Elemental 
 
 Forces 
 
 In Home Missions 
 
 ♦ LEMUEL C. BARNES * 
 
/. /^. />5", 
 
 <^^ PRINCETON, N. J. *^ 
 
 Purchased by the Hamill Missionary Fund. 
 
 
 1938 ' -^^^Uel ca7 7 / 
 
 
ELEMENTAL FORCES IN 
 HOME MISSIONS 
 
ELEMENTAL FORCES 
 IN HOME MISSIONS 
 
 BY 
 
 LEMUEL CALL BARNES 
 
 Author of " Two Thousand Years of Missions Before Carey," 
 "Shall Islam Rule Africa f Etc. 
 
 JAN 19 1915 
 
 New York Chicago Toronto 
 
 Fleming H. Revell Company 
 
 London and Edinburgh 
 
Copyright, 1912, by 
 FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 
 
 New York : 158 Fifth Avenue 
 Chicago: 123 North Wabash Ave. 
 Toronto: 25 Richmond Street, W. 
 London: 21 Paternoster Square 
 Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street 
 
FORESPEECH 
 
 ALL events have zestful meaning to the 
 modern man when seen in their 
 genetic relations. We want to know 
 how great forces are begotten and what they 
 bget. Christianizing a new continent is the 
 most stupendous of evolutionary processes. 
 We care more to learn the dynamics of it than 
 the statistics. 
 
 The undertakings of material civilization 
 involve large principles. They are titanic in 
 scope. But the forces at play in the American 
 missionary enterprise are vaster — are nothing 
 less than cosmic. The following chapters are 
 intended to show the connection between some 
 of these universal, elemental factors and their 
 concrete products. 
 
 Chapter One show^ that our nation more 
 than any other was conceived for the purpose 
 of spiritual leadership on the whole planet and 
 that it is now coming to that high destiny or 
 — missing it. 
 
 Chapter Two shows that the entire upward 
 march of humanity by means of vast migra- 
 5 
 
6 Forespeech 
 
 tions of races over the face of the earth is 
 coming to its final and far greatest develop- 
 ment in present-day America, making this the 
 crisis of human evolution. 
 
 Chapter Three shows that the primitive 
 processes of creation are contemporary in the 
 very highest realm, the creation of communi- 
 ties and commonwealths, and are acting with 
 a swiftness never before approached. 
 
 Chapter Four shows that in this land the 
 fundamental principle of human welfare, the 
 sense of social justice, is now coming to the 
 keenest activity and widest application ever 
 known. 
 
 Chapter Five shows that the tie of neighbor- 
 hood which is at the basis of all relationships 
 in time and eternity is coming to a new inter- 
 national meaning on this continent. 
 
 Chapter Six shows that the great genetic 
 factors can achieve their natural end only 
 when all the forces of the Kingdom of Heaven 
 on earth adopt the definite method of cooper- 
 ation in place of both the traditional but prac- 
 tically discredited methods of segregation and 
 consolidation. 
 
 L. C. B. 
 New York City. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 I. International Ideals 9 
 
 II. Ethnic Migrations 29 
 
 III. Creative Pioneering 42 
 
 IV. Social Justice 65 
 
 V. National Neighborhood 73 
 
 VI. Cooperative Action 91 
 
International Ideals 
 
 " All nations have their message from on high, 
 Each the messiah of some central thought 
 For the fulfillment and delight of man." 
 
 THE poet-statesman Lowell sets forth in 
 these lines a fact of the first magni- 
 tude. The highest achievement of 
 any nation is to perceive clearly that it has a 
 messianic function and then to perform it with 
 intelligent, unwavering, ever increasing pur- 
 pose. Most nations do it blindly and so in a 
 bungling way — commonly a self-destructive 
 way. That to a tragic degree was true of the 
 ancient nation which was most aware of its 
 messianic mission. Shall it be so with the 
 United States? 
 
 We may go faster and get further in finding 
 an answer, as well as keep together best, if we 
 start with a few elemental facts, the simplest 
 kind of certainties in nature and history. 
 9 
 
10 Elemental Forces in Home Missions 
 
 Everything that lives (except man) is the 
 product of two factors. Man is largely — more 
 largely than most suppose — the product of the 
 same two factors, heredity and environment. 
 But in man, along with these two, there is a 
 third factor which gives him uniqueness, dif- 
 ference from every other living thing. This 
 factor is personal choice, self-determination. 
 This it is that makes human life sublime. 
 
 This element belongs to each man by him- 
 self. Since, however, there is no such thing 
 as a human being out of organic relation to 
 other human beings, this element of subHmity 
 belongs to groups of people as well as to the 
 individuals in the groups. Families, churches, 
 cities, states, nations, are not only what their 
 heredity and environment make them, but also 
 what they make themselves. 
 
 The classic instance is Rome. She made 
 herself magnificent and then ruined herself — 
 gave laws to regulate the human race, but went 
 to pieces herself. Back of Rome there loomed 
 on the continent of Africa, an empire so vast 
 and solid that its pyramids have survived the 
 sand-tides of Sahara and its hieroglyphics 
 have developed into the very alphabets of 
 civilization. Beyond Europe and Africa, on 
 the mother-continent of Asia, there is a similar 
 
International Ideals 11 
 
 story of a prodigious civilization, or rather 
 series of civilizations, along the Euphrates. 
 They played a great part in the development 
 of history and then tumbled into oblivion. 
 Who dares to assert or to tacitly assume that 
 our own tremendous civilization on the conti- 
 nent of North America is outside the realm 
 of self-determination and therefore possible 
 self-termination? In view of these broadest, 
 simplest facts of nature and history, it stands 
 our nation in hand, instead of drifting, to 
 steer. As to our having a messianic function 
 in the world we may learn best from the 
 nation which had such a function most un- 
 mistakably. When Frederick the Great, petu- 
 lantly, imperiously, demanded of his chaplain, 
 proof in one word of the reality of God's hand 
 in human history, the answer flashed like a bolt 
 from the sky, " Sire ! the Jews." One of the 
 three recorded times when Jesus Christ, the 
 replacer of Judaism, the founder of cosmo- 
 politanism, stood face to face with outside peo- 
 ple, he affirmed that Israel was messianic. It 
 wias at the moment, too, when he was making 
 one of his clearest declarations of the univer- 
 sality of true religion. Yet he insisted that 
 " Salvation is of the Jews." This is supreme 
 endorsement of the messianic ideal of a nation. 
 
12 Elemental Forces in Home Missions 
 
 Let us put side by side the messianic con- 
 sciousness of the Jewish nation and of the 
 American nation. Messianic as a word means 
 anointed, as an idea it means set apart for 
 special service, anointing being a feature of 
 oriental Inauguration ritual. Priests were 
 anointed, kings were anointed. In the concep- 
 tion of the Jews their whole nation was 
 anointed. 
 
 " Thou wentest forth for the salvation 
 of thy people, for the salvation of thine 
 janointed." (Hab. 3 : 13.) 
 
 The Jews were a chosen people, set apart for 
 a special function among the nations of the 
 earth — in short a messianic nation. 
 
 Think for a moment of that splendid con- 
 ception of theirs. Other ancient nations 
 thought of nothing but living for themselves 
 and that all outside were important only as 
 tributary to them. The Jews had that feeling 
 in common with all the rest of the world. It 
 was, and is to this day, ingrained with them. 
 But in spite of that inveterate feeling, they 
 kept rising out of it — clear out of themselves. 
 
 Invisible forces at play underneath the com- 
 mon crust of national conceit kept throwing 
 up mountain peaks of world-wide vision. The 
 Bible is an Andean range of such peaks. They 
 
International Ideals 18 
 
 glitter in the sunlight along every period of 
 Jewish history, patriarchal epoch, legislative 
 epoch, imperial epoch, international epoch. 
 Take even the most primitive, pre-tribal period 
 when there was nothing yet but a wandering 
 Bedouin family, " In thee shall all the fam- 
 ilies of the earth be blessed." That is not an 
 incidental phrase. It is the vital part of the 
 story. It is the very climax of God's original 
 call of Abram. It is repeated again and again 
 and yet again. It is a pivotal idea on which the 
 history of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob turned. 
 Their commission was world-wide. 
 
 This conception of the international meaning 
 of Jewish history keeps emerging all the way 
 along from the story of the patriarchs to the 
 apocalypse of John. There are surprising 
 traces of it in the legislative epochs. In the 
 imperial epoch it rose in splendor. In Messi- 
 anic psalms there are matchless strains of inter- 
 national anthem. 
 
 The conception naturally reached its greatest 
 clearness in the distinctively international 
 epochs of Jewish history when Israel was being 
 thrown like a shuttle back and forth among 
 the great nations of antiquity, weaving in the 
 thread of a universal purpose. It is the over- 
 mastering thought of that mighty prophecy of 
 
14 Elemental Forces in Home Missions 
 
 The Exile, the second part of the book of 
 Isaiah. 
 
 " It is too light a thing that thou shouldst 
 be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob 
 and to restore the preserved of Israel: I will 
 also give thee for a light to the Gentiles, that 
 thou mayst be my salvation unto the end of 
 the earth." " And nations shall come to thy 
 light and kings to the brightness of thy rising." 
 It was too light a thing for Isaiah, a too trivial 
 thought, that the nation was merely for its 
 own sake. It was for the sake of all nations. 
 
 This messianic conception is the true miracle 
 of the Bible. Other miracles are paltry com- 
 pared with it. Take the book of Jonah. It is 
 childish to stop at the fish story. The one 
 stupendous miracle of that book is the one 
 which it was written on purpose to tell, the 
 miracle of salvation brought by a reluctant Jew 
 to a great, hostile, heathen nation. 
 
 So the Jews, in spite of extreme tendencies 
 to narrowness and provincialism, rose to lofty 
 visions of a universal mission. 
 
 Now how about our own nation? We com- 
 monly think of its forefathers as being driven 
 hither by persecution and as, both by inherit- 
 ance and by bitter experience, having as much 
 justification as people ever could have for nar- 
 
International Ideals 15 
 
 row and exclusive conceptions. At the very 
 outset,, however, they conceived of their under- 
 taking as a messianic enterprise. 
 
 William Penn in 1681, the Charter of 
 Pennsylvania having just been granted him, 
 wrote to friends these remarkable words : 
 
 " Because I have been somewhat exercised 
 at times about the nature and end of govern- 
 ment among men, it is reasonable to expect that 
 I should endeavor to establish a just and right- 
 eous one in this province, that others may take 
 example by it — truly this my heart's desire. 
 For the nations want a precedent. ... I do, 
 therefore, desire the Lord's wisdom to guide 
 me and those that may be concerned with me 
 that we may do the thing that is truly wise and 
 just." 
 
 This was the dominant thought in Penn's 
 mind. To another correspondent he expressed 
 it this way : " For my country, I eyed the Lord 
 in obtaining it and more was I drawn inward 
 to look to him and to owe it to his hand and 
 power than to any other way. I have so 
 obtained it and desire to keep it that I may 
 not be unworthy of his love but do that which 
 may answer his kind providence and serve his 
 truth and people that an example may be set 
 
16 Elemental Forces in Home Missions 
 
 up to the nations. There may be room there, 
 though not here, for such an holy experiment." 
 
 You find it exphcitly declared, not only in 
 the utterances of the religious leaders but also 
 in the state documents of the first generation 
 of English Colonists, as for example the char- 
 ter of Massachusetts granted by Charles I 
 in 1629. It was declared that bringing the 
 native inhabitants of the new world into the 
 realm of the Messiah is " the principale ende 
 of this plantacon." 
 
 It is not wanting in the earliest of them all, 
 the Virginia Charter of 1609 and the New 
 England Patent of 1620. Precisely the same 
 statement is made in them both ; " The princi- 
 pal effect which we can desire or expect of this 
 action is the conversion of the people in those 
 parts into the true worship of God and Chris- 
 tian religion." The redemption of the strange 
 race of men inhabiting the new continent was 
 " the principal effect " desired. The American 
 colonists may have fallen from such ideals as 
 frequently and as far as did the Israelites of 
 old, but they had them. Our nation was cra- 
 dled in messianic feeling. 
 
 It is one of the most significant facts in the 
 history of the human race to which attention 
 never has been duly directed that the first gov- 
 
International Ideals 17 
 
 emment completely democratic on the planet 
 and the endeavor to evangelize the occupants 
 of one of its hemispheres were born at the 
 same time, conceived in the same cultivated 
 brain, engendered by the same throbbing heart. 
 The brain had been developed in the ancient 
 seat of Anglo-Saxon liberal culture — Cam- 
 bridge, England. The heart was a glowing 
 Keltic heart. Prof. Sellinek of Heidelberg, 
 has recently affirmed what Gervinus the Ger- 
 man political historian long ago pointed out 
 and all scholarly students sufficiently detached 
 to be impartial say, that the first embodiment 
 on earth of complete democracy and the orig- 
 inal from which it is now spreading through- 
 out the world was the colony founded by Roger 
 Williams. But Roger Williams was also the 
 first apostle of the English-speaking race to the 
 pagan races of America. For more than forty 
 years their evangelization was his chief occu- 
 pation. He was banished from Massachusetts 
 more because of his stout defense of the rights 
 of the Aborigines against greedy encroach- 
 ment than because of theological differences. 
 Later he was the only competent interpreter 
 as well as peacemaker between Massachusetts 
 and the outraged Indians. To them the last 
 
18 Elemental Forces in Home Missions 
 
 years of his life, as well as the first in America, 
 were lovingly devoted. 
 
 Thus complete democracy and Christian 
 missions in our country were twin-born. 
 
 By the time our nation had grown to inde- 
 pendent manhood, the messianic conception 
 had taken on new forms and developed world- 
 wide scope. At the laying of the corner stone 
 of the Bunker Hill monument, Daniel Webster 
 said: 
 
 " Our history hitherto proves that the pop- 
 ular form of government is practicable, and 
 that with wisdom and knowledge men may 
 govern themselves ; and the duty incumbent on 
 us is, to preserve the consistency of this cheer- 
 ing example, and take care that nothing may 
 weaken its authority with the world. If, in our 
 case, the representative system ultimately fail, 
 popular governments must be pronounced im- 
 possible. No combination of circumstances 
 more favorable to the experiment can ever be 
 expected to occur. The last hope of mankind 
 therefore rests with us." 
 
 Other nations early discovered that our 
 country was the seed-plot of freedom for the 
 old world as well as the new. One hundred 
 and twenty-five years ago the Emperor of Aus- 
 tria wrote to his minister in the Netherlands, 
 
International Ideals 19 
 
 " France, by the assistance which she afforded 
 to the Americans, gave birth to reflections on 
 freedom." He was quite right. The French 
 Revohition followed ours. Frenchmen regard 
 their " Declaration of the Rights of Man," 
 made in 1789, as the greatest gift that France 
 has made to mankind. A European Doctor of 
 Laws has recently published a book showing 
 paragraph by paragraph in parallel columns 
 that the French Declaration of the Rights of 
 Man was taken from similar declarations pre- 
 viously made and published abroad by five or 
 six of our American Colonies. 
 
 A few years ago the English founder of the 
 Review of Reviews, William T. Stead, pub- 
 lished a volume entitled " The Americanization 
 of the World." 
 
 The most eminent English statesman of 
 recent times, William E. Gladstone, who was 
 not over- fond of America, frankly said: 
 " America will probably become what we 
 (England) are now, the head servant in the 
 great household of the world, the employer of 
 all employed; because her service will be the 
 most and ablest. We have no more title 
 against her than Venice, or Genoa or Holland 
 had against us." 
 
 Mr. Bryce, the English Ambassador to the 
 
20 Elemental Forces in Home Missions 
 
 United States has well said of the principles of 
 our nation that " they are believed to disclose 
 and display the type of institutions toward 
 which, as by a law of fate, the rest of civilized 
 iYiankind are forced to move, some with 
 swifter, others with slower, but all with unrest- 
 ing feet." 
 
 It is not a matter of national conceit, it is 
 a mere fact of history that our form of govern- 
 ment has been a model, at least has been eagerly 
 studied, not only by the twenty-one American 
 Republics, but also by the constitution makers 
 of France, Germany, Switzerland, Australia, 
 South Africa, Japan, and now at last by the 
 great embodiment of old world stolidity, 
 China. 
 
 The so-called Monroe Doctrine is one ex- 
 pression of our conviction that we have a mes- 
 sianic function. In the days immediately 
 before us, the days of the Panama Canal, that 
 old doctrine, ninety-year-old doctrine, is com- 
 ing to new, most critical application. In the 
 direction of Europe, too, our messianic func- 
 tion has new and portentous bearings. 
 
 The report of a special investigation made by 
 the Italian Government declares that the mil- 
 lions of American dollars are of small value 
 
International Ideals 21 
 
 compared with the American spirit brought to 
 Italy by returning emigrants. 
 
 Prof. Steiner in his fascinating books has 
 shown how other portions of southern Europe 
 are being transformed in the same way. 
 
 At the Queen's Jubilee in 1897 the Colonial 
 Premiers of the British Empire were most 
 loyal to the Queen, but the special representa- 
 tive of the United States at the celebration, 
 Whitelaw Reid, after watching them closely 
 and talking with them freely, declared that 
 they were all " downright Yankees." 
 
 " I mean that these men are not in the least 
 like British Ministers or any of your English 
 politicians. Their point of view is American. 
 Their political ideas are the same as ours. 
 They are loyal to the Queen, no doubt, but that 
 is a thing apart. In their work-a-day politics 
 they are as Republican as ourselves. They 
 start from the same principles, they reason in 
 the same way, and they arrive at the same con- 
 clusions. Not one of them would tolerate a 
 House of Lords in his own colony, or an estab- 
 lished Church. Even on Free Trade their 
 ideas are more American than British. In 
 talking to them I am never conscious of that 
 break of gauge which I constantly feel in talk- 
 ing to a British statesman." 
 
22 Elemental Forces in Home Missions 
 
 It is ours to give the light of liberty, not 
 only to the other nations on our own side of 
 the globe and to Europe, which is our father- 
 land, but also to Africa, and just now increas- 
 ingly to the vast continent of Asia. 
 
 It was in 1852 that Senator Seward, who 
 afterward became the great Secretary of State 
 under Abraham Lincoln, uttered a forecast 
 concerning the messianic destiny of our nation 
 in relation to the nations of Asia, which now 
 after sixty years we see, was nothing less than 
 true prophecy. 
 
 " Even the discovery of this continent and 
 its islands, and the organization of society and 
 government upon them, grand and important 
 as those events have been, were but conditional, 
 preliminary, and ancillary to the more sublime 
 result, now in the act of consummation — the 
 reunion of the two civilizations, which, having 
 parted on the plains of Asia four thousand 
 years ago, and having traveled ever afterward 
 in opposite directions around the world, now 
 meet again on the coasts and islands of the 
 Pacific ocean. Certainly no mere human event 
 of equal dignity and importance has ever 
 occurred upon the earth. It will be followed 
 by the equalization of the conditions of society 
 
International Ideals 23 
 
 and the restoration of the unity of the human 
 family." 
 
 " AS to those who cannot see how this move- 
 ment will improve the condition of Asia, I 
 leave them to reflect upon the improvements 
 in the condition of Europe since the discovery 
 and colonization of America. Who does not 
 see, then, that every year, hereafter, European 
 commerce, European thoughts and European 
 activity, although actually gaining greater 
 force, and European connections, although 
 actually becoming more intimate, will, never- 
 theless, ultimately sink in importance; while 
 the Pacific ocean, its shores, its islands, and the 
 vast regions beyond, will become the chief 
 theater of events in the world's great Here- 
 after." 
 
 Put along side this messianic prophecy con- 
 cerning our relation to Asia the words of 
 Asiatics themselves in February, 1912. A 
 committee of Chinese, representing, as it 
 affirmed, 900 Chinese students in the United 
 States, addressed a petition to President Taft 
 urging " Your Excellency's immediate recog- 
 nition of the first republic in Asia — the new 
 government of China." They say that "the 
 government of the United States has success- 
 fully preserved in the past its noble and unpar- 
 
24 Elemental Forces in Home Missions 
 
 alleled tradition of being always the first to 
 welcome into the family of nations the various 
 republics established one after another in the 
 different parts of the world." 
 
 " In effecting the remarkable transition of 
 China from a corrupt monarchy to a sound 
 republic, many of the most prominent leaders 
 have been guided by the practical knowledge 
 and experience of the blessings of free gov- 
 ernment which the hospitality and generosity 
 of this land of liberty have enabled them, in 
 their student days, to acquire within the pre- 
 cincts of its institutions of learning; and all of 
 them have been inspired by the luminous ser- 
 vice which the people of the United States have 
 rendered to the cause of republican China. We 
 avail ourselves of this opportunity to own our 
 debt of gratitude." 
 
 In rapid outline, having brought ourselves 
 face to face with the messianic ideal of the 
 Jews and the messianic call to America, we are 
 confronted by the most stupendous and awful 
 questions which any nation has faced since the 
 Jews rejected the world's Messiah, who was 
 at the same time their own Messiah. 
 
 When the " hour of visitation " came for 
 which the long centuries had been laboring, 
 Israel missed the supreme opportunity. That 
 
International Ideals 25 
 
 failure is the tragic scandal of the ages. One 
 Son of Israel, though of god-like composure, 
 wept when he saw it impending. 
 
 In the counsels of infinite Love the world 
 was not deprived of a Redeemer, but the 
 messianic nation was wrecked — frightfully 
 wrecked — becoming thenceforth driftwood on 
 the shores of time. 
 
 I, for one, have little patience with native 
 Americans who denature themselves by living 
 in Europe for years out of preference and then 
 come home to write petulent, almost hysterical 
 books about the disappearance of true Amer- 
 icans. Still, there would be no sting in what 
 they say if there were not some terrible truth 
 in it. 
 
 One needs to take no expatriated point of 
 view but only to look with clear vision of patri- 
 otic sanity in order to see possible perils loom- 
 ing high above the horizon. 
 
 The real perils of America, like those of old 
 Judea, are not external invasions from Italy 
 or anywhere, but internal failure to see that 
 the strenuous hour of American life has come, 
 when we ourselves determine whether our 
 nation is to rise to its sublime messianic 
 opportunity or is to miss the decisive moment 
 
26 Elemental Forces in Home Missions 
 
 through the blindness of Pharisaic tradition 
 and Sadducean self-complacency. 
 
 What fates have guaranteed that while 
 Rome could rise and fail, Egypt could rise 
 and fail. Babylonia could rise and fail, Assyria 
 could rise and fail, yea, even Israel, the chosen, 
 called and favored of Heaven could rise and 
 fail most desperately of all, America, the 
 chosen nation of the New World, can only 
 rise, and rise, but cannot fail? 
 
 Heredity can not guarantee it. We, too, are 
 the children of the same old human family. 
 
 Environment can not guarantee it. The 
 wide open spaces which have heretofore been 
 our insurance are now swiftly closing in with 
 struggling humanity. 
 
 When all the accumulated achievements of 
 modern science and invention commanded by 
 all the force of modern aggregation of capital 
 have constructed the completest embodiment 
 of human progress and fitly named it the 
 Titanic, it may crumple in an instant and crum- 
 ble at the touch of silent cosmic energy. 
 Early in our boasted twentieth century, when 
 we thought that we had organized the forces 
 of nature and maneuvered them beyond the 
 possibility of such perils as had wrecked the 
 less developed civilizations of the past, we are 
 
International Ideals 27 
 
 forced to exclaim with deeper meaning than 
 ever before, 
 
 "Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State! 
 Sail on, O union, strong and great! 
 Humanity with all its fears, 
 With all the hopes of future years 
 Is hanging breathless on thy fate ! " 
 
 The time has come for all Americans to seek 
 the substance of national stability in something 
 deeper than material achievements, in forces 
 finer than mere economic factors. Power to 
 withstand all possible shocks in the drift of 
 time and to override all obstructions, however 
 solid or hidden, is to be found only in forces 
 which are eternal, spiritual. 
 
 Nothing but an open mind to see the new 
 necessities, and an alert will to sacrifice in 
 meeting them can insure for a second century 
 our messianic Republic. It will not do to prate 
 about " manifest destiny." The most " elect 
 race " that ever lived fumbled its destiny. So 
 can we. But we must not. Nay, we will not 
 
 "Land that we love! Thou Future of the 
 World! 
 
 Keep thou thy starry forehead as the dome 
 
28 Elemental Forces in Home Missions 
 
 All white, and to the eternal Dawn inclined ! 
 Thou art not for thyself, but for mankind, 
 And to despair of thee were to despair 
 Of man, of man's high destiny, of God! 
 
 To despair of thee! Ah, no! 
 For thou thyself art Hope; Hope of the World 
 thou art ! " 
 
 — "The Great Remembrance," R. W. Gilder. 
 
II 
 
 Ethnic Migrations 
 
 HUMANITY is being possessed, in- 
 formed, inspired by the life of God. 
 " The life of the ages," — as a recent 
 admirable translation of the New Testament 
 renders the phrase " eternal life," that epitome 
 of the gospel according to John, — this life of 
 the ages is coming into the fleeting lives of men 
 more and more. The most important discov- 
 ery that we can make is as to the way in which 
 the life of God comes most naturally, freely, 
 effectively, into human life. 
 
 Under what circumstances does the life of 
 the ages flow surely, abidingly, into the life of 
 humanity? Call it springtime. The sap is 
 running up out of the ground, the leaves are 
 budding and bursting forth. Where is the 
 actual tract of augmenting life in the tree? 
 It has, it ever has had, but one such area, 
 whether it be ten years old or a hundred or a 
 29 
 
30 Elemental Forces in Home Missions 
 
 thousand. However small or great the tree 
 may be, it is not growing throughout the entire 
 mass. The bulk of the wood is not changing, 
 the bark is not alive, but there is between the 
 bark and the trunk a thin zone around the tree, 
 where all the sap flows. The cosmic life out 
 of earth and air goes into the tree along that 
 zone. Those who know this part of God's 
 work best, tell us that the bulk of the tree does 
 not come out of the ground but out of the sky. 
 You take one of those great trees in California, 
 standing so many hundreds of feet high with 
 its vast bulk. It has come out of the unseen, 
 it has been accumulated there out of the invis- 
 ible atmosphere. That is the way of God, the 
 things which are seen come out of the things 
 which are not seen. All of the play of life up 
 and down and around a tree, expanding it year 
 by year, ring by ring, century by century, all of 
 it comes in the zone of vital activity, the one 
 layer which pulsates with plastic forces. 
 
 What is the zone of the accession of God's 
 life in humanity? Where does the life of the 
 ages pour itself into the life of the centuries? 
 It is in the zone of migration. It is where 
 humanity is moving from one place of abode 
 to another. 
 
 Look at some of the outstanding moments 
 
Ethnic Migrations 31 
 
 'e> 
 
 in the spiritual development of mankind. 
 Abraham is called as the Father of the Faith- 
 ful. Not only Christians and Jews regard him 
 in that way, but Mohammedans as well. Three 
 of the great world religions look back to 
 Abraham as their progenitor. The life of God 
 came into the human race through him in a 
 most original and originative way. 
 
 " Now, Jehovah said unto Abraham, get 
 thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, 
 and from thy father's house, unto the land 
 which I will shew thee." God spoke to him 
 and started him on his career as an originator 
 of increased spiritual life in mankind by send- 
 ing him from one country to another, telling 
 him to go West. So he moved from Mesopo- 
 tamia over into the Promised Land. Wherever 
 he went, Schechem and Bethel and Hebron, he 
 put up an altar, a place of communion with 
 the invisible God. The story of Abraham is 
 the story of the first great accession of spiritual 
 life to the human race, and it came explicitly 
 in connection with his migration from one land 
 into another land. 
 
 That first instance is typical of the whole 
 career of the spiritual development of the 
 human race. Take the next — we can speak only 
 of a few instances, touching on some of the 
 
32 Elemental Forces In Home Missions 
 
 mountain peaks of the long chain of human 
 history, — take the next great advance of 
 humanit}^ in its relation to God. Under what 
 circumstances did the Almighty speak to men 
 afresh, so that they heard, so that the sound of 
 His voice has gone ringing down the centuries, 
 to the present hour? When was it that the 
 law of God in the Ten Words, as they are 
 called, was promulgated? It was when the 
 people were migrating from Egypt to Pales- 
 tine. It was during that forty years of mi- 
 gration that the great increase of divine revela- 
 tion came. 
 
 Take the highest attainment in the spiritual 
 life that they ever made before Christ came. 
 Under what circumstances did they make it? 
 When did the great seers see and speak, — 
 those mighty speakers for God, whom we call 
 the prophets? Every student of the Bible 
 knows that the greatest of them, whose words 
 have had the highest influence ever since, spoke 
 in connection with what is technically called 
 "The Exile" and "The Return." It was 
 when the people were taken away from one 
 land over into a new land, lived there long 
 enough to have a new life in the new surround- 
 ings and then, some of them, were brought 
 back into the old land again. It was in con- 
 
Ethnic Migrations 83 
 
 ^fc> 
 
 nection with those migrations of the people, 
 that the greatest utterances of God to them 
 and through them came. 
 
 When you come on down to the supreme 
 revelation of God to men, you find that it is 
 when the Son of God moved from heaven into 
 the earth, came from the invisible world, and 
 pitched his tent, — as one of the New Testa- 
 ment writers put it, — here in this land where 
 we live, — " tabernacled among us," that the 
 great accession of the life of God to humanity 
 took place. 
 
 How will it be in the future ? We know ex- 
 ceedingly little about the world to come. It 
 is best to dogmatize about it very little indeed ; 
 but our strongest conviction concerning the 
 future, our one clear hope, is that, when we 
 pass out of this world into the other world, 
 there will be such an accession of spiritual life, 
 such an augmentation of the life of God in our 
 lives, as we never have seen or even been able 
 to imagine before. 
 
 Such is the story, the spiritual history of 
 humanity, as it appears in the literature which 
 sets forth the highest aspirations of the human 
 race. If you look abroad in a wider way, you 
 find the same thing. The advances of the 
 human race into a higher life have been in con- 
 
34 Elemental Forces in Hom6 Mission 
 
 nection with their migrations from one place to 
 another. Wave after wave of humanity moved 
 out of the original home of the human family, 
 starting out of the steppes of Central Asia, 
 driven over Europe, first the Kelts, then the 
 Teutons and behind them the Slavs. The 
 whole development of mankind has been con- 
 nected with these mighty racial migrations. If 
 the original human family had stopped where 
 it started, you and I would not be living here 
 to-day. Neither would we be civilized, — as we 
 flatter ourselves we are now. We should be 
 somewhere back in Central Asia, living in a 
 hut instead of a house, with no tools, except 
 some branch wrenched off a tree as a club, 
 with no language except inarticulate cries. The 
 advancement of the human family has been 
 connected very closely, intimately, inevitably 
 connected with the movement of the human 
 race from one place to another on the face of 
 the earth. 
 
 We think, fondly think, that the English race 
 is the great dominant race of the earth. How 
 did it become the foremost people ? There were 
 in Great Britain the Kelts. Then by the suc- 
 ceeding waves of migration they were crowded 
 into the north and west and into the mountains, 
 into Ireland, into .Wales and Scotland, the 
 
Ethnic Migrations 35 
 
 Teutonic peoples occupying the other portions 
 of Great Britain. Hengist and Horsa, landed 
 on the shores of Britain, and changed the 
 course of the human history, those old Anglo- 
 Saxon forefathers of ours. After them came 
 the Danes ; later on, a great influx of Normans, 
 Scandinavians who had migrated out of Scan- 
 dinavia down into France, where they came 
 in contact with the remains of the old civil- 
 ization of Rome and France, and were partly 
 civilized, and then came over into Britain and 
 took possession of that island. The vast ener- 
 gies of the Anglo-Saxon race, and its dom- 
 inance on the face of the earth at the present 
 time, are because it is the strong, joint off- 
 spring of mighty migrations. A spring-tide of 
 Anglo-Saxon migration reached the shores of 
 North America three hundred years ago. 
 
 We are today confronted by a much vaster 
 migration. We are in the midst of a tremen- 
 dous and an unparalleled movement of human- 
 ity into a new world. The migrations of the 
 past, including the migrations of the children 
 of Israel and of the Anglo-Saxon race, — all 
 these are but preliminary and small, as com- 
 pared with the vast current migrations of the 
 human race into this great western hemisphere 
 of ours, especially into our own country. It 
 
36 Elemental Forces in Home Missions 
 
 has become a familiar fact that there are more 
 Jews in New York City than are to be found 
 in any other place on earth, more even than 
 ever lived in one place, not excepting Jerusa- 
 lem itself. It is a familiar fact that there are 
 more Italians in New York than anywhere 
 else on the earth, except in Rome. 
 
 And so on, with others, people after people, 
 there are more of them gathered together here 
 than are collected anywhere else on the earth, 
 in many cases, and in a large number of other 
 cases, more than anywhere else except in the 
 very capitals of their own countries. Out of 
 every hundred people in Manhattan, 86 are of 
 foreign parentage, and 49 were themselves 
 born abroad. In Lawrence, Mass., it is said 
 that sixty men before one row of looms could 
 not understand one another's language. Sim- 
 ilar conditions are reported as to iron workers 
 in Pueblo, Colorado. All the way from Boston 
 to San Francisco, even through many of the 
 rural regions, we are a nation of newcomers. 
 So that we live in the midst of a movement in 
 the history of humanity like that when the 
 spiritual growth of the human race received 
 its first mighty impulse, God saying to the 
 Father of the Faithful, the progenitor of the 
 spiritual life of humanity, " Get thee out of 
 
Ethnic Migrations 37 
 
 thy country, and from thy kindred, and from 
 thy father's house, into the land that I will 
 shew thee." That little migration of Abraham 
 and his family was hardly worth noticing, so 
 minute was it in its nature as compared with 
 this vast world-wide movement of the human 
 family at the present moment. And the place 
 into which it is moving, as into no other, is 
 our own land. If it would have been great to 
 have stood beside Abraham when God told 
 him to migrate from one country to another, 
 that he might become the Father of the Faith- 
 ful, a great nation, and not only that but a 
 blessing to all other nations, — if that would 
 have been great cosmic experience, it is 
 infinitely greater to be right where we are at 
 the present time; for God himself is bringing 
 to pass mightier accessions of the life of the 
 ages in the life of humanity here and now, 
 than ever anywhere else on this planet. 
 
 There are two ways of taking these porten- 
 tous events: the way of fear and the way of 
 faith. We are easily frightened at the number 
 coming now. We all came a few generations 
 ago, at earliest. Some of us are very proud 
 of the line that we can trace back to, say, 1640, 
 or possibly as far back as 1620. That, however, 
 is a short time in the long history of humanity. 
 
38 Elemental Forces in Home Missions 
 
 But I am speaking now of those who were 
 born on the other side of the sea, and have 
 themselves come over, not their grandfathers 
 or their great grandfathers, but themselves. 
 There are enough of these in the United States 
 at the present moment to displace every man, 
 woman and child in nineteen whole states of 
 this country. If they were distributed in that 
 way, were all in those nineteen states, they 
 could elect thirty-eight of the United States 
 Senators. 
 
 It is easy to be alarmed when we realize this. 
 It is not simply because of the multitudes who 
 are here now, but in view of the multitudes 
 who are coming every hour, every minute, — 
 two every minute landing on our shores. This 
 has been going on for the last ten years, — on 
 the average two a minute, whether we wake or 
 sleep, whether we pray or play golf. Two 
 every minute, year in and year out, landing 
 here from the other side of the globe ! 
 
 This is the mightiest moment of human 
 migration that the long ages ever have known. 
 Some are alarmed. They feel like saying: 
 
 "Wide open and unguarded stand our gates. 
 And through them presses a wild motley 
 throng; 
 
Ethnic Migrations 39 
 
 Men from the Volga and Tartar steppes, 
 Malayan, Scythian, Teuton, Celt and Slav, 
 Featureless figures of the Hoang-Ho, 
 Flying the Old World's poverty and scorn ; 
 These bringing with them unknown gods and 
 
 rites, 
 Those, tiger passions, here to stretch their 
 
 claws. 
 In street and alley what strange tongues are 
 
 loud. 
 Accents of menace alien to our air. 
 Voices that once the Tower of Babel knew! " 
 
 But, we may take a more Christian attitude. 
 We may recognize the fact that God himself 
 comes into human life, that His spiritual force 
 streams into the tides of humanity in infinite 
 blessing, chiefly through all the ages in con- 
 nection with the migrations of men. So, we 
 may rejoice that we live at such a moment as 
 this in human history. 
 
 We may say with another poet: 
 
 " Countrymen, bend and invoke 
 
 Mercy for us blasphemers, 
 
 For that we spat on these marvelous folk, 
 
 Nations of darers and dreamers. 
 
 Scions of singers and seers, 
 
 Our peers, and more than our peers, 
 
 " Rabble and refuse," we name them 
 
40 Elemental Forces in Home Missions 
 
 And " scum o' the earth," to shame them. 
 Mercy for us of the few, young years. 
 Of the culture so callow and crude, 
 Of the hands so grasping and rude, 
 The lips so ready for sneers. 
 At the sons of our ancient more-than-peers. 
 Mercy for us who dare despise 
 Men in whose loins our Homer lies; 
 Mothers of men who shall bring to us 
 The glory of Titian, the grandeur of Huss; 
 Children in whose frail arms shall rest 
 Prophets and singers and saints of the West." 
 
 That is the Christian way in which to look 
 at this mighty inundation of our continent with 
 peoples of every tribe and tongue and nation 
 on the earth. 
 
 Corinthian bronze was more costly than 
 gold. It was so precious because it was an 
 amalgam out of the choicest ores. Tradition 
 had it that it was discovered when a great fire 
 in Corinth accidentally melted together a num- 
 ber of precious metals. The American " melt- 
 ing pot " is more than an accident, it is the 
 plan of the God of Abraham for producing a 
 mettle of manhood more precious than Corin- 
 thian bronze. 
 
 But analogies do not compel the modem 
 mind as do the genetic realities of historic and 
 
Ethnic Migrations 41 
 
 current human evolution. The infinite cosmic 
 energy gets free way among men, augmenting 
 the total life of mankind most effectively along 
 the tracts which are athrob with migrating 
 humanity. While we welcome the fresh and 
 needed energy which the newcomers bring, let 
 us share with them the loftiest ideals we have 
 and the uplifting impulses which have come to 
 the human race, at its hours of deepest insight.* 
 
 * For this purpose, see " Early Stories and Songs for 
 New Students of English," by Mary Clark Barnes. 
 (Revell.) 
 
Ill 
 
 Creative Pioneering 
 
 COLUMBUS discovered a new world. 
 To-day a new world is being created. 
 We are permitted to look in on the 
 process. " There was evening and there was 
 morning," of momentous import seven times, 
 and " God saw everything that he had made, 
 and behold ! it was good." The result is won- 
 derful and is commonly dwelt upon, but we 
 are invited to go below the surface and to see 
 at work the creative factors. A number of 
 these factors are at work at the same time in 
 the western half of the United States. For 
 months I have given the matter first-hand 
 study, going back and forth, up and down, 
 through the vast region and staying long 
 enough in some places to get close to the 
 people. 
 
 One creative factor in making this new 
 world is the rapid irrigation of deserts. 
 42 
 
Creative Pioneering 43 
 
 " Behold I will do a new thing, now, will it 
 spring forth. ... I will even make a way in 
 the wilderness and rivers in the desert." 
 
 In every one of a dozen great states, in 
 valley after valley where five years ago there 
 was nothing but dust and ashes with forlorn 
 tufts of sage brush on the gray desert, there 
 are now wide stretches of the richest verdure 
 on which the human eye can rest, field upon 
 field of deep green alfalfa. Three and four 
 crops a year of this concentrated food for the 
 creatures upon which man depends for food, 
 along with almost incredible crops of every 
 other kind, account for settlers' cabins five 
 hundred rriiles from any great city, planted 
 almost as thickly as houses along a suburban 
 highway of a metropolis. 
 
 " On that piece," said a farmer, " I raised 
 ninety bushels of wheat to the acre last year." 
 In famous Minnesota wheat fields the writer 
 has known forty bushels as a great yield and in 
 fertile sections of Michigan, twenty bushels as 
 a good crop. Fourteen is the average for the 
 whole country. Ninety bushels of breadstuff 
 to the acre! But wheat, generally speaking, 
 is too thin a crop for the intensive farming of 
 irrigated regions. Fruit is better — pears of 
 such preserving and at the same time mouth- 
 
44 Elemental Forces in Home Missions 
 
 watering quality, that they can be trundled 
 three thousand miles across America and 
 pitched another three thousand miles across 
 the Atlantic, to sell in London for eleven dol- 
 lars a box (less than a bushel.) On every 
 fruit-stand from Maine to Florida, apples 
 grown on the Pacific slope have displaced the 
 best of eastern growth. In such a country 
 farmsteads are not four to the square mile as 
 in the old West. Twenty acres are enough to 
 provide for a family of five and make it rich; 
 forty are a superabundance. A public motto 
 in some sections is this, *' a ten-acre orchard 
 means an independent income for life." Ten 
 acres make the normal portion in great tracts of 
 country. Private projects have irrigated ten 
 million acres. That means, taking farm and 
 town together, the establishment of at least a 
 million homes. The recent Government plants 
 cover three million acres, with fifty million 
 more to follow. I have gone through many 
 of the new tracts, settled but a few months, 
 where it stirs the blood to the tingling point 
 to see not only green fields and great stacks of 
 fodder, but new homes in neighborly nearness 
 to each other, with school-houses — so quickly 
 built in every American community — not far 
 apart. Think of the fresh, eager community 
 
Creative Pioneering 45 
 
 life, in the full sense of that sovereign word, 
 community, which is being at this moment 
 created. Is Christ being clearly affirmed there 
 as the inspiration of life and of neighborhood 
 in their only full meaning ? " In Him all things 
 hold together." In many sections of this new 
 West, boys have grown to the voting age 
 without ever having an opportunity to hear the 
 gospel. 
 
 But the development of the country on a 
 gigantic scale is just beginning. Members of 
 a Committee of the United States Senate who 
 went over these regions carefully, saw that more 
 than is now being done must be done soon. The 
 Government had been putting eight million dol- 
 lars into irrigation annually. President Taft 
 recommended that bonds be issued for 
 $30,000,000 additional to be expended in the 
 next few years. No one can give first hand 
 study to this matter without agreeing with Mr. 
 Roosevelt that it is the most significant work 
 which the Government has ever undertaken. It 
 is only begun. The expert estimate is that Irri- 
 gation will bring from twenty-five to thirty 
 million people into the New West. In the end 
 these people will have a large part of the agri- 
 cultural wealth of the country and, if they are 
 Christians, will help to support missions in the 
 
46 Elemental Forces in Home Missions 
 
 cities of the Atlantic coast, now peopled so 
 largely by foreigners. 
 
 But to-day the newer West is in its infancy 
 and must be provided for for a little while just 
 now, like your own boy who, by and by, is to 
 be a greater man than you. When you hear 
 of enormous dividends in the West even now, 
 remember that the statistical returns show that 
 they almost all come back East as interest on 
 borrowed money. The East is eager to invest 
 where the pioneers must make it pay. When 
 they are struggling to get a start and have to 
 put together everything they can rake and 
 scrape to pay the East interest, we ought, at 
 least, to help them with the gospel of courage 
 in their mighty creative work. 
 
 There is peculiar joy in helping the little 
 bands of Christians who are almost swamped 
 by anti-Christian forces, because our churches 
 in the newest West give heroically not only for 
 their own support but also on an average far 
 above the average of the giving of eastern 
 churches for work beyond their own borders. 
 The figures in this particular are nothing less 
 than inspiring. 
 
 The farmers and their families require many 
 townspeople to serve them in various ways. 
 Every one hundred added to ranch population 
 
Creative Pioneering 47 
 
 adds twenty-seven to the population of neigh- 
 boring towns. Hence villages spring into 
 being in a month, and young cities in a year 
 or two. Twin Falls, Idaho, is a famous 
 instance. Desert, desert, in every direction that 
 the eye could roam. Six years and there were 
 six thousand people with all the conveniences 
 of a modern city, and many facilities which an 
 eastern city of that size has not produced in 
 sixty years, e.g., the appliance of electricity 
 to household heating and cooking. But 
 Twin Falls is not exceptional, save in 
 the matter of publicity. It is typical. In 
 exceptional cases towns of twelve and even 
 fifteen thousand people have sprung up in three 
 years. Hundreds of towns have blossomed 
 on irrigated tracts in the last five years, and 
 hundreds more will do so in the next five years. 
 They are as inevitable as volcanic ash, water, 
 sunshine and toil. There is no evading a con- 
 junction of stars. When they sing together it 
 is a creative day. 
 
 What does it mean ? It means people, people, 
 swarming people. The process of swarming 
 is fascinating to behold. Old hives over- 
 crowded are deserted. The air is flecked with 
 bees. They settle together at some point. 
 There is a new swarm. It is a critical moment. 
 
48 Elemental Forces in Home Missions 
 
 They must be hived at once. Otherwise, no 
 honey — or, if honey, but little, and that mixed 
 with dirt from the hole in the ground which 
 the swarm has found for itself, or with rotten 
 wood from a hollow log. Countless souls for 
 whom Christ gave his life are now hunting 
 homes and a new honey-making life. Shall 
 they have only the bitter bread of earthly ashes 
 and be destined to the doom of the rich cities 
 of the plain which Lot coveted, or shall we 
 infuse among the creative forces of these vast 
 coming communities the glad tidings of endur- 
 ing life , the " Life of the Ages? " 
 
 Another creative factor in making the 
 New West is the new dry farming of semi- 
 arid regions. 
 
 Printing space does not allow as long a look 
 at this as at the preceding factor, but it stands 
 for other creative marvels, some of them more 
 astounding than those of irrigation. That the 
 bringing of water to volcanic dust and other 
 earthy richness of the New World makes it 
 fruitful, is a glorious revelation but ought not 
 to be surprising since milleniums ago the over- 
 flowing Nile and the ditched Euphrates turned 
 deserts into the primal garden-plots of civil- 
 ization. But when a limit of rainfall has long 
 been accepted as the scientific standard below 
 
Creative Pioneering 49 
 
 which agriculture is impracticable and it is sud- 
 denly discovered that by special methods of 
 tillage and with special seed, three-quarters of 
 this or even one-half of it is enough for profit- 
 able farming, we have one of the marvels not 
 of the nineteenth century but of the 
 twentieth. 
 
 Dr. Wm. MacDonald, Editor of the " Agri- 
 cultural Journal " at Pretoria, South Africa, 
 after extensive travel in the Western United 
 States and rigorous investigation of the sub- 
 ject, says, in an official report to his govern- 
 ment : " Dry farming is destined in the imme- 
 diate future to play a far more important role 
 in agricultural development than even the great 
 art of irrigation." 
 
 Fold a map of the United States with its 
 eastern and western edges even. The crease 
 down the center is, roughly speaking, the divid- 
 ing line between humid and arid America. 
 There are some humid sections west of that 
 line and many semi-arid regions. 
 
 It is now affirmed that the equivalent of a 
 belt of semi-arid country three hundred miles 
 wide, stretching all the way from Canada to 
 Mexico, is thrown open to farming without 
 the necessity of irrigation. 
 
 The United States Department of Agricul- 
 
50 Elemental Forces in Home Missions 
 
 ture sent a Dakota college professor to Russia 
 to hunt for arid land seed at a cost of $10,000. 
 He brought home Durum wheat. In eight 
 years our Durum wheat crops amounted 
 to $200,000,000. 
 
 In a dry land, a long day's journey from a 
 stick of growing wood or a drop of running 
 water, where it is two hundred feet down to 
 well water, and then sometimes a scanty sup- 
 ply, I have seen every homestead plot with a 
 cabin built and occupied, or a " dug-out " hab- 
 itation in process of making. 
 
 What does it mean ? People, swarming peo- 
 ple, at the very moment of swarming! They 
 can prosper without much rain and without 
 irrigation ditches, but they perish without the 
 Living Water. Without it their children will 
 be blighted at the start. 
 
 Another Creative Factor in making the 
 New West is the final occupation of Indian 
 lands. 
 
 Slowly through three hundred years the 
 white man has been taking possession of the 
 red man's continent. By honorable purchase, 
 by pretended purchase, by red-handed force, 
 by darker means, we have covered in to our 
 own uses his territory. Even yet, however, at 
 the end of three full centuries after the begin- 
 
Creative Pioneering 51 
 
 ning at Jamestown, vast domains have been 
 reserved still in the name of remaining abo- 
 riginal tribes. At last it has come to pass that 
 the welfare of the Indian himself, according to 
 the judgment of his best friends, requires that 
 instead of tribal ownership each one be allot- 
 ted a generous personal holding, and that the 
 rest of the reservation be thrown open to white 
 settlement. Just now at the end of the first 
 decade of the twentieth century, this is being 
 done as it never has been done before, and as 
 it never can be done again. Ten reservations 
 have been opened, practically at once. An 
 aggregate area considerably greater than the 
 entire kingdom of Holland is being settled at 
 this moment. Holland contains nearly five 
 million people. 
 
 Do actual settlers want these lands? They 
 can be had only by people who will both pay 
 for them and live upon them. They must 
 journey to the reservation to register in 
 advance on the mere hope of obtaining. At 
 one of the registrations which I visited, where 
 less than 5000 farms were available, 114,769 
 people came and registered. This is the story 
 everywhere. What does it mean? People, 
 people, multitudes of people, in the act of 
 swarming! With most of them it takes all the 
 
52 Elemental Forces in Home Missions 
 
 funds they can get together to secure the land 
 and get upon it with the crudest necessities of 
 occupation. Shall we allow such communities 
 to be created without lending a hand to put 
 church and Bible-school among the creative 
 forces ? 
 
 Another Creative Factor in making the New 
 West is the current turning of vast grazing 
 ranges into farmsteads. 
 
 In many places the great " bonanza farms " 
 are being divided into small farms. But every- 
 where the immense cattle ranches are being 
 broken up into agricultural ranches. Recently 
 in California an old-time ranch about the size 
 of the State of Rhode Island was sold for this 
 purpose. In another of the huge western 
 states ten years ago, there were thirty ranches 
 of a million acres or more each. Scarcely 
 half a dozen of them are left now. These 
 will soon go to pieces under the inexorable 
 hammering of profit and loss. Were nothing 
 wanted but cattle, two acres of alfalfa will do 
 more than forty acres of wild range. The 
 cow boy is fast passing. Farmers are making 
 fences, and with their families are building 
 homes all over the once wide, open, stretches. 
 
 Again it is people, people, swarming people. 
 
Creative Pioneering 53 
 
 Shall they be left to run wild, or be helped to 
 have church homes? 
 
 If one were in the attitude of special plead- 
 ing instead of being in the attitude of stern 
 scientific observation, he would separate for 
 the sake of distinct impressiveness factors 
 which I am about to class together and would 
 dwell on still other factors in the development 
 of the far West, especially mining and lumber- 
 ing. The bulk of the remaining wood of the 
 country, and nearly all of its precious metals, 
 are in the western half of the land. Some 
 believe that the discovery of abundance of 
 gold has been a leading factor in the dominance 
 of the Anglo-Saxon race. However that may 
 be, the most sudden and spectacular swarming 
 of people is at new mining points and is a con- 
 stant occurrence. These new communities 
 include men, women and children who desper- 
 ately need the gospel, especially men, stalwart 
 men. But all that I pass. I prefer to confine 
 attention to the agricultural interests and other 
 fundamental tendencies of humanity which 
 are, beyond question, the basis of permanent 
 population and of all civilization. In a calm 
 spirit of study we are looking only at elements 
 of human life which are the causes of an 
 inevitable evolution. 
 
54 Elemental Forces in Home Missions 
 
 Another Factor — or rather pair of factors — 
 of this basic order in making the New West 
 is today's reinforcement of the migratory 
 instinct by industrial stress. 
 
 Migration is one of the deepest tendencies 
 of humanity. It has become inbred by count- 
 less generations of movement over the face of 
 the earth. But the instinct is especially keen in 
 America because by its operation the oldest 
 portions of the land have been occupied so 
 recently that the migratory feeling is fresh 
 and lusty. Migration is a national habit. The 
 movement is constantly freshened by new tides 
 from the old world. 
 
 The Pilgrim breed is being pushed as well 
 as pulled further and further west. Iowa has 
 long had more New England blood and literacy 
 than New England itself. To-day the census 
 indicates a small minority of Yankee stock in 
 Massachusetts and a great majority of it in 
 Idaho. 
 
 At the present hour the primeval instinct of 
 migration is mightily reinforced by industrial 
 unrest. What the merits of the case may be, 
 is another question — a labyrinth of questions. 
 Whatever it be, the psychological result is a 
 state of mind which is eager for industrial 
 outlet, for untrammeled opportunity. The vir- 
 
Creative Pioneering 55 
 
 gin fields of the West come nearest to meeting 
 the need. 
 
 Thus the four great classes of unparalleled 
 openings at the present moment appeal to a 
 profound want, which now as never before, is 
 a hunger — a hunger with pangs in it. It is the 
 co-operation of these factors which is creating 
 the New West of to-day with a swiftness 
 undreamed of a few years ago. If we do not 
 rub our eyes open quickly this phenomenal 
 state of affairs will have passed before we 
 know of it. But the consequences of our neg- 
 lect will not have passed. For the people, peo- 
 ple, people, who are swarming in the West, are 
 just now giving the set to new communities for 
 untold generations to come. Christ will be in 
 the genesis of those communities and genera- 
 tions, if you and I give him a chance. 
 
 Another Creative Factor which is mak- 
 ing the New West is the intense exploiting of 
 the last continental opportunities. 
 
 The factors which we have observed to be 
 at work are sufficiently powerful in themselves, 
 but their force is greatly multiplied by the fact 
 that we now are entering into the use of the 
 last of such opportunities that our country ever 
 can have. This is not a matter of speculation. 
 It is a matter of inflexible natural conditions. 
 
56 Elemental Forces in Home Missions 
 
 There will be opportunities of other kinds, but 
 land hunger is facing its last meal. The zestful 
 activities which belong to the settlement of a 
 new country, the ineffable qualities which have 
 made America peculiarly America — to milHons 
 of us the most glorious country in the world — 
 these distinguishing features of life are coming 
 to their final exercise. 
 
 For many a day to come there will be land 
 openings of a limited sort, but soon there will 
 be no great areas which can be developed on a 
 vast scale. 
 
 Hence men of sagacity are racing each 
 other in endeavoring to get a hold upon the 
 remaining continental opportunities. This is 
 conspicuous in railroad enterprise, though by 
 no means confined to that realm. We are told 
 the number of transcontinental lines which are 
 just now stretching for the goal, but we can 
 have no true sense of this until we live for at 
 least a little while in the regions most directly 
 affected. Then we find the atmosphere in 
 electric tension on these matters. An example 
 of another kind is the opening of conspicuous 
 show-rooms in the East, as on a prominent 
 corner of Broadway, New York, for the exhi- 
 bition of the products of a tract of land which 
 is being put upon the market. Rich red apples 
 
Creative Pioneering 57 
 
 and other fruit in bewildering variety attract 
 attention, engaging expounders deepen it, and 
 the most costly, picturesque printing fastens it. 
 
 Out of the desire to make the most of the 
 opportunities come elaborate advertising and 
 stimulation of the movement westward along 
 with the furnishing of great facilities and in- 
 ducements for going. Hence the movement is 
 not left alone to the operation of the great 
 factors before enumerated, but is quickened 
 by all the skill of the most vigorous brains in 
 the country. 
 
 The Old West was peopled by wagon loads, 
 the New West is being peopled by train loads. 
 A big family with one " prairie schooner " 
 might include a dozen individuals. But a 
 single car holds fifty people and there are 
 several cars to a train. I was on a train packed 
 with pioneers going to a land opening at the 
 end of a long branch line. The road advertised 
 hourly trains to this far-away opening for new 
 homes. 
 
 Any one of the six factors named would be 
 enough to make a New World for myriads of 
 people. But when they all are working at the 
 same time, with the intensity involved in its 
 being the only time, nothing can characterize 
 
58 Elemental Forces in Home Missions 
 
 the result but an exclamation. People, people, 
 immortal souls aswarm! 
 
 The finishing factor of the Creative Week 
 in the New West is the unprecedented making 
 of manhood. 
 
 " God formed man and breathed into his 
 nostrils the breath of life." The tides of his- 
 tory are not waves of hydrogen-oxide heaping 
 up dunes of wheat or gold dust. The on- 
 coming tides of humanity are the movements 
 of the Almighty in the evolution of manhood. 
 The forces at play are infinitely vital. 
 
 " God had sifted three kingdoms to find the 
 
 wheat for this planting, 
 Then had sifted the wheat as the living seed of 
 
 a nation." 
 
 That old American seed has been sifted still 
 again for the western planting. Young, virile, 
 progressive people are laying foundations on 
 the slopes of the Rockies. There is no reason 
 known why the highest type of manhood ever 
 to appear should not be developed somewhere 
 between the Mississippi and the Pacific. 
 Washington, the typical Atlantic slope Amer- 
 ican, and Lincoln, the typical Old West Amer- 
 ican, may well be succeeded by the superlative 
 
Creative Pioneering 59 
 
 American rising somewhere in the New West. 
 God grant that there may be no terrific national 
 emergency to call him out, and that when he 
 comes, it may not be as the ** super-man "of 
 materialistic conception, but as God's man for 
 the uplift of all his fellows on this continent 
 and other continents! Let the father of his 
 country and the saviour of the United States 
 be followed by a spirit-quickener of the United 
 .World. 
 
 There is more than the sifting of seed and 
 the westward course of empire to suggest such 
 expectancy. The conditions of life in the once 
 arid West necessitate a peculiarly keen, alert 
 and at the same time, steady going and reliable 
 type of mind. A few generations in the region 
 where man must provide himself with rain, or 
 its equivalent, may well develop a supremely 
 provident, providential order of manhood. " In 
 the image of God created He him." 
 
 " Nature, they say, doth dote. 
 And cannot make a man 
 Save on some worn-out plan 
 Repeating us by rote ; 
 For him her Old-World moulds aside she 
 
 threw. 
 And choosing sweet clay from the breast 
 Of the unexhausted West, 
 
60 Elemental Forces in Home Missions 
 
 With stuff untainted shaped a hero new, 
 Wise, steadfast in the strength of God and 
 true." 
 
 If conditions of the Old West could make 
 such manhood as that of Lincoln, 
 
 " New birth of our new soil, the first 
 American," 
 
 we can wisely hope that in the New West 
 conditions far more unique and generative may- 
 evolve the final American. We had noble co- 
 lonial Americans, we have had splendid Amer- 
 ican Americans. Shall we not look for the 
 ultimate product of our soil to be cosmopolitan 
 Americans and to grow in the vast regions of 
 inconceivable fertility which stretch away 
 everywhere in sight of inspiring mountain 
 peaks facing the Pacific, " the Mediterranean 
 Sea of the world's future? " 
 
 There -is one "if "—but one fatal "if "— 
 ferreting its way to the very heart of these rea- 
 sonable expectations. If the on-coming, inev- 
 itable, colossal race in the New West should 
 fail to have its central, creative factor the 
 Word, it would become only a brilliant, titanic 
 brutalism. "All things were made through 
 
Creative Pioneering 61 
 
 Him, and without Him was not anything made. 
 That which hath been made was hfe in Him, 
 and the Hfe was the Hght of men." Unless 
 humanity has in it divinity, it ceases to be 
 humanity. Brutal materialism is boldly advo- 
 cated by some in these days. It is covertly 
 cultivated by more. There is a leaven at work 
 which is worse than sadducean. Hundreds of 
 Sunday schools (!) in the West are teaching 
 not only that there is no spirit in man, but also 
 that there is no God in the universe. On the 
 other hand it is found by careful investigation 
 that there are thousands, literally thousands of 
 organized public school districts — mark you, 
 organized because there are enough young 
 people living there of school age to meet the 
 legal requirements for the organization of a 
 public school district — without Bible-schools 
 or other regular religious services of any de- 
 nomination in them. 
 
 If we create the rising generation in this 
 way, to what will it come? No mere intel- 
 lectual sharpening ever made imperial man- 
 hood. Every document that came from the 
 hand of George Washington was badly spelled, 
 but was lifted to an exalted rank by recogni- 
 tion of the hand of Almighty God in human 
 history. Abraham Lincoln's thought and feel- 
 ing were surcharged with vision caught from 
 
62 Elemental Forces in Home Missions 
 
 the Bible seers. Neither bumper crops nor in- 
 ternational trade nor wireless telegraph nor 
 aerial navigation can create a lofty, cosmo- 
 politan type of manhood, unless there is at 
 heart of it all a sense of the infinite Love. This 
 is the factor in the Creative Week in the New 
 West which you and I are permitted to supply 
 by sending the glad tidings of measureless 
 good incarnate in the man of Nazareth, of 
 Calvary and of Olivet. 
 
 The moral emergency in the creation of the 
 newer West, extremely critical in the nature 
 of the case, is further complicated by Mor- 
 monism.* 
 
 More than a few of us will live to see as 
 many people on the Pacific side of our land as 
 are now in the entire country. The greatest 
 spring-tide of humanity ever seen by any one 
 generation is rising. There has been a long, 
 low swell in advance. Just now the crest of 
 the wave is breaking over the Rockies- The 
 beginning of the second decade of the twen- 
 tieth century is the hour of destiny. Call it the 
 moment of conception, call it the Creative 
 Week, call it simply the time in the history of 
 humanity in its movement around the planet 
 
 *See "Mormonism the Islam of America," by Dr. 
 Bruce Kinney. (Revell.) 
 
Creative Pioneering 63 
 
 when the final evolution of the mightiest race 
 of men is being initiated and determined. It 
 is the time when the life of the Occident is 
 fixing the nature of its own climax at the very 
 place where, at last, it comes face to face with 
 the Orient. It is the crisis toward which all 
 crises have converged since history began. 
 
 The Far East and the Final West have come 
 together. For a century to come, perhaps for 
 a millennium, the western half of America, 
 touching the Far East closely, will have every- 
 thing to do with shaping its character. 
 
 Will He by whom the worlds were made be 
 obliged to stand once more before His church 
 and say, " Thou knewest not the time of thy 
 visitation? " 
 
 " I hear the tread of pioneers 
 
 Of nations yet to be. 
 The first low wash of w'aves where soon 
 
 Shall roll a human sea. 
 The elements of empire there 
 
 Are plastic yet and warm. 
 The chaos of a mighty world 
 
 Is rounding into form." 
 
 Omnipotent forces are making a new earth. 
 The God-like work of making a new heaven 
 on that new earth is committed to you and me. 
 
64 Elemental Forces in Home Missions 
 
 ^re we doing it? It is a question for each one 
 of us — How much am I doing to make the 
 western half of my own country a Christian 
 land? 
 
 There, as nowhere else on earth, the destiny 
 of the whole human race is now balancing — 
 pivoted. 
 
IV 
 Social Justice 
 
 EXTREMES meet. Old high Galvanism 
 and new extreme evolutionism agree 
 that the will of man is always prede- 
 termined. Seventeenth century Puritanism 
 and twentieth century socialism exalt justice 
 as the supreme moral quality. Justice will 
 stand comparison with any other virtue as to 
 central importance in human life. Every self- 
 respecting person if compelled to choose be- 
 tween justice and benevolence in the treatment 
 of himself by others would prefer to be treated 
 justly. As a matter of fact there is no conflict. 
 Love, the infinite good, includes justice as well 
 as benevolence. Benevolence without justice 
 in it is not truly benevolent, and without benev- 
 olence justice is likely to be unjust. Still, if the 
 heart of character is kindness, its backbone is 
 justice. In a critical emergency would one 
 choose to entrust his case to courteous Latin 
 65 
 
66 Elemental Forces in Home Missions 
 
 effusiveness or to taciturn Scotch definiteness ? 
 At any rate justice is fundamental. Character 
 to be four-square must have justice for one of 
 the corner stones. 
 
 Justice belongs to groups as well as to indi- 
 viduals. The origin of the sense of justice is 
 closely associated with primitive tribal experi- 
 ences. In the current conscience of the most 
 advanced peoples the sense of collective justice 
 is greatly increasing, in fact, is, much more 
 acute to-day than in any previous generation. 
 
 Recompense is a primary element in justice. 
 When one has been deprived of his rights by 
 another the first act of justice is restitution. A 
 large part of all the law pertains to that. The 
 chief business of courts of justice is to secure 
 restitution or the recovery of a disturbed equi- 
 librium of possessions and rights. 
 
 One of the most elemental of moral obliga- 
 tions is that which we are under to a group of 
 people because of wrongs which they have 
 suffered at the hands of our own group. It is 
 easy to overlook this. Superficial students of 
 missionary obligation are apt to base every- 
 thing on the numbers and on the destitution of 
 the unevangelized. It is an easy way to think 
 and talk of the millions who are utterly with- 
 out the light which we have, as if the weight 
 
Social Justice 67 
 
 of our obligation could be wholly gauged by 
 number and destitution. But if one has stolen 
 from a man, though he know a thousand men 
 poorer than that man, his first obligation is to 
 make restitution to the one wronged. That is a 
 thousand-fold more binding than any obliga- 
 tion to the others. There are whole groups of 
 people in America concerning whom this ele- 
 mental principle of justice applies. 
 
 The American Indians have a claim upon us 
 which we can not begin to measure by their 
 numbers, their moral destitution or their prob- 
 able influence on the future of humanity. If 
 there were only one hundred of them, instead 
 of hundreds of thousands, if they were all 
 within the sphere of low forms of nominal 
 Christianity, instead of being still in unmiti- 
 gated heathen darkness, if none of them could 
 ever contribute to the main current of human 
 history, instead of contributing as they do con- 
 siderable factors to Congress and other high 
 walks of influence, we should still be under a 
 primary and immeasurable obligation to them, 
 because we have dispossessed them. The con- 
 tinent was theirs. We now call it ours. By all 
 the pride we have in it, by all we get out of it, 
 by all its beauty which is dear to us, by all its 
 magnificence which we glorify, we are bound 
 
68 Elemental Forces in Home Missions 
 
 to give to the remnant of the aborigines without 
 stint the choicest goods we have. " If a man 
 shall cause a field or vineyard to be eaten, and 
 shall let his beast loose, and it feed in another 
 man's field ; of the best of his own field, and of 
 the best of his own vineyard, shall he make 
 restitution." (Exodus 22: 5.) 
 
 After three hundred years of Anglo-Saxon 
 occupation which began by officially proclaim- 
 ing as its " principale ende," the conversion of 
 the natives, whole bands of them are still with- 
 out the slightest touch of the Gospel. Multi- 
 tudes more are barely touched, are essentially 
 unevangelized. What a commentary is this, 
 more than two hundred and ninety years long, 
 on the " great hope " of the Pilgrims as 
 recorded by Bradford himself : " A great hope 
 & inward zeall they had of laying some 
 good foundation, or at least to make some way 
 therunto, for ye propagating & advancing ye 
 gospell of ye kingdom of Christ in those 
 remote parts of ye world; yea, though they 
 should be but even as stepping-stones unto 
 others for ye performing of so great a work."* 
 Those devout Pilgrims were indeed " step- 
 ping-stones unto others " — are there not some 
 
 * For other similar data see " Two Thousand Years 
 of Missions Before Carey," Chapter XXIV. 
 
Social Justice 69 
 
 thirty million communicants in the United 
 States? — but not "for ye performing of so 
 great a work " as bringing the Gospel to three 
 hundred thousand Indians. Elemental justice 
 calls upon us to wipe out the disgrace of three 
 hundred years, and make restitution out of 
 the best we have, the best of our own field and 
 the best of our own vineyard. 
 
 Our Anglo-Saxon Christianity is under a 
 similar obligation of elemental justice to the 
 Negroes in the United States. In this case the 
 obligation is intensified, not only by their 
 greater numbers, but, still more by the fact 
 that we brought them to this land, and by 
 sheer brute force. Our forefathers. North as 
 well as South, kidnapped the Africans, often 
 after instigating bloody raids for that purpose, 
 and dragged them hither through the awful 
 tortures of " the middle passage." 
 
 They have multiplied into millions. We 
 have asked them to share with us the responsi- 
 bilities of the great democratic experiment on 
 the planet. We have put them under this tre- 
 mendous burden without the centuries of train- 
 ing which our Anglo-Saxon race has had. 
 What it took us a thousand years to acquire 
 we thrust upon them, with no such millennium 
 of evolution behind them. The least we can 
 
70 Elemental Forces in Home Missions 
 
 do is to use every measure possible to accel- 
 erate their evolution. With such help it is 
 moving much faster than did that of our own 
 forefathers. For white men to help black men 
 on a large scale in America, however costly, 
 can scarcely be called benevolence, it is col- 
 lective justice. The first ship to bring African 
 slaves to the American colonies by a frightful 
 irony was named Jesus. In the conception of 
 those days there may have seemed no impro- 
 priety in the name, the master of the ship 
 might, in fact, have been one of the most de- 
 vout of men. The sense of collective justice 
 has so vastly broadened and deepened since 
 those days that we are impelled to strenuous 
 exertion in order to make the name of that 
 slave ship ultimately good for the African race 
 in America and so throughout the world. 
 
 There is a third direction in which the ele- 
 mental principle of collective justice cries aloud 
 to us. A favored few have taken possession 
 of the bulk of the goods of America. Those 
 goods have been accumulated by the toil of 
 the vast majority, who are dispossessed. It is 
 silly for us to rail at any one on this account. 
 All are living in glass houses, or trying to do 
 so. Hence we better not throw stones. The 
 men who have got the goods have averaged 
 
Social Justice 71 
 
 no worse than the men who have failed to get 
 them. All alike have been working under a 
 system of " catch as catch can." Grant that 
 the leaders of the race which has dispossessed 
 the Indians have been good men. Grant that 
 the leaders of the race which took possession 
 of the Negroes were good men. Grant that the 
 leaders of the class which has coralled most of 
 the earth's goods are good men. The only 
 sincere thing for any one to think or say is that 
 in the evolution of humanity the hour has 
 finally struck when a sense of collective justice 
 is developed sufficiently to make restitution 
 both possible and necessary. The submerged 
 classes are to be lifted up and placed on deck. 
 America has always meant that by intention. 
 The intention is coming to new embodiment. 
 What action of the principle of restitution has 
 ever taken place on such magnificent scale? 
 One of great wealth declares that it is a shame 
 to die rich. One of the Christian millionaires 
 has recently died poor after conscientiously 
 distributing all. The most conspicuous Chris- 
 tian man of vast wealth has for months been 
 pleading with the public to take it all. When 
 such marvels are being performed, if we can 
 only have a little patience with one another and 
 diligent perseverance in learning how to safely 
 
72 Elemental Forces in Home Missions 
 
 and wisely do it, a way will be found of putting 
 into practice collective justice between all races 
 and all classes. 
 
 The missionary undertaking has been stand- 
 ing on one leg, benevolence. It has two. The 
 other is justice. It will show its virility and 
 take the commanding position which belongs 
 to it when it stands squarely on justice as well 
 as on benevolence. In addition to the three 
 directions just indicated there are others in 
 which justice plays no small part. But these 
 are broad, outstanding features of missions in 
 the New World and are sufficient to indicate 
 the fundamental place of justice in the mission- 
 ary enterprise. That enterprise has been hop- 
 ping along on one foot under noble, but inter- 
 mittent impulses. As it gets on both feet it 
 will take up a steady, triumphant march. The 
 sense of justice is deep in every man who is fit 
 to be called a man. Of every such man it re- 
 quires a worthy share In the undertaking to 
 uplift all races and classes in America. 
 
V 
 National Neighborhood 
 
 SOME obligations are temporary, fleeting, 
 rooted in time, others are elemental, 
 inevitable, rooted in space. Ships 
 within range of the Titanic' s S. O. S. (save our 
 souls) are by reason of nearness under supreme 
 obligation. 
 
 Obligations grow out of the fact that we 
 are members of the animal kingdom. Next 
 door to my office in New York is a splendid 
 building of the Society for the Prevention of 
 Cruelty to Animals. Hundreds of thousands 
 of dollars are invested, merely to have an office 
 from which to administer the work and dis- 
 charge obligations that rest on our relationship 
 to contemporary animals. 
 
 Obligations grow still more out of our 
 
 human relationships. Every human being has 
 
 a claim on us. It is our privilege to undertake 
 
 the betterment of every soul on the planet. Not 
 
 73 
 
74 Elemental Forces in Home Missions 
 
 to do that is to live a needlessly small life. Ele- 
 mental obligations grow out of civic relations 
 of various kinds. The city in which we live, 
 the commonwealth in which we live, the nation 
 in which we live, give birth to profound obli- 
 gations. 
 
 To come closer still, and to a more intimate 
 circle, there are elemental obligations in domes- 
 tic relationships, those of husband and wife, 
 parent and child, and all others who are so 
 related to us that it is our divine privilege to 
 care for them. He that does not do it is worse 
 than an infidel. They are genetic obligations. 
 
 One of the elemental obligations is that 
 growing out of neighborhood. In fact, this 
 obligation growing out of neighborhood in- 
 cludes all the others. It underlies all the 
 others, that is, gives them their possibility and 
 their significance. We may not know anything 
 about the suffering of an animal in the Hima- 
 layan Mountains, but when we see one suffer- 
 ing before our eyes, there is an obligation 
 because of its neighborhood. 
 
 This relationship of neighborhood is ever- 
 lasting. Each of the others may cease. It is 
 not commonly believed that the animal world, 
 below men, will survive death. We are not 
 certain about the human relations forever and 
 
National Neighborhood 75 
 
 ever. It is certain that civic relations will dis- 
 solve. Even the most sacred of them all, the 
 domestic relation, will utterly change, for in 
 heaven they neither marry nor are given in 
 marriage. 
 
 The one of the great elemental relations 
 which is everlasting, is neighborhood. You 
 and I never will be omnipresent. God only is 
 that, — the universal Neighbor. We shall be 
 forever and ever somewhere, not everywhere, 
 in some one part of space, and therefore shall 
 be in obligation to all who are there. We shall 
 always be near to some one and therefore under 
 special obligation. God is everywhere. We 
 are always in relation to him. We are always 
 in relation to our neighbors. Those are the 
 two elemental, eternal, inescapable relation- 
 ships, to God and to other neighbors. Hence 
 it is that Jesus names these two as the supreme 
 obligations which include all the rest. Then, 
 he goes on in his own large way, lifted com- 
 pletely out of all pettiness, to unfold this 
 principle of neighborhood, setting it forth on 
 an international scale. 
 
 The whole story of Israel, the messianic 
 nation, is interwoven inextricably with that of 
 the neighboring nations. The great dynasties 
 of Egypt, to the westward, and the great em- 
 
76 Elemental Forces in Home Missions 
 
 pires succeeding one another in the Euphrates 
 Valley on the eastward, occupy a large part of 
 the story of the Bible because they were the 
 neighbors of the Israelitish nation. 
 
 Jesus when he is talking with a thoughtful 
 lawyer, takes for illustration the nearest of the 
 national neighbors. The " Good Samaritan," 
 illuminates for all time this eternal principle 
 of neighborhood. 
 
 It is common to magnify one's own nation 
 and belittle all other nations. Oh, he is only 
 a "Dago," or a " Sheeny," or something; we 
 are Americans ! But Jesus when he wanted to 
 hold up for everlasting admiration a fine trait 
 of character, gratitude, took a foreigner. The 
 one man who exhibited that, the cured leper 
 who came back to say " Thank you," was a 
 Samaritan. Again Jesus wanted to reveal the 
 highest spiritual truth and he revealed it to 
 a Samarian. God is Spirit and they that wor- 
 ship Him must worship in spirit and in truth. 
 Religion is universal. Wherever men are sin- 
 cere and honest, there God is worshipped. He 
 revealed this revolutionary sublime truth to a 
 Samaritan. 
 
 Everybody would agree that one of the two 
 or three greatest parables of all the wonderful 
 parables that Jesus gave, was this of the good 
 
National Neighborhood 77 
 
 fellow-countryman — oh, no, not the good Jew, 
 but the Good Samaritan. Thus Jesus put in 
 practice the principle of showing the greatest 
 appreciation instead of depreciation, of the 
 commonly despised and commonly disparaged 
 Samaritans. 
 
 Nothing is more needed at the present junc- 
 ture of events in America, than a Christ-like 
 appreciation of all our national neighbors. 
 Who are they? The very last words of Jesus 
 were : ** You shall be my witnesses in Jerusa- 
 lem and in all Judea and Samaria, and unto 
 the uttermost parts of the earth." 
 
 Our Jerusalem is, of course, the city where 
 we live ; our Judea, it is equally obvious, is our 
 own country; the uttermost parts of the earth 
 are, without question, all the continents outside 
 of our own. But, where is our Samaria? It is 
 that portion of our own continent which lies 
 between our own country and another conti- 
 nent, namely, Spanish North America. That 
 is our Samaria, Shall we seek to apreciate this 
 near national neighbor in the spirit of Jesus, 
 who says that one of the two elemental, eter- 
 nal, supreme, obligations is to love with a love 
 that takes care of them, our neighbors, though 
 they are of a nationality that we are inclined 
 to disparage? How much do ordinary Amer- 
 
78 Elemental Forces in Home ^Missions 
 
 icans think of Spanish- Americans ? We are apt 
 to think of them in about the way they used to 
 think of the old Samaritans. Let us try to 
 think of them in the way that Jesus thought 
 of the Samaritans of his day. 
 
 In seeking to appreciate our national neigh- 
 bors, note their nearness to us. Our Samaria 
 is so near to us that when they get to quar- 
 reling down there and shoot at each other, 
 their bullets come over the line and hit us. 
 Our Samaria is getting nearer and nearer to 
 us. We are throwing our arms around it. 
 Sooner than we expected the Panama Canal 
 is to be opened. The canal zone is American 
 soil. Our flag floats there. Let us hope that 
 not another square foot of our Samaria will be 
 politically annexed but, like the old Samaria, 
 we " must needs go through " it in getting 
 from one part of our own country to another. 
 Everything that is this side of the canal is 
 within our immediate circle. It is exceedingly 
 near to us. 
 
 Note also the greatness of our Samaria. 
 There are nine Republics in Spanish North 
 America, not going beyond the Panama Canal. 
 There is also one French republic, making ten 
 of these republics on our continent, and its 
 adjacent islands. One of the ten, and the 
 
National Neighborhood 79 
 
 nearest of these neighbors, has an area as great 
 as the combined area of Germany, Great Brit- 
 ain, France and Italy, We have been incHned 
 to think of our Samaria as insignificant. There 
 are 15,000,000 people in Mexico, 5,000,000 in 
 the Central American republics, 2,000,000 in 
 Cuba and 1,000,000 in Porto Rico, with many 
 in other sections of Spanish North America, — 
 more than 23,000,000 souls in our Samaria! 
 That is more than there were in the United 
 States no longer ago than when Abraham 
 Lincoln was born. In some of this vast terri- 
 tory, they are thinly scattered, but in other 
 places they are clustered together more closely 
 than people anywhere else on the western hem- 
 isphere, outside of cities. Seventy-five per 
 cent of the people in Porto Rico are agricul- 
 turalists, and yet they are closer together 
 than human beings are anywhere else 
 in the western hemisphere except in one 
 country. That one country is also in our 
 Samaria. It is the Republic of El Salvador, 
 where, though this is agricultural, too, the 
 people are packed together, five times more 
 closely than they are in the United States. 
 Belgium is famous for being densely peopled, 
 but Belgium, someone has said, is not a 
 country, it is the manufacturing center of 
 
80 Elemental Forces in Home Missions 
 
 Europe. These Spanish-American thickly 
 populated regions are not manufacturing cen- 
 ters, but are agricultural regions, where human 
 beings are gathered in swarms. 
 
 Now, having thought of the nearness of our 
 Samaria, and the greatness of our Samaria, 
 let us look at the capabilities of our Samari- 
 tans, the Spanish North Americans. When 
 you visit those countries you may find 
 numerous ruins of civilization there, showing 
 human attainments greatly superior in some 
 respects, — not in all respects nor in the most 
 important respects, yet in some respects — 
 decidedly in advance of the average civilization 
 of the United States in the twentieth century ; 
 a civilization established in those lands before 
 the Three Wise Men w^ent to find the cradle in 
 Bethlehem. Such ruins are scattered at vari- 
 ous points. I have visited some of them that 
 are beautiful beyond words to express. What 
 does that show ? We are in the habit of saying 
 that in the tropics you cannot expect much of 
 the people; that it is in the temperate zones 
 that high types of humanity are developed; 
 that in the tropical and semi-tropical regions 
 there is something that prevents high attain- 
 ment. That is why we need to think of the 
 history and remember that the highest develop- 
 
National Neighborhood 81 
 
 ment of the human race on the western 
 hemisphere was there, on that platform, rather 
 than here on the platform where we stand. 
 
 If any one is inclined to say, That is too long 
 ago to affect our estimate of the present inhab- 
 itants of Spanish North America, then look 
 at some of those people now. Senator Elihu 
 Root is no demagogue. He is a scholarly 
 statesman. On one occasion, when he was 
 Secretary of State, he said that there are two 
 men now living on our planet who are best 
 worth knowing because of what they have 
 done for humanity. One of those two is Pres- 
 ident Porfirio Diaz of Mexico. Yellow jour- 
 nalism was inclined to disparage Diaz, but in 
 the last few months the whole world has been 
 convinced that he was the man who for a gen- 
 eration held Mexico up to a high and ever ris- 
 ing standard of civilization. Recent history 
 has wonderfully justified the statement of Sec- 
 retary Root. 
 
 This may be the most eminent example, but 
 there are multitudes of men and women in 
 Spanish America of splendid capabilities intel- 
 lectually and in every way. They often put us 
 to shame. I sat at a table with twelve or four- 
 teen Anglo-Saxons in one of the little cities of 
 Mexico, not long ago — people, most of whom 
 
82 Elemental Forces in Home Missions 
 
 have lived there for years, and who know the 
 country well. They love the United States, 
 and talk about it, as all people do when 
 they are in a foreign land, longing to be at 
 home. To change the drift for a moment I 
 said, " Let us think of things in which Mexico 
 is better than the United States, — actually 
 better." I took out a note book and put down, 
 as they named them one after another, respects 
 — a long list of them — in which Mexico is 
 better than our own glorious country. We 
 might dwell upon this greatly to our advantage 
 in striving to come into the spirit of Jesus in 
 respect to our national neighbors. 
 
 But we must pass on to note the spiritual 
 needs of these neighbors. Why should we take 
 the Gospel to these brilliant people in their 
 glorious countries ? For one reason, they need 
 that factor which more than any other one fac- 
 tor has made Anglo-Saxon America what it is, 
 in contrast with Spanish America. 
 
 When our forefathers came over to Ply- 
 mouth, to New Amsterdam, to Virginia, most 
 of them had a book in their hands, sixty-six 
 pamphlets bound together in the most won- 
 derful literature that the world ever has seen 
 collected. We call it the Bible. Many of them 
 had this Book in their hearts as well as in their 
 
National Neighborhood 83 
 
 hands. i\Il of them, whether they had the book 
 in their hearts or in their hands, had 
 a great amount of it in their heads. That was 
 true even in those parts of the country where 
 they used the prayer book more than the Bible ; 
 for nine-tenths of the phraseology in the Eng- 
 lish prayer book is composed of scriptural 
 phrases. Their whole intellectual life was 
 framed on the Scriptures. Even the people 
 who repudiated religion, thought along bibli- 
 cal lines, had biblical ideas, used biblical 
 phrases. Their whole intellectual equipment 
 came out of the Bible. More than any other 
 one factor, that is what has made Anglo-Saxon 
 America as good as it is. The worst tendencies 
 among us are due to loss of biblical ideals. 
 
 The Spanish-American pioneers came with- 
 out Bibles. The few that they did have were 
 in Latin. Speaking in a general way, the Span- 
 ish-Americans did not bring Bibles. They 
 came with swords and cut their way relent- 
 lessly to rule. A' sword in one hand and a 
 rosary in the other! The difference between 
 the Anglo-Saxon civilization on this continent 
 and the Spanish-American civilization, is due 
 in large part to that initiative difference. 
 
 'As I intimated a moment ago, we have much 
 to learn from them. Their courtesy often puts 
 
84 Elemental Forces in Home Missions 
 
 to shame our inconsiderateness. Like that 
 Samaritan in the time of Jesus who came back 
 to say " Thank you," our Samaritans are apt 
 to say " Many thanks," Muchas Gracias. There 
 are other things, not a few, which they have to 
 teach us, but we have to give them the New 
 Testament. That is the best gift we have for 
 any neighbor. 
 
 Spanish America needs stabiHty — stabiUty 
 in home and in state. It has been said that 
 Secretary Knox on visiting Central America 
 was treated with special courtesy in that revolu- 
 tions were suspended while he was present. A 
 man said to me in Central America a few 
 months ago, — an American alien whose home 
 is there — " In my thirty years in this country 
 I have seen seventeen revolutions." An Eng- 
 lishman who has lived eighteen years in Cen- 
 tral America, has repeatedly visited all the 
 republics and knows them well, remarked inci- 
 dentally " Costa Rica is a splendid, progressive 
 country, far more stable than most of these 
 republics; she has not had a single revolution 
 for twelve years." Twelve whole years with- 
 out a revolution! a remarkable achievement! 
 
 Spanish American instabihty is not more 
 marked in national life, than it is in home life. 
 In this land of divorces we are not in a position 
 
National Neighborhood 85 
 
 to fling stones at our neighbors. In Spanish 
 America there are multitudes of men and 
 women who Hve pure and noble lives. Many 
 homes there are models of domestic peace and 
 stability. Conflicting marriage laws of church 
 and state with exorbitant marriage fees 
 account for much that is irregular in domestic 
 establishment. But when all allowances are 
 made and generously made, all who know the 
 facts in the case and who care for social mo- 
 rality must sadly admit that the situation is 
 indescribably bad. The deepest need in our 
 Samaria is of the same kind that Jesus found 
 in ancient Samaria and pointed out so unmis- 
 takably to the Samaritan woman at Jacob's 
 well. 
 
 The hospitable mayor of a Central American 
 city handed me the published annual report 
 of the various departments of his municipality. 
 The table of births gave the number of " legiti- 
 mate" and "illegitimate." The latter were 
 seventy-one out of every one hundred. In the 
 capital of the same republic the percentage was 
 seventy-three. As carefully noted above, these 
 figures do not signify what the same figures 
 would in the United States. We may believe 
 that true marriage without legal sanction takes 
 place much oftener in Spanish America than in 
 
86 Elemental Forces in Home Missions 
 
 the United States. On the other hand, the 
 popular customs are such that even where the 
 legal forms have been observed the common 
 standards require less than with us, so that 
 well-informed students believe that the offi- 
 cial figures do not exaggerate the actual state 
 of immorality. It is obvious that there is a 
 perilous condition in republics where from 
 twenty to seventy of every hundred children 
 are brought into the common life outside the 
 sanction of organised society. The seriousness 
 of the situation is fearfully accentuated if — 
 as is commonly believed in those countries — 
 many of the representatives of the dominant 
 church participate in the immorality. 
 
 Mr. Wm. T. Stead, founder of the English 
 Review of Reviews, published a book a few 
 years ago in which he said that " the morality 
 of many of the priests in Spanish America 
 left so much to be desired that there was a great 
 deal of talk some years ago at the Vatican of 
 the necessity for such an exercise of the Pope's 
 authority as would suspend for a time the 
 enforced celibacy of the clergy which had pro- 
 duced, not chastity, but almost universal con- 
 cubinage." Just before Mr. Stead sailed for 
 America on the Titanic, in answer to an inquiry 
 about that statement, he wrote me, " The state- 
 
National Neighborhood 87. 
 
 ment concerning the priests in South America 
 I can vouch for with my own knowledge, for 
 it was a subject of common talk when I was 
 in Rome in 1899, but I do not know that any- 
 thing was ever officially published on the sub- 
 ject." Of course nothing of that kind would 
 be officially published. As to pervasive social 
 corruption in Spanish North America, it is 
 doubtful if any honest man conversant with 
 the actual situation, can be found, whatever his 
 creed, who would not admit that the corrup- 
 tion is so serious that the conditions cannot be 
 adequately described without using the word 
 " rotten." 
 
 It is possible that the instability of mother 
 earth in Central America, the land of earth- 
 quakes, along with other conditions of physical 
 geography, may have had something to do with 
 the development of social instability. That is 
 a mere speculation. But it is perfectly certain 
 that domestic instability in the home has much 
 to do with domestic instability in the state. 
 The center of social equilibrium is the home. 
 When that is shaky all society totters. 
 
 In Central America I talked with a trusted 
 Scotchman so trustworthy that English cap- 
 italists had entrusted him with their capital for 
 years in India, where he managed great enter- 
 
88 Elemental Forces In Home Missions 
 
 prises. Later he was in South America in 
 charge of an English railroad enterprise there. 
 When I met him he was in Spanish North 
 America, having been at the head of great 
 English business undertakings in two different 
 republics on this side of our Panama canal. 
 He had had large, intimate experience in 
 Spanish America, both North and South, and 
 in old heathen India. When I said to him, Is 
 there any need of the kind of work that one 
 of these home missionary societies would do 
 if it came into Central America? this trusted 
 Scotch business man said, " The need is greater 
 here than anywhere else on earth." 
 
 The spiritual needs, then, of our nearest 
 national neighbors are profoundly serious. The 
 next question is whether they will welcome 
 neighborly help from us. At times and among 
 some there is great fear of us. Others long 
 for such close political connection as may in- 
 sure at least commercial stability. Secretary 
 Knox has assured the Central Americans that 
 the United States does not want another inch 
 of their territory. It would be unspeakably 
 deplorable for us to have on our hands any part 
 of the region between the Rio Grande and the 
 Canal Zone. 
 
 All that aside, there Is an ample welcome 
 
jVational Neighborhood 89 
 
 for us in the discharge of neighborhood obli- 
 gation. 
 
 President Barrios, of the Republic of Gua- 
 temala, came to New York City years ago 
 looking for Protestant missionaries. Provi- 
 dentially he was directed to the Presbyterian 
 Board. He knew that the religion which is 
 founded on the Bible is essential to a strong, 
 democratic government, so he came here to 
 find men who would bring it. That action is 
 typical of the spirit of many patriotic leaders. 
 
 I have intimated that the fundamental evil 
 in our Samaria is the same that Jesus met in 
 old Samaria. In a little chapel in Porto Rico, 
 I talked with one of the leading citizens of the 
 town, a gray haired man. He said to me, *' I 
 used to like to come here and hear your mis- 
 sionary preach, but after a while the message 
 went down deeper than before into my heart, 
 and I decided to follow Jesus Christ and 
 become a Christian myself." He said, " My 
 son and daughter, my son 26 years old and 
 my daughter 24, were here in the chapel and 
 their mother. She gave her heart to Christ 
 when I did mine." Then, I wish you could 
 have seen the smile on that old man's face, 
 as he said, " Within half an hour after we 
 became disciples of Christ, we arranged to be 
 
90 Elemental Forces in Home Missions 
 
 married." The son and daughter were the 
 best man and woman at the marriage of their 
 parents ! 
 
 They receive the gospel when we bring it, 
 and it goes to the root of the trouble in Spanish 
 America, and uproots it. It brings heahng to 
 our Samaria, as Christ coming to the old 
 Samaria brought heahng there. 
 
 A dozen years ago there were no Evangehcal 
 Christians in Cuba and Porto Rico, and to-day 
 there are twenty thousand. In the Roman 
 Catholic Episcopal palace, in one of the capitals 
 of Spanish North America, the Roman Catholic 
 bishop said to me, a Baptist missionary, " You 
 are welcome here and you are needed. For 
 four hundred years Spain sent priests over 
 here who were not wanted in Spain. Such men 
 never could Christianize any land." Remem- 
 ber, I am quoting the words of the bishop to 
 me. " The consequence is, this country was 
 never Christianized and there is room for all of 
 us here. You are doing the country good and 
 are stimulating our Church to do better work." 
 
 This noble utterance is a fitting introduction 
 to the final chapter of our study, that on co- 
 operation of the Christianizing forces. 
 
yi 
 
 Cooperative Action 
 
 WE have seen that great genetic forces 
 are operating to develop the king- 
 dom of God in America. We 
 come now to the supreme necessity in the case. 
 
 The Kingdom of God is not a physical 
 mechanism but a spiritual organism. Its essen- 
 tials are a Spirit, a Principle, a Process, a 
 Law, a Consummation, a Substance and a 
 Method. 
 
 The Spirit is the spirit of Jesus. The Prin- 
 ciple is the principle of service. The Process 
 is the process of growth. The Law is the law 
 of justice. The Consummation is discriminat- 
 ing love. The Substance is personal fellow- 
 ship and the Method is the method of co- 
 operation. 
 
 Of these seven aspects of the Kingdom of 
 Heaven on Earth the first is most essential. 
 The Kingdom of Heaven on Earth never has 
 91 
 
92 Elemental Forces m Home Missions 
 
 existed, it never can exist, except to the extent 
 that the Spirit of Jesus prevails. That is the 
 essential strength of the leaders of the King- 
 dom everywhere, before Christ as well as since 
 — for " our fathers did all drink the same 
 spiritual drink, for they drank of a spiritual 
 rock that followed them and the rock was 
 Christ." Where the Spirit of Jesus prevails 
 the principle of service rules inevitably. The 
 process of growth is the process of life which 
 the Master so carefully expounded in his par- 
 ables and which is now accepted as the great 
 law of life under the name of evolution. Justice 
 is fundamental, as love is supreme. In the 
 present study we confine attention simply to 
 the Method of the Kingdom of Heaven on 
 Earth not undertaking to discuss the more 
 important elements of that Kingdom, the 
 Spirit, the principle, the process, the law, the 
 consummation and the substance of the 
 Kingdom. 
 
 The true Method of the Kingdom of 
 Heaven on Earth is Cooperation. The 
 chief methods proposed in opposition to the 
 true method are anarchy and monarchy. 
 Anarchy is only an ideal. As a matter of fact 
 it is an impossibility. Those who propose it, 
 like the political anarchists, the Plymouth 
 
Cooperative Action 93 
 
 Brethren and other small sects of ecclesiastical 
 anarchists, come nowhere near their ideal in 
 practice. Their existence as a force in the world 
 is accurately measured by the degree of their 
 departure from anarchy, that is, by the amount 
 of cooperation which they practise. 
 
 Monarchism, however, cannot be dismissed 
 so easily. It has been the prevailing practice 
 of the human race. Under various names and 
 in a thousand degrees of greater or less com- 
 pleteness it is in vogue. Absolute monarchy, 
 so-called, may not exist anywhere on earth now 
 except possibly in Siam and Afghanistan. In 
 the form of oligarchies it rules almost every- 
 where, not only in Romanism but in most of 
 the other great sects of the church, not only in 
 Russia but in the United States. A part of the 
 people are determined to rule the rest. What 
 a time " the better half " of the English people 
 and of the American people is having to get 
 on a basis of cooperation with the worse half 
 instead of staying in political subjection to 
 the worse half ! 
 
 Competition is a passing form of monarch- 
 ism. It is the strenuous endeavor to rule. The 
 competition may be mainly brutal or mainly 
 artful; the principle is the same. It rests on 
 the survival of the savage. It is weighed in 
 
94 Elemental Forces in Home Missions 
 
 the balance and found wanting. Compe- 
 tition, seeing the handwriting on the wall, is 
 now seeking a sort of apotheosis in the cult 
 of the superman. 
 
 One method of efficiency which is often put 
 in contrast with competition is in reality the 
 consummation of competition, — combination. 
 The most subtle form of monarchism at pres- 
 ent, now that the older forms are vanishing, 
 is the craving for consolidation. In the bus- 
 iness world consolidation is the famous method 
 now-a-days and is accentuated by many 
 attempts to make it infamous. In the church 
 consolidation is the glowing ideal of a multi- 
 tude of noble brethren who long for ecclesias- 
 tical solidarity. In the state it is the glowing 
 ideal of a swelling host of heroic souls who 
 long for politico-industrial socialism. Consol- 
 idation is the fascinating goal before the eager 
 vision of the present moment. But at its heart 
 lurks the world-old method of efficiency — 
 COMPULSION. Hence it is that we need to 
 study as never before the Method of the King- 
 dom of Heaven on Earth,— COOPERATION. 
 
 It should be fully acknowledged, that 
 the method of compulsion has tremendous 
 efficiencies. If the compellers could always 
 be perfect and the compelled could be com- 
 
Cooperative Action 95 
 
 pletely compelled, that method would have 
 matchless advantages. The single disadvan- 
 tage would be the abolition of freedom. About 
 that point, freedom of the will, past genera- 
 tions bothered themselves a great deal. We 
 are fond of calling it a dead issue. There are 
 indications, however, that it is only a case of 
 metempsychosis. On this old question of free- 
 dom of the will it is hardly possible for the 
 most up-to-date man to sit on the fence. Mod- 
 ern materialism is down on the same side of 
 the fence with ancient supralapsarianism. 
 Strangely enough, Ernest Haeckel and Jona- 
 than Edwards lean the same way. 
 
 Our theme brings us dangerously near 
 another eternal issue which is parading under 
 a new name, Monism — a name so portentous 
 that, like the name of the Deity, one is tempted 
 in pronouncing it to prolong the sound of 
 the o. 
 
 Evidently our theme is on the margin of 
 deep seas. Even if the waves are too tempting 
 for us to quite stay out, we must not plunge 
 in beyond our depth. The beach has a long 
 slope. We can wade around safely keeping 
 our feet all the time on the ground. But while 
 we only play in the shallows, we may get some 
 whiffs of ozone from the boundless ocean. A 
 
96 Elemental Forces in Home Missions 
 
 little briny mist in our eyes might strengthen 
 them. 
 
 We can avoid all perils of being unduly 
 speculative or discourteously original, if we 
 keep as well as we can to the inductive way. 
 We get the widest platform on which to study 
 Cooperation as the Method of the Kingdom 
 of Heaven on Earth when we observe that co- 
 operation is the method of efficiency in all 
 God's kingdoms. 
 
 Cooperation is the method of efficiency in 
 the Mineral Kingdom. That kingdom is 
 controlled by neither anarchy nor monarchy. 
 Of course not by anarchy! the physical uni- 
 verse is not a chaos but a cosmos. How about 
 monarchy in the mineral kingdom ? There has 
 been a tremendous drift of thought for a gen- 
 eration or two in the direction of monism. 
 Though not so many have been able to con- 
 ceive matter and mind both as one, it has been 
 assumed by almost everybody that each one 
 of those two is by itself a unit. It is a fascin- 
 ating conception. It is almost one of the 
 pieties of thought. With many it is, indeed, 
 a fetish, one of the absolutes. All matter is 
 essentially one. In spite of the overwhelming 
 drift of thought assuming unity, the examina- 
 tion of the facts in the case has gone on dis- 
 
Cooperative Action 97 
 
 covering more and more plurality. The text- 
 book on chemistry which men still in the prime 
 of life used in college enumerated 63 chemical 
 elements. All matter was constructed by com- 
 binations of these few. Has the progress of 
 science diminished the number? On the con- 
 trary it has increased them. Eighty-one is the 
 smallest number named by any chemist now; 
 83 are commonly listed. In addition to those 
 which are clearly above the horizon, others are 
 dawning. Dr. Alexander Smith, head of the 
 department of chemistry in Columbia Univer- 
 sity, writes me as follows : " In addition to 
 the above, it is found that uranium, radium 
 and thorium decompose, giving additional ele- 
 ments. The number of such elements as given 
 by Soddy in his recent book, 191 1, is about 30. 
 Whether the products of these three different 
 parent elements are all different or include 
 duplicates is not yet known." 
 
 Evidently the farther we go in the study of 
 matter the more its ultimate constitution 
 appears in the plural number instead of the 
 singular. The material universe is composite. 
 There are some two hundred and fifty thou- 
 sand kinds of matter. They are all composed 
 by the cooperation of four or five scores of 
 elements. The speculative hypothesis that the 
 
98 Elemental Forces in Home Missions 
 
 elemental atoms are but varying systems of 
 electrons has the fascination which all monistic 
 speculations possess. How dazzling the thought 
 that everything is electricity! It is the more 
 dazzling because no one pretends to know what 
 electricity really is. But scientific imagination 
 — allowing for a moment that the most specula- 
 tive imagination may be called scientific — 
 when given unlimited liberty conceives elec- 
 trons as only the negative pole of the atoms. 
 .What is the positive pole? 
 
 Coming back from the realm of near- 
 metaphysics, from the aeroplane flights of 
 physics, to solid ground, the surest thing about 
 the Mineral Kingdom is that all its marvels 
 and splendors are produced by cooperation of 
 elements. They mix and mingle in no end of 
 combinations. But the ultimate particles are 
 forever separate, discrete, individual. The 
 particles of a single substance even are only 
 united, they are not a unit. They stand out 
 and apart, each one by itself, presenting 
 a common front to the world because they 
 move together as one harmonious whole. The 
 particles of solid gold are so far apart that a 
 substance as compact as mercury can work its 
 way in between the particles of gold and with- 
 out crowding them apart in the slightest degree 
 
Cooperative Action 99 
 
 or expanding the mass, yet add substantially 
 to its weight. 
 
 The ultimate materials of which any sub- 
 stance is composed are infinitesimal galaxies 
 of molecules and the molecules themselves 
 are atomic solar systems. They swing 
 along through space together under common 
 laws, in one kingdom. The vast energies 
 operating throughout the physical universe are 
 closely, intimately, cooperant, making it indeed 
 a universe. This is the Method of Efficiency 
 in the Mineral Kingdom of God. 
 
 Passing to the next realm of God, where 
 life begins. Cooperation is the Method of Effi- 
 ciency in the Vegetable Kingdom. No plant 
 liveth unto itself. Every plant is in genetic 
 relation with a whole series. It is in the 
 momentous position of being both offspring 
 and progenitor. It has a distinct, individual 
 life. There may be no other plant in the world 
 exactly like it in every particular. Yet it 
 epitomizes the type and reacts on the type of 
 its whole kind. It embodies the destiny of its 
 whole race. 
 
 Speculation, sometimes, has postulated a 
 " vital principle," as if there were one entity 
 in all living things. Science discards that idea. 
 It knows no life except in lives. But the lives 
 
100 Elemental Forces in Home Missions 
 
 are interdependent. Not only is the coopera- 
 tion lineal, with no genesis except biogenesis, 
 it is also lateral, widely lateral. It even reaches 
 from one kingdom of life into another. Vast 
 multitudes in the Vegetable Kingdom are abso- 
 lutely dependent on members of the Animal 
 Kingdom for the most vital processes. Fertil- 
 ization itself takes place in many plants only 
 through the cooperation of animal lives. Red 
 clover, with all that it means for kine and so 
 for human babies, survives from one gener- 
 ation to another only through the ministration 
 of bumblebees. 
 
 This vital interrelationship of lives in two 
 kingdoms is not exceptional, it is typical. It 
 has often seemed to me that this cooperation 
 of our humble friends Bombus and Trifolium 
 is the great emblem of the universe. If you 
 were to devise a coat of arms for the chariots 
 of the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth, what 
 could be more appropriate than a honey-bee 
 couchant on a head of white clover? 
 
 Coming back from this glance at Coopera- 
 tion between kingdoms international coopera- 
 tion so to speak, the Method of Cooperation in 
 the Vegetable Kingdom by itself shows trium- 
 phant tendencies. Some plants put forth their 
 blossoms singly, separately. Others combine 
 
Cooperative Action 101 
 
 them in clusters, pool the issues of life, form 
 a trade union of petals so as to exert by their 
 united bloom a more commanding influence 
 with the essential animal world. Early bota- 
 nists called them compound flowers. They 
 have given name to a whole order of plants, 
 now called the Compositae. It is significant 
 that this order of cooperatives is conquering 
 the earth as no other order is doing. " Com- 
 positae: the largest natural order of plants, 
 including over 750 genera and 10,000 species, 
 distributed all over the globe wherever 
 vegetation is found and divided equally be- 
 tween the old world and the new." That is 
 a scientific record of the world- winning Effi- 
 ciency of Cooperation as God's Method in the 
 Vegetable Kingdom. 
 
 As we ascend the scale of being, we find the 
 Method of Cooperation efficient, not only, as 
 below, in giving mass, variety, continuity and 
 power of survival, but also in higher ranges of 
 activity, evolving complicated, sensitive, sym- 
 pathetic nerve-centers where intellectual and 
 moral qualities have their seat. In the 
 Animal Kingdom the highest intelligence is 
 developed by cooperation. That is true all the 
 way from bees to elephants. The insect which 
 surrenders its individual life utterly to the aims 
 
102 Elemental Forces in Home Missions 
 
 of the swarm creates all the honey of the 
 world. The huge beast which, in spite of its 
 apparent clumsiness, can do work with almost 
 human efficiency, has developed its wonderful 
 intelligence not by solitary existence but by 
 roaming in herds. It is the difference in co- 
 operative faculty which makes the whole genus 
 of dogs both domestic and wild so much nobler 
 than that of cats. 
 
 "Now this is the law of the jungle — as old and 
 
 as true as the sky ; 
 And the wolf that shall keep it may prosper, 
 
 but the wolf that shall break it must die. 
 As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk the 
 
 Law runneth forward and back — 
 For the strength of the Pack is the wolf, and 
 
 the strength of the wolf is the Pack." 
 
 The chief mark of progress in the human 
 race is that it is learning this old law better 
 and better. Savages can live the simple life 
 together only in tribes of a few hundred souls, 
 even that little group readily going to pieces. 
 Civilized men can live together in one infinitely 
 complex but closely cooperative government a 
 hundred million strong. Here is the table 
 which has been worked out by careful students 
 of the whole human family, showing in four 
 
Cooperative Action 103 
 
 stages of human advancement with ten sub- 
 stages the average number of people in 248 
 races of men who have learned to live together 
 cooperatively. 
 
 Savages : 
 
 Lower, average of 8 races 40 
 
 Middle, average of 6 races 150 
 
 Higher, average of 33 races. . . . 360 
 
 Barbarians : 
 
 Lower, average of 30 races. . . . 6,500 
 
 Middle, average of 35 races. . . . 228,000 
 Higher, average of 61 races. . . . 442,000 
 
 Civilized : 
 
 Lower, average of 23 races. . . . 4,200,000 
 
 Middle, average of 8 races 5,500,000 
 
 Higher, average of 30 races. . . . 24,000,000 
 
 Cultured : 
 
 Lower, average of 14 races. . . . 30,000,000 
 Middle, average of — races. . . . 
 Higher, average of — races .... 
 
 The last two steps in the giant stairway 
 from animal to heavenly human society are 
 not yet built. But the first ten are as solidly 
 laid in hard facts as any scientific induction 
 in the realm of anthropology can be. The scale 
 
104 Elemental Forces in Home Missions 
 
 of human being is marked by the degree of 
 Cooperation attained. 
 
 Having obtained this widest inductive basis 
 as to the method of efficiency in God's other 
 kingdoms we are prepared to study the matter 
 in hand more closely and to see without sur- 
 prise that Cooperation is the method of effi- 
 ciency in the Spiritual Kingdom. 
 
 If we plunge into the midst of the spiritual 
 history of humanity at the point where it re- 
 ceives its greatest tributary — a tributary 
 greater than all the preceding stream itself as 
 the tributary river from the far heights of the 
 northern Rockies is mightier than even the 
 Father of Waters — ^we may gain at that point 
 the best conception of the spiritual kingdom. 
 What did Jesus Christ himself mean by the 
 key-words of his ministry, Kingdom of 
 Heaven? 
 
 On the one hand he did not mean anarchism. 
 The word *' Kingdom " was the only available 
 word in the vocabulary of the people then to 
 indicate social organization on a large scale. 
 He used it in radically new senses, to be sure. 
 But it could not be used In any sense without 
 meaning at least organized cooperation. He 
 dwelt mainly on the important elements of the 
 Kingdom which we are not studying at this 
 
Cooperative Action 105 
 
 hour. He did not go into questions of the 
 method of the Kingdom. He left that for us 
 to work out in view of the essential spirit, 
 principle, process, law, consummation and sub- 
 stance of the Kingdoms of God open to our 
 study and in view of the spiritual evolution of 
 humanity. It is a part of the many things 
 which he expressly left to the developing power 
 of hio Spirit in the world. But his teaching 
 about the Kingdom involves as an irreducible 
 minimum Cooperation. 
 
 The spirit of Jesus means cooperation even 
 to the extent of cooperation between the in- 
 finite God and human flesh. The principle of 
 service as he unfolded and exemplified it means 
 cooperation at all cost and with all men, even 
 the most unattractive. The process of growth 
 which so many of his parables of the Kingdom 
 centrally set forth is a cooperative process be- 
 tween earth and air, rain and sunshine, at 
 heart between a multitude of vital cells which 
 are linked together as the very form and fact 
 of growth. The law of justice means fairness 
 in all the relations of one with another. Love 
 the consummation of the Kingdom, is by its 
 inherent nature, cooperative. The substance of 
 the Kingdom, personal fellowship, is the very 
 soul of cooperation. The great essentials of 
 
106 Elemental Forces in Home Missions 
 
 the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth, therefore, 
 involve Cooperation as their indispensable 
 method. 
 
 On the other hand the method of the King- 
 dom unfolded by Jesus is not compulsion. It 
 is the Kingdom of God. The authority is His. 
 The Infinite is of necessity supreme. The 
 Kingdom ideally is the perfect sway of the 
 unlimited good, the good God. The sover- 
 eignty is far too complete to be delegated. It 
 is absolute and unshared. As between finite 
 beings there is no vestige of it. The assump- 
 tion by men of the place of God In his King- 
 dom is the depth of absurdity. In a thousand 
 degrees and forms that assumption is common. 
 If it were not the most serious and primal sin 
 of the universe, it would be the most ridiculous 
 thing in the universe. Subjects mistaking 
 themselves for the sovereign! That is the 
 great insanity. 
 
 As between man and man nothing more than 
 cooperation is ultimately possible. Even as 
 between man and God Jesus came to establish 
 the method of cooperation. This is the core of 
 the Gospel. In Jesus of Nazareth the infinite 
 and absolute has become our comrade, has 
 entered into intimate fellowship with us. 
 
 If we turn from the history of revelation to 
 
Cooperative Action 107 
 
 the revelation of history we see the same thing. 
 Without any question the nucleus of all the 
 spiritual development of the human race is 
 the family. There has been born not only the 
 life of the body, but also the life of the spirit 
 of humanity. Everything humane has been 
 generated there. Cold-blooded animals spawn 
 in m /riads and abandon their offspring. It is 
 the prolongation of the care of offspring which 
 not only marks but generates the sympathetic 
 feelings which eventuate in the highest forms 
 of spiritual tenderness. The expansion of 
 family feeling into widening circles becomes at 
 last cosmopolitan altruism. All spiritual out- 
 reach Is rooted back through nation, tribe, 
 clan and gens in the family. The patriarch 
 is the " father of the faithful." In some 
 branches of race development it is the matri- 
 arch Instead of the patriarch who Is recognized 
 as the head. But In all cases it Is in fact both. 
 The root of everything vital is not singular 
 but plural. It is a pair. The foundation of 
 society is dual. Two cooperate not only In 
 making life but In making life worth while. 
 The story of all that is best In the world is a 
 love story. It is esesntlally that all the way 
 from the simplest unicellular forms of life, 
 which either divide or commingle or both, in 
 
108 Elemental Forces In Home Missions 
 
 order to develop, on through the multicelhilar 
 forms which are vast colonies of cooperating 
 cells, on and on until " God so loved the 
 world." There is a subject and an object. The 
 uplift is always through cooperation. The 
 highest spiritual attainment is never in singu- 
 larity. In fact no spiritual activity can come 
 into being except through plurality. The spirit 
 of man as such does not function except co- 
 operatively. 
 
 This elemental force of spiritual history is 
 its chief factor on every page of that history. 
 The typical organization of that force is the 
 church. All other organizations of men, what- 
 ever their object, promote the activity of the 
 spirit. The church, instead of doing this inci- 
 dentally, exists for the purpose of doing this. 
 This is its reason for being. In the church, 
 therefore, the method of cooperation must be 
 peculiarly aware of itself. So it is in one form 
 and another. It is a fellowship, a brotherhood. 
 There is no question about that in the local 
 groups of believers. But when you go beyond 
 that to the relationship of the local churches to 
 one another you pass into a realm of great 
 uncertainty even in this twentieth century of 
 Christian history. The uncertainty pertains to 
 
Cooperative Action 109 
 
 both interdenominational relationships and to 
 the internal relationships of denominations. 
 
 The atmosphere of thought about interde- 
 nominational relationship is filled with mist. 
 Collisions are frequent in spite of fog-horns 
 which rend the air. Some denominations 
 spend a large part of their energy blowing 
 about it. 
 
 Where the clouds are not sufficiently con- 
 densed for thunder and lightning or any kind 
 of storm, there is yet the pervasive, chilling 
 mist — so thick in some places that you have 
 to swallow as you advance, so thin in other 
 places that you seem to see distinct objects 
 through it. But they loom. Everywhere 
 haze, haze — sometimes wide expanse of haze 
 — with every now and then wonderful mirage. 
 In short, on the subject of interdenominational 
 relationship, the one reliable forecast is 
 " cloudy and windy." 
 
 In all the wide welter, but two ideas have 
 been sufficiently distinct to be taken as ideals, 
 the idea of Consolidation and the idea of 
 Segregation. Take the idea of a single, uni- 
 versal, solidly organized Church, with every- 
 body in it. As an abstract idea that Is easily 
 grasped. As an ideal it is fascinating beyond 
 the power of words to depict. It glows and 
 
110 Elemental Forces in Home Missions 
 
 gleams and glitters. None but the stone-blind 
 can fail to look upon it with charmed interest. 
 Not only with bishops, archbishops, cardinals 
 and popes is it the Dcils ex machina, but equally 
 with sectarians of every other title. The 
 thought of one great, all inclusive church 
 organization with uniform symbols of faith, 
 organs of devotion, discipline of life and goal 
 of ambition, is the ideal, not only of multitudes 
 in the several great historic bodies of Chris- 
 tians, but also of the majority in many of the 
 smaller, newer and, as it seems to us, most 
 flighty groups. They have glowing expecta- 
 tion, born of consuming zeal, that their own 
 communion is to become universal. For that 
 end they live. For that they think, even, that 
 they are willing to die. There is a great long- 
 ing for consolidation. 
 
 The other ideal, that of Segregation, is 
 also clear cut. A church of Christ is a local 
 group of agreeing Christians. That is the only 
 body with legislative, judicial or executive 
 functions. Let its relations with other such 
 groups be purely sentimental and in no way 
 organic. That was the earlier view of Isaac 
 Backus and the majority of New England 
 Baptist churches which refused to go into any 
 such ecclesiastical machine as an association. 
 
Cooperative Action 111 
 
 There are scores of churches in the South- 
 west claiming to beHeve in missions which re- 
 gard missionary societies as utterly wrong. 
 When it comes to interdenominational relation- 
 ship segregation is the ideal tenaciously held 
 by vast multitudes of Christians of all names 
 in this country. It is, indeed, the ruling idea 
 between denominations. 
 
 As a matter of fact, neither of these ideals 
 is consistenly held or practised by any con- 
 siderable number of people. The so-called 
 " Gospel Mission " churches which repudiate 
 boards of joint administration as the work of 
 the devil, in trying to do mission work together 
 have committees or some kind of designated 
 groups of people to look after the work. There 
 is no possibility of doing anything beyond the 
 reach of one's own presence without some kind 
 of cooperative understanding. Difference of 
 vocabulary in describing it does not overcome 
 the necessity or change the reality. 
 
 On the other hand the bodies which cherish 
 the idea of consolidation most insistently are 
 frequently the ones who segregate themselves 
 most exclusively from their brethren of other 
 denominations. Even within their own de- 
 nomination their solidarity is more theoretical 
 than actual. A minister in one of the denom- 
 
112 Elemental Forces in Home Missions 
 
 inations which dotes most on solidarity, when 
 asked if they did not have within the one 
 Church so-called, three sections virtually as 
 distinct as sects outside, replied, " Not three 
 but nine." 
 
 Not only are both of the opposite ideas mod- 
 ified out of all semblance of consistency in 
 practice, but both also are held mainly by the 
 same people. The staunchest advocates of 
 independency are the most enthusiastic believ- 
 ers that everything will be swallowed up in 
 independency. On the other side the strongest 
 advocates of all-inclusive unity are the most 
 exclusive in practice. 
 
 So here we are, away down into the twen- 
 tieth century, with but two well defined, widely 
 held ideas of the church universal, neither of 
 them practised by anybody, neither of them, 
 in fact, practicable. Is it not time for a new 
 ideal? Is it not time to frankly discard both 
 the old, tenderly cherished but forever unwork- 
 able ideals and openly to put in their place an 
 entirely different conception from either of 
 these ? 
 
 That it is time is proved by the fact that the 
 churches are groping after the new ideal, are 
 engaged in seventy-seven " movements," more 
 or less, feeling along new lines. The time is 
 
Cooperative lA^ction 113 
 
 ripe for sharp definition of the new ideal, for 
 getting it into simple shape where everyone 
 can see it and lay hold of it and be certain that 
 he is no longer under the spell either of soli- 
 darity or of segregation. The new ideal is not 
 a compromise between the old ideals, though 
 it is a golden mean. As a conception it has 
 as great simplicity as either of the old concep- 
 tions. As a working ideal it is beset with end- 
 less difficulties, but so were the old ideals. 
 They, in fact, were nullified by their difficul- 
 ties. The new ideal merely puts into clear 
 expression what has been the actual working 
 principle under the old nominal ideas. 
 
 The word which sets forth the new ideal 
 better than any other single word is coming 
 into use instinctively more and more. It is 
 the word COOPERATION. All God's people 
 are to work together — are to work together. 
 
 All cannot sing together — some want ora- 
 torios while others want jingles. All cannot 
 think together — some demand logic while 
 others demand imagination. All cannot poli- 
 tize together — some require a rigid church 
 mechanism, while others require measureless 
 flexibility. Ritual forms, creedal forms, 
 ecclesiastical forms, never can be uniforms for 
 all. God is too great, his galaxies are too 
 
114 Elemental Forces in Home Missions 
 
 vast. We can not formulate him at once. But 
 we can perform his work in our world. " He 
 that doeth good is of God." That is the last 
 word on the last page of the last apostle. The 
 consummation of godliness is doing good. In 
 the conception of John, the beloved, the whole 
 story condenses into that. When we come to 
 this ultimate experience, this result of last 
 analysis, this elemental simplicity, this final 
 reality, we are all together. We do not have 
 to get together, we are together. Our hearts 
 are one on that. In other matters there are 
 many rival forms and lines. But when the 
 wireless S. O. S. pulsates through the air all put 
 the helm down hard for concentration, unity 
 of effort. 
 
 The end of church life is not church life, 
 but human hfe, the life of God in man, " the 
 human life of God." Our chief desire, our 
 very foremost petition, is that the will of God 
 may be done on earth as it is in heaven. Doing 
 Christ's work together is not only along the 
 line of highest obligation, it is also along the 
 line of least resistance. We have not a tithe 
 of the difficulty in doing practical work with 
 our fellow disciples that we have in theoriz- 
 ing with them. Work is elemental and simple. 
 People who could not use the same ritual with 
 
Cooperative Action 115 
 
 any degree of satisfaction iand who could not 
 honestly recite the same creed, can do practical 
 work together without hesitation and without 
 compromise. In many lines of service Jews 
 and Roman Catholics gladly work with Prot- 
 estants. The whole experience of men in the 
 necessities of daily life, in manufactory, trade 
 and transportation, trains them in doing things 
 together regardless of differences. It comes 
 about therefore happily that work together, co- 
 operation, is the easiest as well as the most 
 important margin of contact with our fellow 
 Christians. 
 
 Doing the will of God, is the only all- 
 important thing. If that be accomplished other 
 things are of too little consequence to matter 
 much. But if you thought differently and set 
 great store by ecclesiastical formularies of one 
 kind and another to which all men should be 
 brought, you would expect the best success in 
 that by first getting them to work together. 
 Cooperaton is the strategic point in the inter- 
 est of unity at all points. Those who try to 
 get men to agree first on a creed, a ritual or 
 any question of ecclesiastical order are begin- 
 ning at the wrong end of the problem. They 
 are putting the cart before the horse. It is 
 sound psychology as well as sound Christianity 
 
116 Elemental Forces in Home Missions 
 
 to learn by doing. If men will do the will, they 
 shall know the doctrine. It is foolish as well 
 as futile to talk much about church union and 
 at the same time stand off from one's brethren 
 in practical endeavor. The habit of doing that, 
 is common and is nothing less than ridiculous. 
 On the other hand I have noticed bodies of 
 Christians who make no pretense of wanting 
 church union, so called, and who yet are gen- 
 erally found doing their part in practical united 
 work. 
 
 From every point of view cooperation is the 
 key to interdenominational relationship. It is 
 the new ideal which is driving both of the old, 
 mutually conflicting ideals off the platform. 
 The principle of Cooperation is now gathering 
 headway rapidly. The last ten years have 
 seen its practice augmented more than the pre- 
 vious hundred years, perhaps thousand years, 
 and in manifold ways. The last twelve months 
 have witnessed more than one tremendous 
 accession to the momentum of interdenomina- 
 tional cooperation. One of the recent accel- 
 erations has been with much rattling of broad- 
 sides and firing of guns. Such things are of 
 enormous value with average humanity. 
 
 Another increase of cooperation which is 
 more fundamental and far-reaching, has been 
 
Cooperative Action 117 
 
 without blare of trumpets. The plans for it 
 were laid out before the Men and Religion 
 Movement was mentioned. The Home Mis- 
 sions Council composed of the administrators 
 of Home Missions of nearly all the great evan- 
 gelical denominations has entered upon a 
 thorough-going, united study of conditions. 
 This epoch-marking step in cooperation meets 
 the approval of bodies which have no penchant 
 for consolidation. 
 
 The Northern Baptist Convention in 19 12 
 adopted the following expression of opinion: 
 " The most important and hopeful movement 
 ever undertaken for the Christianizing of 
 America seems to be the cooperative study 
 the exact religious condition and needs of our 
 western states which was inaugurated by the 
 series of interdenominational conferences held 
 last autumn, which is being continued by the 
 careful and scientific survey now in progress." 
 
 One of the most significant steps in the 
 kingdom of heaven on earth, is this deter- 
 mination of the great Home Mission Societies 
 to face their task together. The task is the 
 Christianization of a continent. Heretofore 
 each body has gone at it almost regardless of 
 what the others attempted to do. When that 
 method involved no hostility, even when it 
 
118 Elemental Forces in Home Missions 
 
 involved, as it commonly did at heart, sincere 
 appreciation of what the others were doing, it 
 yet lacked all power of concerted action — that 
 power which makes the composite order of 
 plants the most world-possessing order, that 
 power which makes the insects which work in 
 swarms the most productive insects, that power 
 which makes the animals which hunt in packs 
 the most sagacious animals, that power which 
 makes the tribesmen who learn to back each 
 other up the most numerous and wide-ruling, 
 that power which makes two organized as a 
 conquering team able to put ten thousand sep- 
 arates to flight. Heroic work, devoted work, 
 effective work, magnificent work has been 
 done b}'^ Home Mission forces acting with little 
 regard to each other, except sentimental 
 esteem. But at its very best, that way of work- 
 ing was devoid of the efficiency which makes 
 a small squad of cooperating men able to out- 
 maneuver a vast mob of merely sympathetic 
 individuals. 
 
 I heard a characteristically clear, inescapa- 
 ble expression of this principle made by a rep- 
 resentative of one of the great denominations 
 which always has put the greatest emphasis on 
 independency, the distinguished President of 
 the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. 
 
Cooperative Action 119 
 
 These are President Mullin's words : " Free- 
 dom expresses itself in two ways among others, 
 first, in the disposition to stand alone, and, 
 second, in the disposition to cooperate. Many 
 seem to think that the only legitimate expres- 
 sion of freedom is in the attitude of antago- 
 nism to other people, as if protest and refuta- 
 tion were the only functions of the free man. 
 On the contrary, it is a more fundamental and 
 higher expression of freedom to cooperate with 
 others. Individualism is not dependent upon 
 isolation in order to its full expression. 
 It is, however, dependent upon integration 
 with other persons in order to its complete 
 expression. The individual is incomplete in 
 himself. It is only in the social organism 
 that he finds his completion. Baptist independ- 
 ence, therefore, and Baptist freedom never 
 attain to maturity until they attain it in co- 
 operation with the brethren in the common 
 ends and aims of the Kingdom." 
 
 The day of segregation within denomina- 
 tions is passed, between denominations it is 
 passing. The day of consolidation has not 
 come, even within denominations, — witness 
 'Northern and Southern Methodists, Baptists 
 and Presbyterians. Between denominations 
 the day of consolidation is not in sight. But 
 
120 Elemental Forces in Home Missions 
 
 the day of cooperation is here. The sun is up. 
 It behooves us all to be up and doing. The 
 Kingdom of Heaven on Earth can come and 
 come swiftly, if we learn to use its method, 
 cooperation. 
 
 It is the only method of modern alertness. 
 It is the only method of wide-reaching and per- 
 manent efficiency. In a word it is the only 
 method of sanity. The Superintendent of an 
 asylum for the insane was asked, " Are you 
 not sometimes afraid for your life here? How 
 easily these hundreds of people might rise up 
 and overwhelm you and the few attendants." 
 " Oh, no," he replied. " There is no danger 
 of that whatever. Insane people never 
 cooperate." 
 
 The Method of the Kingdom of Heaven on 
 Earth is Cooperation. Have we proved it? 
 It does not matter whether we have proved it 
 or not. It is too obvious and eternal to need 
 much proof. It simply needs to be dwelt upon, 
 taken in and worked out. Our task is not to 
 prove it but to do it. In some directions that 
 means reconstruction. 
 
 We have confined our attention to the King- 
 dom of Heaven on Earth, as well wo may for 
 the most part. Yet it would not be natural to 
 leave the subject finally without any mention 
 
Cooperative Action 121 
 
 of the heaven above from which the Kingdom 
 on Earth gets its name. As I was writing 
 this page, I heard a whirring in the air and 
 hfting my eyes to the waters of Lake 
 Michigan and the sky above, I beheld a 
 great biplane sailing through the air. It flew 
 on between the blue above and the blue below, 
 wheeled about, wheeled again and again, and 
 rising higher and yet higher above the tallest 
 roofs of the giant city by the lake, crossed 
 my astonished horizon five times, then sailed 
 away southward till its huge wings appeared 
 to be no more than the pinions of a swallow. 
 And so it vanished in the heavens. When a 
 human being in a machine heavier than air 
 can do that the most earthbound of us may 
 be forgiven for a gyration or two above terra 
 firma. 
 
 We have looked into the Mineral Kingdom, 
 the Vegetable Kingdom, the Animal Kingdom, 
 the Human Kingdom, the Spiritual Kingdom 
 on earth. The Kingdom of Heaven is the 
 Kingdom of God. What is the method of the 
 plural and the singular there ? " Let us make 
 man in our own image, after our likeness." 
 *' Behold, the man is become as one of us." 
 " The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the 
 love of God and the communion of the Holy 
 
122 Elemental Forces in Home Missions 
 
 Spirit be with you all ! " These ancient phrases 
 in a concrete way reflect the first and last 
 pages of almost universal human thought. 
 Duality is the lowest term to which the com- 
 mon consciousness of mankind has been able to 
 reduce its conception of the pluralities of the 
 cosmos. It is a universe, but a plural universe. 
 Does any one ever think of matter and spirit as 
 being one and the same thing, except by a 
 mental tour de forcef We get that idea only 
 by speculating ourselves into it. We can hold 
 it only by main strength. 
 
 Yet our hearts insist on unity. " The Lord 
 our God is one Lord." Every tendency of 
 modern thought sweeps in that direction. The 
 greatest prayer ever uttered brings men with 
 God into the supreme unity. " That they may 
 all be one, even as thou. Father, art in me 
 and I in thee, that they also may be in 
 us." That prayer throws light both Godward 
 and manward. It leaves no place anywhere 
 for segregation. At the same time it assumes 
 the very opposite of consolidation. The Naz- 
 arene petitioner and the infinite God and the 
 included believers are surely plural. Their 
 unity in its highest ideal is that of absolutely 
 perfect and complete cooperation. 
 
 Shall we take one more swing into the blueii 
 
Cooperative Action 123 
 
 How would it feel to be in heaven? What is 
 heaven like? One of the best guesses is that it 
 feels like music. Is it that we really expect 
 brass bands, or pianos or even harps with 
 frames of gold? That cannot be what we 
 mean. Is not this what we mean — music is 
 the finest emblem we have of cooperant forces. 
 Segregated noises are the perdition of the 
 nerves. Consolidated noises are the roar of 
 the city which threatens our life more than 
 Daniel's was threatened by the disconcerting 
 roar of all the lions together. Music is simply 
 sounds transformed and transfigured by co- 
 operation. The forces which segregated or 
 consolidated are too much for us, when they 
 are marshalled and played together, each work- 
 ing with all and all with each, become music, — 
 heaven. 
 
 " Love took up the harp of life and smote on all 
 
 the cords with might ; 
 Smote the cord of self, that, trembling, pass'd 
 
 in music out of sight." 
 
 Printed in the United States of America. 
 
THE MINISTER AND HIS WORK 
 
 THIS ELTON MARK, D.Lit. 
 
 The Pedagogics of Preaching 
 
 A Short Essay in Practical Homiletics. Net S^c. 
 
 Much has been done for the Teacher in showing him 
 the practical application in his work of the findings of the 
 new Psychology, but comparatively little has been done in 
 the field of "Psychology and Preaching." This scholarly and 
 yet popular book applies to the art of preaching methods 
 which have long been followed in the training oiE teachers. 
 
 frank: w. gunsaulus, d.d. 
 
 The Minister and The Spiritual Life 
 
 Yale Lectures on Preaching for 1911. Net $1.25. 
 
 Among the phases of this vital subject treated by the 
 pastor of The Central Church, Chicago, are; The Spiritual 
 Life and Its Expression in and Through Ministering; The 
 Spiritual Life in View of Changes in Philosophical and 
 iteological View-Points; The Spiritual Life in Its Rela- 
 tion to Truth and Orthodoxy; The Spiritual Life and 
 Present Social Problems, etc. 
 
 PJ?OF. A. T. ROBERTSON, D.D. 
 
 The Glory of the Ministry 
 
 Paul's Exultation in Preaching. Cloth, net $1.25. 
 
 Rev. P. B. Meyer says: "I think it is the best of all 
 your many books and that is saying a good deal. Its il- 
 luminating references to the Greek text, its graphic por- 
 traiture of the great Apostle, its allusions to recent liter- 
 ature and current events, its pointed and helpful instruc- 
 tions to the ministry combine to give it very special value." 
 
 SAMUEL CHARLES BLACK, D.D. 
 
 Building a Working Church 
 
 l2mo, cloth, net $1.25. 
 
 Every pastor or church officer no matter how successful 
 he may be, will find practical, vital suggestions for strength- 
 ening some weak place in his present organization. The au- 
 thor makes every chapter bear directly upon some specific 
 phase of the church building problem. 
 
 WILLIAM E. BARTON, D. D . 
 
 Rules of Order for Religious Assemblies 
 
 i8mo, cloth, net 50c. 
 
 TTiis work is entirely undenominational and will be 
 found adapted to use in any religious assembly whethev 
 church, council, association or convention. 
 
MISSIONS 
 
 ALICE M. GUERNSEY 
 
 A Queen Esther Round Robin 
 
 Decorated Paper, in Envelope, net 25c. 
 
 "It supplies a long-felt want in getting the girls of 
 younger Queen Esther age interested in the Why and How of 
 other girls. It will be a constant reminder through the year, 
 and many loving deeds will be wrought in the lives of the 
 girls which had their inception in the careful study of this 
 book." — Woman's Home Missions. 
 
 Children's Missionary Series 
 
 Cloth, decorated, each, net 60c. 
 Childrea of Persia. By Mrs. Napier Malcolm. 
 
 The latest addition to this popular series. The story 
 Is related in such a manner as to please as well as instruc^ 
 the young reader. Handsomely bound, with colored illustra- 
 tions. 
 JAMES F. LOVE, AD. 
 
 Asst. Ctr. Sic. Bome_Miiiitn Board Southtrn Baftiit Cenvintitn 
 
 The Mission of Our Nation 
 
 i2mo, cloth, net $1.00. 
 In "The Unique Message and Universal Mission of 
 Christianity" Mr. Love gave as the foundation reason for 
 missions the peculiar character of the Gospel. In this later 
 volume he presents as the fundamental ground for home mis- 
 sions and good citizenship, the peculiar mission of the Anglo- 
 Saxon race and the American Republic, a proposition which 
 the book successfully expounds. It is specifically a home 
 mission discussion on the broader lines with a foreign 
 mission inference and objective. 
 
 BRUCE KINNEY rormerly Sup't Baptist Misshns in Utah 
 
 Mormonism, The Islam of America 
 Interdenominational Home Mission Study Course. 
 Illustrated, i2mo, cloth, net see. ; paper, net 30c. 
 
 It contains not only the history of the Mormons and 
 their sacred book but a study of their organization and 
 methods, including a history of polygamy as counselled and 
 practiced by them, the ceremonies of the endowment house, 
 articles of faith, missions; together with the results of the 
 Mormon faith in character and life. 
 
 MARY CLARK BARNES 
 
 Early Stories and Songs ^°''o^F^ENfL.T''^' 
 
 A Primer for Immigrants. Illustrated, net 6oc. 
 
 Through the medium of these stories and songs, teachers 
 knowing only English have given to pupils of different na- 
 tionalties the ability to speak, read and write the English 
 required for practical use. Dr. Bdivard A. Steiner says: 
 "Not only practical but it affords easy transition to the 
 higher things. The Bible is a wonderful primer, simple, 
 yet wonderfully profoundw I am glad that it is the basig 
 lif your system of teaching English to foreigners." r 
 
MISSIONS 
 
 ROBERT McCHE YNE MA TEER 
 
 Character Building in China 
 
 The Life Story of Julia Brown Mateer. With In- 
 troduction by Robert E. Speer. Illustrated, net $i.oo. 
 
 Robert E. Speer says: "Mrs. Mateer belonged to the old 
 heroic school which did hard things without making any fu»s, 
 which achieved the impossible because it was one's duty to 
 achieve it. May this story of her strong, vigorous life be the 
 summons to many young women in our colleges and Cburca 
 to-day. — From the Introduction, 
 
 GEORGE F. HERRICK, P.P. 
 
 Fifty Ytars Missionary of tht Amtrican Board in Turitf 
 
 Christian and Mohammedan 
 
 A Plea for Bridging the Chasm, Illustrated, i2mo, 
 cloth, net $1.25. 
 
 "Dr. Herrick has given his life to missionary work 
 among the Mohammedans. This book is the mature expres- 
 sion of his profound belief that the followers of the Arabian 
 Prophet are to be won to Christianity by patiently showing 
 Jesus Christ, with kindly appreciation of the good while fully 
 gauging the deadly evil of their religious system. Opinions 
 from leading missionaries to Mohammedans, in all parts of 
 the world have been brought together in the book. — Henry 
 Otis Dwight. LL.D. 
 
 EPWARP C. PERKINS, M. P. 
 
 A Glimpse of the Heart of China 
 
 Illustrated, i6mo, cloth, net 60c. 
 
 "A simple, clear story from a physician's point of view 
 of the sickness, the unnecessary suffering, the ignorant and 
 superstitious practice of the native physician, constrasted 
 with the comfort and healing that follow in the wake of 
 the skillful treatment of a Christian Chinese 'woman doc- 
 tor,' has in it many elements of interest. The reader of 
 these pages feels that he has truly had a 'glimpse of the 
 heart of China.' " — Missionary Voice. 
 
 ANSriCE ABBOTT 
 
 The Stolen Bridegroom east i?d?a"n Fdvixs 
 
 With Introduction by George Smith, CLE., Au- 
 thor of "The Conversion of India." Illustrated, 
 l2mo, cloth, net 75c. 
 
 "The author reveals, as only an expert could, the life of 
 the Marathi women of Western India. With delicate touch, 
 but realistic effect, she draws back the curtain that conceals 
 the Zenana The Missionary with the native Bible- 
 woman is seen on her daily round of love and mercy, in 
 the home, the hospital and the school, winning the weary and 
 despairing women and widows." — George Smith. 
 
FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 JAMES F. LOVE. P.P. 
 
 The Unique Message and Universal 
 Mission of Chri^anity 
 
 l2mo, cloth, net $1.25. 
 
 So condensed, fresh and rigorons is his style that he a^ 
 tracts and holds the attention and interest of the reader and 
 renders attractive and almost fascinating the discussion of 
 subjects which are sometimes supposed to be dull and heavy." 
 
 — Biblical Recorder. 
 EMILY T. SHEETS 
 
 In Kali's Country: Tales from Sunny India 
 
 Illustrated, i2mo, cloth, net $1.00. 
 
 "An entertaining little book of stories from India, told 
 by the wife of an American missionary." — The Standard. 
 
 HOME MISSIONS 
 
 ■ >■ 
 
 HOME MISSION STUDY COURSE 
 
 Conservation of National Ideals 
 
 i2mo, cloth, net 50c. ; i2mo, paper, net 30c. 
 
 ;A series of most important themes by well-known 
 writers, specialists fully qualified for such work. 
 
 KATHERINE R. CROWELL 
 
 "Best Things in America" 
 
 The Home Mission Junior Text Book for 1911-ia. 
 
 i6mo, cloth, net 40c. ; paper, net 25c. 
 
 "The author has vivacity of style, close sympathy and 
 high ideals of service." — Over Sea and Land, Philadelphia. 
 
 JOSEPH ERNEST McAFEE 
 
 World Missions from the Home Base 
 
 I2mo, cloth, net 75c. 
 The added emphasis being given to the missionary work 
 of the American Church in foreign field is apt to cause 
 aeslect of the enormous needs for purely missionary effort 
 throughout our own great land. This work is exceedingly 
 well presented in this practical little volume. 
 
 JAMES E. Mcculloch 
 
 Author of "The Open Church for the Unchurched." 
 
 The Mastery of Love ofSetSSliie. 
 
 lamo, cloth, net $1.25. 
 
 "The hardship, the humor, the joy, the despair of city 
 ■Jssion work arc all reflected in this chronicle of haps and 
 mishaps, ups and downs — a chronicle so well told that the 
 reader will be tempted to believe it fiction instead of tbc 
 sstual record that it \»."^-Chns. Workers Magagme. 
 
Princeton Theological Seminary Libraries 
 
 1 1012 01186 8702 
 
 Date Due 
 
 >6- ^ 
 
 f*' J 
 
 
 
 MV '?.'=?. 'A 
 
 
 
 
 ~ 
 
 
 
 
 v«ii 1 iP* 
 
 00^ 
 
 
 
 Hi*"'" 
 
 
 
 
 
 WT 
 
 ^^MQ0au|ggl 
 
 m 
 
 
 
 
 »vn ■ nil" 
 
 
 
 
 I99» 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 
 
 ^