Home Missions in Action Part 13

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The German poet, Goethe, a most penetrating thinker, declared that the prime quality of the real critic is sympathy. There is no other realizing and understanding approach to a man or a race.

"The significant ideals, the organized energy, the sustaining vitality of an alien people must be sought and understood in order to come into sympathetic touch with them." This is the only key to mutual understanding and respect.

It is especially needful that the Oriental should be considered from this standpoint: in varying degrees, according to their race and standard, they lay a grave responsibility upon Home Missions.

By the tens of thousands they are here, Hindus, Chinese, Koreans, and j.a.panese, bringing their ancient faiths, raising their temples in our Christian land. Mohammedanism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Brahmanism, and many other alien and heathen faiths count their adherents by the thousands, while many one-time Christian folk are turning to the modern forms of these religions.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"They are all marching together with eager expectation on their upturned faces and the morning light s.h.i.+nes on them."

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

VI

SOURCES OF POWER

Lover of souls, indeed, But Lover of bodies too, Seeing in human flesh The G.o.d s.h.i.+ne through; Hallowed be Thy name, And, for the sake of Thee, Hallowed be all men, For Thine they be.

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

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

And Thine shall the Kingdom be, Thou Lord of Love and Pain, Conqueror over death By being slain.

And we, with lives like Thine, Shall cry in the great day when Thou comest to claim Thine own, "All hail! Amen."

--W.J. Dawson.

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

Fundamental in all projects for the upbuilding of a worldly or a spiritual kingdom, or an individual character, lies the ideal.

Action, growth, conduct, spring from the creating ideal and in the process of development they advance and enlarge together.

"The ideal is the primary moving power in the human spirit,"

Professor Gidding says; "into his ideal enter man's estimate of the past and his forecast of the future--his scientific a.n.a.lysis and his poetic feeling, his soberest judgment and his religious aspiration."

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

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

The rich heritage bestowed by a Was.h.i.+ngton, a Lincoln, a Lee, a John Eliot, a Charles Sumner, a Marcus Whitman, a Sheldon Jackson, a Harriet Beecher Stowe, a Frances Willard, and a host of others, const.i.tutes the infinitely precious treasury of our national life.

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

From the homes of all, where her being began She took what she gave to man.

Justice, that knew no station, Belief as soul decreed, Free air for aspiration, Free force for independent deed.

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

In one strong race all races here unite.

Tongues meet in hers, hereditary foemen Forget their sword and slogan, kith and clan.

'Twas glory, once, to be a Roman: She makes it glory, now, to be a man!