, exceptional only in being exceptionally important. There are those millions to be reckoned in, and now 120 MISSIONS STRIKING HOME fifty millions, sixty millions, sixty-five millions of uncommon, common Americans, sons of their fathers, people who have made this land of ours one of the finest, and all too nearly the wickedest nation upon earth. The most sordidly contented, and the most divinely discontented lot of people the Lord ever got together. The race in all the history of the world the most capable both of virtue and of vice, and not too backward, at least in the latter particular, about revealing their capabilities. These splendid, wicked, in- dustrious, careless, godly, godless, Christian, un- Christian, uncommon, common American people. God bless them ! as He certainly means to make of them a blessing. And that completes the reckoning. Ah ! that completes the enumeration, but num- bers do not count for all in the final reckoning. There are some eighty-five or ninety millions of them, all told, but that is far from telling the full tale. The problems of the divine purpose and of human destiny are not simple sums in arithmetic. You can never discover what God meant in creating people and putting them here in this world, merely by counting people's noses. The Declaration of Independence observes that all men are created free and equal, and that they are endowed indefeasibly with certain common and inalienable rights, which is all true enough, to be sure; but it does not say that all men are appointed the same duties in the universal economy and that all carry the same responsi- "E PLTJEIBUS USTUM" OF GEACE 121 bilities. We often remark that one soul is as precious in God's sight as another, by which we mean something which is very true, and which needs much to be emphasized. But that is not denying that certain people hold positions of peculiar importance in the enterprise of grace. The American has no business strutting about, boasting that he is better than other people ; for he is not, and his strutting goes far to demon- strate that he is not. But the American does not know his place in the divine economy and in the issues of human destiny unless he understands that he carries a tremendous load of responsi- bility for other people as well as for hims It is not enough, therefore, simply to remark that here are eighty-five or ninety millions of people. These bulk a deal larger than figures can make appear when it is reckoned who they are and what God expects to use them for. Home missions are not alone missioning at home. They are by the very necessities of the situation the most effective sort of world- wide missions, since they are getting the American most effectively ready for those important functions for which God has evidently designed him among the peo- ples of the earth. There is nothing which can mean more for the good of the whole world and for the advancement of the kingdom of God in all the earth, than that the American people should be downright, upright, inright, outright Christian, and so prepared for the Christly mis- sion for which God is ready to use them. 122 MISSIONS STEIKING HOME E pluribus unum is stamped upon many of our coins and national emblems. It is wholesome that we remind ourselves that the American people are many and potent. It is equally im- portant to observe that they are one in the economy of grace, that they are wrapped in the one spiritual bundle. When the patriot framers of the Declaration of Independence arose from the table at which they had signed the immortal document, and, as the consciousness of the grave issues of the moment came over them, one of the number sententiously remarked, "Now, we must all hang together." "Yes," echoed another, "for if we do not, we shall hang separately." It required nerve to be jocular on such an occa- sion. The little quip was a profound truth. It was far more profound than the flippant speaker could have realized, serious as was the situation for those hardy patriots. It was the immediate application of a principle which operates through all society and is especially applicable to the national life to which those daring men were that moment giving birth, the American common- wealth. We go up and down together ; the peo- ple of any social order do, more or less truly. We American people do by virtue of the peculiar sensitiveness of our national and social organism. When we fall to teetering, part of us soaring high, and part of us dropping deep, the very foundation of things in the centre begins to totter. Two generations of orators and states- men have lauded the sagacity of Abraham Lin- "E PLUEIBUS UNUM" OF GEACE 123 coin who dared in a critical moment to declare, " This Eepublic cannot endure half slave, half free." At the time and in its immediate appli- cation, it was a daring thing to say. Of course it is true ; the underlying truth is far more pro- found than Lincoln's application of it suggested. A nation like ours cannot endure half of much of anything. We cannot remain long balanced on the thin edge of any moral or spiritual reality. Make the best of a condition of unstable equilib- rium, the instability is a hazard. The spiritualities are peculiarly sensitive to the laws of gravitation. Water does not begin to seek its lowest level with the promptness with which humanity responds to a similar law in the spiritual realm. We move in the mass, we Americans do. We do, simply because we are people, and more especially because we are Amer- icans. We do whether we altogether want to or not. We do, in the last analysis, because we have to, because the free operation of the spirit- uals demands that we shall. It may be difficult for some to discern the con- nection between the morally and spiritually neg- lected communities in the distance, and the fair- featured youngsters who play upon our door- steps, but the connection is established, and all the remoteness of the parties involved and the disparities of station and temper, cannot wholly destroy the connection's vitality. The very fluc- tuations and volatility of our modern life are ren- dering more vital our spiritual unity. We 124 MISSIONS STBIKING HOME Americans are astonishingly agile travellers. It is idle to look twice in the same spot for any of us. Some reckon this trait our national glory. It makes, it may readily appear, for our national health. But it is easy to understand also that it is bound to spread disease, if there is any. The doctors have pretty well established the germ theory for medical practice. Every disease is more or less transmissible. Not contagious, may be, in the old sense of the word, but far more contagious, in the real sense, than the old prac- titioners ever imagined. The most virulent maladies are often contracted from the slightest touch, from a gust of wind as one hastens past an infected spot, from a chance brush of the cloth- ing in the jostle of the street. These are purely physical transactions, chemical precipitations. The spirituals are far more delicate and sensitive still. None can estimate the potency of these in- timate and delicate spiritual contacts. And the points of such contact are multiplying at a marvellous rate. The country people are crowding in to the cities, and all the capitalists, East and West, cannot build electric railroads fast enough to carry the city people out to the country. Westerners are flocking East, and wise old Horace Greeleys are still charging the rising generation, "Go West, young man." The par- ticular phraseology of the advice is now being modified, and they are saying much of the time, "Go South, young man; go South." But the variation only introduces a new complication. "E PLUEIBUS UNUM" OF GEACE 125 The lust of gold on the Yukon precipitates a stampede of people to Alaska, and the same lust of gold on Wall Street draws in men to that maelstrom like grains of wheat into the hopper of a grist mill. Passions, ambitions, friendships, animosities, all unite to keep us perpetually on the move. There is no community so staid and confirmed in its ways as not to feel the movement of the currents. Even those to whom the same spot is home from birth to death, are really no more ex- empt than the rest from the contagion of the spirituals. Wherever any of us may live, we are reading pretty much the same books and papers. We are sharing each other's ideas as fluently as if each were equipped with a Marconigraphic apparatus ; and ideas are the very health or dis- ease of the soul. People in different sections speak with varying accents, but they are all say- ing much the same things. Even our slang has now become universalized. There are two great slang factories : the Bowery, and the wilds of Arizona ; and the entire country is kept con- stantly supplied with the latest output of both. Each newspaper East and West rehashes the de- tails now of the shocking murder scene and the more revolting social debauch in the Madison Square Garden, and again of the life story of that prodigy of crime on the witness chair in Idaho. Months and months ago an event transpired in San Francisco which stirred the nation to the re- motest bounds of its life. Of course there were 126 MISSIONS STRIKING HOME the earthquake and fire, but I have nothing so tame as that in mind. It was this : a school- teacher one day told two or three or half a dozen brown-skinned children that they should go home or to another school, and to this very day sober editors the country over, and some not so sober, are sagely discussing the grave national and in- ternational issues which are likely to ensue if we don't watch out. It is always making a difference to all of us how things are going anywhere and everywhere. It must appear therefore that the neglect of the spiritual needs of any section or race or rank of our people is unreasonable and foolish and inen- aceful and suicidal and all that. It is more j it is impossible. The neglected simply will not stay neglected. You know how it is with a child. Spoiled, he is not content with being spoiled ; he becomes a spoiler. This is a case one with the doctors' disease germs : they grow and multiply faster than one can count. Bad conditions do not merely remain conditions : they turn at once into forces. But that is not all, or the most important thing to be said. The chances are that you and I will never be scared into doing our duty by the spir- itually neglected. If we wait to minister cleans- ing to the unclean till after we are forced into it by the jeopardy of ourselves becoming befouled, that ministry, I fear, will be shamefully delayed. Let us not preach the gospel for the menace of not doing so. Let us rather share with God His "E PLUBIBUS UNUM" OF GEACE 127 glorious enterprise. It is a great task you and I and God have assumed. It would not be worthy of us if it were not so. Perhaps you and I seem to be carrying a very small end of the load, and perhaps shame on us ! it is true that we are. But if we are, it is a gratuity on our part. It is not God's way to emphasize our insignificance. The very point of remark is that this of which we are a part is a great, closely articulated organism, and the articulation is growing more complete every day. No part of an organism is wholly in- significant ; it could not be so, even if it should try. No healthy American entertains a doubt of the destiny in the world economy marked by God for the American people. The very counsels of the Almighty are bound up in the issue of having the American people ready to do their part. You and I know what each American, white, black, brown, red, yellow, fair or swarthy, needs most : the illuminating, uplifting, steadying, soul-re- deeming power of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of men's lives. He needs it not alone for himself, but for all the rest and for all the world, since he holds in his power the shaping of so much of human destiny. Home missions offer a pro- gramme for the patriot, the Christian, the man or the woman who has sounded the purposes of God for His world through the ages.