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 “Speak to the children of Israel, that they go forward.” 
 
 Exodus 14 : is. 
 
 A Sermon by 
 
 William Pierson Merrill, D.D. 
 
 Preached in the Brick Presbyterian Church 
 New York, March 8, 1914 
 
 The Board of Home Missions 
 
 of the 
 
 Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. 
 156 Fifth Avenue, New York 
 
 No. 1202 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 'C'VERY one interested in home mis- 
 sions will be glad to read this ser- 
 mon, published with Dr. Merrill’s con- 
 sent. Members of the congregation who 
 heard it delivered on the occasion of 
 their recent home mission offering have 
 urged that it be printed and distributed. 
 It is so cogent a presentation of funda- 
 mental home mission principles that we 
 are very glad to have the opportunity of 
 giving it to the Church. 
 
 Charles L. Thompson. 
 
 3 
 
THE 
 
 FORWARD MOVEMENT 
 IN HOME MISSIONS 
 
 “ Speak to the children of Israel, that they go 
 forward." 
 
 I ET me confess at once that I take 
 . this text as a motto, rather than as 
 a subject. I shall spend no time 
 over the text itself. Nor shall I say a 
 word, even by way of introduction, about 
 the passage of Scripture from which it 
 comes, or the situation in which Moses 
 and his people were when this stirring 
 summons came from God. Moses was 
 one of the greatest of men, and the 
 movement he led was one of the very 
 few permanently significant movements 
 in human history ; but the Word of God 
 reminds us that “a live dog is better than 
 a dead lion.” And I covet every minute 
 of the possible sermon time to make 
 more vivid and real to our minds a move- 
 ment of our own day and place, to 
 arouse your hearts and my own to the 
 call of God, “Speak to the Presbyterians 
 of America, that they go forward, refus- 
 ing to stop, or to retreat, but going on, in 
 their work for the redemption of the 
 people of America.” 
 
 Last spring, at the meeting of the 
 General Assembly in Atlanta, I heard 
 Dr. Thompson, the veteran Home Mis- 
 sionary Leader, say, in one of the most 
 thrilling addresses to which I have ever 
 listened, “We will do anything the 
 church tells us to do except one thing. 
 We will go slow, if you tell us to. We 
 will stop, if you say we must. But we 
 will not back up. For there are rocks 
 behind as well as ahead, and we might 
 smash our rudder.” It is in that spirit 
 that I would try to set before you the 
 Home Mission work of our church, and 
 the right attitude of the members of the 
 church toward it. 
 
 I suppose a man of Pauline type would 
 count it a privilege to be allowed to lay 
 before a body of Christian people the 
 needs of any good cause. Paul did not 
 hesitate to close his most doctrinal and 
 5 
 
spiritual letters with an appeal for a 
 large offering, nor does he reveal any 
 consciousness of incongruity in passing 
 suddenly from a lofty discussion of im- 
 mortality with the words, “Now, con- 
 cerning the collection, brethren.” But 
 even an ordinary man, quite unlike Paul 
 in ability to “glory in tribulation,” might 
 eagerly welcome the opportunity to let 
 people know how strong and worthy is 
 the work of Home Missions, as our 
 church is planning and attempting to do 
 it. For the plans of our leaders in the 
 Board of Home Missions are farseeing, 
 and their efforts well-directed; and the 
 people of the church do not always real- 
 ize that the work of Home Missions is 
 far greater, and calls for a larger loyalty, 
 than ever in the past. 
 
 Serious and significant changes have 
 lately taken place both in the scope and 
 in the methods of Home Missionary 
 work. In the days of our fathers, that 
 work was comparatively simple and 
 homogeneous. The one great function 
 of the Board was that of distribution. 
 America consisted of a few well-estab- 
 lished centres of population, and a great, 
 expanding, growing country. The pic- 
 ture that instinctively stood out before 
 the eye as one heard the words, “Home 
 Missions” was the new town “on the 
 frontier,” where men were busy building 
 their homes, their cities, their business 
 enterprises, their scanty resources being 
 wholly needed for these prime require- 
 ments. Yet the church of God must get 
 and keep a place in the lives of these 
 people. If they could not maintain 
 churches, the Christian people of the 
 settled districts must help. So the work 
 was organized on the basis of the scrip- 
 ture saying, “He that had much had 
 nothing over; and he that had little did 
 not lack.” 
 
 That work is still, and probably al- 
 ways will be, a very large part of the 
 enterprise of Home Missions. To plant 
 churches in new communities, to main- 
 tain church privileges in communities, 
 whether new or old, which cannot pro- 
 vide them for themselves, — is the pri- 
 mary task of the Home Mission Board. 
 
 6 
 
It has also been the aim of the Home 
 Mission Board, throughout its history, 
 to direct missionary operations among 
 the exceptional elements of our popula- 
 tion. The conscience of the white man 
 has always felt a measure of uneasy re- 
 sponsibility for the red man who was 
 dispossessed by our coming to these 
 shores. From the days of Eliot and 
 Brainerd to the present hour the church 
 has felt bound in honor to reach the 
 Indians with the Gospel of Christ. That 
 work also is a permanent element in 
 Home Missionary operations. Indians 
 are increasing rather than diminishing 
 in numbers, and many of them have as 
 yet no contact with the Gospel. 
 
 We have responsibilities also toward 
 the mountain-dwellers, whose cramped 
 life needs the freedom of Christian and 
 intelligent preaching; toward the people 
 of Alaska, and the West Indies, and the 
 Spanish-speaking Southwest ; toward 
 the masses of men in the logging camps, 
 who can be saved from becoming brutes 
 only by living witnesses among them to 
 the grace of Christ. Our Board of 
 Home Missions is our agent and leader 
 in our attempt to meet all these respon- 
 sibilities. “If any man see his brother 
 in need, and shutteth up his heart against 
 him, how dwelleth the love of God in 
 him?” And, because we are Christians, 
 we believe that the deepest needs are 
 needs of the spirit. We must therefore 
 support, with extreme devotion, a work 
 which is simply our most efficient means 
 of supplying the spiritual needs of the 
 neediest. 
 
 But late years have witnessed a signif- 
 icant and serious change in Home Mis- 
 sionary policy. It is not that the old 
 functions have been abandoned. They 
 are being discharged as faithfully as 
 ever. But new phases of effort have 
 been added ; and a new sense has awak- 
 ened of the proper scope and function 
 of the Home Missionary work of the 
 church. 
 
 I have said that the word “Home 
 Missions” instinctively called up, to the 
 minds of our fathers, a picture of a 
 frontier town, or a new farming com- 
 7 
 
munity, with the missionary walking or 
 riding about, holding little services at 
 scattered points, trying to keep bright 
 the spark of Christian life in the hearts 
 of the farmers or villagers. I suppose 
 some such picture would arise in the 
 minds of many in the church to-day, 
 when the word “Home Missions” was 
 spoken, though some would be carried to 
 the mountains of Carolina or Tennessee, 
 and some to Indian Reservations. But 
 to those who know best the story of re- 
 cent years of Home Missionary evolu- 
 tion, the word would call up very dif- 
 ferent pictures. It would take their 
 thoughts to Ellis Island, to the crowded 
 foreign quarters of our great cities, to 
 factories where masses of men labor and 
 dimly grope after principles of indus- 
 trial and social justice, to rural districts 
 where once religion had its favored 
 dwelling, but now the higher life has 
 fallen asleep. In brief, the word takes 
 us into the thick of the problems of 
 America to-day ; the outstanding fea- 
 tures of the work of our Board of Home 
 Missions are its Departments of Social 
 Service, of Immigration, of Church and 
 Country Life. More significant even 
 than the appearance of these new ob- 
 jects is the emergence of a new policy, 
 a new conception of the scope and func- 
 tion of the Board which plans and di- 
 rects the home mission of our church. 
 In former days, the Board of Home Mis- 
 sions was, above all, the distributing 
 center, a reservoir. Its chief functions 
 were to gather and impound the needed 
 financial resources, and then to let them 
 flow wisely and broadly, where they 
 would do the most good. It was the 
 medium of communication between the 
 churches that could give and the 
 churches that needed to receive. 
 
 But that conception of the place and 
 function of the Home Mission Board 
 has given way to another. Instead of a 
 mere distributing center, skillful in ex- 
 tracting money from those who have it, 
 and wise in directing its flow to the places 
 that need it most, the Board of Home 
 Missions has become more like the staff 
 of a great army. Its function, as it sees 
 8 
 
it, is to direct the church in the Chris- 
 tianizing of our nation. It must find the 
 facts about the national life, must see, 
 and foresee, and make the church see. 
 To that end it must put much of its force 
 and means into study, into setting ex- 
 perts at work, into experiments, into 
 surveys of conditions, investigations, 
 tests. It must be the churches’ “Secre- 
 tary of State for the Home Depart- 
 ment its task calls for high statesman- 
 ship, not for mere skill in distribution. 
 Above all, the church must know what 
 are the facts and factors in the religious 
 problem of America, and how best they 
 can be successfully handled. Tradition- 
 al methods may be right or they may be 
 wrong; we want to know. And who 
 shall get the information and give it to 
 us, if not the Board in charge of our 
 Home Missionary work? 
 
 So has grown up a new consciousness 
 on the part of our Board, a new, and 
 very much more serious, view of its 
 function. In former days the Board 
 seemed to a distant Presbytery a sort of 
 bank, on which it might draw to supple- 
 ment its own resources, that its weak 
 churches might have their necessary def- 
 icits made up. Now the Board stands 
 as an adviser, ready to co-operate with a 
 Presbytery, or a Synod, in facing the 
 problems there to be met, studying 
 conditions, making necessary experi- 
 ments, and attempting a scientific solu- 
 tion of the real religious problems of that 
 territory. Of course the Board stands, 
 and always must, as the means whereby 
 the stronger churches play brother to 
 the weaker, the distributing center 
 through which needed funds flow to 
 needy churches. But above that func- 
 tion is rising the new conception of the 
 mission of the Board, to lead the church 
 into scientific management of Christian 
 work, into concentration and efficiency, 
 to plan comprehensively for the whole 
 country, to study present conditions. 
 Such a Board, leading in religious policy, 
 may find it wise to appoint and employ 
 men who do nothing directly in the way 
 of evangelization, or of helping churches 
 in their regular work, but who study 
 
 9 
 
conditions, form plans, make ex- 
 periments, arouse sentiment, enlighten 
 the mind of the church as to the facts of 
 our national life. It may find it wise to 
 expend the main part of its resources in 
 such constructive statesmanship rather 
 than in the planting and maintenance of 
 churches. It will discover, and uncover, 
 the problem of the down-town city 
 church in an alien community, and will 
 spend thousands of dollars in an experi- 
 ment like the Labor Temple, turning 
 over the work, when shown to be a suc- 
 cess, to the local Presbytery. It will 
 attempt new methods of work among 
 foreigners, by grouping foreign parishes 
 under American leaders, by fellowships 
 enabling young men to spend months in 
 the foreign land from which large bodies 
 of our citizens come, that they may re- 
 turn and work the more intelligently and 
 sympathetically among the men and 
 women of the races so studied. It will 
 seek points of contact between the 
 church and the laborers. It will set men 
 investigating and agitating with regard 
 to the problem of rural life, that we may 
 not only maintain churches in sparsely 
 settled communities, but make them effi- 
 cient and powerful in the daily life of 
 the people. These things, and many 
 others, it will do. Yet no one of these 
 is essential. The essential thing is that 
 the Board shall be a leader in the posi- 
 tive, constructive, statesman-like facing 
 of actual problems, that it shall be ready 
 to tell the church what experiments are 
 worth making, what risks are worth 
 taking, what must be done first, what 
 path is best to take if the church would 
 reach most surely the goal of an evange- 
 lized America. 
 
 Now, friends, is not that the sort of 
 agency we want our Home Board to be ? 
 Is it not a far better and worthier con- 
 ception of the functions of the churches’ 
 organization of its Home Missionary 
 work than the old, simple idea of a dis- 
 tributing center, a money-getter and 
 money-spender on pre-determined and 
 traditional lines? In every department 
 of life, men are awakening to the fact 
 that the day of haphazard has gone, that 
 10 
 
organizations content to drift and drib- 
 ble and run on in old grooves and ruts 
 are doomed. We should welcome in the 
 church the dawn of a consciousness that 
 the times demand constructive planning 
 and leadership. There should be a fresh 
 heartiness, a redoubled support, on our 
 part for a Board that is coming to view 
 its functions with such largeness of out- 
 look, such boldness of spirit, such real- 
 ity and resoluteness. 
 
 If that is our attitude toward the new 
 spirit and policy of our Home Board, 
 then it is time we were giving to the 
 Board such deep and hearty support as 
 we have never given in the past. For 
 the Home Mission work of our church 
 is in a critical position just now. The 
 new policies are threatened. I speak 
 frankly, for it is time the people of the 
 Presbyterian Church were realizing the 
 situation. I am an outsider, and what I 
 say expresses only my personal estimate 
 of the facts and forces that are apparent. 
 But certain of the facts and forces are 
 plain even to an outsider who will give 
 the matter any real attention. 
 
 During the past few months and years 
 there has been developed a determined 
 opposition to the modern policies of the 
 Home Board, a reaction bent on forcing 
 the Board back into its old function of 
 intermediary between the churches that 
 have means and the churches that have 
 needs. Such a reaction was inevitable. 
 Men, no less than horses, find it easier to 
 trot in the ruts. The church is, wisely 
 on the whole, conservative, distrustful 
 of radical changes, hard to stir out of 
 accepted ways. Large sections of the 
 country are still in the early stages of 
 growth; their needs naturally seem to 
 them the most urgent of needs. In put- 
 ting into operation the new policies of 
 investigation and experiment, the Board 
 has found it necessary to spend large 
 sums in great cities, and in work not di- 
 rectly affecting the mass of churches 
 throughout the land. It is inevitable that 
 churches in small places, cramped by 
 lack of funds, should protest, and feel 
 that the Board should return to the sim- 
 ple and sole function of securing and 
 
 11 
 
distributing the money needed for main- 
 taining churches. 
 
 The reaction is natural and inevitable ; 
 but it is shortsighted, narrow, and wrong. 
 And it makes the demand imperative 
 that those in the Presbyterian Church 
 who see the wisdom and strength of the 
 new spirit and policy of the Board, 
 should give to the work just at the pres- 
 ent moment a loyalty, such as they have 
 never before shown. The attack on the 
 Board by the enemies of its present pol- 
 icies was sharp and determined at the 
 last Assembly. It has been renewed dur- 
 ing the year. The battle must be fought 
 out at the next Assembly. It is time 
 that all who believe in going forward, 
 all who want to see the church move out 
 of small shop-keeping into statesman- 
 ship, all who long for a church big 
 enough to meet the religious needs of this 
 great country of ours, should fall in be- 
 hind the men who stand for the larger 
 vision and the bigger work in our Home 
 Mission Board. In such a crisis, our 
 offering becomes far more than an offer- 
 ing ; it is a vote of confidence, an answer 
 of readiness to the God who calls us to 
 move forward. 
 
 I have not attempted to present to you 
 the work our Home Mission Board is 
 doing, to speak of details, to tell stories, 
 to give statistics. There is very much 
 worth telling about our work among the 
 Indians, and on the frontier. There are 
 notable facts about the work among im- 
 migrants, close at hand. There are 
 striking and far-reaching results. A 
 Waldensian Missionary in Italy found 
 by chance last fall a community where 
 300 people were eager to receive him and 
 the Bible teaching he brought. He traced 
 their awakening back to one man who 
 had been converted in an Italian mis- 
 sion here in New York City, and had 
 “lived by his faith” when he returned to 
 Italy. This is but one of many facts 
 and instances I might have set before 
 you, as justifying the appeal of this work 
 to your liberal support. But the appeal 
 of the work lies deeper than statistics, 
 and facts, just now. The question be- 
 fore the church is extreme and radical, 
 12 
 
— Shall we, or shall we not, have a Home 
 Mission work worthy of our church, 
 worthy of our country, worthy of our 
 age? Shall our Board be set forward in 
 its strong, farseeing, heroic policy of 
 statesmanship and efficiency, or shall it 
 be set back and confined to its old func- 
 tion of distributing funds for the con- 
 ventional church operations? Do not 
 misunderstand ; I know you will not ; no 
 one proposes that the Board shall aban- 
 don, or reduce its work of planting and 
 sustaining churches in communities 
 which cannot maintain their own relig- 
 ious work. That must always be the 
 largest work of the church. But this is 
 the issue, — shall the church be content 
 to do this work haphazard and piecemeal, 
 or shall it encourage its Board to become 
 the leader of the church, the pioneer, 
 enabling the church to base its work on 
 known facts, to advance confidently 
 on paths cleared by careful experiments, 
 to see its task comprehensively, intelli- 
 gently, and then to do it efficiently ? 
 That is the issue. And all who believe 
 that God is in facts, that He works 
 through laws, that He honors and uses 
 most the men who strive to serve Him 
 with mind and soul and strength, that the 
 great need of our day and country is that 
 the church shall be big enough, far-see- 
 ing enough, intelligent enough, to meet 
 with adequate Christian statesmanship 
 the intricate and acute social and relig- 
 ious problems of the America of to-day, 
 must throw every available ounce of 
 their energy and influence on the side of 
 maintaining and expanding the new 
 policies of our Home Mission work. 
 
 This is not the main reason why you 
 should give liberally, sacrificially, to the 
 offering to-day. The chief reason is that 
 what you give means that men will hear 
 the Gospel who otherwise would not hear 
 it, that churches will be opened in com- 
 munities that would otherwise remain 
 godless, that worship will be maintained 
 in little centers where it would cease if 
 you did not give, that without your gifts, 
 camps of men in the forests of the north- 
 west would remain in sodden, coarse 
 monotony, unrelieved by the grace of the 
 
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Gospel; that great sections of our large 
 cities, where foreigners congregate, 
 would be left without the uplift of the 
 free grace of our Protestant Christianity. 
 Your failure to give would mean that 
 you are indifferent to the great command, 
 “Go and make disciples of all nations;” 
 indifferent to it in the case of the nation 
 that is nearest to you and means the 
 most. These are the deep and great 
 reasons why you should give your best 
 and utmost to-day. But to these deep 
 and permanent reasons is added another, 
 of immediate and sharp urgency, — the 
 fact that your support this year means 
 confidence in the big, heroic, Christian 
 plans and policies and spirit of our 
 Board. This offering is your chance to 
 “come to the help of the Lord against 
 the mighty,” to set the influence of this 
 church decisively on the side of the for- 
 ward movement, and against the back- 
 ward movement. James Russell Lowell 
 caught a gleam of the true meaning of 
 Christ and His Gospel when he spoke of 
 “the cross that turns not back.” We 
 must take up that cross, and carry it for- 
 ward in our own land, daring harder 
 tasks, making bigger plans, looking 
 further into the real facts and forces of 
 our national life, and resolutely believing 
 that the Gospel of Christ is the one force 
 adequate to solve the problems, and meet 
 the needs, of this or any age ; and that 
 the church is here to prove the wisdom 
 of God and the power of God in bring- 
 ing America to Christ. In that spirit, 
 knowing that we are called to the more 
 extreme devotion because some do not 
 see the facts as we do, let us make our 
 offering to Almighty God for the work 
 of the Presbyterian Church in the 
 redemption of our own country. 
 
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