A A HUNDRED YEARS | i IN THE HOMELAND ll ===================================== i I THE STORY OF i 1 HOME MISSIONS i i I i !i 1 0 i\ H P i BY EMMA A. ROBINSON BY THE SAME AUTHOR The Junior Worker and His Work 16mo. NET, 75 CENTS. After a Hundred Years: The Story of Foreign Missions IGmo. NET, 25 CENTS. Stewardship Stories for Boys and Girls 16mo. NET, 25 CENTS. THE EXTENT OF THE HOME MISSIONS WORK OF THE METHODIST CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES A Hundred Years in the Homeland The Story of Home Missions BY EMMA A. ROBINSON THE METHODIST BOOK CONCERN NEW YORK CINCINNATI Copyright, 191!), by P:MMA a. ROBINSON CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE America the Beautiful 7 I. The Beginning 9 . II. A Sample Christian Nation 17 III. The Field of the Home Missionary 26 IV. The Front Line 34 V. The Church in the Country 41 VI. Our World Family 48 VII. Church Extension 55 VIII. Snapshots at Home 62 AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL O beautiful for spacious skies, For amber waves of grain, For purple mountain majesties Above the fruited plain. America ! America ! God shed his grace on thee. And crown thy good with brotherhood From sea to shining sea! O beautiful for pilgrim feet, Whose stern impassioned stress A thoroughfare for freedom beat Across the wilderness! America! America! God mend thine every flaw. Confirm thy soul in self control, Thy liberty in law! O beautiful for heroes proved In liberating strife, Who more than self their coimtry loved, And mercy more than life. America! America! May God thy gold refine. Till all success be nobleness, And every gain divine! O beautiful for patriot dream That sees beyond the years Thine alabaster cities gleam Undimmed by human tears! America ! America ! God shed his grace on thee, And crown thy good with brotherhood From sea to shining sea l—Kathcnne Lee Bates. CHAPTER I THE BEGINNING "The Missionary, the Church, the School, the Flag" ASSIGNMENTS KOR STUDY 1. Have sonic one draw on tho board an outline map of the United States as it was in 1819. t. As the missionaries go to the di{ferent parts of the country, have some one outline tlie territory influenced by them, as the Louisiana territory, including the States between the Mississippi Iliver and the Rocky Motintains; Texas; the Northwest Terri- tory, including Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Illinois; the Oregon Country North of California and west of the Rocky Mountains. 3. Have some one read the words of Linc;oln at the close of the Civil War, "Nobly sustained as the government has been by all the churches, I would utter nothing which might in the least appear invidious against any. Yet, without this, it may fairly be said that the Methodist Episcopal Church, not less devoted than the best, is, by its greater numbers, the most important of all. It is no fault in others that the Methodist Church sends more sol- diers to the field, more nurses to the hospitals, and more prayers to heaven than any. God bless the Methodist C'hurch; bless all the churches; and blessed be God, who in this our great trial giveth us the churches," to show that Methodism is always ready, whatever the call, to serve her country or her God. "/CIRCUIT RIDERS and saddlebags"— what are they? You never saw either of them, and it may be you do not even know wliat the words mean. Your grandt'atlier or your great-grandfather could tell you all about saddlebags, and you know 9 10 A HUNDRED YEARS Francis Asbiiry, Thomas Coke, Richard Whatcoat and other pioneers of the saddlebags. They were the circuit riders whose tireless courage sur- mounted every difficulty, and thus forecast the great missionary enterprises of the Methodist Church. Was there a marriage or a death .^^ was there a barn-raising or a corn-husking? was there a case of need or a far cry for help.? — the circuit rider was there. Swollen streams and trackless forests were no terror to him. Where God's voice called he went. In these sturdy men of faith the Missionary Society was born, though it was not formally organized until 1819. The automobile, street car, or train of these early Methodist preachers always traveled on four feet, and their lunch boxes and trunks were found in the queer-shaped leather bags which were strapped to the saddle and called saddlebags. Thus equipped they were ready for work. Many were the streams forded and forests penetrated by these fearless pioneers. At that time, and for some years later, no one thought of two Missionary Boards. It was just missionary work, whether home or foreign. In fact, it was all home work for a few years. The Society first called the Missionary Society of the Methodist Church in America, in 1840 became the Missionary Society for Home and Foreign Fields. In 1908 two Boards, known as the Board of Home Missions and Board of Foreign Missions, were created, and two secretaries elected. At this time the Church Extension Society, which was IN TPIE HOMELAND 11 organized in 1864, became a part of the Home Mis- sionary work. The Board of Home Missions might well be called the Patriotic League of Methodism. Its motto is "America for Christ." When we, as a church, sing "America" we pledge ourselves to do, not "our bit," but "our best" to hold America for Christ by trying to make every American citizen a Christian. In 1816 John Stewart, a colored man, was what Bishop Berry would call "gloriously converted." He was a free man and had some education, but had become a dissolute drunkard. From the mo- ment he was converted he knew God had a work for him to do among the Indians. He felt that a drunken colored man could not be a preacher, but he could not get away from the fact that God wanted him to go as his messenger to the red man. The more he prayed the more certain he was that he must go. There was no Missionary Board nor Society to send him. Alone he started. It was a lonely and dangerous journey. There might be wild animals to be encountered, unfriendly or hostile Indians inight waylay him, but he was*not afraid. He could not speak the Indian language, but he could sing, and the music of his voice was his first sermon to the Wyandot Indians, to whom he felt God sent him. Among them was one who proved to be, not an Indian but a colored man, who had been stolen by the Indians when a boy. He had grown up as one of them but had not forgotten his native language. 12 A HUNDRED YEARS Stewart first led him to Christ and then used him as^ an interpreter to help the Indians know God. His first sermon was preached amid the paint and feathers of a war dance. While there was no Missionary Society to send John Stewart to the Indians, the church was ready and the call of Stewart to missionary work among the Indians and his plea for help resulted in the organization of the Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church in America in 1819. The United States is really greatly indebted to this organization ' As we follow the footsteps of the early mission- aries we can almost read history in four words ; the missionary, the flag, the church, and the school, and that is really the way our great country was reclaimed for Christ and the United States. In 1820 the first missionary appointed by the Missionary Society, Ebenezer Brown, went to Louisiana and there estabhshed the French Mis- sion, and the great Louisiana territory was saved to the United States. Ebenezer Brown alone did not do this, but the Church of Christ as represented by him did. Peter Cartwright the same year blazed the trail in Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois and helped hold the Northwest territory. In 1830 a French Mission, known as Bethel Mis- sion, was started in Boston. In 1834 Jason Lee, the first missionary to the Pacific Coast, started for that distant territory. In some respects his journey across the great American desert, with its perils, privations, and IN THE HOMELAND 13 experiences, is more wonderful than that of Stanley in Africa. Up to this time it had been thought impossible to reach the coast except by sailing around Cape Horn. Lee, with three or four others as brave and intrepid as himself, left New England in March. He preached his first sermon in Oregon on September 28. It was through the patriotism and undaunted zeal of Jason Lee that the boundaries were adjusted and the great Northwest, the Oregon Country, was saved to the United States. In 1835, just as Texas had cast off its allegiance to Mexico, the first missionary arrived. In this territory were found the Mexicans who for some grievance against their own country had crossed over the border, and the turbulence and violence of the country more than equaled conditions in Mexico in 1913. Here we find the missionary, the church, the flag, and the school, and Texas, instead of becoming an independent nation, or again allied with Mexico, brought its vast territories into the United States. In Texas our missionaries came closely in con- tact with the slave question, and from the begin- ning Methodism took that strong stand that did much in bringing about the emancipation of the slave. From that time the Methodist Church was the friend of the slave, and at the close of the war officially recognized its mission to those people in the organization of the Freedmen's Aid Society. With the ceding of New Mexico to the United States in 1848, a new field opened, and our Spanish and English Missionary work in New Mexico was 14 A HUNDRED YEARS organized and has continued up to the present time. In 1847 the atrocities of the Mormon religion resulted in these people being' driven, as it was then thought, beyond civilization, into Utah, the other side of the mountains. This isolated location gave them a new sense of power, and for a time they ruled everything. Even the governor appointed by Congress was not allowed to take his seat. The church saw her opportunity, followed the build- ing of the Pacific Railroad in 1869, and estab- lished missions in various parts of the State. A church was built in Salt Lake City within sight of the Mormon Temple. This was indeed carrying war into the enemy's country. Eventually one or the other must give up, and Methodism never surrenders; she holds what she has and reaches out for more. The coming of many Japanese to our country and their settlement in Japanese colonies in the large cities on the Pacific Coast led to the organi- zation of the Japanese mission under the direction of Dr. Otis Gibson, assisted by an intelligent Japanese who had been converted under his preach- ing. Out of this has grown the Japanese mission in the Hawaiian Islands. The Chinese too came to the United States, and brought into our own America, God's country, not only the Chinaman but the joss houses, opium dens, and heathen temples with idolatrous rites. In 1868 a mission was established among the Chinese. In 1838, under William Nast,the work among the IN THE HOMELAND 15 German Methodists was organized. This strong, sturdy nationahty with its natural thrift would long before this have been a self-supporting church had it not been that the young people, educated in our American schools, naturally discarded the German language and in time threw their support with the American-speaking churches. Perhaps of all the foreigners there are none that are more valuable to our nation, and to us as a church, than the Scandinavians, among whom missionary work was commenced in 1849. From all over the world the people flocked to America, and the immigrant must be taught Ameri- can citizenship and must be taught to know our Christ. In addition to the work among the incoming people, there has ever been the constant demand on this Board to aid in building churches, the rebuilding of others that have been destroyed by fire or accidents, which have not only de- stroyed the church, but swept away the property and income of its adherents. Home missionaries must be sent into the fields that are to be occupied by the homeseekers, that the church may be planted even before the homes. The Board of Home Missions is paying the salaries of these mis- sionaries and ministers on the frontier and touching in most vital way life in every section of the United States. DO YOU REMEMBER 1. When the Missionary Society was organized. 16 A HUNDRED YEARS what prepared the way for it, and what finally brought about the organization? 2. To what territory the early missionary was sent? 3. What part of the United States was in- directly held for the Union through the missionary? 4. What different causes called for the opening up of new lines of missionary work? 5. What the general work of the Board of Home Missions is? IN THE HOMELAND 17 CHAPTER II A SAMPLE CHRISTIAN NATION "This great country of ours is trusted through- out the world." — Woodrow Wilson. ASSIGNMENTS FOR STUDY 1. Use pictures of the dififerent peoples mentioned. 2. Assign each group to one of the Juniors and ask them to be prepared to tell something about them. 3. Have a list of the nationalities living in your home town, also of the foreign-speaking churches, placed on the blackboard as the Juniors name them. 4. If the Board of Home Missions has any work in your local- ity, have one prepared to tell about it. 5. Story to tell: "Jack and Jill went up the Hill" (page 116, Junior Mission Stories, Margaret Applegate). PRESIDENT WILSON, in his address in Bos- ton on his return to America after the first Peace Conference, said: "We have waited for this day, when friends of Hberty should come across the sea and shake hands with us, to see that a new world was constructed upon a new basis and foun- dation of justice and right. The proudest thing I have to report to you is that this great country of ours is trusted throughout the world." Then he said: "And in the midst of it all every interest seeks out first of all, when it reaches Paris, the representatives of the United States. Why? Be- cause — and I think I am stating the most wonder- ful fact in history — because there is no nation in 18 A HUNDRED YEARS Europe that suspects the motives of the United States. Was there ever so wonderful a thing seen before? Was there ever any fact that so bound the nation that had won it to deserve it?" We are proud to have the world look to us as a sample free nation, but those two words, "right" and "justice," if the standard upon which our country was founded is to be maintained, mean that this country must be not only a sample free nation but a sample Christian nation. We are told that Germany in two generations, through her educational work, was able to change entirely the^character of her people. If Germany can do that through her schools, then the church, building on what has already been done, can make the motto of the Board of Home Missions, "America for Christ," a fact, and give to the world a sample Christian nation. We know something of what the home mission- ary work has meant to our country in the past, but as never before in its history has the United States held so important a place in the world as it .does to-day, so never in the history of our Church has the Board of Home Missions had so great a place in the church, in the United States, and in the world as to-day. The Centenary Survey has not only shown how much has been accomplished, but it has opened the door for greater things than ever were dreamed of by Asbury, Coke, Garrettson, or Simpson. What does it show us? What does this survey :see? It sees the immigrant our neighbor. O yes, it IN THE HOMELAND 19 has seen that for a long time, but it now sees the immigrant our brother, a member of our family, one of us; and this means better houses for the laboring man; it means more schools and Christian teaching. It sees that the "freedom to worship God" which the Pilgrim Fathers found when they landed on Plymouth Rock must never be allowed to become freedom not to worship God. This means that churches and schools shall be supported by the labor unions as well as by the business owners, and that the children of those whom we call the labor leaders shall become ac- quainted with Christ and receive Christian train- ing. It sees that the church must be behind our gov- ernment in such a way that even though peace is declared and our soldiers have come home, the world will still look to the United States as a brother nation, a sample nation, because it is a Christian nation. It sees that when it builds churches and schools for the Italians in Chicago it is helping send Christ to Italy; that the thousands of dollars that have been spent in making Christian citizens of the Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, and the Mexicans on our Pacific Coast and in Honolulu are also making Christians in China, Japan, Korea, and Mexico. The Centenary is proving to every one that "America for Christ" is not a large enough motto for the Board of Home Missions, but that, rather, "Christian America for the World" should be their slogan. 20 A HUNDRED YEARS The actual work of this Board, however, must l be within the United States and her possessions. j Its centers will, at least for the present, be largely i in the great cities of the East, where the need is for strong churches, equipped for social and educa- ■ tional work, and for trained workers, and in the i country churches where great opportunities are < opening and the Christian leaders of the world I may receive the inspiration for Christian service, ' The fields of work for which the Board of Home i Missions is planning in its Centenary, outside of i what we would call purely rural or city work, are: ; The North American Indian, who has been \ compelled to give his land for our homes and who has not seen Christian treatment in the way in • which the government has dealt with him. For ^ him the Board asks for more schools, where native j leaders and preachers may be trained; more women j workers to teach the Indian women how to make I better and more healthful homes; more preachers ' and teachers. ^ The Negro of the South.— Here the Methodist i Church stands at the head, because it was early i on the field, with ideals which place its members \ to-day in the "better class"; but until the home I and business life, the educational and spiritual ; life of the Negro is far ahead of where it is to-day ^ there is still much to be done for the race. These : people must have help in erecting school buildings, \ parsonages, and churches, and in supporting more ministers, women workers, and directors of re- \ ligious education. ^ • And then the Negro of the North : In 1 810 there i 1 IN THE HOMELAND 21 were 1,046,550 Negroes in the North; in 1917-1918 over 500,000 came up from the South to our large cities. What do they need? Homes and decent iDoarding houses in which to live, churches, places of entertainment, and something to do when work- hours are over; preachers and social workers — everything that other people in the large cities need. The Highlanders of the South are a very inter- esting group of people of whom we of the North know little. They are of English, Scotch-Irish, and French descent, people who in the early days of our country settled in the ranges of Appalachian Mountains, extending from Alabama Northeast- ward to Southern Pennsylvania. Can you imagine people settling in these moun- tains and then letting the mountains become a wall shutting them out from the rest of the world so that the children scarcely knew there was anything beyond the mountains.? What would happen in one or two hundred years .f^ Very few books or newspapers; no railroads or telegraph wires; almost no schools or churches; living by hunting, fishing, and very poor farming — such is the condition of about 3,000,000 sturdy Highlanders of the South. It is easy to see their need of wholesome homes, schools, churches, scien- tific methods of agriculture, acquaintance with the world outside the mountain, religious educa- tion — all for a sturdy race of white people, old settlers and right here in the United States. Then the Mormons: Did you know they have 22 A HUNDRED YEARS 1,400 missionaries at work in this country to win people to a religion that teaches things contrary to God's law and does not believe in education? This sounds like a foreign mission field; in a way it is, and in our own United States. It makes the State of Utah one of the blackest spots in the world. The Protestant churches forced the State of Utah to adopt a public school system. The Meth- odist Church has twenty charges in Utah, and the great work it is trying to do is to reach and educate the young people. Its Centenary asking is, first, help to build and maintain a university church in Salt Lake City. It asks also for the increase of work in other parts of the State. The work among Orientals known as the Pacific Chinese and Japanese Missions, must have more day schools and traveling ministers to go from ranch to ranch where these foreigners are em- ployed in large numbers. The building of a large new Japanese church in Los Angeles is also in the plan. The Italians need new churches, language pas- tors, religious educators, and social workers, classes in American citizenship, opportunities for whole- some recreational life, the forming of choirs, or- chestral and choral clubs to utilize the national musical interests, bilingual women workers for the homes, language classes, and many other things. By Latin Americans we mean the emigrants from Mexico, South America, the Philippine Islands, the West Indies, Portugal, and Spain. IN THE HOMELAND 2S There are about 3,000,000 of these in the United States to be made into Christian citizens from a form of Catholicism that is as far from being Chris- tian as any idol worship, and in some ways more so, because of the dense ignorance of its followers. These people make fine, loyal citizens when educated and given American ideals, and they make just as good Christians, with Christian train- ing and ideals. The Methodist Church has a Spanish-American Biblical Institute in California, and a Biblical and Industrial College in Arizona. In Central and Northern California it has exclusive responsibility for the Mexican and has a large part of the responsi- bility elsewhere. For the future it aims to increase the number of pastors, women workers, and religious educators, improve building conditions, provide Christian supervision of employment, establish laboratories and training grounds, elevate standards of living, relieve physical need, establish a Christian broth- erhood, and thus make intelligent Christian citizens of these densely ignorant Catholic foreigners. Of the European immigrants we hear much. They include people from every country, big or little, in Europe. They are found in settlements in every large city and in the rural districts of every agricultural State, in the large manufacturing plants and mining districts, and enter into every plan of home missionary work. The city problem and the rural work, the indus- trial question and the frontier development, the 24 A HUNDRED YEARS scientific handling of the agricultural territory, the development of Christian leadership and the evan- gelistic opportunity in a large measure, are the efforts of the Home Missionary Board to establish the spirit of Christian brotherhood and Christian ideals among these peoples. Only as we help them to become Christians can we as a church help the United States to take its place in the world as a sample Christian nation. Alaska, Porto Rico and the Hawaiian Islands are not omitted in this survey, but will be taken up more fully in a later chapter. How can such work be done.'* How can the United States become a Christian nation? Money cannot do it, not even $8,000,000 a year. The Board of Home Missions cannot do it. In every case the askings have been for men and women leaders — Christian leaders. If the Home Missionary Board needs so many trained leaders, it must make some provision for the training of such leaders. Here it calls for funds to strengthen Methodist colleges and schools that are specializing in Christian training and to establish university churches, to add the Christian ideal to those institutions that are purely educa- tional. For all of this work the Board of Home Missions is asking only $8,000,000 a year, or $40,000,000 in the five years. Some one has summarized the use to which it will be put as follows : 3,564 pastors in mission territories.. 250 language pastors. IN THE HOMELAND 25 1,239 other workers, deaconesses, evangelists, directors, superintendents, helpers. 2,506 new church buildings. 1,035 remodeled church buildings. 1,188 parsonages. 43 special cases. With the amounts as follows: $4,000,000 for work among Negroes. $3,000,000 for Italian and other Latin races. $7,000,000 for industrial centers like Gary, Indiana. $7,000,000 for downtown work in cities, evangelis- tic and institutional. $5,000,000 for community centers in rural regions. $7,000,000 for suburban and strategic city churches. $2,000,000 for frontier territory in the United States. $5,000,000 for Hawaii, Utah, the Pacific Coast, and for the training of Christian leaders. DO YOU REMEMBER 1. What President Wilson said of the place America holds in the world.'' 2. What kind of a nation the United States must be if it is to continue to hold this place? 3. What the Centenary Survey sees for the Indian, the Negro, the Highlander, and the Mor- mon.? 4. For the Oriental.? the Italian.? the Latin American.? 5. How all this work can be done, and the larger motto of the Board of Home Missions.? 26 A HUNDRED YEARS CHAPTER m THE FIELD OF THE HOME MISSIONARY "America Will Be What We Make It/'— Chris- tian Democracy for America. ASSIGNMENTS FOR STUDY For this lesson a map of the United States is essential. The best map is the Centenary Home Missionary map, size three bv six feet. Price, $1.00. 1. If you fail to secure this, draw on the blackboard an outline map of the United States, and as the lesson is taught let one mark the different States as indicated: Work among the Indians A Cross Settlements of Japanese Light Diagonal Lines Work among the Chinese and Japanese. ... A Circle Draw with colored crayon a line indicating the boundary of the frontier territory, the Mason and Dixon Line, and indicate the Appalachian Mountains; mark a few of the larger cities and industrial centers. Or, make the Board of Home Missions, Philadelphia, the center and from there stretch narrow red ribbons, fastening each with pin bearing a small flag, in the different States as they are first mentioned, being sure that no State is omitted. 2. Open the class period by singing "My Country, 'Tis of Thee," and close with "America, the Beautiful." 3. Ask one of the Juniors to be ready to tell what Home Mis- sionary Bombs he would drop into each State if he were dropping bombs from an aeroplane. (See notes on the Devotional Topic for May 18, 1919, Junior Workers' Quarterly). 4. Story to tell: "The People That Walked in Darkness" (Page 39, Junior Mission Stories, by Margaret Applegate). SEND Missionaries to New York city? What are you talking about? New York is the largest city in the United States. What use has it for Missionaries?" IN THE HOMELAND 27 "O yes, I suppose they might need them among the immigrants." Let me tell you something. The Board of Home Missions has five departments, and at least three of these departments are at work in New York city. Many of the churches have become what we call downtown churches. The people who support them have moved out into the suburbs, and unless the Home Missionary Society takes care of them they will have to be sold and these districts be left without churches. Then, of course, the Home Missionary Society must be on the ground to take care of the immi- grants, who are found in large numbers in the crowded parts of the city. In one such section out of 1,280 families 1,220 did not own a Bible and did not want one. Many were found who did not know a Bible when they saw it. The Church Extension Department must help build new churches for the foreigners, and down on the Bowery the Evangelistic Depart- ment is working hard in midnight missions and in every other way possible to make Christian citi- zens. The City Work Department is establishing Institutional churches, organizing industrial clubs and many other things. Did you think the time for home missionary work was over? It has just begun. Look at the map. In every State where there is a mark of any kind our Home Missionary Board is at work. 28 A HUNDRED YEARS The little crosses mean Indian reservations. Where are they? In California, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Montana, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, and New York. You did not know there were Indians in so many States? There are a few in almost every State, 335,998 in all, and only about twenty per cent of these are Christians; 290,193 cannot read or write. Let us look at the State of California. We not only have the crosses, but look at the light lines on the map. They show where the 100,000 Japanese have settlements, and the heavy lines where the 80,000 Chinese are working on the ranches. The circles show where the Board of Home Mis- sions has schools for them. W^e find these in Oregon, Washington, and Colo- rado also. At how many places do we have work? Count them. Fifteen. This we call our Oriental work. But look at those heavy black dots in California, in Arizona, and New Mexico. They stand for the Latin Americans and Mexicans in our "America the Beautiful." Over 100,000 Mexicans crossed the border, to stay, in one year. In Connecticut we find the Portuguese. What do those queer diagonal sections with the black-and-white rectangles mean? Frontier work. ^ Just a few years ago Iowa, Illinois, and Wiscon- sin were frontier States, but since 1918 the frontier IN THE HOMELAND 29 line extends along the eastern boundary of North Dakota, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico. The white space indicates the amount of land in each State still unsettled, the solid black, that taken up in 1917; the lined that previously occu- pied. Here is where the little towns, just ranch centers, mining towns, and lumber camps, are springing up. In how many States do we find them? Rural churches, of course, are found in every State in the Union, and in every State except Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico there are cities large enough to need city missionary work. Now, let us come back to the other part of the map. We find the Negroes of the South in every State bounded by what used to be called the Mason and Dixon line forming the western and northern boundaries of Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Ken- tucky, and West Virginia, Maryland and Delaware, and including everything south of that. But the Negro has emigrated from the South and to-day is found in large numbers in every one of the Cen- tral and Eastern States, especially in ,the large cities. The Southern Highlanders are found in the range of Appalachian Mountains extending in a northeasterly direction through Alabama, Tennes- see, Kentucky, North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, and Southern Pennsylvania. Here we find the descendants of these sturdy pioneers, about 3,000,000 people, who seem to have gotten side- tracked and are almost without schools, churches, or modern ideals or ideas. 30 A HUNDRED YEARS Through the Eastern States from Maine to Pennsylvania and in smaller numbers through the Central States are the Italians, 4,000,000 in all, and needing everything that goes into the making of Christian citizens. They are largely massed in the cities, and only about 20,000 of them are Protestants. Do the cities need the Home Missionary Board.'^ Does this Board need $8,000,000 a year.? It looks as though it did. To indicate all the activities of the Board of Home Missions on one map would have made it about solid. There are the other foreigners found in large numbers in that group of States bounded by the Missouri and Ohio Rivers, and including Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, and the States north There are the Mormons, making black the State of Utah and extending into the surrounding States. There are the great industrial centers with crowded, unsanitary and un-Christian conditions. These we find in nearly every State. There is the Roman Catholic menace. There are the mining sections of the East and West, and scattered everywhere people who do not know Christ. One might take almost any State in the Union and indicate on its map what the Home Missionary Society ought to do in that State; multiply that by all the States, and the work of that Board will be beyond our imagination. Before we look at the other fields of this Board, IN THE HOMELAND 31 let us see what our church has that is to help fur- nish the leaders for all this work. The Centenary Program calls for over a thou- sand new preachers each year to supply the va- cancies. It calls for one hundred thirty-three "language pastors," two hundred sixty -nine direc- tors of religious education, four hundred seventy- two women workers, one hundred thirty-four deaconesses and one hundred specialists in differ- ent lines ; and this is just the beginning. The map, if we could show the Methodist and the State college and the university, would show 106 institutions in the United States where workers are being trained — at least one in every State. (This does not include schools of other denominations.) Forty-five of these are Methodist schools, eight of which are for the colored people of the South. The remainder are State universities or agricultural colleges. Forty thousand students attend our Methodist schools and have the opportunity for training in Christian Leadership. Twenty-five thousand at- tend the State schools, where no Christian training is given unless through university churches, for which the Board of Home Missions is trying to provide. Thus you see in every State university or agri- cultural college town home missionary work is needed in order that the United States may be won to Christ through the training of Christian leaders, to make Christian citizens. We must not forget our possessions; even while they may seem like foreign missionary countries, 32 A HUNDRED YEARS they must be won for Christ through the Home Board. The Hawaiian Islands, which became part of the United States in 1898, are our half-way house, where the United States and Asia meet. Here we find a population of 217,744, one sixth of whom are natives and the rest Japanese, Chinese, Koreans, Filipinos, Portuguese, Russians, and Americans. The Buddhists are strong here, and it requires the combined effort of all denominations to com- pete with them. That there may be no overlapping of work, the denominations have divided the work into districts, excepting that the Congregational Church does no work among the Koreans and the Methodist none among the Chinese in these islands. Porto Rico is also one of our island territories, which came to the United States in 1898, at the close of the Spanish-American War, after four hun- dred years of Roman Catholic domination. It has a population of 1,198,970, sixty per cent of whom are illiterate. Eighty per cent live in rural districts, while even the cities are rural in character. Here Methodism in 1918 had forty- seven centers. Alaska, our Northwestern outpost, with an area equal to one sixth of the United States, is one place where there has been a constantly decreasing popu- lation since 1810. The small number of people scattered over such a vast territory makes our missionary work some- thing like a needle in a haystack. In 1918 we had but four Methodist churches in Alaska. IN THE HOMELAND 33 The Centenary Survey indicates that our Board of Home Missions is working among nearly 32,- 000,000 people, about one third of the entire popu- lation of the United States. Overlapping this are the city work and the rural work, the latter touching fifty -three per cent of all the people in this great land of ours. If from an aeroplane we could get a view of the United States and its possessions and all that the Board of Home ^Missions could do, we would say with Christ, "The harvest truly is great, but the laborers are few: pray ye therefore the Lord of harvest, that he send forth laborers into his har- vest;" and would add to our prayer, "Lord, help us all to become Christian stewards, that the treasury of the Lord's church may be full, and the work not be restricted." DO YOU REMEMBER L What the field of the Board of Home Mis- sions is? 2. In how many States it has work? 3. Its principal lines of activity.'^ 4. The nationalities among whom it works? 5. How it is helping to train leaders? 34 A HUNDRED YEARS CHAPTER IV THE FRONT LINE ''It is simply downrfght hard labor for Jesus Christ." — Alice Guernsey. ASSIGNMENTS FOR STUDY 1. Have small churches cut from white paper ready. 2. Ask some one to draw on the map with colored chalk (un- less you have the Centenary map) a line marking the boundary of the present so-called frontier States. 3. Have some one name the frontier States. 4. In each frontier State place a church. 5. Stories to tell: "Pollyanna and the crutches" (Pollyanna, pages 5 to 56, by Eleanor Porter). The Centenary Home Board Booklet Number 4. A LARGE, gray stone church, with the most beautiful picture windows, stands on a prom- inent corner in one of the cities of Iowa. Within are a fine pipe organ, appropriate decorations, a Sunday school room that is just right, ladies' parlor, kitchen, dining room — in fact, everything that could be desired in a modern church. From the tower exquisite chimes send the gospel message all over the city. This is the fourth in a series of churches in which its members have worshiped. On the Board of Trustees there is a man who was on that Board back in the little log church, when they could pay their pastor but a hundred and IN THE HOMELAND 35 fifty dollars a year. In those days Iowa was a frontier State. The frontier line moved west, and in Kansas it is possible that you may still find the little sod church, where the frontier preacher fought prairie fires and slept under his wagon when distances were too great to be traveled in one day. But again the frontier line moves west, and this time we will attend service in the adobe church in Arizona. Churches of this type have disappeared or been replaced by the little frame church, but even to-day there are many sections of the great western part of the United States where people never hear a ser- mon or go to Sunday school and have not even the most primitive sort of church building. There are places where a mother might say, as one did, *'I want my daughter to see what a church service is like; she has never been to church or Sunday school" — and that daughter was twelve years old! This mother, being asked how long since she had heard a sermon, replied, "Fourteen years — ^not because I did not want to, but if you knew the dis- tance from our home to the nearest church you would understand." In the days of the log or the sod church the frontier settlers crossed the great prairies in "prairie schooners," but a whole caravan of these "desert ships" could not carry as many families as one of our great transcontinental trains; and it took weeks to make the journey that can now be made in a few days. Let us see what this change means. 36 A HUNDRED YEARS The building of the Union Pacific Railroad is one of our wonder stories. "It could not be done," so said the wise man, "and we did it." One of the marvels of that building time was the springing up of the little railroad towns. One day there was nothing but barren sage bush; the next all was life and activity, and, lo! there stood the town — houses, hotel, public hall, and with every appearance of a city come to stay. Then that section of the railroad was completed, and the town disappeared as rapidly as it grew. We are told that in the story of the building of this road the minister is mentioned but once, and that at the time when he was called to make the prayer at the celebration when the road was com- pleted. But the minister was found in more than one of those little towns. The towns are gone, but others have come. As you cross any of the Western States- you will pass here and there a little group of houses with a gen- eral store and a school— yes, and usually a saloon; just a little town, miles from any other. In the prairie-schooner days one train, or cara- van, might carry a score of families, with their cattle, hens, and household goods. They forded streams, camped at night, traveled through heat and storm, many times not knowing where they were going. They built their log cabins or sod houses somewhere in the great West, and very often were lost, so far as the world was concerned. For years not even the church found them. IN THE HOMELAND 37 To-day let us board one of the westbound trains. After we cross the Missouri River more cars are added, and at almost every station several families, some large, some small, board the train. We smile as we see them, for they are loaded with luggage of all kinds, and soon every available space in aisle or seat is filled with boxes, bundles, and bags, while the people are crowded three in a seat and some standing. We wonder at the crowd, and find we are on a "homesteader train" and the people are going west to take up claims. On the whole, they are a jolly crowd, for the West means homes and fortunes to them. Far along the line there is a commotion, and - Sam, with whom you have picked up an acquaint- ance, tells you^that here is where they take the trail that leads to their claim, and adds, "There will not be another house within ten miles." We watch and see other families, ten or a dozen, all starting off together; but if we could follow them, we would find first one, then the other dropping out or turn- ing from the main road, each seeking his own claim and there pitching his tents till buildings of some sort could be erected. Come back in ten years and we will find ten great cattle ranches, each a settlement in itself. Let us visit Sam. It is Sunday morning and the cattlemen, cowboys, and others are gathered on the great porch. Sam tells us this is the morning for the "little preacher," as he calls him, to be with them. It is a strange service, but it is evident the preacher is a great favorite. The men crowd 38 A HUNDRED YEARS around him and urge him to stay, but as soon as the noon meal is over his pony is at the door, for he must preach at three ranches each Sunday, and even then only makes the rounds once a month. Let us go back to the train, as some miles further on another group leaves. Such a hunt as there is for bundles, boxes, yes, and children! Here we almost get back to the prairie schooner, for these people all go together across the country in wagons. The evening of the second day finds them in a beautiful valley. Tents are quickly pitched and the next morning the sound of the hammer and the saw is heard. Almost like the railroad town a little settlement springs up. It takes hard work to get the houses up, the crops in and business started. No one has time to think of church. Sunday is not very different from other days, but in some homes it is not forgotten. Then one day comes the pony, and on "its back, the circuit rider, who is a good deal like a forest ranger. His eye is constantly on the alert, and not even the little settlement has escaped him. A service is held, and soon the Board of Home Missions sends a minister, and a little church is established. A few years later the daughter of this minister, a girl of sixteen, spent the night in one of the large ranches. She wanted to borrow some books and said she hoped the next fall to find a place to work for her board and go to high school in the city. Her entire wardrobe was from the missionary bar- rel. Fortunately for her, it was not like the barrel of which Pollyanna tells, "which had only boys' clothes in it, when there was just a girl in the IN THE HOMELAND S9 family." Her father, she said, was a carpenter" and worked at his trade during the week, but never missed his Sunday services or failed to give help when any one needed him. Had we gone on another train toward the North- west, we might have seen a car filled with men, many of them foreigners — ^the real lumberjacks of whom we read in storybooks. They were on their way to a lumber camp. It was not a new camp, and the "sky pilot" was on the ground ahead of them. How could he live in such a place.? He did, and was the best friend of many of those men. before they had been there many months. On this same train, under the direction of a guide, was a car full of foreigners, each with his out- fit tied in a bundle or bag. My, such a noisy car! Perhaps it seemed so because we could not under- stand what they were saying. This crowd were headed for the mines, and here again our story- books help us out. A mining camp is not all bad, but its very roughness attracts many men whom we would not enjoy having as neighbors. Then the houses are so poor; there are few women or children until the camp becomes a town. If a man is hurt or sick, every man is ready to help him, but he doesn't know how, and the frontier minister must be doctor, nurse, and friend as well as preacher. The prairie schooner opened the field of the fron- tier minister. The railroad pushed the frontier line west, but it also brought to the border multi- tudes of people who sought, not a place to worship God, but gold and wealth; people to whom the 40 A HUNDRED YEARS church must bring Christ if this great Western country is to do its part in making the United States a sample Christian nation whos'e people are Christian citizens. ■ DO YOU REMEMBER 1. Which part of the United States is called the frontier? 2. Why there is need of missionary work on the frontier? 3. What States are going to help greatly in this frontier work? 4. Which State, formerly a frontier State, has given more missionaries and deaconesses than any other State in the Union? 5. How these former frontier States are going to help in the frontier work? IN THE HOMELAND 41 CHAPTER V THE CHURCH IN THE COUNTRY "The Church at the Center" ASSIGNMENTS FOR STUDY 1. Ask some one to draw or bring a picture of an ordinary country church. 2. Call for the description of a Sunday in the country by'some one who has spent a Sunday on a farm. 3. Ask some one to tell how boys and girls in the country spend their time. 4. Stories to Tell: Centenary Home Board Booklet, Number 5. HI,^ THERE, Tom, come quick!" Tom rolled over and grunted. He had been called only twice and liis record was a fourth call, before he really crawled out. This time, however, there was a peculiar thrill in Jack's command which caused him to add, "What's up.?" "Up!" said Jack, "You would better get up. The church is on fire!" "On fire!" Tom scrambled out in a hurry. Sure enough, off in the distance, away beyond the south meadow, the smoke was curling in great waves right where the church stood ! Soon father joined the boys. "No use for any one to try to save it," he said. "That road from the highway to the church is impassable. The rain last week took the bottom right out of it." The boys did not especially love the little church, but it did make them feel queer to see the flames 42 A HUNDRED YEARS rapidly reducing it until it was only a heap of smoking embers. It had not been an attractive church; just a bare room, with pine floors, uncomfortable benches, smoking lamps, cob webbed windows; hot in the summer and cold in the winter. How the boys had disliked Sunday ! for of course they must go to church. O no, they were not glad the church had burned, but secretly they did rejoice in the prospect of the Sunday mornings out of doors, instead of in the stuffy, poorly ventilated church. Before a week had passed, however, the pastor, Mr. Brown, called and with him was a man whom he introduced as Dr. Hemingway, a representative of the Rural Work Department of the Board of Home Missions, who had come to help plan for a new church. They had been down to see the ashes of the old church, and the first question asked by Dr. Hem- ingway was "Why build on a crossroad instead of on the highway?" Less than a mile from the old church a north-and-south government road crossed the highway, giving good roads in all directions. Why not rebuild near that crossing.? No one had thought of that possibility. But why not? It did not take long for the men to realize the good common sense of such a plan, and a plot of ground was secured before Dr. Hemingway left. But that was not all. He had brought with him plans for a church. The boys did not pay much attention to these, but when they overheard the IN THE HOMELAND 43 words "reading rooms," "volleyball," "ball teams," etc., they were greatly interested, although, of course, that had nothing to do with the church. Didn't it.? In a surprisingly short time, on the highway and within a quarter of a mile of the government cross- road, stood a church that, as Tom expressed it, "made you feel kind of good inside." It looked like a real church with a tower, con- crete walks across the front and leading to the dif- ferent doors, and a real church entrance. But the best was inside, for there was an auditorium, light and seated with comfortable chairs that could be moved when the room was needed for a social. The floor was covered with something soft and noiseless, and sounded as though you had rubber heels when you walked upon it. Then, too, every chair leg had a rubber tip, so that even moving chairs did not make a noise. Big doors on one side of the room opened into classrooms, while downstairs, in a light basement, were a real kitchen and a dining room. There was something even better than this, though at first no one really un- derstood it. In a vestibule was a blackboard called a bulletin board, and on it was the following church program : Sunday: 9:30 Sunday School. 10:30 Preaching Service. 7 :00 Ep worth League. 8:00 Church Fellowship Hour — Classes in Mission Study, Bible Study, etc. 44 A HUNDRED YEARS 1 Each Evening : 7 :00-9 :00 Reading Room open. Wednesday : 7 :30-8 :00 Prayer Service. 8:00-9:00 Men's Club. Women's Guild. Epworth League. 9:00 Light Refreshments. ^ The subjects for the different club meetings were given, but to those the boys did not pay much^ attention. There was something about scientific farming, politics, labor-saving devices for the home, better babies, and so on. They were, however, interested in the next an- nouncements : Group Junior League Meetings at 3:00 p.m., one Sunday each month. General Junior League Meeting and Social the first Saturday in January, April, July, and October. Volley Ball — For young people Friday Even- ings; for boys and girls Saturday afternoon, by arrangement with the pastor. Dr. Hemingway preached the first Sunday morn- ing. Everyone was invited to bring a lunch. Cof- fee was made in the new kitchen, and the lunches were eaten in the dining roon. Such a good time as they had! In the afternoon Dr. Hemingway explained the new plans of work as outlined in the bulletin. Some of the farmers shook their heads. It would take too much time; it could not be done; it would cost too much. Others thought it was fine. At the close the pastor read the story of the IN THE HOMELAND 45 Rural Junior League from the Junior Workers* Quarterly and announced the names of four young ladies who had consented to be group superinten- dents. Mrs. Ellis, he said, would act as the super- intendent. He then asked the mothers to meet with these Junior superintendents in the dining room to complete the plans. On their return the new Sunday school plans were also talked over, the new books were explained, and Sunday school papers were distributed. It was a great day, but not so great as the year that followed. Were you ever in the country? Did you go into that little church that was destroyed by fire or one like it.? O yes, there is another like it, more than a thou- sand like it. In fact, there are several thousand not so very different. You did not know that more than half the people in the United States live in the country or in small towns, did you.'' People could not get along without a church, even in the country, but isn't it strange that we thought it did not make any difference whether God's house was beautiful or not? Tom and Jack were like many other boys in the country. There was nothing in the little church for them, and it was not even a pleasant room to be in. It is often a long ride to church, and sometimes the roads are bad. A farmer gets up early and works late. He has forgotten that not only boys and girls but men and women can work harder if there is a little play thrown in. Some farmers do 46 A HUNDRED YEARS not even know that having a good time is part of God's plan, and that they can find that good time in the church. Then, too, the crops are ready to be harvested. Sunday morning comes and the sun is shining. It may rain Monday. Out come the teams and the day is spent in the field— "just this once." But this once comes again and again, until on many farms Sunday is almost forgotten. In the small towns there are so many, many Sunday gardens — at least it seems as though they must be Sunday gardens, for they have taken the place of the morning church service. Our Rural Work Department says that we must put into the small town and the country just such churches as our story described, churches that people will want to attend; churches whose quiet beauty makes one feel that God is there; churches that put good books where young people can read them; churches where everyone can find good times — ^better times than in any other place; churches that are interested in better farms, better homes, better schools, and better babies. We might call them every-day or seven-day churches, with Sunday as the center, a day of wor- ship for everyone, and with six days of church activities for boys and girls, men and women. The rural church the center of the community life is part of the plan for winning America for Christ. DO YOU REMEMBER 1. What the representatives of the Board of IN THE HOMELAND 47 Home Missions said about the location of a country church? 2. In how many ways the Board of Home Mis- sions helped the rural church? 3. How the new church building and program differed from the old? 4. What is meant by a "group plan"? 5. How city and rural churches may help each other? 48 A HUNDRED YEARS CHAPTER VI OUR WORLD FAMILY "After all, we are Brothers" ASSIGNMENTS FOR STUDY 1. Have some member of the class bring and explain the "Race Map" published by the National Geographic Society in the December, 1918, number of the National Geographic Magazine. 2. Have mounted the pictures found in the same number of the Geographic Magazine, or better, if a file of the World Outlook is accessible, cut and mount the larger pictures of the different nationalities found in our "World Family." 3. _ Stories to tell: "The People from Over the Ocean" (in Junior Mission Stories, by Margaret Applegate, pages 142 and 205, The Centenary Home Board Booklets, Number 3). THE map of the United States, as studied from a home missionary viewpoint, took on a new meaning — indeed, it was a new map. Perhaps the best explanation of that map is to be found in a new map of Europe, a map not of countries but of peoples. The continent we call Europe covers less than one fourteenth of the land surface of the globe and has a population of 450,000,000. More than one fourth of the people of the world live in that power- ful little continent. Not only this, but the fact that this 450,000,000 people speak eighteen different languages adds to the marvel of this continent. With so many peo- ple and so many languages crowded into such small IN THE HOMELAND 49 space, it is not hard to realize that after hundreds of years, with the invasion of one race after another, with internal wars and conquests, and with the constant overstepping of boundaries, not one pure language is left. The people living on the opposite edges of the same country frequently can- not understand each other at all. The history of Europe shows that the ruling countries have been determined, not by right nor superiority but by force. From such a densely populated land and, as the Slav leaders in 1862 said, "A country great and fertile but with every- thing disorderly," the United States, as well as Africa, South America, and other countries, have been peopled. Providentially for the United States, her early settlers were not those who sought gold or power, but those who sought a freedom to worship God, and because of this the United States to-day holds the place she does among the nations of the world. When the world war broke out, we as a nation began to realize what we knew but had not thought much about — that a war in Europe touched a large part of the population of the United States even before we went into war ourselves. As we studied the home missionary map of the United States we found that in every State, and in almost every branch of the home work, it was the fact that we were a world family, and not just a United States family, that created the need for the work of this Board. Can we understand why? Let us try. First, we said force, not right, ruled Europe. A foreign- 50 A HUNDRED YEARS born boy in one of our schools seemed to have no respect whatever for the rules of the school. One evening the teacher kept him after school to talk to him. She said, "Peter, why do you not obey when I speak to you.^*" Peter replied, "You never choke me." Further questioning brought out the fact that in his home his mother enforced her commands by choking him, and he had no idea of obedience except by force. Many of these immigrants, as we call them, com- ing to us from countries ruled by force, do not know much about respect for law as we think of it, nor about doing right because it is right. Their religion, if they have any, is on the same order. They are under the rule of the priest and not under the law of God. They have heard in their country untrue stories of the United States, and come here expecting to get rich very fast. They do not understand our language. Everything is so very different from the old home, and they are lonesome, homesick, and discouraged. They need friends who will help them to be happy while they are getting the "home feeling." There is no one who can really be a friend to these people except the church, and to the world family in our country the Board of Home Missions might be called the "Friendlies." To be a real friend the church must greet these foreigners as they come to our country, must help those who do not know where they are going, must help them find work, find wholesome homes and IN THE HOMELAND 51 clean recreations, and must provide for them churches with what we call "language pastors," that is, pastors who speak their language and ours. These people usually come in groups ; then they write back home and urge others to join these groups, so that in our cities we will have Little Italy, Chinatown, French settlements, Lithuanian colonies, the Ghetto, etc. In the mining districts and agricultural territories there are similar groups or settlements. In time these people begin to wear our kind of clothes, the children go to school, learn to speak English, to salute and to love our flag, and to carry our customs into the homes; but to us, they are still "Dagos," "Sheeneys," "Greasers," and "Chinks." Why? Because they are still our neighbors and not our brothers. They are "the world family," but not our world family; they are outside. When Moses led the children of Israel out of Egypt they became God's chosen children and nation, and they thought God wanted Jews, and only Jews, in his family. When Jesus came he taught that God's family was a peculiar people — and he said, "Come ye out from among them and be separate," but he also said, "Everyone who will may come in and belong to my family." We believe that the United States is GocFs chosen nation for leading the world to him. Our government has said : "Our doors are open. Come in, take out your naturalization papers; become citizens of the United States." But the war showed us that many people who were living in the A HUNDRED YEARS United States seemingly as citizens were not citi- zens at all; many were even enemies. Our church says to these foreigners, "Come in; belong to us," but, as our government found out, the church must do more than this. Let us go into that big steel mill territory — foreigners, all foreigners, on every side; nineteen different nationalities in one room at school. Three fourths of them did not have enough nourishment for breakfast, ninety per cent of them slept in rooms with from three to a dozen people and not a window open. The places in which they live we in many cases would not use for a chicken- coop. School is over and the boys and girls must play in the street, as there is not room in the house. Play? They do not even know how to play! Evening comes and crowds of young people pour out of the mill gates. What are they to do? Homes cold or hot, according to the season; cheer- less, crowded; they too take to the street. Any place that is light and warm calls loudly to them. Here the church may become the center. It must have a large building with plenty of warmth and light, music and refreshments, rooms for clubs, gymnasiums, and swimming tanks; classes where girls may learn to trim pretty hats and make shirt- waists like other folks; all kinds of clubs for boys and girls, out-of-door play grounds, and a play director; classes where mothers may learn how to properly feed and care for their children. These, with the concerted efforts for better homes, better wages, and better working hours. IN THE HOMELAND 53 help the foreigners to feel that the church is their friend. But with all of this effort to make this family of ours happier, healthier, and more contented, there must be the language pastor, the woman workers who speak their language, the deaconess, the doc- tor in the dispensary, all living and teaching Jesus Christ, and trying to help these people of ours find in him their best Friend, their Elder Brother. Sometimes this group of people is in the mining towns, sometimes in the foreign-speaking sections of the city, but their needs are much the same. Sometimes they are out on the great farms and ranches; sometimes they are very poor and some- times they are well-to-do, but they every one belong to our family and they all need the best Friend of all. On the Pacific Coast are immigrants from the Orient. The men and women are largely em- ployed on the great fruit ranches, which prevents them settling in such large groups, though the big cities all have their Chinatown and their Japanese sections. Here they live in their own way with their own peculiar customs and with just the same demands on the church as other nationalities. The ranch owners, as a rule, give little heed to the housing or family life of these foreigners. They are interested only in the amount or kind of work they do. The church can reach them only through the traveling minister or missionary, who travels from ranch to ranch, getting acquainted, holding religious services, and leaving Bibles to talk for Christ in his absence. 54 A HUNDRED YEARS In the same article in which Edwin A. Grover says, "Force, and force alone, was the world order in Europe," he says: "The new Europe will rest upon the solid rock. Right is the sovereign of the world. To establish this the Allies have lavished their wealth and the lives of millions of their sons." He might have added, "The church will give her millions and her missionaries, for Europe or any other country cannot stand on a foundation of right unless Christ be the cornerstone." To-day the Board of Home Missions is asking for $40,000,- 000, not only that the United States may be made a safe place in which to live through the making of our "world family" a Christian family, but that through these, the religion of Jesus Christ may be carried back to the home lands so that the nations of Europe and the world, as well as America, may become free Christian nations. DO YOU REMEMBER 1. For what the first immigrants came to this country .f^ 2. Why the immigrants come now.^^ 3. The two reasons why they need the Board of Home Missions .f* 4. Why we call them our "world family".'^ 5. How we can help them become part of our family? IN THE HOMELAND 55 CHAPTER VII CHURCH EXTENSION "Church Extension— it's a romantic word after all." ASSIGNMENTS FOR STUDY 1. Arrange for a debate; Resolved, That the kind of church building docs not make any difference. 2. Ask some one to be prepared to tell how many churches in your city or town have had help from the Board of Home Missions. 3. Appoint one or more church architects to bring plans for a building that would enable your church to do better work. IN the State of Iowa, the new preacher arrived about Thanksgiving time. He was obHged to haul his goods across the Mississippi River on a bobsled drawn by oxen, and his wife made the trip on a hand-sled drawn by one of the official mem- bers. He soon saw that rural centers were spring- ing up everywhere in the State and it seemed to him as though the settlements were getting -far ahead of the church. In every center, big or little, there was some one who realized that he did not want his family to grow up in a town in which there was no church. In many places the farms were new, the farmers were new, and the towns themselves were new. Even those who wanted a church did not feel that they could afford to build one, though many would gladly give something toward it. Services in a schoolhouse, a store, or a vacant room did not seem like church, and, too, they felt 56 A HUNDRED YEARS that the town as well as the boys and girls needed the influence of a church building, to lend dignity and increase self-respect, and to teach a reverence for God's house. At the meeting of the Iowa Annual Conference in 1854, Dr. A. J. Kynett, then pastor in Dubuque, presented a plan for Iowa, with a vision for the whole church. Before its adjournment that Con- ference organized the Iowa Church Extension Society, by which all the churches of Iowa con- tributed to a fund to be used to help build churches in places where they could not otherwise be built. Sometimes the money was loaned and paid back as soon as the church could do so; sometimes it was given outright. The movement was watched with interest, and m 1864 the General Conference made this a church- wide movement and organized the Church Exten- sion Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church. This society was consolidated with the Board of Home Missions in 1901. During the forty-one years it had existed as a separate Board, it had handled $19,067,736.68 and aided in the building of nearly 15,000 churches. Of these, nearly 3,000 were among the colored Methodists, 1,800 among the white people of the South, and about 7,000 west of the Mississippi. To-day it is not only helping to build churches, but is helping communi- ties to erect buildings that will meet their needs. The pictures of the small churches built some years ago show that the first thought was to build the simplest and most inexpensive church possible. Many of them looked much like the little country IN THE HOMELAND 57 schoolhouses, except that they were originally . painted white. Inside there was just one bare, unattractive room, and not very comfortable benches. No one thought of the boys and girls; of a comfortable Sunday school room; of socials or reading rooms. If anyone had suggested such things, people would have shaken their heads and said, "Too expensive! too expensive and not nec- essary, anyway!" To-day the Church Extension Board not only supplies money, but it has on its force church archi- tects who are proving to people that a church building should meet the needs of a community as much as a house the needs of a family. For example: here is a church in a thickly settled foreign section of the city. It must, of course, have a kindergarten room; but it would be foolish to plan for a kindergarten room in that church out in the country where the great farms make houses miles apart. Another church stands where there are hundreds of boys and girls; it, therefore, needs a large Sun- day school department, well equipped for graded work; club and recreational rooms. But there are communities in New England where there are not twenty children of school age in a school district; here the Sunday school can easily be cared for. But they still have class meetings, several meet- ings at a time, and classrooms must be provided. One church is near a branch library with reading rooms and a fine juvenile department and does not especially need a reading room; another must pro- vide a place and books for its young people. 58 A HUNDRED YEARS All of these differences call for different plans, but without the Board of Church Extension, in_ many places people would not even know that nowadays churches are built, not just for the Sun- day morning service, but for a church home, where folks come to worship, to study, to help others, and to have a good time. Let us look at one church that shows what a church building may really be. Morgan Memorial Church, Boston, is a very different church than the one in a small town. Where that one minis- tered to a resident people, this is a church of all nations in the heart of a settlement of immi- grants. "The church building is flanked on one side by a settlement house, where theological students from Boston University live to study social service first hand, and on the other side by a six-story store. Yes, s-t-o-r-e. In that department store cast- off clothing, worn-out shoes, broken furniture, old papers are gathered, disinfected, repaired, and sold. There are rug weaving, shoe-cobbling, tailoring, and goodness only knows how many other depart- ments. In the church building proper there are rooms for mothers' clubs, English classes, an audi- torium for a children's church, a day nursery, a dormitory, small suite of rooms — three, in fact — furnished and arranged as a model suite for that section of the city should be. Here is a reading room and a temperance "saloon," where the men of the neighborhood can come and play checkers and be served with soft drinks by a converted saloon keeper! Here is a gymnasium with lockers IN THE HOMELAND 59 and showers and all the rest of the accompani- ments, art and music departments and a printing shop" — (Ep worth League Quarterly). When we say church extension we think about church buildings; but suppose the church is al- ready built— what then? The minister? O yes! but he ordinarily comes before the building; many times he comes through the aid of the Home Missionary Society. While the church must have a place to live, so also must the minister and his family, and the church par- sonage is added to the extension work. Here again not only a building to house the minister's family, but the kind of house that shall be built becomes a part of our church work. ^ The parsonage is not only the home of the minister's family but the center for the social life of the church and should in its architecture be a model of convenience and comfort. There is a word that we have all learned during the last few years, though we do not exactly know its meaning — the word "reconstruction." We do know what it means to reconstruct, to rebuild a house. Partitions are removed, new ones are put in at different places, doors and windows are changed, ceilings raised, stairways turned, and numberless other things done to make the house better adapted to the needs of those who are to live in it at that time. The word "reconstruction" as we use it to-day refers, not to houses or churches — though the very plans of new churches are a part of it — ^but to the national life of the world. We talk about the new 60 A HUNDRED YEARS map of the world. It will show that many parti- tions or boundaries of countries have been torn out, moved and rebuilt as our world is being made over. But that is not all. Changes in every nation, too complicated for us to understand, must be made in order that all the nations of the world may fit into and work together in a peaceful world. To do this will take many years; it will take very wise leaders; it must have Christian leaders, not only ministers, but Christian business men, finan- ciers, politicians and statesmen. Our country must be in the front line in leadership. We must send out into the world engineers, skilled mechan- ics, scientific agriculturalists, expert lawyers, doc- tors, and teachers, and these leaders, if the great task of reconstruction, of the rebuilding this world is to be well done, must be Christian leaders. Our church must be extended through such leaders. These leaders must be trained. This brings us to another line of work of our Board of Church Extension. The church schools give a boy or girl an opportunity to secure training in Christian leadership. Are you planning to attend a church college.'^ No.? Why not.? Reasons are many, why even church boys and often girls attend State colleges and universities. To give their young folks a fair chance at Christian leadership Methodism is establishing university churches near the State Colleges, as sort of an annex to or a department of the university, that the great big word "Christian" may not be left out of the leaders these colleges are putting into this IN THE HOMELAND 61 work of making the world a saFe place in which to live — a world of peace. A Methodist boy says: "I am a sophomore in the State University. I hear that in former days the fellows who were interested in church affairs lost interest after leav- ing home and coming to this big university. That is not true in my case; I'll tell you why: First, I'm studying the Bible as part of my curriculum. By the way, did you know that the Bible is a unit of credit in the university.? My social life is more wholesome than it was at home, for the college folks who are Methodists are now under the supervision of a Methodist preacher who has a lot of pep. Another thing, we college folks have a church of our own, and are not dependent on the small church in the town, which too often has no college spirit or insight. We run our own church; we are learning to be leaders by practicing on each other. I hope some of these fellows who are to-day prac- ticing will develop into student pastors, for they are sorely needed by the Board of Home Missions." DO YOU REMEMBER 1. When and why and by whom the Church Extension Society was organized? 2. What the business of this Board is? 3. How many churches it helped in forty-one years? 4. What it does toward building or helping build churches? 5. How it is trying to help you do your part in the work called "reconstruction"? A HUNDRED YEARS CHAPTER Vni SNAPSHOTS AT HOME "The Twenty-third Psalm in Indian Sign Language ASSIGNMENTS FOR STUDY 1. Have some one ready to recite "Your Flag and My Flag." 2. Have the twenty-third psalm in the Indian Sign Language recited verse by verse and let the class give the King James Ver- sion and some one give the American Revised Version. 3. Have some one give the story of "Two Thousand Miles From a Bible." 4. Stories for telling: "Black Sheep" (Junior Mission Stories, page 79), by Margaret Applegate. The Centenary Home Board Booklet, Numbers 1 and 6. THE Great Father above a Shepherd Chief is, the same as I am His, and with Him I want not. "He throws out to me a rope, and the name of the rope is Love, and He draws me, and He draws me, and He draws me to where the grass is green and the water not dangerous, and I eat and lie down satisfied. "Sometimes my heart is very weak and falls down, but He lifts it up again and draws me into a good road. His name is Wonderful. "Some time, it may be very soon, it may be longer, it may be a long, long time. He will draw me into a place between mountains. It is dark .there, but I'll draw back not. I'll. be afraid not, IN THE HOMELAND 63 for it is in there between those mountains that the Shepherd Chief will meet me, and the hunger I have felt in my heart all through this life will be satisfied. Sometimes He makes the love rope into a whip, but afterwards He gives me a staff to lean on. "He spreads a table before me with all kinds of food. He puts His hands upon my head and all the 'tired' is gone. My cup He fills till it runs over. "What I tell you is true, I lie not. These roads that are 'away ahead' will stay with me through this life, and afterward I will go to live in the 'Big Tepee' and sit down with the Shepherd Chief for- ever." (Copied from a W. H. M. S. Leaflet.) The very name "Indian" makes us "sit up and take notice." We at once think of war-paint and feathers, of war-whoops and scalps, of massacres and war-dances, all these of the storybook and the once-upon-a-time tale. To-day the word "Indian" suggests the blanket and moccasin, the bead-work and sweet^grass basket of the curio shop. One vision is as far from the real Indian of to-day as the other. Four hundred years ago the Indian began to learn of the white man; to-day more than two thirds of the 335,998 Indians in the United States cannot read nor write, and quite that many do not speak English. The Centenary is to commemorate the one hun- dredth anniversary of the founding of missionary work in the Methodist Church, and the first mis- sionary was to the Indians. Jason Lee in telling of one of his experiences says: 64 A HUNDRED YEARS "Just after we crossed the Great Divide, where the waters flow on one side toward the Gulf of Mexico and on the other toward the Pacific Ocean, we heard that an Indian party was coming toward us. Immediately we were all attention to guard the company, as usual, when we learned that the Indians were coming on a friendly mission. In some way, the Nez Perces and the Flat Heads had learned that the longed-for men with the Book were coming from the East, and they had sent rep- resentatives to welcome the visitors. My heart leaped with joy, for the heavenly Father had surely heard my prayers and opened the way." The story of the Indians who traveled two thou- sand miles for a Bible is well known. ' Yet to-day only about twenty per cent of them are Christians. Look at the other side! When our country called for help, 5,000 of these red men went into the service, and one third of the number by enlist- ment. The Indians subscribed $10,000,000 to the first and second Liberty Loans. How can we explain these conditions .^^ A queer thing has happened in the work among the Indians:' the church has gone after the grown men and has almost forgotten the women and chil- dren ! This means the home of the Indian to-day is largely the home of the savage Indian one hun- dred years ago. An Indian young man attends one of our fine Indian schools; he lives as we live; he graduates, he goes back to his people. What does he find.'^ "A room perhaps twelve by fourteen feet in area, IN THE HOMELAND 65 with ceiling so low as to be easily touched by the hands, black with smoke and very dirty. It is the under side of the flat roof, which is made of grass and mud thrown over poles laid crosswise and a foot apart. Dry chips and dirt are continually dropping through the cracks, and the ceiling is a splendid place for wasps' and spiders' nests, with an occasional scorpion, centipede, or tarantula to drop to the floor, and possibly a snake to crawl along the poles. "Strips of meat hung for drying on lines stretch- ing across the room are covered thick with flies. The floor serves for dining table as well as for beds. Water is brought by women in jars, manufactured by themselves. So skillful are they that they can run with these jars on their heads without breaking them, or even spilling their contents. Bread is baked in ovens outside, and these are the favorite resorts of the dogs, with which the pueblo abounds." Or it may be a tent with similar conditions. What would you do if you came from college to such a home? Yet it is the only home to which the Indian can come. What happens.? Many times he puts on a blanket and goes back to where he left off when he went away. Let us put the 16,789 Indian boys and girls of school age, who are not now attending school, into school. Give them Christian mothers and Chris- tian homes; teach them sanitation and domestic science, how to keep their bodies well and strong, and the next one hundred years will tell a different story. 66 A HUNDRED YEARS This the Centenary program plans to do, through giving to the Indian more ministers, more women workers to go into the homes and among the women, and by the training of native workers making new mothers and new homes. Latin America. The United States flag is **our flag" to Spanish-speaking people, not only in what we may call "the States," but in Porto Rico and Hawaii. We have noted in the early days of our country that where the church went the flag went. It is equally true that where the flag goes you will be sure to find the church. Porto Rico is a small island with a big population ■ — ^more than ten times as many people to the square mile as in the United States. In fact, there are so many people that the island is covered with . villages almost running one into the other. Roman Catholicism was the state religion before 1878, and the people thought of the church only as a place which touched them at the time of birth, marriage, and death. They have no idea of our form of government. The United States must give to them an education in American citizenship, and the church is trying to put the word "Chris- tian" into it. "A pretty young girl of seventeen," says the principal of a Porto Rican school, "walks twenty miles to and from the school daily, sleeps on a bare floor, and is so poor that she must beg nearly all her food," but she goes to school. "A boy in a Porto Rican school who modestly admitted he could speak some English, said: 'I am learning many things in this school. I like best the story of Abraham Lincoln. He was a IN THE HOMELAND 67 poor boy like me and lived in a log cabin as poor as mine. But he was honest and earnest and became the saviour of his country, I mean to work so hard that I may become of use to my country.'," (The CongregationaHst.) "The poor people of Porto Rico are making un- usual sacrifices to educate their children. No compulsory law is necessary. Attendance is higher in percentage than in any State of the Union except Massachusetts, which State exceeds Porto Rico only by one per cent. Hundreds of children carry their shoes and stockings to and from school, sit down by the roadside, remove shoes and stock- ings and climb rugged and jagged mountain trails barefooted to save the shoes and thus prolong their use. I know women who sit on the river rocks all day and every day washing clothes to keep their children in school." The survey, in stating what Methodism has done in Porto Rico, gives the Epworth League membership 549 Seniors and 496 Juniors. One of the Centenary writers says, "The Epworth League is a strong factor in the success of the church in Porto Rico." The Centenary effort will be especially in the line of more ministers, more training in Christian citizenship, and in affording an opportunity for higher education than the public schools give, that the church may have a better educated class of native workers. Hawaii. Here, as in Porto Rico, we must make Christian American citizens. But Hawaii is away out in the Pacific Ocean. We may call it our half- 68 A HUNDRED YEARS way house. People are gathering here both from the United States and from the Orient. In fact, so many are coming from China, Japan, the Philip- pines and, until recently, from Korea that Hawaii may be called the Oriental possession of the United States. Its great sugar-cane and pineapple plantations are owned by Orientals who bring with them their Buddhist religion and build their Buddhist temples. This means real foreign missionary work in our own country. The churches have divided these islands as they have some of the foreign countries. To Methodism comes all of the Korean work, and in certain territories the work with the other nationalities. Letters have come to the mission- aries from certain plantations where from five to fifteen hundred Japanese are employed, begging that Christian workers be sent to them, and in one place the Koreans v^^hen Sunday comes, run up their "church flag," which says, "No work on Sun- day because it is God's day." They use a coconut tree for a flag-stafi'. The Centenary program plans for college- trained field secretaries, one for the Japanese and one for the Filipino work; for four Bible women; to make possible the training of all native pastors in America; to provide social centers, children's welfare centers, institutional and other churches; to maintain high schools and a training school for Christian workers; we cannot say native workers, but workers from among the people now living there. United States Latin American. The name IN THE HOMELAND 69 "Spanish-American" suggests at once the Mexican and the first thought is "over the border, please," But the Mexicans are not staying over the border. We were very glad years ago when those states separated from Mexico to put the border on the south side of Texas and New Mexico, and with the taking of that territory into the United States we adopted legally the Spanish-speaking American. The Mexicans who have come the last few years, however, are largely visitors, as few of them have become citizens. The absence of an ideal and a disinclination to work or to be like Americans is characteristic of these later arrivals from Mexico. Then, too, they are densely ignorant, wretchedly poor, very super- stitious, and still under the influence of the Catho- lic Church. These people are our newest immi- grants. They are sheep-herders, section hands, and workers in the beet and cotton fields. "It is hard for an American to realize the con- dition of the mass of poorer, uneducated Mexicans. They live an idle, aimless existence because they have nothing to do with. The wornen cannot sew because they have nothing to sew. They cannot cook much because they have nothing to cook. Many sit all day long, it may be, doing nothing, waiting for time to pass, helpless, because igno- rance is always helpless. "If you could see a dirty, procrastinating, un- trained Mexican boy transformed by life in one of our schools into the tidy, dish- washing, bed-making, care-taking, studious, Bible-loving, hymn-singing, wide-awake schoolboy, you would know what it is 70 A HUNDRED YEARS that justifies this string of adjectives, and the money spent on this school. And you would want to help all the rest of the poor, schoolless, Christian Mexican boys to find home care and practical Christian training that shall make them citizens worthy of such a country as our own." In many places shacks and halls built to meet the first emergency years ago still stand as the center of our missionary work. They can have no attraction for a "don't-care" people. If we could put Morgan Memorial Church, adapted to meet the conditions, into Southern California or Arizona, what do you suppose would happen? The church needs to do something big— big enough to awaken these Latin-Americans, and while they are aroused give them an ideal big enough to keep them awake until we can really get them up and at work. Once awake they make fine citizens and the best of Christian citizens. This is proven in New Mexico, where the Span- ish-speaking people are alive, awake, and loyal citizens, who have been in our country long enough to feel that it is their country as well as ours. Here we are not surprised to find "two bright-eyed, manly little fellows, who had walked five miles to school, and proposed to do so daily if only they might come so as to learn to read, like a companion who had been in school the previous year." And yet often they must be turned away unless there are more and larger schools. During the war these Latin-Americans who could not speak English fought side by side with the other "Yanks." IN THE HOMELAND 71 Listen to the Centenary survey: An automobile for each worker; Spanish-speaking directors of rehgious education; pastors who see through a magnifying glass; women workers who will keep "things doing" in the community — as clubs, play- grounds, entertainments, social plans, domestic science classes, etc. ; specialists of every kind, doc- tors, teachers, child- workers, home builders, etc.; laboratories, training schools — in fact, everything that anybody could need in any place. Alaska. Dog-trains, Eskimos in fur costumes, and gold stand for Alaska. But Alaska as we think it is rather like a'f airy story. It isn't so ! It is the one country where the population is decreas- ing becaiise so many people who went there from the United States have given up and come home. The people are so scattered that the church is meeting a serious problem. Only four churches in Alaska, and these so widely separated one needs a spyglass to find them. The severe cold, the long dark winters and changing populations make church work very dif- ficult. "Ink freezes on the pens of the scholars as they write; people in church have to keep stamp- ing their feet to keep warm, and the minister has to break off icicles from his moustache while preach- ing." There is little of what we recognize as the joys of childhood among Alaskan children. The fearful storms that sweep peninsula and islands fill their hearts with terror. The conditions of life forbid much of the free, glad outdoor play that is the birthright of children in kindlier climates, and 72 A HUNDRED YEARS their dwellings offer no substitute. "Alaskan children seldom laugh" is a statement full of pitiful significance. "Me sick," said an old chief to a missionary. *'Me sick at heart. My people all dark at heart. Nobody tell them Jesus dies. By and by all die — go down — to dark, dark!" Then there must be the work for the natives and for the settlers. The Centenary plan is to appoint a general mis- sionary to cover the entire field and send more pastors that the distance to be covered by each need not be so great. The Mormons. Listen to what a Mormon woman is supposed to say, and might truly say, as given in the Manual to Christian Democracy for America : "I think my church is ordained for this crisis in the world's history to help repeople the earth. At least it ought to make other people more tolerant with us. We are feeling more encouraged over our church of the Latter Day Saints since we have been getting recognition in these war times. You know we had a chaplain in khaki who ministered to the soul comfort of your boys on the battlefield. His name is Brigham H. Roberts. 'Tis true he has been excluded from the House of Representatives because he has three wives, but that was very un- fair. That was as unfair as the term in prison he had to serve in 1889 because he violated the law passed against polygamous marriages. "We have the most faithful missionaries imagin- able. There are 1,400 of them who give two years IN THE HOMELAND 73 of service free of charge to their church. I only hope the Methodists will never do that, for they would soon have us marked off the map. The Methodists don't amount to much in my State of Utah — they have only 1,712 members, while we have in the same State 293,000. "We are very proud of our wonderful temples in Salt Lake City, in Cardston, Alberta, Canada, and another magnificent one on the same plan in the Hawaiian Islands, and the elegant structure in Brooklyn, New York. The only thing we fear is the effect of so-called orthodox people on our young people. Our children who are in college are hard to hold because they get new notions and ideals from the young people with whom they associate." Now listen to the survey: "Utah may be classed as one of earth's darkest spots." It is marked black on the map. The Centenary proposes to bring these new ideas into the very stronghold of Mormonism. It plans to build a $100,000 church and student center right beside the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, and in every way possible, through churches and schools, to educate the young people for Christ. The Negro. The story is told that in the midst of one of the hard-fought advances the German army was almost panic stricken when the opposing section of the Alhes, who chanced to be Americans, suddenly turned black. They did not know that those on the fighting line had been reheved by a company of Negroes. In some sections of our own country the effect was 74 A HUNDRED YEARS almost as startling. The draft took from some of the great railroads and other industrial centers such a large percentage of the employees that an exodus of colored people from the South followed to meet the emergency. In just a short time the color of many shops and factories changed. Working hours were soon cared for, but the question was what to do with the leisure of these people, how to find places for them to live. They were crowded in the most unsanitary conditions. The saloon, vaude- ville, and"lowgrade moving pictures beckon them with both hands. The churches were not large enough to accom- modate these new crowds. Most of them had no plans for anything outside Sunday service. Our church, which could seat 1,000 to 2,000, had 4,000 members, and still they came. Fortunately, the Centenary arrived just in time to help meet this emergency. It says: "We must have more churches; we must have ministers who not only preach, but who know how to be friends to these colored people every day in the week. We must give them reading rooms, lectures, recrea- tional rooms, places that will be more attractive than the cheap and harmful city amusements." It also aims to provide temporary homes for women and girls, organize domestic science and home-making courses to fit these women to become self-supporting, and all in the name of Jesus Christ, the friend of the black man and thfe white. DO YOU REMEMBER 1. The great need of the Indian to-day? IN THE HOMELAND 75 2. Who are meant by Latin Americans? 3. What are the Centenary plans for the United States Latin Americans? 4. Why Utah is the blackest State in the Union? 5. What the Centenary needs to do for the Negro in the North? OUR SURVEY If we were to go up in an aeroplane to a place from which we could see the whole United States, and could drop a home missionary bomb where we saw a place that needed help, we might drop a rural church — not the kind that they used to have, but like the new one we have heard about, in that little town in Iowa; we might drop another, filled with money to double the salary of that frontier preacher in Wyom- ing, who is getting only five hundred dollars; we might drop an institutional church, with club rooms, gymnasium, lunch room, etc., in New York from the next explosion; a language preacher in Pittsburgh, a university church in Utah, traveling preachers for the Chinese and Japanese in California, schools for the Latin- Americans in Arizona would follow in quick succession. Next would come a quick trip to Alaska, where we might have to fly low and use a searchlight to find our scattered churches, and we could add another church with preacher, salary, and Junior League for good measure. Then off to Honolulu, where only the stars 76 A HUNDRED YEARS and stripes can convince us that this is part of the United States. It looks as though it were the Foreign Mission- ary Society that is needed here, and it is the teachers of the foreign schools, the Christian business man and the physician that must help win these Koreans, Chinese, Hindoos, Malay- sians, Japanese, and natives for Christ. Then would come a long trip back to Porto Rico, where the rural church bomb is again needed. On our way back we catch a glimpse of the Portuguese in Connecticut needing the language preacher and teacher bomb, and the Highlander of the South in Kentucky and Tennessee calling for almost every bomb in the Home Missionary Arsenal. Had we come near enough the ground in any and all of these places, we might have heard the strains of "My Country, 'Tis of Thee," for all are a part of our great nation to which the world is looking as a sample free country and which we must make a sample Christian nation. REFERENCE BOOKS Christian Democracy for America (Text Book of the Senior League Chapter) . Paper, 50 cents ; cloth, 75 cents. Winning the Oregon Country. J. T. Faris. Paper, 40 cents, postpaid; cloth, 60 cents. Centenary Leaflets. Centenary Headquarters, 111 Fifth Avenue, New Yorl^. Comrades in Service. Margaret E. Burton. Paper, 40 cents, postpaid; cloth, 60 cents. I i ■i i ! j i i I I I i i i t 1 i J i i I ( i i i I ] 1 i * 1 .1 i 1 j J i I 1 ii i « ■J ) t i ,1 1 i i 1 1 i 1 'i