e Immigrant AND America for Ckrist » Upon whom tne ends of tne world are come. Published by The Board of Home Missions and Church Extension of the Methodist Episcopal Church, 1026 Arch Street, Philadelphia, Pa. -o- -o- -o- -o- IMMIGRATION spells obligation. About one-half the people of the United States are foreign born or of foreign parentage. Are they to be Americanized or we foreignized? The numbers stagger us. They come in legions. No other such invasion was ever known. An endless human horde pushing lightward. Most of the multitudes press into a few over- crowded cities ; only about one in twenty-five gets west or south. Forty-eight cities in the Union, ranging in pop- ulation from 25,000 to over 4,000,000, are more foreign than American. A single alley becomes a babel of eighteen languages, and one public school enrolls twenty-six nationalities. New York A Modern Babel. Four-fifths of the people in New York City are of foreign parentage. There are more Cohens than Smiths in its city directory. There are two Italian men to every Irishman in that city. More Jews land in New York every five years and stay there, than all the members of all its Protestant churches. New York is a type of what other cities are becoming. Even now, while 20,000,000 are in our churches, 25,000,000 in the United States are absolutely un- churched. These statements, and some others made herein, are procured from various sources, but neither writer nor reader, in the face of these facts, can procure exemption from his task or shift personal responsibility. In fifteen years what may the harvest be? Will the Alien Rule? Will these alien races rule at the ballot box? Will they govern our great cities? What will be their rule? Will theirs be the dominant church life? What will be their faith? Will their children determine our social and industrial con- ditions? What will be their ideals and standards? We must answer for all this. These immigrants are our raw material out of which we make our to-morrow. We have sent the gospel to the ends of the earth, and the ends of the earth have come to us. America the World's School House. American ideas like leaven — keep Europe in a turmoil. Even our post office has become a mar- velous immigration agent. God has chosen the American people as the old world's schoolmasters. We make the curriculum and determine their destiny and ours. The task is ours and we cannot escape it. The question of saving those away from the slums, if they heed not the heavenly vision, is as great as that of saving the slums. Like Peter, we must respond to our call and go to Cornelius. We must see in the foreigners what Christ sees. We are the body of Christ and these brothers are members of it. There is but one way to Americanize and that is to Christianize. The Rising Tide. There are no indications that this incoming tide will lessen. It is rising. At its source they are born faster than they die and emigrate. This dense throng packing our congested cen- ters, lives its foreign life, crowds its foreign churches and fills our ballot boxes with its half pagan votes. This question of immigration has grown until it includes most of our other problems. It means tenements where people are herded like cattle, and in surroundings more unsanitary. New York has more rooms without windows than any city of the world: 360,000 — largely peo- pled by foreigners. This means disease; veritable plague spots of Consumption. Its Fearful Scourge. It means the sweat-shop where helpless thou- sands are ground between the upper and nether millstones of rapacious landlords and heartless slave-drivers. Men, women and children are held cheaper than beasts, human flesh and blood coined into American dollars. It means the slum ; the scum on this caldron of seething humanity. If the immigrant had fair treatment in our great cities; the tenement defying description, a slavery worse than before the war, and that sullen cess- pool, the slum — these would largely disappear. We Reap What We Sow. We cannot hedge ourselves from contamina- tion. We may drink from our silver faucet, but we imbibe the deadly germ. Diseased clothing and other merchandise created in labor mills do not find their market there. The public buys cheap, but at an awful price. The Christ who lifts the scales and weighs the wrongs of the "least of these" will exact payment and interest, even to the last blood-marked penny. We are told that restriction is a remedy. This may be true in part, yet in that quarter we are helpless. If these people, even with all their ignorance, poverty and superstition, are turned back, who will do our work. The industrial cry of this country is for laborers. Two-thirds in all our factories are foreigners. To shut out the immi- grant is to shut down industries. What then? Shall they be Christianized or we paganized ? Tied In One Bundle. We, in things material, are helplessly tied in the same bundle with the immigrant. We equally need each other. He imparts to us the material, what do we owe him? His only hope and ours is that he may know Christ. Verily we are the people " upon whom the ends of the world are come." These " other sheep " are sent to us, the most favored people of any land or age, that out of our abundance we may spread their spiritual feast. Our Lord, the Shepherd, is saying: "These need not depart ; give ye them to eat." Only thus can we be fed. Twelve baskets are better than five loaves. Let Us Pay Our Debt. Our forefathers built churches for us. From four-fifths to nine-tenths of all the Protestant church buildings in this country were erected wholly or in part by Home Missionary and Church Extension money. Pioneer home missionaries stamped this coun- try with the image of Christ. They withheld neither treasure nor life that this might be a Christian republic. At the close of the Revolutionary War and be- fore a missionary society had been formed in this country, New England, out of her penury, gave, in about thirty years, $250,000 to evangelize what to-day are our great centers of moral and reli- gious power. In their day but one in eighteen of the inhabi- tants had been gathered into the Church. Now it is one in fom and one-fourth, while the increase in population has been but three and one-half fold. No such success has crowned any other land or age. Revival fires are brightening and burning in our great centers. "Aggressive evangelism" .is in the air. Dr. Storrs says, "Home Missions saved this country once, and, if necessary, it can save it again." The Board A Bulwark. More than $9,000,000 expended by our Board of Church Extension in aiding 16,000 church build- ings in our land (one-half the whole number in our Methodism here), and above $20,000,000 al- ready expended by us in Home Missions, have, under the hand of God, been a part preparation to meet this crisis now upon us. We now appropriate $122,760 to city work, when the immediate annual need is at least ten times that sum. City Evangelization Unions are nobly battling great odds. This can be but temporary. The whole country must come to their relief. The city is our Gettysburg. That battle fairly won will make easy the relief of other situations. Brothers from Over the Sea. Let us draw nearer to our brother. He may be an Italian from over the sea. Is he an Italian and do we owe him nothing? An Italian discovered this country, another gave it his name; Italians first explored and mapped our coast lines. They have great ancestry — Romulus and others of Rome's founders. Their forefathers rode in bronze chariots when ours were but savages living in caves. Theirs are Raphael, Michael Angelo, Dante and Savonarola. Theirs was the Italian Renaissance that, for Eu- rope and the Anglo-Saxon race, shattered the mouldering walls of medieval ignorance and led mankind out under the boundless sky of thought. Apostolic Forbears. Paul yearned for Italy. There at Appi Forum the Italian brethren so greeted him that he " bles- sed God and took courage." The saints of Caesar's household still salute us, and we pause reverently to think it was in Italy where the apostle to us Gentiles witnessed a good confes- sion; and that on the resurrection day Paul will rise in the company of Italians. Not one of our foreign brethren, if we search his family record, but bears honored kinship to us. Even that illiterate, a Russian Jew, wears the features of our Lord. And does Christ speak of such when tenderly He says, " Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these, my brethren, ye have done it unto me?" May we not well pray, " Lord, open thou mine eyes that I may behold wondrous things" in the face of my brethren from over the sea? An Honorable Kinsman. And this brother, the immigrant, will do us honor. In things material he is prospering. His will be our best acres. He will dominate many of our large industries. His children are captur- ing our educational prizes. They will easily mount heights where our children are climbing. They are sure to fill our leading places by sheer force of toil. Let us make their acquaintance and treat them on the level of friendship. They must have a place in our congregations and in our pews. This will solve problems of our local churches. Education is the basis of God's call for new reinforcements in this field. Our children must know this people through Sunday-school Missionary lessons. Our young people need the outlook of the Mission Study classes. They will then interpret the foreigner intelligently and approach him sympathetically. Only thus can Christ's prayer be answered, " that they all may be one " * * * " that the world may believe that thou hast sent me." Our Home Missionary and Church Extension offerings must rapidly increase to overtop this rising tide of immigration. Its colossal ignorance and poverty must be eradicated by enlightenment and power. Home Missions Imperative. Our first missionary movement as a Church was in behalf of the foreigner in this country. We now have missions here in several languages. These beginnings at Jerusalem are now perennial springs whose streams have watered the earth. Again God's call hath come to us. Christianity must and will meet the crucial test, for, if we can- not on our own soil, "and for the love of Christ and in his name," meet and win these foreign peo- ples, what of the future of our foreign missions? We cannot overestimate the appalling needs of the foreign field; unstinted help and reinforce- ments are instantly imperative; but, dear disciple, kindly note, IF METHODISM IN THE NEXT FEW YEARS IS NOT PRE-EMINENTLY VIC- TORIOUS IN AMERICA, SHE MUST LOSE ON EVERY FOREIGN FIELD. What doth Christ require of thee? Is he again saying, " As the Father hath sent me into the world, so send I you?" American Methodism must again endure the test of the Gospel for everybody. The spirit of Jesus must be the spirit of His Church. And the Church will respond. It is a fullness of times. God's clock strikes high noon! Our great Church by timely enactment commis- sions " Home Missions and Church Extension." In its one hand is the Stars and Stripes inscribed with "America for Christ," in the other a banner with a luminous cross and the watchword, " By this Sign we Conquer." In the United States as never before " The Son of God goes forth to war A kingly crown to gain; His blood-red banner streams afar, Who follows in His train!" —WARD PLATT. How Contributions to this Board Meet the Situation. During the Quadrennium ending with the last General Conference, the Board has helped church- building enterprises 1,775 times, by expending in donations more than $713,000 (which is $183,000 more than for any other like period) and in loans exceeding $408,000. The meager support of 4,000 missionary pastors was supplemented by nearly $2,600,000, while Board administration expenses were much reduced. The first year of the new Quadrennium shows a further increase paid to churches and missionaries. More than $350,000 was granted in Church Ex- tension Donations and Loans. The Missionary Appropriation, amounting to $653,850, was distributed among various peoples, as follows : English Speaking.$338.665 (White) English Speaking.- 39.150 (Negro) Italian 48,000 German 46,850 Spanish 43,470 Swedish 30,835 Japanese and Korean 25,400 Norwegian and Danish 22,800 Chinese 15,110 Bohemian 10,900 Indian 9,200 French 4,785 $122,760 of the above was appropriated for work in cities. $170,009 in addition was appropriated for Church Extension. $3,140 2,925 2.820 1,800 Polish 1,100 850 600 350 300 200 Other Foreign Popu- 4,600 Total for Home Mis- sions $653,850