:?i^^t^^§$'^^^ wj^T! '' NOV 27 1920 A ^^omAi. m'^ A BV 2766 .P6 T5 1919 Thompson, Charles Lemuel, 1839-1924. The soul of America The Soul of America The Soul of America The Contribution of Presbyterian Home Missions. 12 mo, illustrated, cloth, net $\.1S\ paper, net 50c. A lucid, clearly defined statement of what has been done on the North American con- tinent, in Home Mission field by the Pres- byterian Church. The Religious Foundations of America 12mo, cloth, net $1.50. **The 400th anniversary of the Reforma- tion makes this a timely treatise, as well as a storehouse of valuable information — polit- ical, historic and religious. ... A valuable cyclopedia of the religious beginnings of our country.*' — The Missionary Survey. The Soul of America The Contribution of Presbyterian Home Missions 'OV 27 1920 ^/ BY Charles LemuelThompson, D. D. , LL. D. Secretary Emeritus Author of The Story of the Presbyterian Church'' "The Religious Foundations of America,'' "Etchings in Verst," etc. New York Chicago Fleming H. Revell Company London and Edinburgh Copyright, 1919, by FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY Printed in United States of America New York: 158 Fifth Avenue Chicago : 17 North Wabash Ave. London: 21 Paternoster Square Edinburgh: 75 Princes Street To The Board of Home Missions and The Womaji's Board of Home Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. In memory of a long fellowship This book is dedicated. FOREWORD IN these days of crowded libraries every new book should be able to give a reason for its existence. This then is not a full history of the Christian missions of America, nor even a full account of the Presbyterian share in that great enterprise. It is an at- tempt to outline the missionary adventure in two re- spects. First, to trace home missions as an organiza- tion from the time when the germ of it was in a small Committee with indefinite powers to this latter day of enlarged tasks and increased opportunity. In the second place, to show the development of the work of home missions from the time when it was the outreach of a feeble hand of help to settlers on the borders of a great wilderness to this day, when it comprises many new departures, yet all on the stock of its original charter. The hamlet in the wilderness has become a great city and calls for help for all its congested and im- perilled multitudes. The Anglo-Saxon message of the first century must now be translated into forty tongues and must be adapted to forty various inheritances and conditions. John Eliot's message to aborigines must be enlarged to take into consideration physical, social and tribal peculiarities. The gospel preached to primi- tive country people must be united with community service that will arrest the moral and intellectual de- cline which solitude has enforced. The old-time call which was the same for rich and poor must now take 7 8 FOREWORD account of industrial and economic conflicts and must point and lead the way out to a real brotherhood of people, founded on the Gospel of Micah, that God re- quires of all men and all groups of men to do justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with God. In its first century the Board was engaged in a great territorial expansion. It covered the breadth of the continent. In the last few decades it has added to this, topical expansion. The new frontiers are in new social, industrial and moral conditions. To meet them home missions must expand in directions not contem- plated fifty years ago.. No longer merely a matter of virginal areas of land, it now must grapple with what comes after the land has been occupied. This book is an attempt to present the activities of the Board of Home Missions and the Woman's Board of Home Missions in view especially of the conditions that have demanded attention during the past genera- tion. It is not claimed that these Boards have adequately met or fully solved these problems. The following pages will, however, indicate that they have some vision of new duties and are somewhat alive to new responsibilities. This book is primarily a statement of some of the work of the Presbyterian Church. It is, however, written from the American rather than the denomina- tional point of view. It has made at least passing ref- erence to other communions and has tried to empha- size the fact that the Kingdom is above any denomi- nation. It records the contribution one body of Chris- tians has made, but in full and grateful recognition of the equally important service of other bodies toiling in FOREWORD 9 the same great field. Only by regarding the achieve- ments of one regiment in the Lord's army of occupa- tion as related to the others, only by lining up the ad- vance of the various detachments into one compre- hensive and conquering march, will we get the true perspective of the progress of the Kingdom. C. L. T. Nezv York City, CONTENTS PAGE I. Early Days 15 II. Beginnings of Organization 28 III. The First Synod and General Assembly 39 IV. Over the Alleghenies 52 V. The American Indians 75 VI. From the Mississippi to the Yukon .... 104 VII. Immigration 134 VIII. City Missions and Social Service 150 IX. Country Church and Mountaineers .... 172 X. Spanish-Speaking People 201 XI. Woman's Board of Home Missions 218 XII. The Call of the Hour 232 Appendix 245 II ILLUSTRATIONS IMAGING PAG^ Boys of Menaul School, Albuquerque, New Mex- ico Title Chauncey Yellow Robe 76 Sheldon Jackson School, Sitka, Alaska 122 Immigrants from Siberia 124 Class at Gary Neighborhood House, Gary, Indiana 164 Gary Neighborhood House, Gary, Indiana 164 A Typical Country Church 174 Jarrold's Valley, West Virginia, Sunday School . 174 Poultry Club, Rocky Fork, Tennessee 184 Canning Club, Rocky Fork, Tennessee 184 A Lumber Camp of the Northwest 188 A "Loading Donkey" and Crew 188 A Missionary's Home as She Finds It 194 A Missionary's Home as She Develops It ...... 194 Normal and Collegiate Institute, Asheville, North Carolina 196 Some Girls of Normal and Collegiate Institute, Asheville, North Carolina 196 Community Headquarters, White Rock, North Carolina 200 Laurel Hospital, White Rock, North Carolina . . . 200 Southern Mountaineer's Home 200 President's New Home, Polytechnic Institute, San German, Porto Rico 204 Class in Physics, Polytechnic Institute, San Ger- man, Porto Rico 204 San Juan Hospital, Porto Rico 208 Boys of the Cardenas School, Cuba 210 Class in Christian Americanization 228 13 EARLY DAYS A HI STORY of missions as developed by the Presbyterian Church through its Board of Home Missions makes it necessary to remem- ber that missionary activity in this country antedates by a century any organized missionary work and to trace, at least briefly, the earlier occupation of the country by Christian forces. The Mayflower was a great home mission adventure. The very earliest set- tlements anywhere on the Atlantic Coast were religious in character. The persecution of Protestant Christianity in Great Britain and on the Continent drove God's people from various lands and of various creeds to seek a refuge elsewhere and to plant those seeds of Christian truth on a congenial soil, the planting and growth of which they were sure would determine the future civilization of the world. So the Pilgrims came to New England, the Hollanders to New York, the Scotch and Welsh and Irish Protestants to New Jersey and Pennsylvania, the Swedes to the Delaware, the Quakers and Germans to Pennsylvania and the Huguenots to the Carolinas. All these were exiles for conscience and for the gos- pel's sake. Puritans. Most of the Presbyterians were Puri- tans, — people, that is, who had broken with the Church of England and were inclined to self-government in 15 i6 THE SOUL OF AMERICA ecclesiastical affairs. Later they became Congrega- tionalists or Presbyterians, according as they favored absolute independence of each Church or adopted in- dependence with representative government. Under these circumstances a fully developed form of government came gradually. Sometimes the Pres- byterianism was manifested only by the pastor or min- ister gathering a few believers around him. Gradually some of these believers had responsibility put upon them, and so a form of responsible government devel- oped, conforming to the model of historic 'Presbyter- ianism. Thus, one of the earliest ministers to Virginia came over with the adventurous Virginia colony, in 1608. Alexander Whitaker, the self-denying "Apostle of Virginia," was the son of a Puritan professor of divinity in Cambridge. That he himself was essen- tially Presbyterian is manifest from the fact that he wrote of the affairs of the colony, saying,"Here neither surplice nor subscription is spoken of." And that his church services and government corresponded to the Presbyterian model is evident from his description of those services. Whitaker organized an informal con- gregational presbytery. He writes, June, 1614: "Every Sabbath Day we preach in the forenoon, and catechize in the afternoon. Every Saturday, at night, I exercise in Sir Thomas Dale's house. Our church affairs be consulted on by the minister and four of the most religious men. Once every month we have a communion, and once a year a solemn fast." In the Massachusetts Bay Colony there was from the first a strong tendency to Presbyterian polity. The churches were usually organized on an independent basis. It could not be otherwise. There was no ec- EARLY DAYS 17 clesiastical body to which they could be attached. They were a few faithful souls in a wilderness. The Church was at first in every man's heart. Cot- ton Mather reports Mr. Higginson, the first elder, as saying : "We go to practice the positive part of Church ref- ormation and propagate the gospel in America." Presbyterian Government. The first churches or- ganized usually had one or more elders associated with the minister in the government of the congregation. This was Presbyterianism. Dr. Briggs names the fol- lowing prominent ministers as holding the Presby- terian form of government: Thomas Parker and James Noyes, of Newbury, Massachusetts; John Eliot, the apostle to the Indians; Peter Hobart, of Hengham ; John Young and Richard Denton, of Long Island. Presbyterianism thus had an early footing in New England. That it later lost much of it cannot dim the glorious fact that the Mayflower carried the seeds of that form of church development which later in other parts of the country came to be so large a factor in American life. Circumstances necessitated a gradual change in church polity. A Congregationalized Presbyterianism spread through New England. Later the preponder- ance of immigration from England turned the scales and New England became the American home of the Congregational form of church government. Perhaps a different story might have been told of Presbyterianism in New England if a storm at sea had not interfered. In 1736 the Governor of New Eng- land invited the persecuted Scotch Presbyterians of Ireland to come to New England. On September i8 THE SOUL OF AMERICA ninth, one hundred and forty of them set sail in the Eagle's Wing to transplant Scotch Presbyterianism to New England. Disasters overtook the vessel and they were compelled to return. Concerning this ill- fated voyage Samuel Rutherford wrote to John Stuart : "I would not have you think it strange that journey to New England has gotten such a dash; it indeed hath made my heart heavy ; yet I know it is no dumb providence, but a speaking one whereby our Lord speaketh his mind to you, though for the present ye do not well understand what he saith. However it be, He that sitteth upon the floods hath shown you his mar- vellous kindness in the great depths If I saw a call for New England I would follow it." Presbyterian Cooperation. Presbyterians are said to be positive in their convictions and ways. And yet even in those early days in New England they were willing to join with independents in a modified Con- gregationalism, and for a long time the two coop- erated in county associations. This accommodation to the necessities of the times gradually passed away, but the spirit of cooperation in the Presbyterian Church happily remains. It appeared in the middle of the nineteenth century in the union church formed in New York State and elsewhere, in which Congrega- tionalists and Presbyterians united in churches which should belong to one or the other body, as circum- stances might determine. And it appears to-day in the fact that Presbyterians are among the first in pleading for cooperative movements and steps toward a more united Church. Thus, the General Assembly of 1918 declared its profound conviction that the time EARLY DAYS 19 has come for organic union and asked the national bodies of the evangelical communions of America to meet for the purpose of formulating a Plan of Or- ganic Union. Evangelization of Indians. In view of the subse- quent history it is interesting to note that the first missionary steps were directed to the evangelization of the Indians. Thus the first charter granted the colonies was one to the Presbyterian colony of Massachusetts Bay 1628, which declares that *'to win and incite the natives of the country to the knowledge and obedience of the only true God and Savior of mankind and the Chris- tian faith was in the royal intention and the adven- turers free profession the principal end of this planta- tion." Society for Propagation o£ the Gospel. Under this impulse the Puritan ministers of England and Scotland pressed a petition on parliament for the propagation of the gospel in America. The result was an organization known as the Society for the Propa- gation of the Gospel in New England. This was in 1649. 'The Society was authorized "to receive and dispose of monies in such manner as shall best and principally conduce to the preaching and propagating of the gospel amongst the natives and for the main- tenance of schools and nurseries of learning for the education of the children of the natives." To support this noble purpose collections were or- dered through all towns and parishes "as the founda- tion of so pious and great an undertaking." The first collection amounted to about sixty thousand dollars. 20 THE SOUL OF AMERICA After a few years a new and ampler charter was granted. Its terms were enlarged. It was en- titled "A Society or Company for Propagation of the Gospel in New England and the Parts Adjacent in America." Later, Indian missions were prophesied in its statement that in addition to evangelistic labors its objects should be the "nourishing, teaching and in- structing the said heathen natives and their children, not only in the principles and knowledge of the true religion, and in morality, and the knowledge of the English tongue, and in other liberal arts and sciences, but for the educating and placing of them or their children in some trade, ministry, or lawful calling." This society sustained thus generously by the Pres- byterian Churches of Great Britain nearly four cen- turies ago would, one would think, have prophesied much greater results from Indian evangelization than the subsequent generations attained. John Eliot. The pious zeal and heroism of one lone missionary to the Indians was the main incentive to the noble action of British Presbyterians. John Eliot was the mainspring of it all. This great "Apostle to the Indians" came to Massachusetts in 1631. For fourteen years he gave himself to the study of the Algonquin, conscious of the fact so often illustrated in the history of missions that only so could he gain real effective entrance for gospel truth. He then began his great work of the translation of the entire Bible into Algonquin. It was the first book that came from the American press, Eliot was not only a great scholar and preacher. He was a great organizer as well. Little Indian vil- lages were gathered about the colonists' villages that EARLY DAYS 21 the natives might be thoroughly imbued with the co- lonial Christian life. Forty years after he began his arduous labors there were six churches of baptized Indians in New England, eighteen assemblies of cate- chumens and twenty-four Indian preachers. The large number of native preachers testifies to his zeal in pro- moting Christian education among the converts, that they might become missionaries to their own people. His far-seeing vision of a socialized Christianity is evinced by the fact that as early as 165 1 he had se- cured a grant of land for an Indian settlement. It was called "Natick." The town remains as a witness and reminder of a missionary policy as sagacious as ever this world has witnessed. For a form of civil government Eliot suggested what Jethro proposed to Moses. The result was a theocratic Christian Indian government. In thirty years the Christian Indians numbered eleven thousand and had schools in fourteen towns. This mention of Eliot's work for and among the New England Indians is called for in a history of Presbyterian home missions by the fact that he was himself a Presbyterian and introduced the "Congre- gational Presbytery" among his converts. Differences between Congregationalists and Presbyterians in the matter of church government prevented the extension of Presbyterian polity from the individual congrega- tions to the presbytery and synod, but the genius of Eliot and his associates was thoroughly Presbyterian. From the beginning the care of the Indians was dear to their hearts. One of the first missionaries among the Indians was the Rev. Azariah Horton. He was supported by a Scottish Missionary Society and in 22 THE SOUL OF AMERICA 1 74 1 began labors on Long Island which were so suc- cessful that in a short time he baptized thirty-five adults and forty-four children. David Brainerd. Among the best-known Presby- terian workers for the Indians was the Rev. David Brainerd who, in 1744, was ordained a missionary by the Presbytery of New York. He labored extensively in Connecticut, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. His greatest work was done in New Jersey. Of this Dr. Ashbel Green wrote : "His success here was perhaps without a parallel in heathen missions since the days of the apostles." On his death, at the early age of thirty years, he was succeeded by his brother, John Brainerd. The salaries of both were furnished by the Scottish So- ciety. Organized work for the conversion of the Indians is of recent origin. This will be presented in a later chapter and is referred to here only to show that the first home mission work on this continent was chiefly in the interest of the natives. The Revolutionary War stayed the efforts at Indian evangelization for almost twenty-five years. We have alluded to the fact that much of the earli- est immigration to New England was of Presbyterian lineage and always of a missionary temper. The chief home of Presbyterianism, however, was to be in the colonies south of New England, though that coloniza- tion came first by way of Massachusetts and Con- necticut. The strength of the missionary impulse is recognized by the fact that Boston sent missionaries to the banks of the Delaware. It is probable that the first Puritan minister in the Empire State was the EARLY DAYS 23 Rev. John Young, who organized a country church in Southold, Long Island, in 1640. The first Pres- byterian minister who brought a colony to Long Island was Abraham Pierson, an English clergyman who went to New England in 1639 and two years later carried his little flock to Southampton, Long Island. A few years later we find him at Branford, Connecti- cut, but in 1667 he moved to Newark, New Jersey, and established there the first Presbyterian church. Francis Doughty. We know more of the third Puri- tan minister to come to New York — Francis Doughty. He had been a vicar in Gloucester and was silenced for non-conformity. In 1637 he went to Taunton, Massachusetts. Persecutions followed him there. He spoke so vehemently for infant baptism that a magis- trate charged him with being a disturber of the peace. He was dragged out of the church and with wife and children was forced to leave the town. With one of his elders he found a refuge in Mespat (near New- town, Long Island). After only a year of service there in 1643 the Indian War broke up the little colony and Doughty found his next refuge on Manhattan Island. He became the first Presbyterian minister in the City of New York where, supported by voluntary contributions of Puritans and Dutch, he continued his labors for five years. But troubles were after him again. Because of the failure of his Mespat Colony and his refusal to sur- render to Governor Stuyvesant his slender holdings there he encountered the wrath of that official and was glad to escape to Maryland, where for many years he preached to the scattered companies of Puritans. Richard Denton. Another Presbyterian pioneer 24 THE SOUL OF AMERICA was Richard Denton. He came from England to Con- necticut in 1630 and after laboring there removed to Hempstead, Long Island, where after fourteen more years of service he returned to England. He ministered at times in an English Puritan church in Manhattan. Worship of the Presbyterian pattern was held in a building occupied at different hours jointly by the Presbyterians and the Dutch. It is not known how long his services in the city were continued but he has the honor of having been the second Presbyterian min- ister in New York City. From this time there was a steady increase in the number of Presbyterian ministers in New York, so that when the New Amsterdam Colony surrendered the city to the Duke of York in 1664 there were six Puritan pastors with their churches within the city, besides several congregations without pastors in the environs. Opposition in New York. The Revolution of 1688 which brought toleration to Puritans in Great Britain had grave perils for those in America. Worthless governors in New York tried to efface the growing spirit of the liberty-loving Puritans. Many efforts were made to establish the Church of England in the province. By an Act of Assembly in 1693, liberty was granted the people in four counties to choose their pastors. But dissenting ministers continued to have a hard time, various obstacles being thrown by the ruling powers in the way of congregations desiring their services. Nevertheless, steady progress was made. Persecutions in Maryland. Presbyterianism in Maryland and Virginia came chiefly from New York. EARLY DAYS 25 Under the reign of Sir William Berkeley persecu- tion began in 1642. In response to a petition to New England for pastors for certain parishes in Virginia three ministers were sent. They were John Knowles, William Thompson and Thomas James. Their stay was brief. The Governor had instructions to enforce the ceremonies of the English Church. The New England pastors would none of it, and after a very brief ministry they returned to the more liberal climate whence they had come. Matthew Hill was another Puritan pioneer. He began his labors in 1669 in Charles County, Maryland, and in a letter to Richard Baxter he says : "Divine Providence hath cast my lot among a loving and willing people. That which, as I hope, will make my work the more successful is the people are not at all fond of the liturgy or ceremonies." Of Francis Doughty and Matthew Hill Dr. Briggs says : "To these two men, long forgotten worthies, the Presbyterian Church in the Middle States is indebted for its earliest planting. They were the pioneers and martyrs in its ministry, and their sufferings and toils were the seed of the Church." Francis Makemie. We come now to the name best known among early Presbyterian missionaries — Fran- cis Makemie from the Presbytery of Laggan in Ire- land. He came to America in 1683, landing probably in Maryland. Later he made an effort to settle in South Carolina, but a storm at sea drove him back. We have no record of his having located anywhere for several years. He seems to have combined the busi- ness of a merchant with that of a preacher and in 26 THE SOUL OF AMERICA that dual capacity to have traveled in Maryland, Vir- ginia and the Barbadoes. In 1690 we find him on the eastern shore of Virginia. In 1692 he made perma- nent settlement in the Barbadoes, where for years he exercised his double calling of merchant and preacher. Eight years later there is record of his having been licensed to preach in his own dwelling house in Poco- moke, near the Maryland line. This was to be the scene of his future labors. Two churches, one at Snow Hill and one at Rehoboth, were presently or- ganized. Which has the precedence is still a matter of dispute. In a short time four other churches came into being. Missions to New Jersey. Earlier than the labors of Makemie and his associates in Maryland and Vir- ginia was the settlement of New England Puritans in New Jersey. The first colony came from Branford, Connecticut, and took up its abode in Newark, New Jersey. Up to 1684 there was only one preacher in that town. In a letter published in Edinburgh in 1685 it is written : "There be people of several sorts of religion, but few very zealous. The people being mostly New Eng- land men, doe mostly incline their way, and in every town there is a meeting house where they worship publickly every week. They have no public law in the country for maintaining public teachers, but the towns that have them make way with themselves to maintain them. We know none that hath a settled preacher that follows no other imployment, save one town Newark." Missions to Pennsylvania. In Pennsylvania and Delaware the earliest ministers came from New Eng- EARLY DAYS 2.^ land. Increase and Cotton Mather were in close cor- respondence with Puritans in Great Britain urging suppHes for the colonies, and offered sending them to the rude settlements in Pennsylvania and Delaware. It was a good sign for the growth of the Presby- terian Church in America that to the end of the sev- enteenth century there was happy agreement and co- operation between Scotch and Irish Presbyterians and New England Puritans. While the dominant influ- ence in New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Vir- ginia was Puritan and English, the Scotch and Irish were everywhere welcomed and in the middle colonies came to a preponderance. American Presbyterianism. Presbyterianism in all the colonies thus grew up out of diverse nationalities but in common sympathies. And it grew out of com- mon necessities. If elsewhere that system of govern- ment had been imposed from without it was the glory of American Presbyterianism that it grow out of the soil. They had pastors or missionaries first. Then as the spiritual needs of the congregations became apparent an elder or teacher united with the minister. As congregations became larger other elders were added. Then as a number of churches had common opportunity and responsibility they felt the need of associated labors and so gradually by an inevitable evolution the classical presbytery — and later, for simi- lar reasons, the synod — came into being, and still later the General Assembly, thus completing the structure of thoroughly representative government. This, in brief, is the missionary story of the seven- teenth century. We come now to organized Presby- terianism at the beginning of the eighteenth century. II BEGINNINGS OF ORGANIZATION THE early years of the eighteenth century wit- nessed the firm estabHshing of Presbyterian- ism in the Middle Atlantic States, but not without opposition that sometimes amounted to perse- cution. Scotch Interest in the Colonies. One of the inter- esting features of American Presbyterianism at the beginning of the eighteenth century was the hearty sympathy and close cooperation between Puritan and Scotch and Irish divines. This was most manifest around Boston Bay. It comes out beautifully in the tone of a letter from the Synod of Glasgow in 1700 to Cotton Mather in New England in which, speaking of their common bonds, he exhorts that "Christian communion be mutually maintained by ourselves and express prayer for one another, by brotherly corre- spondence and communicating acquaintance by mutual advice, assistance and sympathy, that thereby we may strengthen one another's hands in the work of the Lord." Presbyterianism has nowhere been of a single strain, but nowhere is its broad base of national diversities and tolerance so well manifested as in the American colonies. Here at the very dawn of the eighteenth cen- tury there were Presbyterian churches in Virginia, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, 28 BEGINNINGS OF ORGANIZATION 29 Maryland and South Carolina, and there were Irish Presbyterian ministers in Virginia and Delaware, and Scotch in the Carolinas, and in New England a num- ber settled in Congregational churches. It was out of such material that the first presbytery was organized, predicting thus early a genuinely na- tional Presbyteriasm made up — as is the Republic — of many nationalities but united in a great common cause. We have alluded to the early missionary labors of Makemie. At the opening of the new century we find him planning larger things for the Kingdom in the new world. Oppressed with the paucity of preachers to meet religious conditions among the scattered settlers, he appealed by letter for helpers, and when that was ineffective he went to London with his ap- peal. This stirred the ministers of London, who agreed to support two men for two years. Happy in the result of his mission, Makemie in 1705 returned to America with two fine recruits — John Hampton and George McNish. In addition to these three ministers in Delaware there was one in Philadelphia, Jedediah Andrews, a Scotch Presbyterian by the name of Stobo in South Carolina and several Presbyterian pastors in New England. The First Presbytery. The need of some Presby- terian organization to bind these widely separated missionaries to each other began to press upon them. The occasion for realizing their hopes soon came. Mr. John Boyd, a young man of excellent parts, desired licensure that he might preach to the little church at Freehold, New Jersey. But how should he get li- censure? Surely the few ministers in Maryland, 30 THE SOUL OF AMERICA Delaware and Philadelphia must grant it. This led to the organization of the first presbytery. The His- torical Society in Philadelphia has the original minutes of the presbytery, but the first pages are missing. They seem, however, to be giving account of the trial pieces for Mr. Boyd's licensure. It would be inter- esting if we could trace the origin of that presbytery through those missing pages. A letter from Mr. Makemie seems to fix the date of the first meeting of these ministers in the spring of 1706. Then, apparently, trial pieces were assigned to Mr. Boyd and the meeting for licensure occurred in the following December. So far as known the only members to constitute that presbytery were Francis Makemie, John Hampton and Jedediah Andrews. Other members, apparently not present, were George McNish, John Nelson, Nathaniel Taylor and Samuel Davis. A suggestion of the cosmopolitan type of subsequent American Presbyterianism is in the fact that Scotch- Irish and Puritan missionaries from New England constituted its first body. The first record that is preserved shows the licensure of a minister and the second record a call for pastoral services. Doubtless in each case the churches concerned were weak and struggling and in need of every assistance the young presbytery could render. Financial difficulties are certainly hinted at in the record. Thus, in the case of the call for the pastoral services of the Rev. John Hampton at Snow Hill, Maryland, (in 1707) it was ordered : Snow Hill. "Whereas, Mr. Hampton, after re- ceiving the call from the people of Snow Hill, gave BEGINNINGS OF ORGANIZATION 31 several satisfactory reasons why he could not at this time comply with it : "That the said Mr. Hampton may have the call and the paper of subscription in his hands for his further perusal till the next presbytery. "It was further ordered that a letter be sent to the people of Snow Hill to encourage their endeavors for a settled minister among them and that Mr. Nathaniel Taylor write the letter expressing the mind of presby- tery." From a later minute we gather that Mr. Hampton's hesitation in accepting the call from Snow Hill was not entirely of a spiritual character. For it was or- dered by presbytery that another letter be sent to the people at Snow Hill "requiring their faithfulness and care in collecting the tobacco promised by subscription to Mr. Hampton." This implied no reflection on the personal habits of the minister. Tobacco was some- what of a legal tender in those days, — at least so far as the minister's salary was concerned. How seriously these early missionaries conceived their mission is evidenced from sundry records in presbyterial meetings. Thus, the year after presby- tery was organized a committee was appointed to "pre- pare some overtures to be considered by the presbytery for propagating religion in their respective congrega- tions." Missionary Impulse. The overtures are worthy of record here as showing not only how definitely the little Church in 1707 understood itself to be a mission- ary body, but also how it anticipated modern discus- sions of the social mission of the Church. The over- tures read : 32 THE SOUL OF AMERICA "i. That every minister read and comment on a chapter of the Bible every Lord's day. "2. That it be recommended to every minister of the presbytery to set on foot and encourage private Christian societies. "3. That every minister of the presbytery supply desolate neighboring places where a minister is want- ing and opportunity doing good offers." That these overtures were as, sometime happens now, not mere scraps of paper easily disregarded, is manifest by a "follow-up" action taken the next year. It reads as follows : "It is further recommended to Mr. Andrews to take into his serious consideration of reading a chap- ter and making a comment on the same. "The first overture is complied with by the rest of the ministers. The second overture is in part prac- tised and hoped in time to be fully complied with. The third overture complied with and practised by the ministers." Christian Societies. What should be the scope of the "societies" alluded to we are left to conjecture, but they manifestly refer to some Christian activities other than public worship on the Sabbath, and they seem to have in them the germ, at least, of all the modern development of Christian and Church enter- prises along social lines. Those divines in the wilder- ness had good prevision. While the presbytery was zealous to have the gospel widely preached, it was far from countenancing the overchurching of communities. Thus, in 1708 the people in a certain church in New Castle County, Maryland, petitioned that another church be organ- BEGINNINCxS OF ORGANIZATION 33 ized near the homes of certain members "for the greater advantage and ease of their several famihes." To this request the presbytery made answer "that the people of New Castle and the country vshould not be divided by setting up two separate meetings." From that day to this the expansive power of Pres- byterianlsm has asserted itself and from Its small beginnings In 1707 It has progressed till to-day it covers the world In Its conception of the missionary claim. First Home Mission Fund. So far as known the first action of presbytery suggestive of modern meth- ods In home mission finance was taken In 171 3, when the Rev. Thomas Reynolds offered to advance thirty pounds to be disposed of by presbytery at its pleasure and a committee was appointed to have charge of this Fund and to apply it to such members of the presby- tery as they saw fit. There were no superannuated ministers in the presbytery at that time, so it was not to be a Board of Ministerial Relief. It was to eke out the Insufficient salaries of the pastors of the weaker churches. It was the first Board of Home Missions, nearly a century ahead of the first mission- ary board organized by the General Assembly. The beginning of the century was remarkable for the number and character of the new ministerial re- cruits that were coming Into the colonies. On the ac- cession of George I persecutions of Protestants in Ire- land increased. This favored America. Notwith- standing the Act of Toleration enacted In 1719, the troubles, specially in Ireland, Increased. Cotton Ma- ther accepted is as a token of divine favor to America. He wrote : 3 34 THE SOUL OF AMERICA "The glorious Providence of God in the removal of so many of a desirable character hath doubtless many great intentions in it." A fraction of the Fund named above anticipated the Board of Ministerial Relief, for it is written in 1719 the committee for the Fund recommended that the widow of the Rev. John Wilson be considered as a person worthy of the regard of this synod and that four pounds be now given her out of the present Fund and discretionary power be lodged with Mr. Andrews (the treasurer) to give her some further supply out of the said Fund. And those pioneers were orderly and businesslike in the handling of that Fund. They appointed a com- mittee to have charge of it. They also urged "all their members to use their diligence that the yearly collec- tion for the Fund may be duly minded, that the said collection may not drop as there seems danger that they may in case better care be not taken than has been for some years past." The rapid growth of the Church seemed now as- sured. New settlements were opening in many direc- tions. Only one agency anywhere interfered with its progress, and that chiefly in Virginia and New York. It was the activity of the Church of England and its purpose that episcopacy should be firmly established in the New World, even though at the expense of other communions. At the close of the seventeenth century it seemed as if Presbyterianism would be dominant in New York. A singular incident checked this expectation. A Presbyterian minister by the name of Vesey became the minister of the Puritan colony in that city. After a ministry of only two years a BEGINNINGS OF ORGANIZATION 35 new ambition seized the Puritan divine who hurried to London and was ordained by the Lord Bishop of London. Returning, he became the first rector of the Episcopal Church. Of him James Anderson, a Puri- tan minister, writes : "He has done and is still doing what he can to ruin the dissenting interest in the place." Lord Cornbury. Whatever may have been Vesey's motives in deserting his old comrades, and then oppos- ing them, there is no question that his change had a mighty effect in giving episcopacy a preeminence which it long maintained. Vesey had strong confed- erates in the civil powers. Every endeavor to advance Puritanism in and about the city was met with opposi- tion. When Lord Cornbury became governor — the man of whom Bancroft says "he joined the worst form of arrogance to intellectual imbecility" — matters went from bad to worse, the persecution of Puritans culminating in the arrest and imprisonment of Make- mie for daring to preach the gospel on Manhattan Island without Cornbury's permission. After a pro- longed trial he was acquitted but was obliged to pay the costs of the prosecution as well as the defense, amounting to the large sum of more than eighty-three pounds. Nothwithstanding the hindrances to the growth of Puritanism, thus illustrated, the first presbytery grew steadily in numbers and influence. However, for many years it was a missionary presbytery and de- pendent in large measure on aid from Great Britain. The extent to which the infant Church was at that time dependent on the bounty of British churches it 36 THE SOUL OF AMERICA were well, in these days of closer fellowship between Great Britain and America, fully to acknowledge. Help from Abroad. In the feeble condition of the early colonies nothing was more natural than that they should appeal for help to the mother churches in Eng- land and Scotland. The first of many such appeals ap- pears to have been made in 1709 in a letter to Sir Edmund Harrison, too lengthy to be quoted here in full. The point of it, however, appears in these sen- tences : "Unto whom can we apply ourselves more fitly than unto our fathers who have been extolled in the Re- formed Churches for their large bounty and benevo- lence in their necessities. We doubt not but that if about the sum of two hundred pounds per annum were raised for the encouragement of ministers in those parts it would enable ministers and people to erect eight congregations and ourselves put in better circum- stances than hitherto we have been." The next year similar letters were sent to Glasgow and Dublin. The letter to Dublin, after giving an ac- count of the state of the churches in the colonies, con- tinues : "That then, reverend and dear brethren, which at present we would humbly for the sake of Christ's in- terests make the subject of our address unto you, is that of your zealous Christian and religious charity to the mystical body of the blessed Jesus, you would raise one sixty pound to support an able, well ap- proved young man from yourselves as an itinerant in these parts among the dispersed children of God for a year, after which time we doubt not but that he may be settled comfortably." BEGINNINGS OF ORGANIZATION 37 The letter to Glasgow is more extended and re- counts the organization of the presbytery (then num- bering ten ministers) "whose endeavors and poor es- says have not been altogether in vain." After speaking of the "desolate condition of sundry vacant places which cannot provide maintenance for ministers" and after begging that one or more min- isters be sent over from Scotland the letter continues thus : "We further represent that, according to the best of our judgment, forty pounds sterling annually be paid in Scotland to be transmitted in goods will be a competency for the support of each minister you send, provided that of your pious and Christian benevolence you suitably fit them out. And after they have labored in the Lord's vineyard a year or two we are in good hope that they will find such comfortable encourage- ment as may induce them to settle among us without giving you further trouble for their support." It is interesting to note that the presbytery also ap- pealed to the Presbytery of Dublin urging their plea on the ground of the impossibility of securing minis- ters for the rapidly enlarging field. They say : "In all Virginia there is but one small congregation, at Elizabeth River, and some few families favoring our way in Rappahannock and York. In Maryland only four, in Pennsylvania five, and in the Jerseys two, which bounds with some places in New York, make up all the bounds we have any members from, and at present some of these be vacant." From Dublin, London and Glasgow substantial help came in answer to these appeals. Within a short time eight ministers were sent to reinforce the thin mis- ,38 THE SOUL OF AMERICA sionary line in the new world and considerable contri- butions of money for their support. Presbyterial Authority. The presbytery in those days exercised authority greater than that exercised by any Board of Home Missions in matters of vacancy and supply. Thus in 171 1 we come on this record: "Mr. McNish's case came under consideration and it was determiend to leave his affair respecting Ja- maica and Patuxunt to himself, with advice not to delay in fixing himself somewhere." Every effort was made by the presbytery to supply the destitute regions with gospel privileges but, true to their inherited principles they refused, under any urgency, to lower the standards of ministerial qualifi- cations. Ill THE FIRST SYNOD AND GENERAL ASSEMBLY ALTHOUGH made up of many different types to which we have referred the first presbytery maintained its unity of doctrine and poHty until by sheer force of its size it divided into presby- teries and united in the first American Synod. Dr. Briggs says : "The Presbyterians of the original presbytery were all of the broad, generous, tolerant type, such as we might expect from a happy union of English, Scotch, Irish and Welsh Presbyterianism." The First Synod. We come now to the organiza- tion of the first synod. Three presbyteries united in it in 171 7. By reason of persecutions in the Old World, immigration to the colonies continued to in- crease. It strengthened the Presbyterian cause. The accessions from Ireland were specially valuable. So the synod began with thirteen ministers and six elders. What is of special interest to us is the subject that first engaged their attention. They were first of all a missionary synod. The theme that dominated the meeting was not theology nor ecclesiasticism, but mis- sions. This was the burning question of the hour, — How may we meet the missionary opportunities open- ing in every direction ? 39 40 THE SOUL OF AMERICA Fund for Pious Uses. First of all, therefore, as we have said, it established a "Fund for Pious Uses," a quaint designation of a home mission treasury. Jedediah Andrews was chosen treasurer of this Fund, which amounted to eighteen pounds, one shilling and sixpence. In due time Mr. Andrews gave bond for the faithful performance of his duties and so home missions entered on an organizezd existence. It is worth noting that the contributions of the Scotch churches came not wholly in cash but in goods, which had free freightage and were sold in New York and the proceeds given to the Fund. Rev. James Anderson. The Rev. James Anderson was the first man to receive the benefit of this Scotch offering. He had preached for a month to a handful of people in New York City. A little later the church was permitted to hold service in the City Hall on con- dition that they would not "obstruct the public Courts of Justice to be held from time to time in the said City Hall." In a short time there was some danger of such obstruction, for the church separated into two hostile factions. Mr. Andrews' preaching was not satisfac- tory. Other causes of alienations arose, so that in 1722 the church split and a separate congregation was organized which called Jonathan Edwards as the min- ister. The original congregation made urgent appeal to Scotland for further help, which resulted in a collec- tion of four hundred and one pounds to enable the Presbyterians of New York to have a church building. Various difficulties arose in connection with the build- ing enterprise. The controversy over the minister raged. Finally, Mr. Anderson, the storm center, was SYNOD AND GENERAL ASSEMBLY 41 forced to retire. The Rev. Ebenezer Pemberton took his place, the wound between the two congregations was partially healed and Presbyterianism in the me- tropolis began to prosper. Home Mission Committee. In 1718 we have the first record of what later grew into a Committee of Home Missions. It appears in an overture before presbytery as follows : "Overtured, whether a sum out of the Fund not ex- ceeding three pounds be referred to three persons nominated by the synod, to be disposed of according to their discretion, suitable to the design of the Fund, and that this be no precedent for the future." They were careful to leave a door open for retreat from having given too much authority to a Commit- tee! Appeals to Great Britain. The appeals to churches of Great Britain for ministers and for help for their support, so often made by the first presbytery, were continued by the synod. From 171 5 on there was a steady accession to the ministerial forces by immi- gration from England, Scotland and Ireland. First Church of New York. In the years following 1 718 the synod w^as as diligent in developing the re- sources of the struggling churches as it was persistent in its appeals for foreign aid. The firm establishing of the *'Pious Fund" had constant attention. A commit- tee to have special care of this Fund and to "consider proper methods of disposing of it" was appointed in 1719. One of the first decisions was to give help to the First Presbyterian Church of New York stated in these words : 42 THE SOUL OF AMERICA "It was overtured to the synod by the committee appointed to consider the Fund that a tenth part of the neat produce of the Glasgow collection be given to the Presbyterian congregation of New York toward the support of the gospel among them and that a letter be sent to them from the synod relating to their circum- stances." Yearly Collections. The same year the synod or- dered "that a yearly collection be gathered in every particular congregation for pious uses to be sent yearly to the synod by their minister or elder." This exhortation was accompanied by a strong ap- peal reciting that it seemed "unreasonable and unjus- tifiable to apply to other places in this affair and our- selves who are more immediately concerned to hold our hands" and then urging that a yearly collection be taken in every congregation "for the carrying on of the noble and pious design of planting and spreading the everlasting gospel in these provinces." In the repeated action taken to impress the duty of missionary gifts in regular and systematic ways, we have the foundation of the later financial plans for doing the home mission work. First Executive Commission. The first mention of an Executive Commission relates specially to the administration of this Fund. Thus, in 1720 it was or- dered, "That a commission of the synod be appointed to act in the name and with the whole authority of the synod in all affairs that shall come before them and particu- larly that the whole of the Fund be left to their con- duct and that they be accountable to the synod." SYNOD AND GENERAL ASSEMBLY 43 The following years were notable for the great numbers of revivals of religion, led on by such men as the Tennents, father and sons, and a little later by Whitfield in his memorable evangelistic tours in the Carolinas, Georgia and north as far as Boston. The next few decades were remarkable for the results of these revivals and, strange to tell, for the controversies which grew out of them, but their story does not prop- erly belong to a history of missions. Division of Synod. Missions were checked rather than advanced by the ecclesiastical debates which cul- minated in 1741 in the division of the synod. There were now two bodies at variance along lines which came to be known as Old School and New School, rep- resented respectively by the Synods of Philadelphia and New York. Rapid Progress. We pass by this period of strife extending to 1758, when the two bodies were happily united. Thence dates a long period of progress in all directions and the missionary story becomes again interesting and full of promise. The latter half of the eighteenth century was remarkable for pioneering and so for missionary opportunities. The Alleghenies were crossed, the territories south of the Ohio were settled by hardy and adventurous people — "fighters for their own land": — owing, as Roosevelt continues, "most of the victories only to themselves." They were be- yond the pale of civil government. Their strong right arms were their defense against French and Indians and their stout hearts and clear Scotch-Irish heads opened the way for a Christian civilization. • Scotch-Irish. Missionaries went from Pennsylva- nia and Virginia into the Carolinas, with such blessing 44 THE SOUI. OF AMERICA on their missionary labors that in 1770 the Presbytery of Orange, comprising the States of North and South CaroHna and part of Tennessee, was organized. This westward migration ahke from the CaroHnas and from Pennsylvania and Virginia was largely by Scotch-Irish people. Of them Theodore Roosevelt writes : "The backwoodsmen were Americans by birth and parentage and of mixed race ; but the dominant strain in their blood was that of the Presbyterian Irish — the Scotch-Irish as they were often called. Full credit has been awarded the Roundhead and the Cavalier for their leadership in our history; nor have we been altogether blind to the deeds of the Hollander and the Huguenot; but it is doubtful if we have wholly realized the importance of the part played by that stern and virile people, the Irish whose preachers taught the creed of Knox and Calvin. These Irish representatives of the Covenanters were in the west almost what the Puritans were in the northeast, and more than the Cavaliers were in the south. Mingled with the descendants of many other races, they never- theless formed the kernel of the distinctively and in- tensely American stock who were the pioneers of our people in their march westward, the vanguard of the army of fighting settlers who with axe and rifle won their way from the AUeghenies to the Rio Grande and the Pacific." It was by the intrepid courage of these Covenanters that the Southwest was rescued from barbarism. Having won the land with their strong hands, their clear heads established their own government and set in the wilderness the first example of stable civil institutions unhampered by foreign dictation. SYNOD AND GENERAL ASSEMBLY 45 North of the Ohio River, before the ordinance of 1789, the western settlements were retarded by the hostihty of the Indians, but the first pilgrimages into the forests of Ohio and Indiana were undertaken by missionaries who dared the privations and perils of the wilderness that they might give the gospel some entrance to cabins of brave settlers and tepees of the Indians. In these intrepid enterprises the names of Charles Beatty and George Duffield deserve recogni- tion. In 1766 they daringly pushed into the wilderness and preached the gospel to Indians and to scattered settlers on the Muskingum and in the Miami Valleys, more than a hundred miles beyond any settled fron- tier. Indian Missions. In 1768 the Synod, "taking into consideration the deplorable condition of the Indian tribes, the natives of the land who sit in heathenish darkness and are perishing for lack of knowledge," appointed a committee to prepare a plan of missions among them. Missionary collections were ordered in all the churches, not only to secure laborers among the Indians, but also "to relieve the unhappy lot of many in various parts of our land who are brought up in ignorance, who on account of their poverty and scat- tered habitations are unable without some assistance to support the gospel ministry among them." Thus, a generation before any organized home mission work was undertaken the missionary spirit breathed in the councils of the Church and took shape in far-reaching missionary plans. Theological Education. The difficulties of realiz- ing their plans were, however, increased by frequent hostilities of the Indians, furthered by intrigues on 46 THE SOUL OF AMERICA the part of the French and, finally, by the approach of the War of the Revolution. But even in those trou- blous times many steps were taken looking to the in- auguration of those wise policies which the new cen- tury was to witness. Thus, in 1768, the germs of theological education, so much needed in the colonies which could no longer import ministers from abroad, made their appearance. John Witherspoon, one of the most famous names in Presbyterian history, was in- augurated president of the College of New Jersey. He was appointed professor of divinity as well as president of the college, and also instructed in Hebrew the young men who were looking forward to the min- istry. A few years later (1771) the synod proposed a scheme "for supporting young men of piety and parts at learning for the work of the ministry so that our numerous vacancies may be supplied with preach- ers of the gospel." This was the germ of the Board of Education. Religious Literature, About the same time the missionary work along the frontiers had made evident the need of religious literature. Collections were asked for that purpose. Committees were appointed in New York and Philadelphia to receive and dis- burse the Fund and each was authorized to draw on the treasurer for a sum not to exceed twenty pounds. This was the germ of the Board of Publication. Dawn o£ Foreign Missions. In 1724 Ezra Stiles and Samuel Hopkins proposed to the Synod the send- ing of two men to Africa to do foreign missionary work on the dark continent. The Synod approved the plan and appealed to the society in Scotland to give help to this enterprise of faith. But the War of SYNOD AND GENERAL ASSEMBLY 47 ^'j6 soon broke out and absorbed the whole attention of the Church, so that the plan could not be carried out ; but the project showed how seriously foreign mis- sions was already pressing on the heart of the Church. This was the germ of the Board of Foreign Missions. The War for Independence was now on and a brief notice of the position of the Presbyterian Church in that great struggle is a proper part of the home mis- sion story. How did the missionary pioneers stand at the time ? Declaration of Independence. Before the Decla- ration of Independence the Scotch-Irish met in council in Abingdon, Virginia, and addressed the Virginia delegates in these memorable words: **We explored our uncultivated wilderness, border- ing on many nations of savages, and surrounded by mountains almost inaccessible to any but these sav- ages; but even to these remote regions the hand of power hath pursued us, to strip us of that liberty and property with which God, nature and the rights of humanity have vested us. We are willing to con- tribute all in our power, if applied to constitutionally, but cannot think of submitting our liberty or property to a venal British Parliament or a corrupt ministry. We are deliberately and resolutely determined never to surrender any of our inestimable privileges to any power upon earth but at the expense of our lives. These are our real though unpolished sentiments of liberty and loyalty and in them we are resolved to live and die." This was in January, 1775. In May of the same year the Scotch-Irish of Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, took still stronger ground in the famous 48 THE SOUL OF AMERICA Mecklenburg Declaration. It reads like an advance copy of the Declaration of Independence, as its closing words plainly show: "Resolved, That we do hereby declare ourselves a free and independent people ; are, and of a right ought to be, a sovereign and self-governing association, under the control of no power other than that of our God and the general government of the Congress; to the maintenance of which we solemnly pledge to each other our mutual cooperation and our lives, our for- tunes and our most sacred honor." Of this deliverance Bancroft says: Presbyterian Patriots. "The first voice publicly raised in America to dissolve all connection with Great Britain came not from the Puritans of New England nor the Dutch of New York nor the planters of Vir- ginia, but from the Scotch-Irish Presbyterians." The patriotism of Presbyterians throughout the War for Independence has been frequently acknowl- edged. Some of the most remarkable illustrations of it were to be found among the pioneers of the West and Southwest, the fruits of missionary labors. Both General Pickens, who planned the Battle of Cowpens, and General Morgan, the commander, were Presby- terian elders. At Kings Mountain the body of the troops was Presbyterian and they were led almost en- tirely by Presbyterian elders. Referring to those Presbyterians of the valleys and mountains of Virginia and North Carolina, Washing- ton declared that if all his plans became overturned and but a single standard was left he would plant it upon the Blue Ridge, and making that his Ther- mopylae would rally around him the patriots of the SYNOD AND GENERAL ASSEMBLY 49 valley and there lay the foundations of a new re- public. With such attitude among Presbyterians and such leadership it is not strange, that when the Constitu- tional Convention met in Philadelphia to frame our national government, the government of the Presby- terian Church influenced the government of the state, : — not strange that the two in so many respects are as- similated. General Assembly. A time of war is fatal to mis- sionary progress. It was, therefore, to be expected that the years of the Revolution would feel the in- terruption. Many church buildings had been de- stroyed; many ministers driven away; many congre- gations scattered. But the recovery was rapid. Again the missionaries took up their march through the forests of New York and Pennsylvania and far down to the pine groves of the Carolinas and the everglades of the Gulf. And organization followed close on heroic adventure. A bond of union between widely scattered workers and synods was called for. The sixteen presbyteries were grouped In four synods and these were united In a General Assembly which met in Philadelphia in 1789. The first care of the now thoroughly organized Church was the subject of missions. The very first action of the new Assembly was "That the state of the frontier settlements should be taken into consid- eration and missionaries should be sent to them and that an annual collection should be taken in all the churches to defray the necessary expenses of the mis- sionaries." The next Assembly ordered a committee "to prepare 4 50 THE SOUL OF AMERICA certain directions necessary for the missionaries of the Assembly in fulfilHng the design of their mission and to specify the compensation that it would be proper to make for their services." That same year two missionaries, Nathan Herr and Joseph Hart, were appointed to central New York. They spent three months among the Oneidas and Cayugas and scattered gospel seed in the now fertile and productive Presbyterian gardens of Wilkes-Barre, Pittston and Scranton, Pennsylvania. Cooperation. It is pleasant to record that at a time when there seemed as yet little danger of denomina- tional rivalry, the Assembly of 1794 laid stress on co- operative relations with other communions. It is in these words: "As our aim has not been to proselyte from other communions to our own denomination we have charged our missionaries to avoid all doubtful disputa- tions, to abstain from unfriendly censures or reflec- tions on other religious persuasions and adhering strictly to the great doctrines of our holy religion which influence the heart and life of godliness to fol- low after the things that make for peace and general edification." An illustration of the spirit of brotherhood which ruled in those early days is the close relations estab- lished and long maintained between the General As- sembly and the General Association of Connecticut. Thus, in 1799, the Rev. Methuselah Baldwin was di- rected to spend three months or more in the vicinity of Onondaga, "in connection with Mr. Williston, a missionary from the General Association of Connecti- cut." SYNOD AND GENERAL ASSEMBLY 51 Plan of Union. In 1801 the "Plan of Union" was adopted "to promote a spirit of accommodation between those inhabitants of the new settlements who hold the Presbyterian and those who hold the Congregational form of Church Government." Briefly, this Plan pro- vided that the Congregational churches might settle Presbyterian ministers and the reverse, and that if a congregation consists partly of Congregationalists and partly of Presbyterians this fact should be no obstacle to their uniting in one church and settling a minister ac- cording to their choice. This Plan continued in peace- ful operation for more than a generation, a happy ar- rangement for advancing the gospel in the new parts of the country. Now, after more than a century, we are just begin- ning by church federation to get back to the essential elements of the "Plan of Union." Better Organization. Though the eighteenth cen- tury at its close witnessed a marked decline in many places in vital godhness and an increase of infidelity and immorality, it also witnessed a marked increase of the missionary spirit, specially in the matter of or- ganization. Among the objects named for special con- sideration in the Assembly of 1800 were the "gospeliz- ing of the Indians on the frontiers of our country, the instruction of Negroes, the poor and those who are destitute of the means of grace in various parts of this extensive country." The same Assembly pro- vided for a permanent fund for missionary work. Here again are the germs of a comprehensive pro- gram for church development which swiftly came into action. So we begin the missionary story of the nineteenth century. IV OVER THE ALLEGHENIES THE first record of organized work which may be regarded as the germ of the present Board of Home Missions is in the "Minutes of the Standing Committee of Missions," May, 1802. The resolution constituting that Committee is as follows: Standing Committee of Missions. ''Resolved, That a Committee be chosen annually by the General Assembly to be denominated The Standing Committee of Missions That it shall be the duty of this Committee to collect during the recess of the Assembly all the information in their power relative to the con- cerns of missions and missionaries, to digest this in- formation and to report thereon at each meeting of the Assembly, to designate the places where and specify the periods during which the missionaries should be employed, to correspond with them if necessary and with all other persons on missionary business, to nomi- nate missionaries to the Assembly and report the num- ber which the funds will permit to be employed, to hear the reports of missionaries and make a statement thereon to the Assembly relative to the diligence, fidel- ity and success of the missionaries." Their Names. The Committee thus constituted should be held in perpetual remembrance. They were : Rev.Dr.Ashbel Green, Rev. Messrs. Philip Milledoler, 52 OVER THE ALLEGHENIES 53 John B. Linn, Jacob J. Janeway and Messrs. Elias Boudinot, Robert Smith and Ebenezer Hazard. In the pahniest days of home missions there has not been an ampler charter for the conduct of the work. The funds, the men, the fields — all were in the hands of this Committee. How they honored their appoint- ment will appear as the work developed under their hands. To be sure it was the day of small things. But the plan was all there. It only waited the coming gen- erations to erect the great building. Religious Literature. The vision and activity of the Committee appear in its next meeting. It was January, 1803. They did two important things. First, with full recognition of the fact that in Presbyterian polity intelligence and religion go together, they de- vised a plan for the wise distribution of books among the different presbyteries. This was long before the thought of any Board of Publication. But it carried namely : what was the condition of the frontiers from a missionary point of view, what missionaries were the germs of that Board. Second, the chairman and secretary were directed to correspond on the subject of missions "with any Missionary Society in this coun- try and abroad." There were not many Missionary Societies at that time to correspond with, certainly very few in the Colonies, but this was a vision ahead which after gen- erations have made significant. The Committee's Plans. At the next meeting a further step toward the orderly conduct of the busi- ness was taken in certain instructions to presbyteries. Three questions were addressed to the presbyteries. 54 THE SOUL OF AMERICA needed among Indian tribes and what kind of mission- aries did the occasion call for. The Committee was specially solicitous regarding the character of missionaries employed. They wanted no men of inferior qualifications, — they thought the frontiers demanded the very finest type. Those who were to make first impressions should be calculated to make them favorably. "To do this work" the Com- mittee says, "men of the most distinguished piety and ability ought to be sent. They will be most likely to make the careless respect religion, to induce them to think favorably of our Church and to engage them to lay to heart the things that belong to their everlast- ing peace." So the Committee considered it desirable "that some ordained ministers of the first reputation and influence should be missionaries." Early Missionaries. The list of those sent into the wilderness at the beginning of the nineteenth century abundantly proves how faithfully this injunction was kept. If in later years the Church came to think more lightly of the missionary cause and that men of in- ferior gifts might do for the rough work of the pioneer it was not so at the beginning. Hence, the Committee sent Gideon Blackburn to the Cherokee Indians in Tennessee and Dr. James Hall to the Potomac and James Hoge "for six months to the State of Ohio and the Natchez district," and Jedediah Chap- man to the forests of New York and John Doak to Tennessee. Indian Missions. The Rev. David Brainerd, the Rev. John Brainerd, the Rev. Charles Beatty and the Rev. George Duffield, all members of the Synod of New York, went on missions to the Indians between OVER THE ALLEGHENIES 55 the years 1740 and 1765. Accounts of all these missions, except that of the Rev. John Brainerd, have been published. In 1799 the Assembly obtained from the Legislature of Pennsylvania a Charter of Incorporation whereby certain individuals were entitled to hold property, both real and personal, for charitable and pious purposes and subject to the order of the Assembly. That year the Standing Committee of Missions reported to the Assembly as follows : "For three years past seven or eight missionaries have been annually sent out, besides a stated missionary who resides on the frontiers of the country to direct the labors of others and to spend six months of the year himself in travel- ing and preaching. The success of these missionaries has been very considerable They are annually forming into regular congregations the people who emigrate from the interior of our country to the wil- derness that surrounds it and planting and cherishing among them the seed of genuine piety. Scope of the Missions. "There are four descrip- tions of people to whom the Assembly at present is en- deavoring to send missionaries : "i. To those who are settled on our frontiers with whom, as just stated, they have had much success. "2. To certain places in the more settled parts where the gospel has not been regularly established. "3. To the black people or Negroes of the United States. These in the southern part of the Union are mostly slaves, extremely ignorant and from the rank they hold in society difficult of instruction. "4. To the Indians or Aborigines of our country. The Assembly has not yet been able to find a suitable 56 THE SOUL OF AMERICA missionary to send among them, but it is hoped it will not be long before more than one will be obtained." We have given this full extract from the Minutes of the Standing Committee of Missions that we may see how from the first our Church has broadly and in a statesmanlike way conceived her religious duty to the American Colonies. Glancing back the following facts appear : Broad Foundations. First. Before there was any organized home mission agency the scattered Presby- terians sent their best men to the home mission field. The names quoted above and many others that might be added attest this fact. Second. They sought and received the help of Scotch and English Presbyterians in their efforts which they recognized were too large for their re- sources. It was strategic thus to bind Christians in two continents in the beginnings of an enterprise which should powerfully affect all continents. Third. They promptly devised a plan which should increasingly give the financial support needed for the great undertaking. Fourth. They secured early incorporation, thus providing for future enlargement through large bene- factions. Fifth. They planned for wider supervision of the work. It seems ludicrous to appoint a superintendent for "seven or eight missionaries who himself should spend six months of the year in traveling and preach- ing." But that act has the seeds of all the extensive organization and supervision which has been one of the effective agencies for the work of the Kingdom during the past century. OVER THE ALLEGHENIES 57 Sixth. They began with that differentiation of classes of people subject to missionary activity, which has only recently been fully recognized. They saw that appeals to four different classes, viz : dwellers in centers of population, dwellers on the frontiers, Ne- groes and Indians, called for a variety of gifts and, therefore, demanded distinct consideration. The various lines of missionary approach to varie- ties of population to be fully dealt with later in these pages have here their primal recognition, viz: con- gested populations in the East, scattered but gathering populations in the West, and the exceptional groups. Have we in these richer days advanced very far be- yond the statesmanship of the first Committee in our conception of the task and our ways of undertaking it? We have verily entered into their labors and sought our advance along the lines they indicated. Synodical Home Missions. A further illustration of how the times repeat themselves, and how the later home mission problems are as old as the country, is found in the Committee's statement about synodical home mission activity. It says : "The Synods of Virginia, Pittsburgh, Kentucky and the Carolinas are all employed in this important work. They are connected with and are under the care of the Assembly, but from local circumstances it has been judged expedient that they should manage the mis- sionary business separately from the Assembly and some of them have manifested a most commendable zeal in the cause. From the Western Commission of the Synod of Virginia nine missionaries were sent forth during the last year. Three of these have gone to the Indians." 58 THE SOUL OF AMERICA List o£ Missionary Societies. The Committee then proceeds to give a list of the various missionary opera- tions at the close of the eighteenth century. They are as follows : First. The Missionary Society of New York, in- stituted in 1796. Its main object was to "gospelize" the Indians and in this it had such success that eight- een missionaries went out among the Senecas and Chickasaws who so affected the people of these tribes that they besought the missionaries to take some of their own youth and so instruct them that they might return to teach the Indians the principles of the Chris- tian religion and the arts of civilized life. Second. The Northern Missionary Society, organ- ized in 1797, as having established missions among the Oneidas in Central New York. Third. The Missionary Society of Connecticut, in- stituted in 1798, consisted of members of the Congre- gational Association of Connecticut. It sent as many as twelve or thirteen missionaries in a year, chiefly to pioneer settlers. Fourth. The Society for Propagating the Gospel Among the Indians and Others in North America. It was organized in Boston in 1787 in consequence of a commission granted "certain gentlemen" in that town from the Society in Scotland for Propagating Chris- tian Knowledge. This Society, with considerable funds, did a pretty extensive work in sending mission- aries to the Indians, establishing schools among them and distributing books to those who were able to read. It also labored among the white settlers in different parts of Massachusetts and distributed among them more than eight thousand volumes of "pious books." OVER THE ALLEGHENIES 59 Fifth. A Massachusetts Missionary Society began its work in 1799, and in 1800 had sent out four mis- sionaries. Sixth. The Moravian brethren gave remarkable service to the Indians among whom they lived. Of them the Committee says, "Their labors were probably more successful than those of any other Society of Christians." Seventh. The zeal of Baptist missionaries is also acknowledged, especially in their labors among the colored people of the southern states. Eighth. The Arminian Methodists were also very successful among the southern Negroes and among poor people of European descent. The Committee, having given this careful statement of its own work and also that of other Societies in America, for its own instruction and help proposed to those Societies a number of questions as to their work — its conditions, prospects, measures taken, diffi- culties to be encountered and "zvhat advice they have to give to the Presbyterian Committee." This remark- able paper concludes thus : "We have nothing further to add but our entreaties and our hopes that your prayers may be united with ours, that God may give the heathen to His Son for an inheritance and the uttermost parts of the earth for his possession and that He may speedily become King of nations as he is King of saints." Appeal to Scotland. We have alluded to the Scot- tish Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. On the second of May, 1804, the Assembly's Committee sent to this Society an earnest appeal for any funds in their possession which could properly be used for 6o THE SOUL OF AMERICA work among the American Indians. It enforces its plea by consideration as follows : "From the great extent of the Assembly's jurisdic- tion, from the respectability of its character and its conspicuous station in the American Church, it is obvious that its authority and influence must be great and that it, hence, possesses peculiar advantages for diffusing the knowledge of the Redeemer's name and the way of revelation through Him. Various attempts have been made for this purpose with very flattering success and the circumstance of revivals of religion taking place in various parts of the country points out this as a season peculiarly inviting to zealous exertion, but it is palsied by a want of adequate funds." The appeal then cites the labors of Mr. Blackburn among the Cherokees as a proper call for increased funds. "Those Indians," they say, "have consented to the erection of a school in their country. The Com- mittee contemplated fixing it within the limits of the United States but the Indians preferred and proposed a site within their territory and have engaged to send some of their children to it for three years and if an experiment having been made shall be found to answer expectations they will consent to its becoming perma- nent." It is evident from the above that the Committee continued its deep interest in the evangelization of the native Americans and, by the limitations of the treas- ury, was restrained from doing more than it had done. But, from the first days of any missionary work in America, that for the natives held preeminence. It is all the more remarkable that this zeal for evangelizing the Indians should have survived through the gen- OVER THE ALLEGHENIES 6i erations of Indian barbarity and cruelty to the early settlers. Although in later days we have been given to idealizing certain traits of the Indian character, it is not to be doubted that missionary work among them in the first hundred years of our history had to be carried on in the face of the gravest perils. Presbyterial Independence. The question of Pres- byterial independence seems early to have agitated the Church. Thus, in May, 1805, the Presbyteries of New York and New Brunswick proposed to the Commit- tee, "That they may be permitted to assign missionary services within their own bounds to be compensated by the Funds of the Assembly." The proposal did not appeal to the Committee. "It is easy to see that if this principle were adopted its operation would be to take the missionary business in a short time entirely from under the immediate di- rection of the Assembly and render your Committee of little other use than to apportion the sums which each presbytery should draw from the Funds of the Assembly." Presbyterial Authority. Hitherto it had been the habit of the Assembly through its Committee on Mis- sions to send missionaries to any part of the country on its own motion and authority. This is the first in- stance of presbyteries claiming the right of directing the mission affairs within their own bounds. It is a sharp anticipation of the most modern developments in home mission administration. Immediately following the decision above recorded we find the Committee sending missionaries to Ken- tucky, to Virginia, to South Carolina, to the Indian Territory, to the State of Ohio, "and the Natchez 62 THE SOUL OF AMERICA District" and to the Cherokee Indians. Up to this time, therefore, the administration of home mission affairs was entirely in the hands of the Assembly's Committee. From 1810 onward the records of the Committee are very full, chiefly occupied with the home mission story. Details of the men employed, accounts of the various fields claiming attention, results achieved, — all these find faithful recital in the book of the Com- mittee. And in general it is a story of steady and often rapid progress. Notes of encouragement run all through the pages. In a record in 181 1, after giving through very many pages the story of the missions, the Committee summarizes it thus : Marked Progress. "Regions where the scattered inhabitants heard only occasional sermons are now thickly settled and covered with respectable and flour- ishing congregations enjoying the benefit of a stated ministry and repaying charity received by them in their infant state by contributing to the support of missions The wilderness has blossomed as the rose. The regions where a few years ago was heard only the howling of wild beasts and the shouts of savage men churches now assemble in peace and love to sing praises to God and to His co-equal Son." Those early years of the nineteenth century were marked by wonderful revivals, specially in Kentucky and Tennessee. They were in part the result of the intense missionary propaganda in those states. In part, however, they incited the missionary enthusiasm and broke new paths in the wilderness for the mission- ary advance. Marked by many extravagances their OVER THE ALLEGHENIES 63 more permanent result was in the organization of an- other branch of the Presbyterian Church. The Cumberland Body. The Cumberland body- had its rise in the conviction that the cause of missions demanded more heralds of the gospel than the schools were supplying and that hence men of piety, however deficient in education, should be enlisted for the great crusade. Those so believing broke away from the Presbyterian Church (which insisted on its traditional loyalty to high educational standards) and organized the Cumberland Presbyterian Church which in 1906 came back to the main body. Enlarged Committee on Missions. The time was rapidly approaching for the fuller organization of the Church for her great task. As far back as 1807 the Assembly recognized the fact that an enlarged mis- sionary committee would more fully represent the ex- panding Church. In these days of more widely ex- tended membership in the Board of Home Missions it is interesting to observe that the motive prompting to such enlargement was felt in 1807, when the Assembly constituted the Committee of Missions by members from the following synods : Synod of Albany, Synod of New York and New Jersey, Synod of Philadelphia, Synod of Pittsburgh, Synod of Virginia, Synod of Kentucky, Synod of the Carolinas. From 1810 to 1816 there was steady and rapid ad- vance. An increasing number of missionaries were sent into the West as far as the Mississippi River. Indian work received annual attention. In 1814 Con- gress was petitioned for a grant of land to assist in conducting a mission to the Indians. The President 64 THE SOUL OF AMERICA of the United States was also asked to give assent to Indian work in the belief that the hands of the mis- sionary would thus be strengthened, — a request to which he promptly and graciously responded. An advance in missionary administration was taken when authority was given presbyteries to employ mis- sionaries within their own bounds at such places as seemed to them to have the greatest need of mission- aries. At the Assembly in 1812 a communication was re- ceived from the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions in which that Board suggested the expedienced of cooperation between the two mis- sionary agencies. Our Assembly's reply was "that as the business of Foreign Missions may probably be best managed under the direction of a single board, so the numerous and extensive engagements of the Assembly in regard to domestic missions render it extremely in- convenient at this time to take a part in Foreign Mis- sions. How extensive the "engagements" of the Committee had at this time become is shown by the fact that in 181 5, the year preceding the organization of the Home Board, the appointment of missionaries covered the distance from the Canadian line on the north and from Long Island on the east to the Indian Territory on the west and Kentucky and Tennessee on the south. Organization of the Board. The organization of the present Board of Home Missions occurred in 1816. The action of the Committee recommending it is so important that we give it in full : "For the purpose of enlarging the sphere of our missionary operations and infusing new vigor into the OVER THE ALLEGHENIES 65 cause, your Committee would respectfully recommend a change of the style and enlargement of the powers of the Committee of Missions. If, instead of continu- ing to this body the charter of a Committee bound in all cases to act according to the instructions of the General Assembly and under the necessity of receiv- ing its sanction to give validity to all the measures which it may propose, the Committee of Missions were enacted into a Board with full powers to transact all the business of the missionary cause, only requiring the Board to report annually to the Assembly, it would then be able to carry on the missionary business with all the vigor and unity of design that would be found in a society originated for that purpose and at the same time would enjoy all the benefit that the counsel and advice of the General Assembly could afford. *'With these views it is respectfully recommended *'That the title of the Committee be changed for that of "The Board of Missions acting under the authority of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America." The Committee then suggests the addition to the Committee of the following names, the whole to con- stitute the new Board: The Rev. John B. Romeyn, D.D., The Rev. Samuel Miller, D.D., Messrs. Samuel Bayard, Robert Ralston, Robert Lennox, John R. B. Rodgers, John E. Caldwell, Divie Bethune and Zacha- riah Lewis. Also that the Board be authorized to appoint mis- sionaries whenever they may deem proper and to make such advances to missionaries as may be judged neces- sary. Also that the Board be authorized and directed to 5 66 THE SOUL OF AMERICA take measures for establishing throughout our churches auxiHary missionary societies and that to the churches be recommended the estabHshment of such societies. The three great advantages gained by this change were — an increase of responsibiUty, greater unity and authority of the administration of the missionary busi- ness and closer missionary relations with the churches by the organization of local societies. Foreign Missions. The cause of foreign missions was now attracting increased attention and the sugges- tion was made to the Board that it undertake that service as a department of its work. To this the Board very wisely replied that "they are inclined to believe that the union of foreign with domestic mis- sions would produce too great complexity in the af- fairs of the Board and render the pressure of business too severe and burdensome." They suggested that a Foreign Board be appointed in which the Presbyterian Church, the Reformed Dutch Church, the Associated Reformed Church and other Churches which adopted the same creed should unite to carry on the foreign work. This suggestion was not adopted, but the effect of it was to turn the attention of the Church more defi- nitely to the great world enterprise of Foreign Mis- sions. It hastened thus the organization of our Board of Foreign Missions. Following the better equipment of the Church for carrying on the project of home evangelization the next f fteen or twenty years were times of rapid ex- pansion and progress. It was the era of staking out a continent for Christian service. In 1787 the ordi- OVER THE ALLEGHENIES ^y nance was passed by the National Congress dedicating the "Old Northwest," as the district which afterward comprised the five great States of Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin was called, to freedom, declaring that "religion, morality and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education should be forever encouraged." The Old Northwest. This wonderful instrument which dedicated a wilderness to the highest moral and intellectual ideals opened the way for the most mar- vellous transformations of virgin territory this coun- try has ever witnessed. It made of that territory the home of the purest Americanism, the seed plot of the finest type of Christian civilization. The settlements which developed that territory with such magical rapidity began a year after the passage of the ordinance of 1787, when a company of forty-seven brave souls from Massachusetts pushed down the Ohio River from Fort Duquesne and making land at the mouth of the Muskingum settled Marietta and dedi- cated it to education and religion by opening a school and founding a church. Of this little company George Washington said : "No colony in America was ever settled under such favorable auspices as that which has just commenced at Muskingum. Information, property and strength will be its characteristic. I know many of the settlers personally and there never were men better calculated to promote the welfare of such a community." Washington's prophecy was justified. In a decade churches were founded and schools begun up and down the fertile valleys of southern Ohio. 68 THE SOUL OF AMERICA Occupation of the West. Similar pioneer activity prevailed in northern Ohio. The Western Reserve was laid out by a Connecticut company and was first called "New Connecticut." These early settlers were for the most part Congregationalists. They were strongly reenforced throughout the state by Presby- terians from western Pennsylvania. In 1814 there were so many churches in Ohio that the Synod of Ohio was formed, consisting of three presbyteries. Fifteen years later there were fifteen presbyteries. The ministers had increased from forty-four to two hundred sixteen. Western Colleges. In 183 1 the Presbyterian strength in that state had grown to twenty-six thou- sand five hundred six church members. The devotion to Christian education is evidenced by the number of colleges which sprang into existence. Thus, Mari- etta College, Miami University, Western Reserve Col- lege and Oberlin College stand for types of the best American colleges. The other four states that grew out of the "Old Northwest" exhibited a like devotion to education. Christian academies and colleges every- where put a Christian stamp on new communities. In this splendid educational progress the Presbyterian Church has taken a leading part. In Indiana such colleges as Hanover and Wabash, in Illinois such as Monmouth and Illinois Colleges, Lake Forest and Blackburn Universities, have enabled intelligence to keep pace with the progress of the state. In Wiscon- sin such colleges as Carroll and Beloit have laid foun- dations for learning and culture. OVER THE ALLEGHENIES 69 The records of the Home Board durhig those years give the story of missionary advancement in detail. More missionaries were sent out from year to year in response to the appeals of the growing centers. Every- where the churches grew in numbers and influence. Thus, in 1816, when the Board was organized, there were forty-three presbyteries. In ten years the num- ber was doubled. In that time church membership rose from forty thousand to one hundred twenty-two thousand, an increase of over three hundred per cent. Theological Education. The period between 1825 and 1835 may be characterized as peculiarly a time of organization. Education, as we have said, advanced by leaps and bounds. Academies and colleges were everywhere appearing. But education alone did not equip men to preach the gospel, and the crying need of the West at that time was for preachers. The Board was well equipped to send out missionaries, but where should they be found? The Board of Educa- tion (founded in 1819) was fostering education. But where were the schools of the prophets? This need led to quick endeavors to open theological schools. The spirit of evangelization, the result of the great revivals which from 1800 on had swept over the coun- try, now sought to body forth its endeavors. In quick succession Auburn Seminary, the Western Theological Seminary at Allegheny, the Union Seminary at Hamp- den — Sidney in Virginia, the college at Maryville, Tennessee, which was at once a college and a theo- logical seminary. Lane Seminary in Cincinnati and the New Albany Seminary — later the Theological Semi- nary of the Northwest at Chicago, were established 70 THE SOUL OF AMERICA and gave the Board of Missions a chance to send men to the ripening fields. This was the most fruitful missionary period of the nineteenth century and the Board, enlarged in mem- bership and in responsibility, proved itself equal to its opportunity. As to its administration during this time there were few changes calling for note. The following are, how- ever, worth a passing record. A Missionary Magazine. In 1804 the General As- sembly ordered the publication of a missionary maga- zine by the Committee on Home Missions. It was the beginning of a good many troubles. With varying fortunes the magazine struggled on until 1841, when the union of Home and Foreign missionary interests in a magazine was ordered by the Assembly. The Foreign Board had for a short time been publishing a "Missionary Chronicle." It was now agreed it should thenceforth represent both interests. By that agree- ment the Home Board should furnish eight pages and the Foreign Board twenty-four for a magazine of thirty-two pages — the Board to divide the expenses in proportion to the number of pages occupied by each. This plan was continued a number of years, other Boards, as they were organized, sharing the privileges and responsibilities of the magazine. After an experi- ment of separate magazines of various Boards into one, a union was effected under the title of The Church at Home and Abroad and changed afterwards to The Assembly Herald, and under its new name, The New Bra Magazine, represents officially the nine Boards of the Church. OVER THE ALLEGHENIES 71 Local Supervision. As the further reaches of the West were settled there was manifest in some quarters a growing desire for more local supei-vision. That which in recent years has made necessary some changes in the form of administration appeared as early as 1835. At that time an agent of the Board in Pittsburgh (Mr. Patterson) raised the question of a subsidiary Home Board in that city. The Board re- plied that they had no power to grant such a request, and if they had it would be hazardous to that unity of views and action which is highly important in all concerns entrusted to the management of the Board. In 1841 a proposal came to the Board from the Presbytery of Mississippi that it would reserve to itself the right of appointing missionaries within its bounds and would fix the amount of compensation each missionary should receive. The Board declined the overture on the ground that the authority given it by the General Assembly was not transf errable. Even if it had the power it would be unwise thus to delegate it to any presbytery because the plan would be inef- ficient and of no value to the presbytery. "The plan of the Board is to act through the pres- bytery in all portions of the Church. On this general plan it is believed all the difficulties mentioned by the presbytery as peculiar to their remote situation may easily be obviated, while the unity of our operations, so essential to their efficiency in the whole and in each portion of the missionary field, will be maintained." Executive Committee for the West. In 1845 the General Assembly directed the Board to appoint a separate Executive Committee for the West to be located in Louisville. It was to embrace the Synods ^2 THE SOUL OF AMERICA of Cincinnati, Indiana, Northern Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, West Tennessee, Mississippi and Alabama. Missionaries were instructed to send quar- terly reports to the Board and also to the Louisville Committee. Applications from presbyteries for the appointment of missionaries were to be made to the Western Com- mittee, the Committee to issue commissions but only up to the ability of their own treasury, except by spe- cial permission of the Board. This action gave extensive power to the western office, which was directed in loy- alty to the Board to carry into effect any instructions given them by the Board. A good deal of correspondence developed in sub- sequent years, showing that there was not perfect agreement between the Board and its western office. Thus, in 1846 the Louisville Committee desired such change in plans as would require the missionaries to report to the western office only. This change the Board declined to make. A request was also made at the same time that funds for payment of missionaries should be sent by the Board in bulk to Louisville and by that office be trans- mitted to the missionaries. This the Board also de- clined, saying they would "continue to pay in the West as in other portions of the field as may be needed by checks sent directly to the missionaries." The plan thus finally agreed upon between the Board and the western office operated successfully for many years. However, the means of communication between east and west became ampler and there seemed less call for the local supervision. The unity of the Board as an institution asserted itself as OVER THE ALLEGHENIES 73 adapted and sufficient for all parts of the country and while agencies remained in various places to stimulate interest and give close consideration of local needs the tendency to centralization of administration increased. Incorporation of the Board. In March, 1841, a further important step in administration was taken by a proposal for incorporation. In the light of modern ex- perience the only wonder is that it was not sought at a much earlier date. The Charter prescribed that its incor- porators should be styled "Trustees of the Board of Missions of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church." They were given the powers usually com- mitted to such incorporators, to manage their funds and porperty comitted to their care, "in such manner as should be most advantageous, not being contrary to law." Under this Charter, with but slight changes, the Board has continued to the present time, administer- ing faithfully and wisely the large properties entrusted to its care. Germ o£ Board o£ Church Erection. In June, 1844, there occurred the first step which ultimately led to the Board of Church Erection. The record is as follows : "The Board having met to consider the plan of church extension adopted by the General Asesmbly and referred to the Board to be carried into effect, it Was "Resolved, First, that it is expedient the Committee on Church Extension consist of members of the Board Avho can conveniently meet together at the missionary 74 THE SOUL OF AMERICA office when applications for aid will be mad^ and when the information necessary to direct them in their work will be most naturally obtained." Following records show that this Committee held regular meetings and made regular reports to the Board. In one of the earliest mentions of the Com- mittee it was directed by the Board to procure a num- ber of plans of church edifices to send to congregations who wish them. If this direction had been more fully and persistently obeyed, it would have saved the Church from a good deal of bad architecture with which so many of our churches are afflicted. Spanish and French Population. One further item of that period is of importance in view of recent history. There was in all the West and Southwest a large Spanish and French population — the inheritance largely of the Louisiana Purchase. In 1848 the re- ligious needs of these people were brought to the at- tention of the Board, by action of the Synod of Ohio. The Board resolved, "That this Board feel with the Synod the import- ance of doing whatever can be done for the evangel- izing of the French and Spanish population of the United States and so far as suitable missionaries can be obtained for this population the Board are pre- pared to do their part in sending them forth and sus- taining them." How prophetic of great responsibility for the Latin race with which the Church in America is now con- fronted ! THE AMERICAN INDIANS ETHNOLOGICAL studies have scarce revealed in any savage race a finer type of essential ele- ments of manhood than that of the American Indian. He has traits of character and natural en- dowments which make not wholly inappropriate the designation sometimes given him — the noble Red Man. Those traits and endowments have given intense inter- est to the studies which seek his origin. But that origin is still a problem. Origin. The most probable suggestion connects him with the Asiatics. In physical characteristics he more nearly approaches the yellow race of the Orient than any other. If any prehistoric bridge carried him across Bering Strait it has long since been submerged. But we leave the mystery of the Indian's origin as we found it and pass on to his relations to the missionary work of the Presbyterian Church. We have touched on the sporadic early missionary endeavors to reach our native population. We have mentioned some of the names which glorified those en- deavors. Like stars out of a dark sky the names of Roger Williams, John Eliot, Jonathan Edwards, John Sargent and David Brainerd shine forth in heroic splendor. In later days, when there was an organiza- tion in the Presbyterian Church for doing missionary work, one of the first claims on its activity was that 75 'jd THE SOUIv OF AMERICA of the scattered, impoverished and often hostile tribes of the Indians. They were scattered by the incursions of the white man ; they were impoverished by his raid upon their lands, and they were made hostile by treaties broken and wrongs inflicted almost without number. In the face of the difficulties thus created the Committee on Missions sent devoted men to bring the message of salvation to tribes thus made difficult of access. Gideon Blackburn. The first missionary was the Rev. Gideon Blackburn, sent to the Cherokees in Georgia by the Standing Committee on Missions in 1803. Bom in Virginia, Blackburn's family yielded to the migrating movement that was carrying so many Scotch-Irish into Tennessee. In Washington County in that state he came under the influence of another pioneer, the Rev. Samuel Doak, who had earned the title of "The Apostle of learning and religion in the Southwest." It was he who crossed the Alleghenies before there were any roads and established Martins' Academy (afterward Washington College) "the first literary institution in the Mississippi Valley." Under Mr. Doak's guidance young Blackburn al- most completed his literary course. His family then moving fifty miles west he finished his education for the ministry under Dr. Robert Henderson at Dan- dridge, Tennessee. From Henderson, Mr. Blackburn got some of the inspiration for powerful speech which characterized all his missionary labors. He found his first field of labor at Maryville, Tennessee, which he reached when on a march with soldiers who were hurried to the protection of a fort in that neighbor- hood. His early missionary life was one of great THE AMERICAN INDIANS '71 hardships and constant peril. He was a preacher of such power that the scattered settlements flocked to his preaching, — now in the woods, again in a fort, and again in the rude home of some pioneer. He soon had the pleasure of organizing two churches, standing yet as witnesses of his devotion, New Providence at Maryville and Eusebia, ten miles away. But Blackburn's chief title to the gratitude of the Church is in his remarkable work for the Cherokee Indians. Their need and their capacity appealed to him strongly. A bright and intelligent race, they gave more promise of profiting by better opportunities than any other tribe. He appealed to the Committee of Missions for help. They gave him a commission and two hundred dollars for support of the mission for two months. Evidently the Committee regarded it only as an experiment. But the indefatigable mission- ary called himself committed to the work for life. Calling a council of two thousand Indians he secured their assent to his plans and their promise to send their children to the school he would open. When his school was well under way he gathered Indians and white settlers with his scholars for a treaty of friend- ship and cooperation. Governor Sevier, who had often braved the horrors of war in those same woods, was present and said to Blackburn, tears running down his face, "I have often stood unmoved amidst showers of bullets from Indian rifles, but this eflfectually unmans me. I see civilization taking the ground of barbarism and the praises of Jesus succeeding the war whoop of the savages." 78 THE SOUL OF AMERICA In the course of a few years Blackburn had so de- veloped the tribe that he reported large advance toward industrial life among those whom he found as nomadic savages. He is justly regarded as the prophet who pointed the way to that path of Indian service which only recently the Church has been wise enough to follow — uniting evangelism and education with in- dustrial and social service. The "Six Nations." In 1811 the New York Mis- sionary Society established a mission among the rem- nants of the "Six Nations" in western New York to the Wyandots and to scattered tribes in the Ohio Ter- ritory. In 1870 it came under control of the Presby- tery of Buffalo and the Board of Home Missions. In 1818 a "United Foreign Missionary Society" was organized by a union of Presbyterian and Dutch Churches, the object of which was declared to be the "spreading of the gospel among the Indians of North America, the inhabitants of Mexico and South Amer- ica and other portions of the heathen and anti-Chris- tion world." In eight years nine missions had been founded with sixty missionaries. As this was regarded as chiefly foreign work, in 1826 it passed under the control of the "American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions" and for the next five years almost all the Presbyterian work for Indians was conducted through this channel. Division in 1839. When in 1839 the Church was divided into Old and New School, the Indian work remained under the care of the American Board while that of the Old School was conducted by the Board of Foreign Missions which had been organized in 1837. THE AMERICAN INDIANS 79 The two branches united in 1870, but the Indian work remained chiefly in the hands of the Foreign Board. In 1865 the Board of Home Missions began in ear- nest the estabHshing of missions among the Indians. The work by the Foreign Board continued until 1893, when it was transferred to the Home Board. Some important movements, begun at an earher date but bearing fruit to the present time, now claim our notice. The Nez Perces. There is no more dramatic story in the history of Indian missions than that of the Nez Perces of Idaho. It has often been told, but it so mightily influenced the better organization of missionary work for our native population that a sketch of it is im- portant. In 183 1 four Nez Perces chiefs, after a peril- ous journey of months, found their way to the city of St. Louis. They came not as adventurers but as ear- nest souls in search of "the white man's Book." Gen- eral Clark, through whom perhaps they had heard of "The Book" on the Lewis and Clark Expedition to the waters of the Columbia a few years before, showed them every courtesy and took them to see the sights of the young city, including some services in the Roman Catholic Church. Worn by their journey over the Rockies and the plains, the two old chiefs died. The young chiefs prepared for the journey home. General Clark gave them a farewell dinner. At this feast one of the chiefs poured out his soul in strains not often matched in native eloquence. His plaint was that while they had been shown many kindnesses they had not found "The Book" for which they had come. He closed in these words. 8o THE SOUL OF AMERICA "I am going back the long trail to my people in the dark land. You make my feet heavy with gifts and my moccasins will grow old in carrying them; and yet The Book was not among them. When I tell my poor blind people, after one more snow, in the council that I did not bring The Book, no word will be spoken by our old men or by our young braves. One by one they will rise up and go out in silence. My people will die in darkness and they will go on a long path to other hunting grounds. No white man will go with them and no white man's Book to make the way plain. I have no more words." No wonder such pathetic eloquence stirred the heart of the Church ! The Methodist Church was the first to enter the field, sending the Rev. Jason Lee, who by patriotic efforts shares with Dr. Marcus Whitman the honor of having set in motion that series of events which culminated in making Oregon and the rest of the Pa- cific Coast an American possession. Whitman and Spaulding. In 1835 the Rev. Sam- uel Parker and Dr. Whitman, then a young physician, were asked to explore the territory and prepare the way for a mission. The following March, Dr. Whit- man and the Rev. H. H. Spaulding, with their brides, undertook the long journey over the mountains. On September second, 1836, after seven months of travel, they reached Fort Walla Walla, Washington, and be- gan their work, — the Whitmans among the Cayuse and the Spauldings among the Nez Perces. For eleven years the work prospered, the most nota- ble even of those years being Whitman's famous ride from Oregon to Washington to save the great North- THE AMERICAN INDIANS 8i west to the American Union. Then came a blow which put an end to missionary work for twenty-four years. In an unexplained attack by the Indians whom the missionaries had so faithfully served, Dr. and Mrs. Whitman were massacred. The Spauldings barely escaped with their lives. In 1871 there came a change. Mr. Spaulding re- turned to the field of his former labors and was warm- ly welcomed by many who recalled his years of sacri- fice and service on their behalf. A revival of religion followed. During the first year the veteran mission- ary baptized a hundred and eighty-four converts. When, in 1874, he was laid to rest in the little ceme- tery at Lapwai, Idaho, six hundred ninety-six converts had been gathered as the fruit of three years' toil. Miss Sue McBeth. At this time there came to the mission a consecrated woman whose labors were des- tined to have a most far-reaching influence on the lives of the Nez Perces. Miss Sue McBeth, a gifted woman, after years of experience as a teacher and a missionary, heard the appeal of the Nez Perces In- dians and, though partially paralyzed and broken down by sorrows, she rallied her strength and went to Idaho — not to die, as her friends thought, but to live a life of glorious service and fruitage as God ordered. She taught at first in a government school, giving her leisure time to training a class of promising Nez Perces boys. When reports reached her of a com- plaint that the government school was harboring a Presbyterian theological seminary she promptly re- signed the government position ; thenceforth giving herself to the work of training the young men for mis- sionary service. 6 82 THE SOUL OF AMERICA For many years this work went on. Her influence was unbounded. The brightest boys of the tribe came to her school. Women and children came to her cottage for instruction. Of her and her service Gen- eral O. O. Howard wrote: "Her work is filling this charming little village with homes and though she cannot visit them her pupils' houses are becoming neat and cleanly. The wife is becoming industrious within doors, sews, knits and cooks. The fences are up, the fields are planted. Oh ! that men could see that this faithful teaching has the speedy effect to change the heart of the individual man. Then all the fruits of civilization follow." On her death in 1893 the work was carried on by her like-minded sister, Miss Kate McBeth, until she, too, was called home in October, 191 5. In honor of these sisters the name of the station has been changed from Lapw^ai Mission to the McBeth Mission. Native Pastors. Several devoted missionaries have been the fruit of that school. Robert Williams was the first of the ordained Nez Perces pastors. By his preaching James Hayes was converted, who became the beloved pastor of the Kamiah Church and a veri- table apostle to Umatillas, Bannocks, Shoshones and other surrounding tribes to whom, in apostolic zeal in many missionary journeys, he preached the gospel. In the way of raising up native helpers no Indian mission has been more fruitful than that among the Nez Perces, due mainly to the devoted lives and the capable service of the McBeth sisters. In 1885 the Nez Perces Presbyterian Church was the largest in the Pacific Northwest. THE AMERICAN INDIANS 83 The Dakotas. The Sioux (or Dakotas, as they call themselves) constituted the most numerous, powerful and warlike tribe. They occupied Minnesota, North and South Dakota and westward as far as Wyoming. The Revs. Samuel W. and Gideon A. Pond from Washington, Connecticut, in 1834 at their own charges went to Minnesota, as they expressed it **to better the condition of the Dakotas." They built their cabin on the shore of Lake Harriet, now within the city of Minneapolis, and full of hope began their labors. The same year the Rev. Thomas S. Williamson, M.D., a godly physician, was sent to the Dakotas by the American Board. In 1836 the first Dakota church was organized with seven Indian and five white mem- bers. A year later the mission was strengthen by the arrival of the Rev. Stephen H. Riggs and his wife, who served the Indians through a long series of years. Three Great Missionaries. Early realizing the need of the Scriptures in the language of the Indian, the three missionaries, Pond, Riggs and Williamson — gave them grammar, dictionary, and then the entire Bible in their own tongue. It was a monumental achievement and opened to the Dakotas an entrance to the Christian life. In 1 85 1 a new treaty was made between the Gov- ernment and the Dakotas. The Indians had already surrendered to the white man all their territory east of the Mississippi River. As the tide of emigration to the West increased the white men demanded more land. The Indians were forced to give up the beau- tiful prairies of Minnesota. At a stroke of the Gov- ernment's pen the hunting grounds and the fertile iields and the graves of their people were taken away. 84 THE SOUL OF AMERICA The Dakotas must move on. They went to poorer lands farther west. Their faithful missionaries went with them and at Yellow Medicine established a mis- sion where, by reason of the temper of the Indians smarting under a sense of their wrongs, the work was discouraging and unfruitful. The Indian Massacre. The Indian has a long memory. He had been driven from home, fair prom- ises were broken, annuities were withheld. The entire attitude of the Dakotas was being changed. They were suffering from hunger. Becoming desperate they broke into the government storehouse to take their rations by force. Repulsed, they sought re- venge in the Indian way. The massacre of 1862 fol- lowed. Nearly a thousand settlers in various parts of the state were brutally murdered and millions of dollars worth of property were destroyed. Of course, the Government soon quelled the outbreak, taking two thousand prisoners and sentencing four hundred to death. All but thirty-eight of these, however, were reprieved by Lincoln. But the remarkable providence that emerged through the horror of those days was the conduct of the Christian Indians. They remained loyal to their white neighbors. Through their assistance many set- tlers escaped uninjured. Recently the people of Min- nesota attested their discrimination between good and bad Indians by erecting at Fort Ridgely a monument "to commemorate the faithfulness of those Indians who remained true to their white friends during the terrible massacre of 1862." The Indian uprising was followed by an extraord- inary spiritual harvest. Four hundred Indians were THE AMERICAN INDIANS 85 sentenced to the Mankato prison. Dr. Williamson, with courage and devotion, so preached the gospel to the guilty men that the Prison Church was organized, enrolling in one day two hundred men. At Fort Snelling a similar work of grace was car- ried on by Dr. Williamson's son, the Rev. John P. Williamson. More than a hundred confessed their faith in Christ. When, soon after, they were removed to South Dakota Mr. Williamson followed them there and organized the "Fort Thompson Church" with one hundred sixty-eight members. In 1871 the American Board withdrew from its In- dian work; the mission was divided, Dr. Williamson and his son, with nine native churches, coming under the care of the Board of Home Missions of the Pres- byterian Church. Native Presbytery. Since that date the work has steadily progressed. It is conducted at six of the twelve Sioux agencies and is embodied in a native presbytery of thirty-nine churches with about fifteen hundred members. The Rev. John P.Williamson, D.D., who, after his father had rested from his labors, took entire charge of the large and growing work, was called to his reward in 1918. During a long life of more than eighty years he had wholly devoted himself to his people and abundantly earned the title so lov- ingly given him of "The Bishop of Dakota Presby- tery." The evidence that the Dakotas thus rescued from barbarism and savagery are Christians indeed is in their missionary life. In 1876 the organized a native missionary society "to hunt their heathen brothers." Its anual income, averaging more than a dollar a 86 THE SOUL OF AMERICA member, is devoted to sending missionaries to other tribes. The Dakota churches far surpass most of the American churches in giving more for benevolences than for their own support, in some cases twice as much. The religious history of the Sioux attests strik- ingly the power of the gospel over the lives— even the imbruted lives — of men. At this writing (1919) there are thirty-five churches among the Dakotas, constituting an entire Indian Presbytery. One of the potent factors in the uplift of this large tribe has been the Good Will Boarding and Industrial School near the line between North and South Dakota. Established by Dr. Riggs in 1871, it grew slowly at first, but in 1883, when the Woman's Board took charge of the work, signs of rapid advance began to appear. Hundreds of girls have been trained in domestic industries and hundreds of boys in farm- ing, carpentry and the like. Eight churches surround the school. The people hold land in severalty and are citizens of the United States. In 1912 the Govern- ment put in an excellent school — making that branch of missionary service unnecessary. It is the policy of the Woman's Board everywhere to retire from school work wherever and whenever the Government is pre- pared to do that service. The Good Will School has, therefore, been closed. The fruit of it, however, abides. The home missionary societies of the Indian Presbytery contribute annually for Indian work not less than four thousand dollars. The Five Tribes in the Indian Territory. Chris- tianity has had a signal triumph in the missions of the Presbyterian Church among the Five Civilized Tribes in the Indian Territory, namely ,the Choctaws, Chero- THE AMERICAN INDIANS 87 kees, Chickasaws, Seminoles, and Creeks. These, by what has so often been the shameful land-grabbing policy of our Government, were nearly a century ago driven from their beautiful homes in the Carolinas, Florida and Georgia. To them was assigned what until recently was called the Indian Territory. If its wealth in the fertility of the soil and its mineral treas- ures had been suspected by the Government it is most probable the Indians would have been forced farther west to the arid plains toward the Rockies. Unwit- tingly they were given a rich heritage. Many of them have become prosperous and even wealthy. Portions of the great tract of land were later ceded back to the Governoment and opened to white settlers. Thus ensued a mixed population of Indians, Negroes and whites. The latter were often renters on the lands of the Indians, who thus were enabled to live in idle- ness, very agreeable to the Indian character but not promotive of his progress. Into this motley population missions were intro- duced at an early date. The missionaries came to a people, many of whom had heard the gospel from missionaries in their old homes and who had already been reclaimed from many of their superstitions and much of their ignorance. Schools were opened for their children and large sums of money were set apart for their support. The Honorable W. A. Jones, a Commissioner of Indian Affairs, wrote : "It is an interesting fact that long before the ad- joining states were states the Cherokees had adopted a constitution making officials elective, abolishing po- lygamy and, recognizing the Christian religion, and had passed strict temperance laws." 88 THE SOUL OF AMERICA To people thus fairly advanced on the road to civili- zation Presbyterian missionaries were sent seventy- five years ago. The fruits of their toil have steadily matured and are thus summed up by the Rev. George F. McAfee, D.D., formerly Superintendent of Schools for the Presbyterian Board of Home Missions : Testimony of George F. McAfee. "As time went on, one station after another was successfully opened, one victory after another over prejudice and opposi- tion was gained, one missionary after another sealed his devotion to his people with his life, until the whole land was opened to the gospel. Many converts were made, a number of churches were organized, numer- ous schools were thronged with children and youth, and rapid progress toward Christianity and civilization was realized. "Then suddenly the whole land was rent and torn by the horrors of Civil War. Mission stations were abandoned, the people divided between North and South, churches, schoolhouses and missionary homes were burned and the missionaries obliged to flee, and practically the whole work came to naught. "After the close of the war, when passions had cooled, the Indians began to clamor for missions again. The work was resumed, although under the most un- favorable conditions. Indian Territory had become a refuge for all sorts of criminals and the youth were subjected to all manner of evil influences. Yet faith- ful missionary preachers and teachers went forward with the work until God crowned their efforts with marvellous success." At the close of the War the work among the Chicka- saws was taken up by the Southern Presbyterian THE AMERICAN INDIANS 89 Church. At an early date the Board of Home Mis- sions of the Northern Church began to build again its shattered work among the other four tribes. The re- covery has been rapid. Churches have been organized, chapels and schoolhouses built and the training in civ- ilized life which had been arrested by the Civl War was hopefully resumed. The school work established by the Presbyterian Board has been taken over in some cases by the Gov- ernment and in others by the Indians who have been quick to claim the direction and development of their educational system. This is specially true of the Cherokees — the largest and the most advanced of the five tribes. Dwight School. The Woman's Board has long conducted schools among the Cherokees and Creeks. Among the former the most notable is that at Dwight, first established on the Arkansas River and later moved west to its present location at Marble City, Oklahoma. It was begun in 1820 by the Rev. Cephas Washburn. It was under the care of the American Board. As a boarding and industrial school it pros- pered until i860, when on account of the Civil War it was closed and so remained until 1867 when Dr. Timothy Hill visited the spot. He found nothing but ruins. So impressed was he by the loss of what had once been a prosperous work, that he appealed to the Board of Home Missions that it might be revived. Not, however, till 1886 was the school reopened in a large, well-equipped building. For ten years the work prospered. Hundreds of Cherokee girls were brought to Christ and trained in domestic arts. Under the fos- tering care of the Woman's Board "Old Dwight" is a 90 THE SOUL OF AMERICA mighty power in the salvation and education of the Cherokees. As the years have gone on additional in- dustrial departments have been added for both boys and girls. The missionary agencies thus at work in this tribe have given it one of the leading places among all our Indian tribes. Nuyaka School. The Creeks were moved from Alabama and Georgia to the Indian Territory in 1837 and given reservation west of the Cherokees. Mis- sionaries among them date back to 1842, when the Board of Foreign Missions opened a mission and a school. Here, too, the Civil War broke up the work. In 1882, the mission having again been opened, it was transferred to the Board of Home Missions. Over- tures now came from many sources asking for schools. Among the first to be taken up was Nuyaka. In 1883 the Woman's Executive Committee undertook the work. The nation cooperated liberally with the Com- mittee in its support. A year later missionaries were located at Red Fork and Tulsa. Henry Kendall College. One of the finest results of the mission schools in the territory is Henry Ken- dall College, named after the veteran Secretary of the Board. It is on the Creek Reservation and began at Muskogee in 1882 as a little day school for Indian girls in the home of the missionary in the village, the Rev. Thomas A. Sanson. Beginning in the parsonage, it soon outgrew those limited quarters. It secured a commodious building and became a boarding school with an industrial department added. For more than ten years it was conducted by the Woman's Board and exclusively for girls. But the Indians clamored for a chance for their boys; so a THE AMERICAN INDIANS 91 boys' department was added. Still the Indians were hungry for the best things for their children. So in 1894 that which began in a mission manse as a pp- mary school blossomed as a Christian college open to both sexes. In 1908 it moved with larger equipment to the thriv- ing city of Tulsa and was then transferred to the Synod of Oklahoma. In its growth it has gone beyond its original purpose in that it is no longer an Indian school, but Indians are admitted to its advantages on an equal footing with white students. As is true of so many mission schools, students usually leave the col- lege avowed Christians, differing in this from the results of our larger institutions of learning. Among the names that should be noted in the mis- sionary history of the Indian Territory are the Rev. Cephas Washburn, the Rev. S. A. Worcester, D.D., the Rev. W. S. Robertson, the Rev. A. Grant Evans, D.D., the Rev. W. R. King, D.D., and the Rev. F. W. Hawley, D.D. It was because of the faith and sacrifice of these men and their devoted wives and consecrated associates — for whose names we have no space but which are in the book of life — that the Indians of that Territory have advanced to their present state of Christian civilization. Work of Charles H. Cook. One-fifth of the In- dians of the United States dwell in the States of New Mexico and Arizona. There some of the most signal victories of Indian evangelization have been won. The beginning of it all was in the heroic faith of an humble pioneer missionary, the Rev. Charles H. Cook. In 1868 General Alexander, an army officer sta- tioned in Arizona, became so deeply impressed with 92 THE SOUL OF AMERICA the ignorance and superstitions of the Pimas, and with their kindly and teachable dispositions, that in an article to the New York Evangelist he appealed that a missionary might be given to them. The article fell under the eye of Mr. Cook, at that time engaged in city mission work in Chicago. He consulted Washing- ton officials, only to be told that there was a state of unrest among the Pimas and that a mission to them would be an unprofitable if not an unsafe undertaking. But the desperate need of those desert people so wrought upon him that he determined to venture all for their salvation. Without funds and with no church backing, convinced, as he said, that the God who provided for George Mueller's orphans was able also to provide for him, he left Chicago on Sep- tember first, 1870, and set his face toward Arizona. The story of his four months' journey by oxcart across the plains and the mountains is one of the ro- mances of missions. Everywhere God raised up friends for him. On December twenty-third he reached the headquarters of the Pimas at Sacaton, the little Indian village which was to be his headquarters for nearly half a century. He began as a teacher in the government school, then for a while he supported himself as a trader, all the time diligently studying the Pima langauge that he might find an entrance for the gospel. In 1881 he was induced by Dr. Sheldon Jackson, who found the lone missionary in one of his many tours, to place his work under the care of the Presbyterian Board. Up to this time there had been no fruit to his labors. He had, however, won the confidence and in some cases the affection of the Indians. At last the harvest THE AMERICAN INDIANS 93 began to ripen. In 1889 he organized the First Pres- byterian Church of Sacaton with sixteen members. For many years he and his noble wife toiled on, undis- couraged by the slowness of results, undismayed by opposition of enemies of missions and by the indiffer- ence of a Government which saw the Indians' lands invaded and their fields made desert by the diversion of the water in the interest of unscrupulous settlers. They appealed to the Government to protect the rights of their people ; they appealed to the Church to send helpers to strengthen the work which was showing signs of such marked encouragement. At last their prayers were answered. The Govern- ment installed a water system which, though long de- layed and never adequate, protected the Indians from starvation and the Church saw her opportunity and sent in missionaries and teachers to uphold the hands of the lonely workers. Not waiting for the increase of the number of mis- sionaries. Dr. Cook became a teacher of theology and trained Indian young men of piety and parts to help him carry the work which was too much for one man's shoulders. Several of these native missionaries were soon added to the force. Aware of the need of industrial training for Indians who must get their living out of their land, Dr. Cook secured the opening of an industrial training school for Pima and Papago boys and girls at Tucson. It was begun in 1886. It has steadily grown in equip- ment and influence, and is conducted by the Woman's Board. So thorough have been its plans and its work, covering all that Pima and Papago boys and girls should know and do, as to have high praise from the 94 THE SOUL OF AMERICA Commissioner of Indian Affairs. The girls are taught the various domestic arts. The boys learn the methods of cultivating the land, and in addition for a number of years were the street cleaning department of the City of Tucson, the income for their labors helping materially the income of the school. Statistics. For nearly fifty years this modern apostle to the Indians — pursued the dream which had become the consuming passion of his life, to save the Pimas, wards of a Government they had never be- trayed. And he had his reward. There are in 1919 twelve Indian churches on the reservation, the one at Sacaton having a membership of three hundred eighty-eight. In three of the churches now supplied by native ministers, graduates of Dr. Cook's theo- logical seminary, there are eight hundred seventy-nine members. Looking beyond the term of his own life, he inspired the founding of a theological school which in his honor has been named "The Charles H. Cook Training School," now located at Phoenix. In 1917 he entered into rest, to be held in grateful memory by the patient, gentle, faithful tribe for whose salvation he gave a long and glorious life. This record would not be complete if we failed to recognize the fact that the influence of Dr. Cook's labors extended to surrounding tribes, specially to the Maricopas and the Papagos in scattered villages in southern Arizona. The latter number about four thousand wandering Indian Arabs who had been wholly uncared for until 1901 when the Rev. F. S. Herndon began work among them, with prompt and blessed results. THE AMERICAN INDIANS 95 Work among the Pueblo Indans of New Mexico was undertaken in 1854 by the Baptist Missionary Society who sent a missionary to the Lagunas. The coming of Civil War made it necessary to abandon the work. But in 1876 the pathetic condition of those cliff dwell- ers so appealed to the Home Board that it sent the Rev. John Menaul and wife to labor — the one as min- ister and physician, and the other as teacher. In 1890 he removed to Albuquerque to engage in the publica- tion of special literature, when the Rev. John M. Shields, M.D., took his place as missionary at La- guna. The Woman's Board also established day schools for the Zuni Pueblos. In 1880 the Woman's Board founded an industrial boarding school at Albuquerque — free to all the pu- eblos. Professor W. D. Bryan, with a strong corps of teachers, opened in buildings with a capacity for one hundred and fifty pupils. It was filled almost from the first. As in other schools established by the Woman's Board mechanical and domestic arts had prominent place with the ordinary English branches. Into this school came pupils from many tribes in New Mexico and Arizona. Navajos. The Navajos in Arizona and New Mexico are the largest and among the most virile and capable of our Indian tribes. One-half of their thirty thousand people are the special charge of the Presby- terian Church. Missions among them date back to the beginning of this century. Until within the last decade they might truly have said "No man careth for our souls." Now, however, several denominations have entered the open door. In 1901 a mission was begun at Ganado — the evangelistic and the medical 96 THE SOUL OF AMERICA work under care of the Home Board, and educational work conducted by the Woman's Board. In 1902 the entire plant at Jewett, New Mexico, begun by the Methodist Church in 1895 — afterward carried on in an enlarged way by two independent New England societies, was transferred to the Home Board. In 1903 the school and hospital buildings came into the charge of the Woman's Board, when a boarding school for boys was opened with medical work under a resi- dent physician. Two years later provision was made for a girls' school. In 191 1 owing to unfavorable physical conditions the location was given up and the entire mission moved to Ganado, where it is now flourishing in every department. It is called the Kirk- wood Memorial School, in honor of the Rev. Thomas C. Kirkwood, D.D., for many years the Synodical Missionary of Colorado. Other stations to be named, where promising work is carried on — both evangelistic and educational — are Fort Defiance, Tuba, Shiprock, Indian Wells and Tol- chaco. These six mission stations splendidly located are being served by six ordained ministers, besides a number of Indian helpers. There are physicians ministering to the health of the people and schools where the children are taught. The government schools are well appoint- ed and doing an increasingly good work. The baneful influence of the medicine men is rapidly waning and the medical missionaries treating thousands of cases annually have ready entrance to the Indian homes. Bible Translation. The most recent missionary achievement for that large tribe is the translation of the Scriptures into the Navajo tongue. As English is the language used exclusively in the instruction in THE AMERICAN INDIANS 97 government schools, there was a question whether this Navajo translation could be used by the missionaries in their classes of Protestant pupils. The Commis- sioner of Indian Affairs has, however, given permis- sion for the use of this translation in teaching the government school pupils assigned to Protestant in- struction outside of school hours, with the understand- ing that the English and Navajo versions will be used side by side. This concession is, of course, very grati- fying to the missionaries on this field. In a tribe who have never been instructed in Christian truth, who are more than nine-tenths illiterate, and who speak only the Indian tongue, to instruct hundreds of their children in Bible is a most difficult task. The Government's Indian Department, realizing the latent capacity of this tribe, has given it special atten- tion. Health considerations and the suppression of the liquor traffic have been given great prominence. Stock raising and the promotion of industry have been developed and the number of acres farmed by Indians greatly increased. An improved vocational training and a new educational system have been adopted, a program now established throughout the Indian educational service. Along with an increasing spirit of independence in a material way — more and more as the number of con- verts to the Christian faith increases — the Indians are learning to contribute to their church and mission efforts. It is a lesson not easily learned by a people coming out of desolate paganism in which generosity and altruistic motives have never had place. Pacific Coast Indians. The Indians of the Pacific Coast have been among the most neglected. A better 98 THE SOUL OF AMERICA day is dawning for them now. Among the Puyallups on Puget Sound a mission was estabUshed by the Pres- byterian Board thirty years ago. They have a church with one hundred and fifty members. Among the Hoopas, long suffering many wrongs inflicted by gov- ernment agents and wholly without religious care, a mission was established by the Board of Home Mis- sions in 1901, and though they have not given up all their old superstitions they are peacable, law-abiding and many of them are professing Christians. The Digger Indians of California, said to be the lowest physical type of all American Indians and the most miserable in the lives they lead, received their first missionary in 1904 in the person of a devoted woman sent out by the Woman's Board. The Woman's Board also conducts schools at North Fork, California, where in 191 7 hospital rooms were added to the new mission building for the care of the sick; at Wolf Point Mission, under direction of Mrs. Cynthia D. King, where there is an industrial home, a self-supporting boarding department and a ten-room addition built for boys ; and the most westerly station at Neah Bay, Washington, opened for the Makah Indians in 1899 where two devoted women are doing hopeful work, and the Shasta Indians, in California, where the Woman's Board began work in 1901. Even among them a few trophies of the power of the gospel have been gathered. Other tribes that should be named are the Umatillas in northern Oregon, where the Rev. James M. Cornelison has given many years of faithful service; the Spokanes, neighbors of the Nez Perces, a tribe religiously inclined but long neg- lected, and the Puyallups on Puget Sound, to whom THE AMERICAN INDIANS 99 the Home Board sent missionaries more than thirty years ago. Of these wronged and neglected tribes Dr. Thos. C. Moffett writes : "The principal cause of the appallingly great and rapid decrease in the Indians of California is not the number directly slain by the whites, nor the number directly killed by whiskey and disease, but a much more subtle and dreadful thing. It is the gradual, but progressive, and resistless confiscation of their lands and homes in consequence of which they are forced to seek refuge in remote and barren localities, often far from water, usually with an impoverished supply of food, and not infrequently in places where the winter is too severe for their enfeebled constitutions." The advance Indian work of the Presbyterian Church thus briefly sketched was begun in 1905 in the appointment of the Rev. Thomas C. Moffett, D.D., as Indian representative and the organization in 1907 of an Indian Department with Dr. Moffett in charge. The work embraces two distinct features. The prime aim of the Board is, of course, to supply the Indian tribes with the message and the helps, indi- vidual and tribal, of the Gospel of Christ. In view, however, of the fact that the success of the work de- pends in large measure on the attitude and help of the national Government, one of the duties of the Depart- ment has been to aid in securing such legislation and such governmental care of the Indians as would make missionary work effective. In this last purpose the Board has had a full measure of cooperation on the part of the Indian Department of the Government. Since the administration of General Grant there has been a steadily increasing interest in the welfare of 100 THE SOUL OF AMERICA the aborigines and a more intelligent sense of govern- mental responsibility for these wards of the nation. The steps taken in these directions may be summar- ized as follows : Forward Steps. I, The allotting of Indian lands in severalty, so that each family would have an oppor- tunity and an incentive to build up family life and be held to social and civic responsibility the same as that of the white neighbors. II. The gradual abolishing of Indian agencies, the fruitful source of many wrongs in the past. III. The breaking up of tribal relations and heathen customs. These aims once accomplished would spell out a new epoch for the race. And in these aims the Presby- terian Church with other communions has been a strong cooperator with all who in governmental work are seeking for our natives the largest possible share in the blessings of the nation. The Report of the Board for 1918 recorded one hundred fifty missionaries and Indian helpers working among forty-five tribal divisions with sixty-six churches being iri two Indian presbyteries, with two hospitals, three Bible Training Schools and a Depart- ment of specialized Indian service. The work is con- ducted in twenty states, the largest block being in what is now the State of Oklahoma and comprising 119,000 people. During the past decade the Board of Home Mis- sions has cooperated strongly with the Home Missions Council in its Indian work, which is an important part of its enterprise. This Council, which represents nearly all the home mission forces of the Protestant THE AMERICAN INDIANS loi Church and has a constituency of thirty-three home mission organizations alHed with twenty-one com- munions, has employed on part time the Superintend- ent of the Presbyterian Indian work — the Rev. Thomas C. Moffett, D.D. He has performed this service from New York and Washington with fre- quent trips to Indian conferences and mission fields. His labors have been varied and constructive, the re- lations with the Office of Indian Afifairs in presenting the interests of the constituent Boards having been particularly effective. Cooperation. The spirit of comity and cooperation in the Indian field has been notably increased during recent years. In fact it may be stated that the mission work for the native American race has been in a re- markable way the means of drawing the divided Prot- estant organizations into mutual understanding and to harmonious and united effort. The Boards in the Home Missions Council have practically agreed to re- spect the possession of Indian mission fields and not to enter any field in which any Board is already at work ; also to refer disputes or claims of disregard of comity to the Council or its Indian Committee. The neglected and partially evangelized tribes of Indians have been commended to the attention of the denomi- nations best prepared to supply the need in each case, and larger efficiency and a statesmanlike handling of this problem have been accomplished. A tabulation has been made and published of all the denominational missions by tribes, and of the lo- cation and population of the neglected tribes and com- munities of Indians throughout the United States. 102 THE SOUL OF AMERICA The policy of the permanent establishment of the work is essential. It is stated that out of the hundreds of missions which have grown from that started under Bishop Whipple in 1852 not one, from Minnesota to Alaska, has been given up or left without a mission- ary. Statistics. In the United States, exclusive of Alaska, 323,403 persons are classed as Indians; of these 296,000 are under the general supervision of the Federal Indian Service. In 1913 it was learned that the Government was taking a hand in gathering statis- tics of the religious affiliations of the Indians, and from superintendents on the reservations and in charge of government schools reports were received from 177,401 Indians. Of this number 69,529 have professed Christianity. This is thirty-nine per cent, of the total heard from. A still larger per cent, of the other half of the Indian population, concerning whom no statistics were gathered, is doubtless non- Christian, for these would include the more primitive tribes. What more effective argument could be pre- sented to the Church for an advance in missions to the American Indians than the statement of the Govern- ment showing that sixty-one per cent, of the Indians enumerated are still out of the pale of the Christian Church? Nothing is more urgent than the renewed calling attention to the list of some forty-six thousand Indians of seventy-eight tribal divisions still in need of the establishment of Christian missions and the providing of the ordinances of the Church for these long neglected descendants of the native Americans. With one-half of the Indians of the United States and Alaska still to be classified as non-Christian, and with THE AMERICAN INDIANS 103 this considerable number of neglected souls who are without shepherds, the evangelical Churches have a task in the homeland which can claim primacy of obli- gation and responsibility. How can we allow the years to pass without carrying the gospel to these neg- lected Red men? Neither the men nor the money to reach these Indians will be lacking if the Churches in united effort will set themselves to the accomplishment of the task without further delay. The highest tribute should be paid to the devoted and self-sacrificing service of the missionaries and teachers on the field who are giving themselves in places of lowly service and far from the marts of trade and from many social privileges to these most isolated fields of American home mission effort. VI FROM THE MISSISSIPPI TO THE YUKON Across the: Contine:nt AMERICAN Home Mission Society. With the division of the Presbyterian Church into Old f and New School in 183^, we come to a new era in the home mission work. In 1826, to meet the ever- increasing home mission demand, the American Home Mission Society had been formed. Its directors were composed of Presbyterians, Congregationalists and Dutch Reformed ministers and laymen. It found its first field of operations in New England, and then with the westward migration entered New York State. The Presbyterian churches and ministry in that field gave their adherence largely to this Society, soliciting funds for its treasury. The Board of Home Missions continued its connec- tion with the Old School branch. Its corporate name was changed in 1857 to "The Trustees of the Board of Home Missions of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of Amer- ica." From 1840 the anti-slavery sentiment of the country developed rapidly. Though the Church maintained its unity till the breaking out of the Civil War the years immediately preceding were times of acrimonious de- bate, of suspicion and alienation between the churches 104 FROM THE MISSISSIPPI TO THE YUKON 105 North and South. The effect on the progress of the Church was to magnify church courts and for the time to hinder evangeHstic movements. Organization of the Presbyterian Church in the United States. In 1861 the southern element organ- ized an Assembly under title of "The Presbyterian Church in the Confederate States of America." At the close of the War this title was changed to the one still in use — "The Presbyterian Church in the United States." Reunion. No sooner had the War made separation between northern and southern Presbyterians complete than a strong desire for union between the sundered branches in the North developed. The first definite steps were taken by the appointment of a joint com- mittee in St. Louis, where both Assemblies were then in session. In 1869 the formal union took place in Pittsburgh, where both Assemblies had agreed to meet for this purpose. The year following this memorable occasion witnessed the consolidation of the Boards of the two Assemblies. The Home Mission Society and the Board of Home Missions were united, with head- quarters in New York. The times of division, conflict and adjustment hav- ing passed, the united Church entered on a new mis- sionary era — both home and foreign. Theological and ecclesiastical questions which had largely absorbed at- tention for a generation were less regarded. The re- ligious needs of the world at home and abroad loomed large and commanding. The result was a marked re- vival of practical Christianity. It found expression in new organizations and in the new spirit with which approved organizations were pushed. There was not io6 THE SOUL OF AMERICA more missionary enthusiasm than in the early part of the century when the great West was swinging its alluring gates. But to the enthusiasm was added a capacity unknown before. Drs. Kendall and Dickson. The Board of Home Missions, which since the beginning of the century had been the pioneer missionary organization of the country, put forth new power. Dr. Henry Kendall, who had been Secretary of the United States branch before the Reunion, was made Secretary of the United Board. Dr. Cyrus Dickson, pastor of a New School church, was associated with him. Dr. Kendall was the statesman, Dr. Dickson was the orator. Together they carried on a great campaign. New communities (now largely across the Mississippi) were sharply followed. The Presbyterian missionary was promptly on the ground to preach the gospel and establish Christian in- stitutes. Westward March. The two decades following the Reunion witnessed such a westward march of popula- tions as this country had not seen before and has not since. New states beyond the Missouri River put forth commercial and political power. New towns and cities everywhere flecked the prairies or gathered under the shadows of mountains. And with this remarkable development the Christian Church kept good pace with the national growth. Thus, in 1869 nine young men from Princeton conse- crated themselves to home missions and in a body moved to Kansas prairies. They are known as "The Kansas Band." Out of their labors sprang the great Synod of Kansas. The man who was the guide and bishop of these young men and of a hundred others FROM THE MISSISSIPPI TO THE YUKON 107 was the Rev. Timothy Hill, D.D., a pioneer and mis- sionary superintendent of rare tact, devotion and power. Nearly three hundred churches in Kansas and Oklahoma, organized directly or indirectly by him, are his fitting monument. He was one of many. Men like Henry Little of Indiana, Daniel Baker of Texas, A. T. Norton of Illi- nois, William W. McNair, B. G. Riley and Stuart Mitchell of Wisconsin and David C. Lyon of Minne- sota laid foundations on which generations to come will build the strength and glory of our Church. A few decades later, by the foresight and energy and missionary enthusiasm of Dr. Sheldon Jackson and others like him, the entire West from the Missis- sippi to the Pacific was staked out in a comprehensive missionary plan. In the generation between 1850 and 1880 thousands of churches were organized between the Missouri River and the Rocky Mountains. Be- tween i860 and 1890 other thousands were founded on the Pacific Coast. Reaching the Pacific Coast. The action of the Board in October, 1848, anticipates the campaign of the Forty-niners on the discovery of gold on the Pa- cific Coast, ''Resolved, That Upper California being now a por- tion of our own country and the way being fully open for the introduction of missions into that whole terri- tory, the Board deem it of great importance that no time be lost in sending one or more missionaries to that field and they hereby instruct their Executive Committee, as soon as a suitable man can be obtained, to commission him for San Francisco or some point on io8 THE SOUL OF AMERICA the Bay of San Francisco, which they view as the most important point on the Pacific Coast to be imme- diately occupied." This was prompt action and has had a glorious harvest. The very next year the Assembly erected "a new Presbytery in Cahfornia under the title of 'The Presbytery of California.' " Thus, the beginnings of missionary work on the Coast came close on the heels of the American occu- pation. The First Presbyterian Church of San Fran- cisco was organized in May, 1849. One of the six persons uniting to form this first Protestant church on the Coast was Frederick Billings, who has the honor of having founded the College of California, now the great University at Berkeley. The First Presbyterian Church of Los Angeles was organized under the name of "The First Protestant Society" in 1859. A few years later their building was taken over by the Episcopalians and the Presbyterians gave up the struggle in that little Spanish outpost. In 1874 a heroic Scotchman, the Rev. Thomas Eraser, on a tour of investigation as synodical mis- sionary wrote to the Home Board "that Los Angeles was one of the places which the Presbyterians should take and hold regardless of expense, as England held Gibraltar." That was the beginning of the rapid ad- vance which has made Los Angeles one of the strong centers of Presb3rterianism. Somewhat later the upper Pacific Coast was ex- plored, and in 1868 the Rev. Aaron L. Lindsley, D.D., laid the foundations of the First Presbyterian Church of Portland and a little after introduced Christian missions to far-off Alaska. The church in Portland FROM THE MISSISSIPPI TO THE YUKON 109 has become the mother of scores of churches in Ore- gon. Thus, in the last half of the nineteenth century, Christianity had a strong grasp on the rising popula- tions of the Coast. Rapid Growth. Between 1870 and 1880 the State of California increased in population fifty per cent., but the increase in church membership was a hundred per cent. Between 1890 and 1906 the population in- creased twenty per cent., but the church membership one hundred and eighteen per cent. In Washington the population increased seventy-five per cent. ; the church membership three hundred and thirty-eight per cent. In Oregon the growth in population was about fifty per cent. ; the church growth one hundred seventy per cent. Thus we have touched some of the high points of that missionary advance by which all our states and territories were claimed for Christian occupation. Dr. Henry Kendall was wont to say that nine-tenths of all our Presbyterian churches had a missionary origin and had been directly or indirectly founded by the Board of Home Missions. In several states every church had a missionary origin. The rapid growth of the Church in the period fol- lowing the Reunion of 1870 is illustrated by these figures; In 1870 there were reported 51 Synods, 173 Presbyteries, 4238 ministers, 4526 churches, 446,561 communicants. In 1918 there were reported 40 Synods, 292 Pres- byteries, 9902 ministers, 9928 churches, 1,631,748 com- municants. Cumberland Union. A vastly enlarged mission field came to the Board in 1906 by a union of the Cum- no THE SOUL OF AMERICA berland Presbyterian Church with the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America. Early in the nineteenth century the Presbyterian Church, ad- hering to its historic standards of ministerial qualifica- tion, was unable to supply the demand for ministers which resulted from great revival seasons in the South, and particularly in the Cumberland Valley. Those who organized the Cumberland Church decided that more men must be drafted into the ministry. If no thoroughly trained men could be found then the Church must use what she could find. So, on the basis of an imperative demand for evan- gelization and the call of consecrated young men to give themselves to this work, the Cumberland Church was formed. It grew very rapidly. As the years went on it also drew nearer to the parent Church in its demand and equipment for a higher grade of minis- terial qualifications. Colleges and theological semi- naries supplied what in this matter had been lacking, so that at the beginning of the twentieth century there seemed no good reason for continuing the division. The: Mormon Fiei.d The Mormon field is far too extensive and insistent to permit of indifference on the part of the Christian Church. It it were only the fanatical dream of a few visionaries in the mountains we might trust to Ameri- can influences surrounding it to bring about its speedy decline. But when we consider that more than fifteen hundred missionaries are at work — mainly in Christian lands, that they have distributed two million copies of their Bible — The Book of Mormon — and millions of tracts, the American Church must wake to her duty. FROM THE MISSISSIPPI TO THE YUKON in The idea that polygamy is the only objection to Mor- monism, that if this were eliminated the cult would be negligible, is viewing the subject far too superficially. It presents and urges — often in alluring forms — a per- nicious set of doctrines entirely destructive of the Christian system. There is no space here to give any account of those doctrines. The system, beginning in the disordered brain of one man in New York, moved westward with startling rapidity first to Kirtland, Ohio, then to Missouri, then to Nauvoo, Illinois, again to Missouri, encountering in each state such opposition that the hierarchy determined on a removal beyond the jurisdiction of the United States, where their plans could mature without hindrance. The beautiful valley between the Rockies and the Sierras was selected. In 1864 Dr. Henry Kendall on his way to the Pacific Coast passed through Salt Lake City. Brigham Young, little dreaming of the voice he would thus let loose, asked him to preach in the Tabernacle. Dr. Kendall gave a ringing message of gospel truth which still rings among those mountains. The following years have made it plain that the word of the Lord runs swiftly. Christianity was first introduced into Utah by the Rev. Norman McLeod and Dr. John King Robinson, respectively chaplain and surgeon in General Connor's army at Fort Douglas. They opened in Salt Lake City preaching service and a Sunday school. In Oc- tober, 1866, during the absence of Mr. McLeod, Dr. Robinson was assassinated and Mr. McLeod, being warned by threatening letters, did not return. The work consequently came to an abrupt end. iii THE SOUL OF AMERICA In the summer of 1867 two young Episcopal clergy- men, Messrs. Foote and Haskins, began services in Salt Lake City. Two years later the Rev. Melancthon Hughes and the Rev. Sheldon Jackson established a Presbyterian Church at Corinne, a Gentile town on the northern shore of the great Salt Lake. Though Co- rinne was a non-Mormon town, the opposition directed from Salt Lake City strove to kill the work. Encour- aged by the Home Board Mr. Jackson, a young mis- sionary, decided on a bold step. He would meet the enemy at headquarters. He found in the Rev. Josiah Welch a young man of heroic mould who, in 1 871, began services in the Mormon capital. Brigham Young had closed against him every hall. But Welch hired a hay loft over a livery stable and went to work. On November twelfth, 1871, the First Presbyterian Church was organized consisting of eleven members. Salt Lake Collegiate Institute. Early in the his- tory of Mr. Welch's work it became apparent that something must be done for the education of the chil- dren of Salt Lake City. Mormon schools were not only inefficient, they were a subtle propaganda for spreading the Mormon doctrine. He induced Mr. John M. Coyner and his wife and daughter, who were teaching at Fort Lapwai, Idaho, to come to Salt Lake City and undertake the training of the children of the congregation. This school was opened in the base- ment of the church April twelfth. This was the begin- ning of Salt Lake Collegiate Institute. It enrolled sixty-three pupils in the first year and in two years grew to an attendance of one hundred sixty-five. After ten years of service Mr. Coyner retired and Dr. J. T. Millspaugh carried on a growing work until FROM THE MISSISSIPPI TO THE YUKON 113 1890. He was then elected Superintendent of Public Instruction in Salt Lake City. Thus the Christian schools of the Woman's Executive Committee pre- pared the way for a system of public schools in Utah. In 189 1 Professor R. J. Caskey, who had been con- nected with the school for four years, became the principal and so continued until 1904. The Institute grew rapidly during all these years and finally became a part of Westminster College, a completed educa- tional plant of which the state and our Church may justly be proud. Mt. Pleasant. The Presbytery of Utah was organ- ized in 1874. It consisted of only three ministers and one elder. With the reluctant consent of the presby- tery the Rev. Duncan J. McMillan, who had gone to Utah in search of health, went to Mt. Pleasant in San Pete County, more than one hundred miles south of Salt Lake City, to open missionary work. On Sunday, March seventh, by invitation of the Mormon Bishop, he addressed the Mormon Sunday school and in the evening preached to a large congregation in the Mor- mon Tabernacle. In the evening he held a conference with a group of the Apostate Mormons in an unfin- ished dance hall which they had erected for social pur- poses. In that town Brigham Young had been hailed as "King Brigham." This was more than some Mormons could stand, so the young preacher found quite a number of people disposed at least to consider the message he was bringing. He succeeded in winning these newly made friends to his view. Accordingly they gave him the property, subject to a building debt of a thousand dollars which he was to assume. He 8 114 THE SOUI. OF AMERICA was to complete and furnish the building, maintain a school for at least five years, and credit the sharehold- ers, on the tuition of their sons and daughters, with the amounts of their investments severally on the property. Announcement was made that a school would be opened on Monday, March twenty-second, provided a sufficient number of pupils were pledged. Before the date forty-four pupils were enrolled, but the promise of the temporary use of a few benches from an unused hall was revoked and the opening of the school had to be postponed until seats could be pro- vided. The young preacher bought rough lumber, carried it on his shoulder from the lumber yard about two blocks away, and with a few tools and nails he constructed the furniture in time to open the school on April nineteenth. The school soon reached an attend- ance of a hundred and fifty pupils. Later it grew to academic proportions and became known as the "Wa- satch Academy," an institution that is well equipped in every way and generously maintained by the Woman's Board. In this connection it is proper to state the relation of the work in Utah to the organization of the Woman's Executive Commitee. Woman's Executive Committee. At the third meeting of presbytery, which was held in Ogden, March 1877, Dr. Jackson, coming all the way from Denver to insure a quorum, an overture was prepared and sent up to the General Asembly asking that the Board of Home Missions be authorized and empowered to undertake the support and supervision of the schools established and to be established among the Mormons. Dr. Jackson took a copy of the over- FROM THE MISSISSIPPI TO THE YUKON 115 ture and secured its adoption by the Presbytery of Colorado. The General Assembly acceded to these re- quests and the outcome was the creation of the Woman's Executive Committee which was organized in the Bible House, New York City, in 1878. Thus were established forty-two mission schools, through which, during the ten years, it was estimated that seventy-five thousand young people had passed under the instruction of Christian teachers. Out of these schools had grown twelve churches and the feeble presbytery had become a synod, embracing two great territories. Five years later a new order of things had come about and a new era had dawned, which brought statehood to Utah. The names and achievements of the noble army of missionaries, ministers and teachers, who wrought in this field in these ten years, are worthy to be written in the annals of the Board of Home Missions and upon the records of the Presbyterian Church. Nev^^ Stations. From 1874 the work developed in many directions. Southward to St. George fourteen stations were opened. At Ephraim and Manti the Rev. George W. Martin was assigned in 1879. To that field he gave forty years of most devoted life, even to his death in 1919. South of Salt Lake City are Springville, Spanish Fork and Payson. Here the valiant soldier of the Cross, the Rev. W. Leonard, wrought from 1877 till his death in 1885. North of Salt Lake is Ogden, the second city in the state. Missionary work began there in 1878. The Rev. George W. Gallagher was the first pastor. He was followed, in 1880, by the Rev. James F. Knowles, ii6 THE SOUL OF AMERICA and he, in 1885, by the Rev. Josiah McClain, whose name should always be mentioned in connection with successful work in Utah. He made headway in the face of bitter opposition. The domination of the priesthood in the civil and educational life of the city had become so intolerable that the non-Mormon ele- ment, roused to action, demanded and secured a share in the management of the town. In this work the four mission churches — ^the Presbyterian, Methodist, Bap- tist and Congregational churches — had a deciding share. The work now extended north through the Cache Valley. Brigham, a town so thoroughly Mor- mon that it took the name of the Apostle, boasted that no one non-Mormon should ever find a home there. But the Rev. S, L. Gillespie from Corinne did. The teamsters who brought his goods to town were disci- plined for their crime. But by the generous personal help of Dr. Kendall property was secured and the mis- sion established. The bishop, unable to prevent the purchase of the property, tried the efifect of an anath- ema. He cursed the house, the well, the garden and all the premises of the missionary. But, as Dr. Wish- ard says, the curse proved to be a great fertilizer. The yield of vegetables that year was unusually large. Very soon other stations were opened In the Cache Valley. In 1878 Mr. Calvin M. Parks, a Bible school teacher in Washington, was summoned by Sheldon Jackson to go to this beautiful valley to open it to the gospel. He began In Logan and then In swift evangel- Ism pushed up the valley to Mlllvllle, Hyrum, Wells- vllle and Mendon. These missions have had various experiences, but all are parts of the gospel move- ment that Is bound to liberate Utah from the Mormon FROM THE MISSISSIPPI TO THE YUKON 117 curse. In most of these places the school has been planted beside the Church. In some places it has been the persistent Christian force after circumstances had made necessary the closing of the church. Rev. Samuel E. Wishard, D.D. The autumn of 1886 marks an important date in the further progress of the work. It was then that the Home Board called the Rev. Samuel E. Wishard from Kentucky to become, first, a general missionary, and in 1891 Synodical Mis- sionary of Utah. He began by holding evangelistic meetings, first in Salt Lake City and then swiftly in many of the new and struggling mission stations, — Ogden, Brigham and Logan in the northern part of the state, and then Mt. Pleasant, St. George and other points on the southern border attested the power of the gospel. For nearly twenty years this devoted leader with voice and pen gave himself to the heroic task of letting the light of God's truth in on the Cimmerian gloom that had darkened that beautiful land. On a review of his long service he has permitted himself to say : "The truth of the gospel is making its way down through the fissures of this slowly opening system. In God's good time it will reach the lowest strata of this obdurate organization and we or our successors will see such a turning to God as will reward His Church for all her toil and sacrifice." A1.ASKA We come now to the missionary story of the Ter- ritory which equals in size one-quarter of the entire nation. When Seward was near his end he was asked what was his most memorable achievement. He ii8 THE SOUL OF AMERICA said, "The purchase of Alaska, but it will take the people a generation to find it out." Before the genera- tion had passed the people who had jeered at the pur- chase had found out that here was a veritable treasure house for the United States. Its coast line exactly measures the circumference of the globe. It was purchased for a little over seven million dollars. It has already paid a great many times that price in the output of its various treasures, amounting in all, it is estimated, to about seven hundred fifty million dol- lars. Its development has just begun. Its call as a missionary field was not the number of its people, but their desperate condition. First Missionaries. The first missionary touch on Alaska came to Fort Wrangell in the persons of some converts, the result of a Wesleyan Methodist mission near Fort Simpson in British Columbia. They came to Wrangell as workmen in search of employment. But they came as Christians. One of their number, Philip McKay, served as evangelist and teacher. He opened a school which had an attendance of ninety during the winter, ^s a result of that winter's work forty of the natives gave up their heathenism and pub- licly professed their faith in Christ. Dr. A. L. Lindsley. A visitor there, Mr. John C. Mallory, a temporary resident of Portland, was so impressed with the wonderful work of grace he had witnessed that he told the story to his pastor. Dr. A. Iv. Lindsley, of the First Presbyterian Church of Port- land. A soldier (Mr. Brown) connected with the post of Fort Wrangell (himself not a professing Christian) vvas also so deeply moved by the transformation of FROM THE MISSISSIPPI TO THE YUKON 119 lives at Wrangell that he wrote a touching letter of appeal for the spiritual help and guidance of the natives to General O. O. Howard, Commander of the District. He referred the letter to Dr. Lindsley. These double appeals moved Dr. Lindsley to write to the Board of Foreign Missions urging that a mission- ary be at once sent to Alaska. Lack of funds pre- vented a favorable response. Dr. Sheldon Jackson. At the meeting of the Gen- eral Assembly in 1877 the letter from Mr. Brown was put into the hands of Sheldon Jackson. Moved by its appeal he published it broadcast. He also sent it to the Board of Home Missions, which just then was considering the sending of Dr. Jackson on an exploring tour to the great West. The Board commissioned him for this tour. Reaching Portland he found Dr. Lindsley already interested in a missionary to Alaska. Providentially, Mrs. A. R. MacFarland, a woman of consecration and courage and of extended service among Nez Perces and other Indians, appeared in Portland and reported herself ready to undertake the perilous mission to Alaska. The door was opening. Dr. Lindsley said: "If you will go my church will send, equip and maintain you." The First Teacher. Sheldon Jackson's enthusiasm led him to interpret his commission to the "Great West" as including Alaska, and he accompanied Mrs. MacFarland to Fort Wrangell. The natives turned over to them the school they had started among them- selves, and then Dr. Jackson, leaving the heroic mis- sionary alone in that wilderness — the only Christian white woman in the territory — returned to the States 120 THE SOUL OF AMERICA to fire Presbyterians for missions to Alaska. The first reaction he received was criticism. **What" was the cry that assailed him, "did you leave Mrs. McFar- land up there alone among all those heathen?" "Yes," was the reply, "I did. She has neither books nor schoolhouse nor money nor friends, only a few converted but uninstructed Indians and a great many heathen about her. Now, what will you do for her?" The response was instantaneous and enthusiastic. In two years he raised over twelve thousand dollars for the mission. The regeneration of Alaska had begun. Rev. William Duncan. Grateful mention must at this point be made of another pioneer in Alaska mis- ions — ^the Rev. William Duncan. He too came from British Columbia. After a fruitful mission at Fort Simpson he transferred his Christian band to Metla- katla and there established a mission which so trans- formed the natives from nomadic heathens to indus- trious, self-supporting Christians that his name de- serves mention with that of Sheldon Jackson as a founder of Christian work in the great Territory. Rev. John G. Brady. Thus the work opened. New men were now needed. Jackson soon found them. In New York he found the Rev. John G. Brady and in the Western Theological Seminary a young student, Mr. S. Hall Young, both eager for a chance at the remote and difficult field. Brady went to Sitka, capital of the Territory, and began the work which In evan- gelistic and educational results has been remarkable. Education was at the first considered by the Alaskan missionaries. Mrs. A. R. MacFarland's school at Wrangell was the earliest. That was soon followed by FROM THE MISSISSIPPI TO THE YUKON 121 a school at Sitka, opened by Mr. Brady, and for which he secured a competent and devoted teacher in Miss F. E. Kellogg. The attendance grew rapidly. By stern necessity it became an industrial school. The boys were set to work at putting up the necessary school buildings. The girls were taught to make their own clothes and care for their homes. This early example of industrial education has largely guided the subse- quent school work of the Territory. In time the Sitka School added other features as needed. Under guid- ance of the Woman's Board, which took charge of it almost from the first, it has built a steam laundry, boys' and girls' hospital wards, buildings for various industries, library and museum, besides a number of model cottages for students' homes. In 1912 the series of attractive buildings was completed and its name changed to "The Sheldon Jackson School." It stands to-day as a model missionary institute ministering to all the needs of students — intellectual, social, industrial and spiritual. Other community service of the Woman's Board in Alaska is represented by two small hospitals on the west coast of Prince of Wales Island, — one at Kla- wock, where the National Bureau of Education trans- ferred all medical work to the W^oman's Board, and the other at Hydaburg, the work similarly transferred by the Bureau of Education. In each place the natives supply the building. In 1879 Dr. Henry Kendall, Secretary of the Home Board, with Sheldon Jackson and Dr. Lindsley, as the representative of the Presbytery of Oregon, went to Wrangell with Hall Young, who had had nearly a year of service there, and organized the first Protestant 122 THE SOUL OF AMERICA Church in Alaska. This was the beginning of a great missionary movement which has made the Presby- terian Church the pioneer and leader of mission work in the Territory. Rev. S. Hall Young. Sheldon Jackson returned to the States to raise funds and seek additional men for the enterprise. Hall Young remained to explore. John Muir, the famous traveler, visited Alaska at that time, fell in with Mr. Young and together they visited a dozen tribes in that southeastern part of the Terri- tory, finding everywhere destitution, disease, sin and wretchedness. The heart of the missionary was deeply moved, and in a short time thrilling appeals for help besieged the Board of Home Missions. The next year he visited the towns of the Hydahs and the Thlingets, finding everywhere appalling moral conditions and inciting him to renewed efforts to arouse the Church to her missionary obligation. Sheldon Jackson — sometimes in Alaska, sometimes in the States — continued to be the inspiring and guid- ing genius of the romantic adventure — to give to the natives a knowledge of the gospel, to the children the advantage of schools and to the sick the comforts of the hospital. The Reindeer. On his visit to the Territory in 1890 he found the sources of food supply so rapidly failing that he perceived unless help could come from the outside starvation would soon confront the na- tives. He conceived the idea of securing food by bringing reindeer over from Siberia. Congress having failed to supply funds, Jackson appealed to the public for help sufficient to prove his plan to be practicable, ^ith two thousand one hundred forty-five dollars thus \.^ ' f Wa 1 • . m m IK SK. JBtfcg £ll -:,-: 1. i .."--fej "^HH^^^^^B^lHHiHIi^ Vi ^. ! -^'^PBI^^p^^^?^^^--. ::;--. ^^..-^S«|i| /.^J^^ ^^^^^^^^^^I^PPiHI Sheldon Jackson School, Sitka. Alaska. FROM THE MISSISSIPPI TO THE YUKON 123 secured he purchased goods suitable for barter, hur- ried over to Siberia, secured sixteen head of deer and landed them safely on the western coast. He had a fine vision of that to which a few reindeer might come. He saw in them the physical salvation of the natives. Under the snows they would dig out the moss on which they could live ; their meat would be food for starving Alaska and their skins would be clothing. Dr. Jackson's vision has come to pass. In 1893 Congress, at last convinced that the mission- ary had found a solution of the food problem for Alaska, voted an appropriation of six thousand dol- lars for the purchase of additional deer. Other herds were from time to time brought over until 1903, when Russia forbade their further exportation. But the herds already secured continually increased, until now they are estimated to number approximately one hun- dred fifty thousand. From the year 1879 the missionary progress in Alaska was rapid. In 1884 a church was organized at Sitka, forty natives and five white members being enrolled. The same year Mrs. MacFarland's home for girls was united with the Industrial and Training School in the capital. Hoonah, with a tribe numbering about one thou- sand, in 1881 began to enjoy missionary service and the privileges of a school. Haines, Juneau, Saxman, Skagway and many small stations along the shores and islands of Southeastern Alaska were opened, in many places the school stand- ing beside the church. Comity. A number of denominations had now entered the Territory and it was evident to Dr. Jack- 124 'THE SOUL OF AMERICA son that to prevent overlapping, and so the waste of missionary effort, there should be mutual cooperation between the various Mission Boards. To secure this he suggested a conference on cooperation. It met in New York in 1883, with the result that a territorial division of responsibility was agreed upon. The southeastern part of the Territory was assigned as the special responsibility of the Presbyterians. To the Episcopalians was given the Valley of the Yukon; Kodiak, with Cook's Inlet, was given to the Baptists, while to the Methodists were assigned the Aleutian and Shumagin Islands; to the Congregationalists was given Cape Prince of Wales, and to the Moravians the valleys of the Kuskokwim and the Nushagak. This comity of agreement has been practically observed during all these years. The Gold Rush. In 1896 the discovery of gold in the interior determined a great rush of prospectors and miners to undertake the perils and hardships of the severe climate and the lack of home comforts. In multitudes they climbed the Chilcoot Pass and pressed down the Yukon, — to find in many cases dis- enchantment and failure, in all cases suffering, priva- tions and homesickness. It was the home missionary's chance. In 1899 and 1900 a number of new missionaries en- tered the service. Speedily stations were opened from Dawson to Nome, and many a weary and discouraged, or prosperous and reckless, heart found help and strength to meet temptations and to endure hardships. Not much fruit appeared in established Christian in- stitutions. The gospel was flung at a feverish proces- sion. But enough has been told to make us sure that FROM THE MISSISSIPPI TO THE YUKON 125 eternity will reveal unexpected harvest from that heroic seed-sowing. Statistics. The progress which the Board of Home Missions of the Presbyterian Church has thus far made is indicated as follows : There are two presbyteries — the Presbytery of Alaska, organized in 1883, the Presbytery of Yukon, organized in 1899. There are twenty churches in the two presbyteries with membership of one thousand six hundred twenty- two. There are sixty-two unorganized missions. There are twenty-five Sunday schools, with a mem- bership of one thousand nine hundred forty-three. There is a total of fifty-eight missionary workers. There is no space to name the men who, as good sol- diers of the King, enforced the lines in that far off battle for righteousness. The name of the Rev, S. Hall Young, D.D., has already been recorded. Always in the front rank of every advance for a generation he has sounded the gospel in the Alaskan wilderness. He has *'mushed" through untrodden forests, camped be- side unmeasured streams, climbed over passes and mountains, seeking the lost, encouraging the discour- aged, nursing the sick, — always teaching and preach- ing, and wherever practicable building houses of wor- ship and organizing churches. The stations that have been scenes of good work may be named as follows : In addition to the points already named and long occupied in Southeastern Alaska, missions have more recently been opened on the southern coast at Cordova, Anchorage and Matanuska. In the interior, since 126 THE SOUL OF AMERICA 1899, at Eagle, Rampart, Fairbanks, Nenana, Ruby and Iditarod, and on the northwestern coast at Nome, Teller, Council and Barrow, the latter being the far- thest north mission station of the Presbyterian Church, with the largest church membership in that Presbytery of Yukon and next to Sitka the largest in the Territory. The Future. Of the future of Alaska, as a Terri- tory and as a mission field, there can be no doubt. Its mountains are loaded with copper, gold, coal, marble and tin; its streams and shores teem with fish; its interior regions have large agricultural possibilities. Railroads are being built, commercial lines established, good government and educational advantages are being secured. A hardy population like that which has en- riched Scandinavia will soon be there to put that bountiful nature under tribute to their enterprise and thrift. And the Church of Christ must keep pace with that development. The Presbyterian Church, the missionary pioneer of Alaska, must continue to lead. At this writing a great forward step in Christian cooperation is in process in regard to Alaska. Under inspiration of the Home Missions Council an organi- zation has been effected of the "Associated Evangel- ical Church of Alaska." It is composed of all mission- ary organizations doing work in that Territory. It plans for annual meetings to consider the work in its entirety, to avoid competition and to allocate responsi- bility, both as to territory and kinds of work. It will make recommendations concerning the opening of new work and the planting of churches and generally plan for greater efficiency and a closer spirit of fellowship. The progress of this new step in cooperative effort will be watched with keenest interest. FROM THE MISSISSIPPI TO THE YUKON 127 Se:i,f-Supporting Synods. The attitude and service of the Board of Home Mis- sions in self-supporting synods demand at least a few- paragraphs in this history. In 1870, Dr. James Mc- Cosh, President of Princeton College, pressed upon the General Assembly the duty of a more adequate support of the feebler churches in the eastern states. In 1871 the Assembly adopted a plan of sustentation. It was soon recognized that the end desired was one of the functions of the Home Board. The Sustentation Scheme, therefore, in 1874 was passed over to the Board. Two collections were ordered — one for home missions proper, and the other for sustentation. The difficulty of keeping alive an interest in two agencies so close akin soon became manifest. In 1882 to relieve the situation the Home Board proposed the plan of synodical self-support. Suggestion from the Board. "The Board is of the opinion that the (Sustentation) Scheme could be made to meet all the expectations of its most sanguine friends if the eastern synods should see fit to adopt it for supplying their waning churches. The West is open- ing up so rapidly, and the demands made by its desti- tute fields on our treasury are so great, that it would be well for the large and wealthy Synods of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Ohio, and, perhaps, Michigan, Indiana and Illinois to undertake the sup- port of their own weak churches by special contribu- tions, called sustentation contributions." The suggestion was approved by the General Asv sembly and commended to the favorable consideration of the synods. 128 THE SOUL OF AMERICA Kentucky was the first synod to respond to the sug- gestion, though its plan did not contemplate and has not yet achieved entire self-support. In 1883 it en- tered on its project of supplementing by special gifts the amount received from the Home Board for special work within its bounds. The synods named in the action of the Assembly did not move so promptly. The new situation brought about by immigration and by industrial conditions forced itself on the attention of these synods. It was no longer the question of merely aiding feeble churches, which was what promoters of sustentation had in view. New lines of work not before contem- plated must now be undertaken. More and more it was seen that synodical missions and the work of the Home Board were practically identical. Would they not conflict? If synodical self-support succeeded, would it not be at some serious cost to the mother Board ? These and similar considerations gave pause. Something must be done. Loyalty to the Board must, of course, be maintained. Synodical independence must be had on a basis consistent with that loyalty. In 1886 the Synod of New Jersey decided on the experi- ment. Pennsylvania, Baltimore and New York soon followed, respectively in 1888, 1890 and 1897. One of the first of the states of the Central West to engage in this plan was Indiana in 1890, soon followed by Illi- nois in 1895. A little later (in 1898) Ohio came into line. These and the other synods that followed, viz: Michigan — 1901, Wisconsin — 1903, Iowa — 1904, Kan- sas — 1908, took up the new plan not on any com- mon program but each according to its circumstances FROM THE MISSISSIPPI TO THE YUKON 129 and ability. Thus, New Jersey's scheme provided, as a primary obligation, the duty of every church to sup- port the mother Board by at least one collection for it every year. There should also be one collection for synodical home missions. Some of the synods refused to give up connection with the Home Board at once, but would attain self- support by gradual steps. The four Synods which were an exception to this program were New Jersey, Indiana, Illinois and Ohio. These from the first paid their own way entirely, though doing something more or less for the Home Board. The strong Synods of New York and Pennsylvania, though in different ways maintaining some direct re- lation to the Board, pay far more to its treasury than they have drawn out of it. The Synod of Pennsylva- nia, while maintaining absolute independence to the extent at one time of declining to the Home Board direct access to its churches, has, of course, been a heavy contributor to the Board in addition to carrying on an ever increasing work in the immigrant and in- dustrial communities of the Keystone State. General Principles. While every synod has thus followed the line of its own necessities and oppor- tunities, all united in certain general principles which have guided their work. They may be tersely put as follows : First. These synods have felt that the local de- mands forced by new conditions were more than they could reasonably expect the Board of Missions to as- sume. While new fields were pressing on the Board, as well as on the synod, it seemed only reasonable that 9 130 THE SOUL OF AMERICA the synods should strive at once to relieve the Board and to overtake their new obligations. Second. There was a common conviction that many of those obligations were of a kind that could better be met by close observation and supervision. The near-at-hand survey and administration would, for certain kinds of service, be more effective than that at a greater distance. The appeal to meet the new duties would come with more force if the need were under the very shadow of the Church. Thus, the industrial problems, getting so acute as to threaten the stability of whole communities in all their interests — problems by which every church member would be confronted in his daily walks along the streets, would have a mightier pull on Christian sympathies, service and gifts, than those which could be visualized and which would be known of only by the hearing of the ear. Third. The synods have not allowed any local pressure to break their sense of responsibility for the national service. If at first the tendency was to a nar- rower vision and to undue emphasis on self-care, that tendency has been overcome. Self-support has been a stairway to the wider outlook. Just as home mis- sions, rightly stressed, leads to a more definite interest in the lands of the world, so synodical self-support links the local to the larger missionary enterprise. Effects. The growth of the interest in self-support by the eleven synods now operating on that plan indi- cates the strong hold it has on those who have en- tered upon it. The assumption of independence, while in a few instances under the pressure of local need it worked as a detriment to the national interests, in the long run has developed a keener sense of responsibil- FROM THE MISSISSIPPI TO THE YUKON 131 ity to the field that was nearest not only, but a gradu- ally broadening vision of the larger work and an in- creasing response to its claims. Administration It is proper here to interrupt the story on the field to note some important changes of administration. In September, 1881, Dr. Dickson, worn out by exhaust- ing labors, passed to his reward, and was succeeded by Dr. William C. Roberts, President of Lake Foregt University. In 1886 he resigned to resume his w^ork in the University. Dr. William Irwin succeeded him in 1887. In 1890 Dr. Duncan J. McMillan was added to the staff. Dr. Kendall, full of years and honors, died September ninth, 1892. In 1892 Dr. Roberts, who had been recalled from the Presidency of Lake Forest University, again became Secretary and with him were associated Dr. Irwin and Dr. McMillan. Dr. Irwin resigned in 1892. In 1898 the Board decided on a radical departure. Convinced that coordinate secretaries were less effec- tive than a single Secretary, who should be held re- sponsible for the entire administration, the Board, with high appreciation of the services of Dr. Roberts and Dr. MacMillan, accepted their resignations and in their place elected the Rev. Charles L. Thompson, D.D., pastor of the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church of New York City, who for ten years had been a member of the Board. He was given general execu- tive charge, with such assistants as he might find nec- essary. He entered upon the office March first, 1898. He presently chose as Assistant Secretary the Rev. John 132 THE SOUL OF AMERICA Dixon, D.D., pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Trenton, New Jersey. Dr. Dixon entered on his office in September. In 1902, the demands of the work yet increasing, Mr. John Willis Baer, General Secretary of the Young People's Society of Christian Endeavor, was added to the staff. On his resignation in 1906 Mr. Joseph Ernest McAfee of Park College succeeded to his office. In 1907 the Rev. Baxter P. Fullerton, D.D., was chosen Field Secretary, with headquarters at St. Louis, and with reference to the work in the district which had been the special field of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, which had united with the parent body in 1906. In 1908 the enlarging work in the West seeming to require closer supervision the Board, on request of the General As- sembly, elected four field secretaries. For the District of the Southwest Dr. Fullerton, for the Northwest the Rev. Robert N. Adams, D.D., for the Rocky Mountain District the Rev. Robert M. Donaldson, D.D., and for the Pacific Coast the Rev. William S. Holt, D.D. In 1910 Dr. Adams, after a great career, resigned and the Rev. William H. Kearns, D.D., was elected to succeed him. These Field Secretaries gave valiant service until the reorganization of the Board in 1914. Mr. Harvey C. Olin was the efficient Treasurer of the Board from 1897 until his death in 19 18. In 1906 the two Assistant Secretaries became "Associate." The executives thus constituted continued unchanged dur- ing the fruitful first years of the twentieth century, ending by the resignation of Dr. Thompson in 1914. The Rev. John Hall, D.D., was President of the Board from 1881 to 1898. On his death the Rev. D. Stuart Dodge, D.D., was chosen President and served until ill FROM THE MISSISSIPPI TO THE YUKON 133 health compelled his resignation in 1914. The Rev. Wilton Merle-Smith, D.D., was then called to the position. Reorganization. Another reorganization followed in 191 5. The Board reverted to the plan of coordinate Secretaries and Dr. B. P. FuUerton of St. Louis was added to the staff. This plan, however, continued only until 191 7, when the Assembly and the Board agreed to resume the plan of a single secretary with such ad- ditional helpers as might be required. To this office the Rev. John A. Marquis, D.D., President of Coe College in Iowa, was called. He entered on his work in the autumn, Dr. Dixon and Mr. McAfee remaining as Associates. In the spring of 1918 they resigned and Dr. Fullerton remained the only Associate. In 1919 the Rev. John McDowell, D.D., pastor of the Brown Memorial Church of Baltimore, Maryland, and the Rev. William R. King, D.D., pastor of the First Pres- byterian Church of St. Louis, Missouri, were elected Secretaries. A list of the officers of both Boards from the beginning of their organizations will be found in an appendix. VII IMMIGRATION IMMIGRATION as a question and a problem is of recent date. It is peculiar now in volume and varieties. The missionary work sketched in the earlier chapters of this book may be said to have been work by immigrants for immigrants. All the people except the Indians came from other lands, were here brought into relations to one another and in a small way constituted a problem. For example, the rela- tions of Dutch and English on Manhattan were at times so strained as to resemble an immigration prob- lem. Inheritors of a common faith, they were at times inclined to persecute one another. Gradually the different colonies localized in con- genial groups, or, if made up of racial mixtures, learned to accommodate themselves to each other. The Pilgrims learned to tolerate Puritans, the Dutch and English fraternized and Scotch-Irish and Ger- mans united to make stronger communities. Because they were at last of the one common reformation stock a unified nation resulted. Incoming Foreigners. With the widening of the basis of immigration, conditions changed and gradu- ally there came about in its full size what we now call the "Immigration Problem." Before the nineteenth century there was practically no immigration as we now use the term. Beginning early in that century 134 IMMIGRATION 135 there was, however, a steady and soon a very rapid rise in the number of immigrants. Before 1820 no accurate census was kept, but the estimated incoming of foreigners from 1776 to 1820 was only two hundred and fifty thousand. The following table will illus- trate the rapid increase: 1821-1830 143439 1831-1840 599.125 1841-1850 1,713.251 1851-1860 2,598,214 1861-1870 2,314,824 1871-1880 2,812,191 1881-1890 5,246,613 1891-1900 3,687,564 1901-1910 8,795,386 It thus appears that the decade from 1881 to 1890 marks the beginning of the high tide. The variations from year to year and decade to decade are determined by two factors, — favorable economic conditions in our own country, tempting people to seek the larger op- portunities appearing here, and the pressure of hard times or oppressive civic conditions in the various lands whence the immigrants come. The same factors determine in large measure the ratio of those who re- turned to their own countries; but by no means wholly. In five years, ending June, 1912, the immi- gration from twelve races was 4,292,985. Of these 1,452,239 returned, leaving us a net gain in population of 2,848,746. Speaking roughly, about one-third of those who came went back. But the ranking order by races varied widely. Some go back readily. Others come to stay. 136 THE SOUL OF AMERICA Net Results. The Italians take first rank in the proportion of those returning. More than half of the immigration of 901,000 returned within the five year period. The Poles come next in order. Of the 430,- 62y who came, almost one-third went back. So also the Magyars. Of the 123,979 ^^^ came, almost one- fourth were added to our population. With the He- brews, the Scotch and the Irish a different story is told. Of 417,000 Hebrews who entered our ports in five years, less than one-twelfth departed. Of the 180,162 Irish almost one-thirteenth departed. The Scotch have the best record. Of the 103,990 who came, almost one-ninth returned. These figures are suggestive. They lessen somewhat the pressure of the immigration problem. The size of that problem can be measured only by net results. Thus, when we say in those years 1,456,- 099 came from southeastern Europe, from populations whose religious ideals are farther from our own, the stern fact is very much relieved when we add that the permanent accession to our population from those sources was considerably less than half that number. When again we say that, of the 284,152 people who came to us from the British Isles only 26,103 returned, we have a further encouraging sign. Less Desirables. But the general fact remains that the great bulk of our permanent immigrants during the past few decades have come to us from those ele- ments of population which are considered the less de- sirable. Not only are the people of eastern and south- eastern Europe farther removed from our American ideals, but they are in many cases on a lower level. The tendency comes from the inheritance they bring IMMIGRATION 137 with them. Te be quite fair, however, to them and to all our immigrants some blame must also be conceded to their surroundings in their new homes. Not infre- quently unsanitary living conditions, temptations of the saloon and brothel, and other deterrent factors have much to do with pulling down these people who, ignorant and unfortified by inherited high principles, readily fall into the evil ways alluringly opened before them. Coal Mining Region. The Rev. William Payne Shriver, D.D., Superintendent of City and Immigrant Work, thus quotes the situation in a county in the coal mines of Pennsylvania as it appeared a few years ago : *'Its foreign born population numbers forty-eight thousand ; it has seventeen distilleries, which made in a year fifty thousand barrels of whiskey ; it has nine breweries, which brewed one hundred thirty thousand barrels of beer. At the long bars of the saloons, which line the main street of its county-seat, you may count from a hundred to a hundred and thirty men at a time. In the first six months of the year 19 12 there were seven hundred commitments to the county jail. More than half could neither read nor write. More than half were foreigners. When a patriotic citizen in the hard coal region asked Dr. Steiner, 'What will these foreigners do to America when they get the power?' he answered, 'They will help save it, or they will aid you in destroying it. It is very much in your own power whether they shall be leaven or dynamite.' " Undoubtedly we increase the size of our immigra- tion problem by our own acts. We bring them here from surroundings that spell moral weakness and we introduce them to social and industrial conditions 138 THE SOULv OF AMERICA which only high moral standards could enable people to stand. For example, in Chicago, in a typical work- ing people's ward, to a population of seventy thousand there are three hundred and four saloons, one saloon to every two hundred and thirty-one persons. And yet we wonder that the criminal courts are crowded. Duty of Government. Our welcome to foreigners is attended with perils. The practical question emerges, "How shall they be met ?" It is this question to which our people are giving instant and most seri- ous attention. While we realize that immigration has made us the people we are, there is a sense of the fact that unless properly restrained or guided it yet may make us what we would not be. Two institutions are primarily concerned. One is the Government. Con- gress is so alive to the situation that at almost every session the question is up for discussion. That dis- cussion takes two forms. One is the open door policy, which until recently has ruled in an almost unre- stricted way. The other is the policy of restriction, more or less severe. This varies from year to year, but as the perils from accessions to our population in- crease, the tendency to a careful and even severe restriction increases likewise. We place a greater number of guards at our ports of entry, guarding against such elements as would bring disease, sub- normal inheritance and liability to crime. The Government's problem is augmented each year by our closer relations with the Orient and the perils to be encountered, whichever way our legislation may tend. The policy of exclusion which would firmly bar the doors against all aliens from the Orient is now seen to be fraught with international dangers. The IMMIGRATION 139 policy of the open door holds domestic perils. It is not the province of this book to do more than thus to hint at the difficulties that beset our law-makers in their endeavor to view and to act upon this question in the way that will be in harmony with our historic attitude and at the same time that will protect our land from evils arising out of new conditions. Church's Responsibility. Immigration being thus accepted on such terms as shall be decided by the Gov- ernment, which has the first responsibility, the question then comes to the Church of Christ. What is her re- sponsibility and how shall she meet it? Her responsi- bility is twofold : First, as a part of the body politic it is her duty to aid in such ways as will make safe and effective the national policy. If there is danger of imported law- lessness, if ignorance and superstition are in the way of good citizenship, if unwholesome social customs have been imported, or bad industrial conditions pre- vail, it is the duty of the Church intelligently and fully to recognize these facts and devise ways to meet them. The second responsibility of the Church is in the interest of the individual foreigners and of the King- dom of Christ represented in the family and in the community. Her duty is evangelistic and educational. The gospel in its purity and simplicity will come with a pleasant surprise to the large body of our aliens. They had never heard it before. If given with sym- pathy and love it will often meet a ready and thank- ful acceptance. Immigration Fellowship. The success of evangel- ism depends in large measure on knowledge of the people and appreciation of their inheritance and cir- 140 THE SOUIv OF AMERICA cumstances, including a working knowledge of their language. The Board of Home Missions, through its Immigration Department, was the first national church agency to meet these requirements. It did this by- offering a series of Immigration Fellowships to recent graduates of theological seminaries. These Fellow- ships imply residence and study abroad at the sources of immigration for a period of eighteen months or more. In the first two years of this movement, out of seven men appointed, four were honor graduates of their respective seminaries. "These men have gained a rich background for their work in this country — a working knowledge of the language and above all else a passionate and con- tagious enthusiasm for their ministry. They will serve not alone in interpreting the best ideals of Amer- ican Christian life to the immigrant but in interpret- ing back again to the Church the needs and aspirations of our new Americans." Important as is this service of evangelism and rich as have already been its fruits, it cannot too often be said that the best results will come where the foreigner has been brought into close relations with Christian communities by the sympathetic attitude and helpful personal ministry of the Christian people among whom his lot is cast. It is not wholly a question of preaching and hearing the gospel. It is in the last analysis the commendation of the gospel of Christ by the lives of His followers. Not many men can become fitted to be successful preachers to immigrants, but all Chris- tian men and women can be to them messengers of life by the tone and temper of their own example and min- istry as neighbors. IMMIGRATION 141 Various Agencies. This leads to the remark that the two responsibiHties to which we have alluded over- lap and mingle. The right kind of Christian living will not be content with a merely personal ministry. It will illustrate that ministry by bringing Americans and foreigners together in various agencies and societies. It will express its influence in organizations that are the fruit of Christianity and the evidence of its genu- ineness. Christian social settlements will naturally come into being. These will seek to minister to every need of the community — personal, social, intellectual, and moral. Then will come clubs for boys and girls, kindergartens for little children, civic societies for a study for American citizenship, and all kindred or- ganizations. Around the Church will center every in- fluence that will make men and women better Chris- tians and better fitted to take up the various respon- sibilities of American citizens. An illuminating illus- tration of what may thus be accomplished is to be found in The Labor Temple in New York, described in the chapter on **City Missions." Largely out of the stimulus of the Labor Temple has grown the Board's Department of Immigration. It is thoroughly equipped for surveys and for actual service of the immigrants along various lines. Either by its own initiative or aiding the enterprises of synods it has touched the foreigners of eleven different lan- guages, commissioned during the year 1917-1918 one hundred three ministers, lay workers and visitors, has organized or aided one hundred fifteen churches and stations having a church membership of 4,463 and a Sunday-school membership of 8,633 in twenty-one states of the Union. We give herewith the report 142 THE SOUL OF AMERICA of the Department to the General Assembly of 1918: Scope of the Department's Work. "The Board's first effort is to maintain contact with the whole broad field of immigrant community life in this country and with conditions at the source of immigration. A li- brary of books, pamphlets, reports, clippings and sur- veys is maintained. Much of this information is se- cured at first hand through such surveys as that re^ cently made in Lackawanna, the steel center, for the Presbytery of Buffalo, and of conditions in the rural Bohemian communities of Texas. A card catalogue recording the progress of all Presbyterian churches and missions employing a foreign language has been kept for a number of year. Also, a catalogue of all Presbyterian ministers employing a foreign language. The Board's City and Immigrant Work office is thus a headquarters and clearing house for information concerning immigrant communities, immigrant races and the work of the Presbyterian Church. The Board's director of City and Immigrant Work is also Chairman of the City and Immigrant Work Commit- tee of the Home Missions Council, which federates the interest of twenty-one denominations. Through this committee cooperation has been extended in studies of the religious conditions among the Poles, Italians and Bohemians in America. At every stage the Board's work among immigrants is developed in conference with other denominations. A late illustration is in the organization of a federation of churches and mission agencies in the great steel center about Gary and Hammond in Northern Indiana and known as the Calumet region. Through this federation, which is actively supported by the Synod of Indiana and the IMMIGRATION 143 Board, it is proposed to attack in a big way the social and religious problems of an industrial community of one hundred fifty thousand souls, one hundred thou- sand of whom have no active relation to the Church, ; — Protestant, Roman, Orthodox or Jewish. "On the field, the Board's contact with the immi- grant is through churches, community centers or set- tlements. This work is administered by Synodical or Presbyterial committees with the Board's cooperation, or in an increasing number of fields directly by the Board for a limited period of years. Of the total dis- bursements for Immigrant Work in the current year approximating eighty-six thousand dollars (not in- cluding headquarters expense), nearly three-fourths (seventy -three per cent.) is distributed in twenty cities from Boston to San Francisco ; sixteen per cent, is for work in four iron and coal mining regions in Kansas, Wisconsin, Michigan and Minnesota; nine per cent, is for work in rural communities, among Bo- hemians in Texas and the Central West, and in an Armenian colony in a fruit-growing region of Cali- fornia; the remaining two per cent, is for general propaganda, including the promotion of Daily Vaca- tion Bible Schools and a specific propaganda among the three million Poles of America." Interdenominational Relationship. Interdenomi- national relations of the immigrant question deserve to be considered. That question cannot be solved de- nominationally. It is so interlaced with all educa- tional, moral and civic interests that only a combina- tion of communions in a common and united service can adequately overtake it. This service cannot most 144 THE SOUL OF AMERICA effectively be rendered by what are called union churches or missions. Each body must pursue this work along its own peculiar lines. Chiefly on three lines can the best results of union effort be secured. One of these is by assigning immigrants of foreign nationalities to the different denominations. This, however, encounters the difficulty that nearly all the larger Christian bodies have already instituted work among many different racial groups, often in a small way to be sure, but even so, difficult to surrender. United Survey. The second sphere for combined service is, however, at once practicable and of prime importance for all economical and successful under- takings. That is, a united survey of the entire field, giving all the facts necessary for intelligent action and suggesting ways for making such action effective. It is to this need that the Home Missions Council is ad- dressing its consideration of immigration. During the year 191 7 it made several surveys of racial immigrant groups in America through its Immigration Commit- tee. The most significant contribution was that made by Professor Antonio Mangano's survey of the Italian communities published under the title of "Religious work Among Italians in America." The studies thus made by extensive journeys through eastern, western and southern states furnished the material of his valu- able book "Sons of Italy" which, published by the Missionary Education Movement, has been the home mission study book of 1917-1918. The Rev. Kenneth D. Miller, who held one of the Fellowships of the Home Board, continued his studies of "Bohemian Communities in America." When these and other contemplated surveys shall have been completed all IMMIGRATION 145 the Protestant forces will have at hand the material for an intelligent and, so far as practicable, united ad- vance on the immigrant problem. Ports of Entry. The third phase of activity ap- propriate for the Home Missions Council, and in which entire denominational cooperation is not only practicable but demanded, is work among immigrants at the various ports of entry. This was undertaken in January, 191 5. The Rev. Joseph E. Perry, Ph.D., was made its superintendent. He visited the various ports from Boston to Galveston and reported on the moral and religious condition and needs of the immigrant population entering those gates. The information gained revealed the fact that the zeal of various Mis- sion Boards had introduced overlapping and in some cases confusion. For example, at Ellis Island, the chief port of entry, there were found so many mission- aries of different communions, and so many that were independent and in a measure irresponsible, that some radical action was necessary. The Government also called attention to this undesirable state of affairs. After earnest consideration of the situation, the Joint Committee on Immigration for the Home Mis- sions Council and the Council of Women for Home Missions was instrumental in setting up a federation of Protestant organizations to secure some genuine coordination of missionary effort, — the General Com- mittee for Protestant Missionary Work at Ellis Island. In the midst of its investigations and plans an order came from Washington that on account of war con- ditions the missionary force must be reduced to seven workers. 10 146 THE SOUL OF AMERICA This abridgment of the missionary force in service at the Island has brought to pass a codrdination of effort which had not been known before. Representa- tives of the Hebrew and Roman Catholic organizations have been meeting with the General Committee and relief work has been planned without sectarian or racial basis. A budget has been prepared covering the entire amount of probable relief necessary per month, to which definite and pledged contributions are being made by two Jewish, one Catholic and at least three Protestant organizations. The present status of the Board's immigrant work is indicated by the statement that it has one hundred three commissioned ministers and lay workers giving the gospel in eleven different languages in one hundred fifteen churches and stations in twenty-one states of the Union. The immigration from southeastern Europe has been practically cut off during the last four years. The War having ended there can be no doubt the immigration problem in America will spring to such proportions as will tax to the utmost the con- secration and resources of the Church. Woman's Board. An account of the work among immigrants would be far from complete if it gave no records of what the Woman's Board has accomplished during the past six years. In 191 3 that Board took action as follows : "As the work needed among immigrant populations has phases that can scarcely be met locally, or even synodically, the Woman's Board feels that it should act as direct agent in the following forms of service : IMMIGRATION 147 "The training of women for service in immigrant communities, both as foreign-speaking visitors and di- rectors of reHglous, social and educational work." To make this action effective the Board in February, 1919, decided to establish not less than ten Fellowships of two hundred fifty dollars a year to be given to young women, preferably college graduates, who shall pursue a course of training to fit them for leadership in work for immigrants. This action looks forward to service similar to that arranged for by the Board of Home Missions in establishing its Fellowships for theological students. In accordance with its plan to cooperate with synods and presbyteries in their for- eign work the Woman's Board carries on school and community work in thirty-five presbyteries among Italians, Bohemians, Slavs, Russian Poles and Mex- icans. The Woman's Board receives and returns con- tributions for this work, giving credit for the amounts from societies sending their immigrant funds through the Board's treasury. Czecho-Slovaks. For both Boards the War has precipitated a new responsibility on the American Church. And that not only — perhaps not mainly — that we will have enlarged immigration of foreigners in the near future ; but rather by the fact that the War has given a new meaning to Americanism to foreigners at home and in this country. A wave of popular in- terest in America and that for which she stands has swept over the world. A striking illustration of what it means to foreigners is given by Dr. Vincent Pisek in his account of the Czecho-Slovaks. He says for generations they have loved America and regarded it as the home and hope of liberty. Before they came to 148 THE SOUL OF AMERICA this country they looked upon the American Republic as the ideal Government and "in their national festivi- ties along with their own flag they would carry the Stars and Stripes," — the "Flag of Freedom" as they fondly called it, "for all the ideals and principles which the American flag represents have been dear to the heart of the Czech for centuries." But how dearer now. They are achieving their own freedom. When we entered the War their joy was unbounded and many of them joined our colors. And now they are trying to build a republic on the model they have learned from us. What an obligation it puts on us to give them our best ! We must send them our Czech-Slovak missionaries, or American mission- aries trained for that service, as contemplated by the two Boards in their plans for immigration Fellowships. Jewish Evangelization. The Board at its meeting in April, 1918, heartily approved the recommendations of its Executive Council, looking to the organization of a National Advisory Committee on Jewish Evan- gelization in accordance with the instruction of the General Assembly of 1917; the authorization of a program of itinerant evangelism and education in be- half of the Jews in America ; and the establishment of a work in the Jewish community of Newark and in similar communities in other cities as soon as the way was made clear. The Rev. H. L. Hellyer, a graduate of Princeton Theological Seminary, and the Rev. E. S. Greenbaum, a graduate of McCormick Theological Seminary, were engaged by the Board for this service. They submit the following brief summary of their activities from July to the close of the fiscal year: IMMIGRATION 149 "November 21, 1918, the Advisory Committee on Jewish EvangeHzation was constituted with a repre- sentation of 19 ministers and laymen from the Presby- teries of Chicago, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Elizabeth, Newark, New Brunswick and New York. The Rev. Prof. Charles R. Erdman, of Princeton, was elected Chairman. The entire day was devoted to the consid- eration and discussion of the many problems inhering in the work of Jewish Evangelization in America. Under the direction of this Advisory Committee, a cir- cular letter was sent out to about 1,500 pastors bring- ing to their attention this field and the Board's pur- pose. A number of outdoor services were held in the summer months in Newark, Atlantic City and else- where. Large groups of Jews thus heard the claims of the Gospel in the Yiddish language. Educational conferences in churches and other places were held, concerning the social and religious needs of the 3,- 500,000 Jews in America. A considerable part of the time was spent in the actual preaching of the Gospel to the Jews, distributing literature, in visitation and personal interview. Ten thousand portions of scrip- ture, religious tracts and booklets were distributed. Several tracts, especially adapted to the needs of the modern Jew, were written and translated from Eng- lish into Yiddish as well as from Yiddish into Eng- lish. One hundred eighty-nine meetings were held or addressed in the first six months of this propaganda." VIII CITY MISSIONS AND SOCIAL SERVICE CITY MISSIONS. Since the beginning of the century home missions have tended strongly toward speciaHzation, following in this the general trend of accepted scientific thought. In past generations the evangelization of the country has been an aim expressed chiefly in terms of the occupation of territory. It has been an endeavor to catch up with the moving western frontier. Now that the geograph- ical frontier has been drowned in the Pacific Ocean the missionary thought has turned toward conges- tions of populations far this side of the frontier. The wave of missionary interest has swung back over fields that had been occupied but not conquered, new fields emerging with startling rapidity out of changed conditions. New Conditions. The old form of home missions, in which the salvation of individuals and the organi- zation of new churches bulked preeminent, still ob- tains, for still there are new and unchurched commun- ties. A survey of western conditions conducted in 1910 by the Home Missions Council made this start- lingly evident. In the very near future frontier life will come to new demands on church forces for two reasons. First, the return of millions of soldiers for whom new opportunities of industrial life will be demanded. 150 CITY MISSIONS AND SOCIAL SERVICE 151 The Government is already making plans for more intensive rural life which will throw back the frontier into central regions of the country. Plans of irriga- tion far beyond anything we have known will yield rich returns for new settlers, and forests and mines will disclose their bounties to a hardy population. The home missions of a generation ago is coming to the front again. Second, clear missionary insight shows us new phases of the Christian adventure in both city and country. Specific fields call for specific treatment. To neglect them were to imperil much of the missionary work of the past century. They have risen out of the new movements of populations and the new conditions around them. Problems have emerged, considered in this and following chapters, for the solution of which early forms of the home mission service may be in- adequate. Specialists. And a new form of leadership is de- manded. "The general practitioner" still is needed in missions as in medicine. But besides, the country calls for men trained and fitted by natural endowments for special and perhaps untried service. For example, the evangelist who can gather a church on the prairies may not be fitted to solve the immigration problem or the country Hfe problem in its modern relations, or the city problem in its complicated reactions. The schools of the prophets now must train men to the specialties of missionary service. Of course, the spe- cialist must have many of the qualifications of the general practitioner. Certain elements are common to all missionary work. A personal message and per- sonal service are fundamental and common, 152 THE SOUL OF AMERICA But conditions may so vary as to constitute a de- mand for a practically new enterprise. Under cer- tain circumstances the enterprise becomes a problem. Dry farming in the West differs from surface farming chiefly in going deeper down. Intensive farming differs from extensive farming in recognizing certain scientific factors not so readily discerned. The home missions which shall be adequate to meet the needs of a complex national life must go deeper than the sur- face and must match new and dangerous, or inviting, conditions by newer and more scientific Christian ex- pedients. Hence, new departments have been added to the equipment of mission Boards to enable them to do this work — more difficult, but yielding abundant fruit. The Board of Home Missions in 1903 recognized the new occasions which teach the new duties and be- gan to organize departments for lines of work which had not up to that time challenged serious attention. Of course, country work had been older than the Board, but the different rural populations and condi- tions of to-day called for special treatment. This was offered through the Department of Church and Coun- try Life. Also, work among foreigners had been as old as the incoming of the first European migrations. But radical immigration changes demanded new forms of Christian activity. So the Department of Immigra- tion began to function. The American city, its mar- vellous growth and, far above all, its cosmopolitan character — cosmopolitan in a sense and to an extent which to thoughtful people spelled a national peril — challenged attention. And so the Department of City Work came into being. CITY MISSIONS AND SOCIAL SERVICE 153 The Board in heeding these calls has not forgotten the call of its original charter. With ever increasing zeal it has followed the steps of the pioneer. But to the historic line it has added the new methods which the new day required. Difficulties. Many factors which are new and difficult enter into the work of missions in our cities. First, of course, is the rapid increase of city popula- tion. Nearly one-half of our population is found in twenty-five hundred cities. In the decade 1900-1910 the cities grew three times as fast as the country. This fact would not of itself have special significance. If it were merely a question of evangelization and church building along old lines the problem would be solved by increasing in adequate measure the number of messengers and of churches. But the conditions of urban life pile up the difficulties. Among them the following should be noted. Our great cities are masses of wandering, and so, home- less population. The vast majority have no settled residence. Less than six per cent, of New York people own the houses they live in. That anchor for good fortune and comfortable living, easily obtained in the country, is absent from the city. Moral storms master unanchored populations. The perils of homelessness are vastly increased by the overcrowding which is another of the city's perils. Not only are the crowds moving crowds; they live under trying conditions which reflect on health and character alike. Country people find moral support in the lives of neighbors. People in established homes supply moral tone. Homeless city people have no 154 THE SOUL OF AMERICA neighbors. Like branches unattached to roots they are at the mercy of any storm that blows. Again, cities are badly governed. This is a notori- ous and acknowledged fact. It is also a warning fact. It works for crime and so for low morals. Again, cities include varieties of nationalities which suggest at once the perils of massed peoples and the difficulties of Christian work on their behalf. Thus, in the Presbytery of New York eighty per cent, of the population are foreigners and their children. And they represent forty nationalities. Most of them come from southeastern Europe. Their ideals and stan- dards of life differ vastly from those of American line- age. Their variety of tongues, habits and character- istics makes good work among them possible only to a Church that is most unusually equipped and under leadership most unusually prepared. Of the prepara- tion required by those who would lead these people out into true American life later mention will be made. It is noted here only to emphasize one of the difficul- ties of city evangelization. And yet over against these difficulties a wise view of the work will set certain advantages and helps which the city affords and which should keep the workers above discouragement. Dr. H. Paul Doug- lass in his informing book on "New Home Missions" summarizes these as follows : Advantages. "Cities, with all their bad govern- ments, do work for good sanitation — and so good health, for remunerative employment, for good schools and social advantages, and latterly for care of the lives and occupations of children," CITY MISSIONS AND SOCIAL SERVICE 155 It is the sphere of the city mission work to make the most of these advantages, to use them as levers of help in the spiritual uplift of the people. It is the province of the gospel wisely applied to infuse into populations, crowded and largely homeless and iso- lated, those Christian motives, ideals and opportuni- ties which alone can meet and overcome the moral and spiritual perils of overcrowding and homelessness and suppressed individual life with all the temptations that come in their train. By what methods and with what success has the Board of Home Missions striven to meet its respon- sibility for city evangelization? This may best be illustrated by giving brief accounts of its service in two representative cities, — one on the Atlantic Coast, the other on the Pacific Coast. New York. For many generations the rapid growth of New York has forced the attention of the Church. To keep pace with the advance in population has been its steady ambition. In the early years this aim was measurably attained. Churches grew to strength in the comfortable surroundings of settled populations. With changing times, changed and discouraging con- ditions appeared. The relatively homogeneous popu- lation was supplemented by one so heterogeneous as to include peoples from all the ends of the earth. Then the struggle began with the odds heavily against the Church. Within the bounds of the Presbytery of New York, in a population of something over three million, there are more than a million Jews, more than a million and a half Roman Catholics, and only about half a million as the field of the Protestant Churches. For 156 THE SOUL OF AMERICA many years the Churches struggled with the move- ment of people that left them stranded. The Church was in retreat. In a single decade six Presbyterian Churches below Fourteenth Street gave up the fight. Reliable statistics show that whereas in 1866 there were 138 Protestant Churches below Fourteenth Street, there are now only 51, and that whereas in 1866 there were 20 synagogues, there are now 71. As these and other similar figures came into view the churches of all communions took alarm. The Board of Home Missions strove to meet the situation. Both men and money were lacking. When in 1909 it was announced that Mr. John S. Kennedy had left to the Presbytery a fund of nearly two million dollars for Presbyterian mission work in New York, both the Board and the Presbytery entered enthusiastically on large plans for a Presbyterian advance, directing their energies specially to the uptown districts full of people and without adequate church privileges of any kind. Church Extension Committee. The Church be- fore this had not wholly failed in its missionary re- sponsibility to the city. Missions were sustained by the strong Churches in various needy sections. But up to the time when the Home Board and the Presby- tery entered on their joint work there had been no united and organized plans for overtaking the enor- mous task. The Church Extension Committee of the presbytery was organized in 1900. Its charter com- prised two objects — the planting of new churches and giving them support till strong enough to care for themselves. It gradually enlarged its vision and its plans. CITY MISSIONS AND SOCIAL SERVICE 157 Labor Temple. At this time the Home Board opened the Labor Temple at Fourteenth Street and Second Avenue in the property of one of the Presby- terian churches that had been depleted by the uptown movement. In the support of this enterprise the Home Board and the Home Mission Committee of the Pres- bytery united and the Rev. Charles Stelzle, by sym- pathies, training and experience specially fitted, be- came the superintendent. The population of the dis- trict so occupied is more than half a million and made up of a vast variety of peoples, the foreign ele- ment predominating. The aims of the Temple were to bring the gospel message to the people of every class and language and with a wide social work to imbue a non-Christian com- munity with the spirit of Christ in all life's relations. The approach to the community was by the familiar church activities and, in addition, by lectures, discus- sions and forums in which the workers would get the reaction of the people they were trying to reach. As the attendance of people from a wide range of nationalities increased it became necessary to special- ize for immigrant service. So leaders were secured for groups in Russian, Ruthenian, Hungarian and Italian as well as English. For a time this large and varied program was misunderstood and so encoun- tered opposition. But as the good fruits began to ap- pear opposition died. Those who thought the move- ment secular and not spiritual were silenced when in 191 5 "The American International Presbyterian Church" was organized, composed of a large mem- bership with an elder and deacon from each of the 158 THE SOUL OF AMERICA foreign groups named, constituting with the pastor the official staff. The church in 1918 had a membership of five hun- dred ninety-six and is exerting a large influence on the social and industrial life of the great community. The Labor Temple was established by the Board of Home Missions through its Bureau of Social Service, a further account of whose activities appears farther on. Not every place where there are foreigners can have such a Temple. Not every community needs one. But every immigration center gives the same chance to interpret to hungry souls the gospel which has the promise of the life that now is and of that which is to come. American Parish. Another illustration of a new method of missionary activity in New York is the American Parish in the upper part of the city, sup- ported jointly by Presbytery's Home Mission Com- mittee and the Board. The year 191 1 found the Pres- bytery in charge of four mission churches on the upper East Side. One of these churches is English-speak- ing, one Hungarian and two Italian. There is a board of pastors and workers, of which the pastor of the American Church is the Chairman. These churches, thus federated, are working together in perfect ac- cord and sympathy to meet all the varied needs — so- cial, civic and spiritual — of the varied population. This experiment of church federation across racial lines is yet in its earlier stage, but bears every mark of being a permanent success in Americanization and a lesson to other communities similarly situated. Thirty-one churches and missions were aided by the Church Extension and Home Missions Committee of CITY MISSIONS AND SOCIAI, SERVICE 159 New York Presbytery and the Home Board in 1918 at a cost of $150,104.38, including buildings. The plan of the Committees in the handling of this large trust includes, according to the published outline of policy, a careful study of the field, the widest pos- sible Christian service to the community combined with an earnest ministry to each individual soul in the spirit of Christ, cooperation with all possible agencies making for social righteousness and personal salva- tion, the fearless presentation to our immigrant and industrial communities of a positive uncontroversial message, the combination of foreign and American leadership, and adaptation of method to particular fields. Inasmuch as the home mission problem is essen- tially one, no matter by what communion undertaken, a coordination of effort of the various bodies is af- forded in a City Missions Council in which represen- tatives of these bodies unite to consider the common task and plan for its accomplishment. The Council consists of ten denominations. Its functions are ad- visory, but its brief experience is proving the value of general plans and coordinated efforts. San Francisco. The other illustration of city mis- sion work will be taken from the Pacific Coast. After the fire which devastated San Francisco there was a great shifting of population. A quarter of a million people were thrown out of their homes. Multitudes of them crossed the Bay to new homes on its east side. Some of the city churches which had been prospering and strong became home mission problems. When the churches had time to look around and get their bear- ings the two Presbyteries, San Francisco and Oak- i6o THE SOUL OF AMERICA land, were confronted with what for a time seemed a hopeless problem. Prayerful consideration of the common needs finally resulted in the conviction that the Bay could not divide the religious interests and that the situation could be adequately met only by a united attack on the moral and religious needs of what is in reality one city. The two Presbyteries united. The Board of Home Missions was consulted and entered heartily into the project. The first step was to know the religious conditions of these affiliated cities — San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley and Alameda. A thorough survey must be undertaken. The Rev. Wil- liam P. Shriver, D.D., Director of City and Immigrant Work, was sent to make a survey and to formulate a program. It required six arduous months. A strong Church Extension Board was organized to cooperate in the advance movements planned by the Board and the Presbytery. After the canvass made by Dr. Shriver all con- cerned saw clearly the program that must be adopted. The Rev. Robert S. Donaldson, D.D., of Milwaukee, was called as Executive Secretary. An initial step was to interest the churches in Daily Vacation Bible Schools for the children. The conditions of the churches stranded by changes of population was next considered. On both sides of the Bay a force of workers was engaged to stimulate these churches along various lines of activity — social and evangelistic. The work among foreign communities was ener- getically promoted. Chinese, Japanese, Russians and Italians had the message of the gospel. One who reports the quickening effect of under- taking a big task by comprehensive plans speaks thus : CITY MISSIONS AND SOCIAL SERVICE i6i "Among Presbyterians of this region there was a feehng of isolation, of being forgotten by the great Mother Church. Now all this is changed. Work is planned and accomplished in a new spirit of hope and courage and with large success. The old feeling of depression has given way to a happy Christian op- timism. The members of the Presbytery feel the great heart-beat of the whole Church and the support of its helping hand. The spirit of Christian fraternity is one of the most pronounced results of having a great and common task." Other Cities. We have touched on these two cities only as illustrative of a new day, dawning in many of our cities, of inspiring missionary progress. It is not possible to name them all, but passing mention should be made of Baltimore, with its far-reaching plans for immigrants ; of Pittsburgh and Philadelphia and Cleveland, with their industrial problems ; of Chi- cago, with its overwhelming problem of a vast variety of foreigners, and of St. Louis, awaking to a new sense of its communal responsibilities. In these and other cities there are strong Church Extension Boards with large vision and large resources and indomitable courage to redeem our cities from the curses of bad government, bad industrial and home conditions and ineffective alignment of Christian forces. This subject bears heavily, in this time of general world reconstruction, on the attention and sympathies of the Christian Church. In September, 1908, a con- ference of representatives from the self-sustaining synods with the Home Board gave consideration to the place of the city and city church extension movements in the New Era. A tentative statement of principles II i62 THE SOUL OF AMERICA and policies was outlined as giving the general scheme of City Missions which might profitably be followed. It is planned for cities of one hundred thousand and more and is presented here as aims for church exten- sion in such cities which may suggest at least the main lines of advance. It is as follows : Principles and Policies, i. The promoting of a consciousness of unity among the Presbyterian churches and a common purpose for a city-wide pro- gram of evangelism, religious education and service, directed from a central administrative headquarters with adequate resources supplied by all churches in common. 2. The coordinating of Presbyterian objectives with those of other Christian bodies through federation, for the avoiding of waste and the supplanting of any ap- pearance of competition by thorough-going coopera- tion. 3. The arousing of a Christian civic consciousness and directing it towards a fair and hopeful community life, in the terms of industry, housing, health, educa- tion, recreation and other common experiences. 4. The breaking up of the isolation and detachment of immigrant and foreign speaking colonies and the adjustment of these groups to the total city life, by the pressing of a sane and sympathetic program of Amer- icanization by all churches in the city, assuring such protection, education and fair economic opportunity as shall enable the immigrant to make the best that is in him effective in our democracy. 5. The establishment and maintaining in immigrant communities of well-equipped and strongly-manned socialized churches and Christian neighborhood or CITY MISSIONS AND SOCIAL SERVICE 163 Settlement houses, which shall afford a common meet- ing ground for old and new Americans. Foreign lan- guages to be used in these centers only as a temporary- measure in order that the Gospel may be better in- terpreted to the aged and recently arrived immigrants who are still in the process of acquiring English, and that the gap between immigrant parents and their children may be bridged in this period of adjustment. 6. In sympathy with the questionings and forming purposes of the working class, the maintaining at some downtown or central location of a well-equipperd so- cialized church with a highly competent leadership. Through its Open Forum and discussion groups op- portunity to be given for a thoroughgoing and con- structive criticism of our present social and industrial order with a hearing assured all measures or programs of reform and advance that hold out promise of a better world. Such a church to be the expression of the purpose of all the churches in the city and sus- tained, where necessary, from a central treasury. 7. A forward looking policy that shall anticipate the expansion of the city's growth and provide ade- quate religious opportunity and church facilities for new communities from their inception. 8. Where the city is central to outlying dependent village and country churches, a policy of cooperation which stresses personal service rather than financial aid and encourages such churches to avail themselves of the best ideas and methods in a spirit of progress. Social Service. The connection between City Mis- sions and Social Service is so close that they may prop- erly be considered together. For it is in cities that the chance for social service is most exigent and ap- i64 I'HE SOUL OF AMERICA pealing. Indeed, City Missions will lose much of their force unless the social conditions around them are improved. Social Service is simply the moral and religious care of the community. And where com- munities are packed — as they are in our cities — the re- ligious care of them becomes that struggle expressed in the phrase Social Service. And this is not a new thing, though sometimes exalted as if it were. It finds its beginning in the ministry of Jesus and in the lives and work of His Apostles. The infant Church in Jerusalem did not have a branch of social service. Itself was an institution of such service. That service was part of the Church's organic law. The com- munity bulked large in its view. Hence the records of the first and second chapters of the "Acts of the Apostles." When, in later centuries, individualism reigned and men's chief ambition was personal salva- tion through the cloister rather than through the com- munity, social service almost went out of the recog- nition of the Church. Even the Reformation did not stay this tendency to over-emphasis of the individual and to the neglect of the neighborhood. The reaction to the apostolic conception of what a Church should be came so gradually that social service may be said to be a modern interpretation of Christ's wide vision of the man and the people and the rela- tion of the one to the other. The Church of the last generation has gone farther in this direction than a multitude of preceding generations. Our present pur- pose is only to sketch the attitude and work of the Presbyterian Church for social service during the past fifteen years. Gary Neighborhood House, Gary, Indiana. C"ia>> at Ciar\ \eiu;hl-c)rhuMd ll(Ui>e, (iar\. liidunia. CITY MISSIONS AND SOCIAL SERVICE 165 Fifteen Years of Social Service. The Board of Home Missions for years had been feeling its way to a larger community service, but not till 1903 did it dis- tinctly recognize its responsibility to workingmen and their families who had been found to be in such large measure wholly unreached by the Church, and organ- ize its "Workingmen's Department" and call to that service the Rev. Charles Stelzle. Principles of Social Service. The Assembly of 1910 adopted the report of a Special Committee on Social Service. A brief outline of the principles there an- nounced is as follows: The Church declares For an acknowledgment of the obligations of wealth. For the application of Christian principles to the conduct of industrial organizations. For a more equitable distribution of wealth. For the abatement of poverty. For the abolition of child labor. For the regulation of the conditions of the indus- trial occupation of women. For the release of every worker from work one day in seven. For the employment of methods conciliation and arbitration in industrial pursuits. For the development of a Christian spirit in the attitude of society toward offenders against the law. The Assembly also urged ministers to recognize and fulfill the obligations resting upon them with respect to the social application of the gospel. i66 THE SOUL OF AMERICA Bureau of Social Service. A few years later the name was changed to the more comprehensive title of "The Department of Church and Labor." Further progress was made when in 191 1 the General Assem- bly instructed the Board to establish a "Bureau of Social Service" in which the "Department of Church and Labor" was merged. This resulted from the labors of a committee appointed by the Assembly to give an expression "of the thought and purpose of our Church regarding the great moral question arising out of the industrial and commercial life of the people." It considered "the application of the Gospel to the acquisition and use of wealth, to the relations between the employees and employed and between capital and labor, and to the existence of unnecessary poverty in a land where there is more than enough for all." From a pamphlet issued by the Board in 1913 we condense a statement of principal features of social service during the ten years following 1903 : In the field of labor "Labor Sunday" was origi- nated, now observed very generally by Protestant de- nominations throughout this country. A weekly article was furnished the labor press of the country, resulting in a marked change in the atti- tude of the labor press and labor leaders towards the Church. Workingmen's mass meetings were conducted on al^ most every Sunday during the winter season. The one aim of these mass meetings, which rarely numbered less than a thousand, was to present the claims of Jesus and His Church upon the toilers. Important shop campaigns were also held. One year, during a period of sixty days in six cities, five CITY MISSIONS AND SOCIAL SERVICE 167 hundred ministers were enlisted in these campaigns, a thousand different meetings were held and two hun- dred and fifty thousand people had the gospel message. "Industrial Parishes" were formed which were adopted by individual churches, just as a church would become responsible for a certain mission field, the church supporting the mission and doing the work through its ministers and members. Upon request made to the Board of Home Missions by presbyteries, surveys of conditions in industrial centers were made together with recommendations to meet those conditions. Such cities as Cleveland, Buf- falo, Chicago, New York, Newark, Elizabeth and Utica, and such Presbyteries as Huntington and Red- stone in Pennsylvania, were among the number. Methods of church efficiency were studied in nearly a hundred cities and in thousands of churches. The survey blanks and charts used in connection with the extensive surveys of the "Men and Religion Forward Movement" were prepared. Movements of populations were interpreted upon request, especially in cities seeking to know the special type of service required of the Church to meet the future as well as the present situation. Social Service Conferences were held in colleges and universities, in theological seminaries and other educational institutions. Social evangelism and the efficiency of the Church as an agency for community betterment were emphasized, equally with the fact that the evangelism which seeks to regenerate the in- dividual is not only harmonious with, but essential to, the social service which seeks to regenerate the com- munity. i68 THE SOUL OF AMERICA "Staff Service" was furnished for various religious movements. Its Superintendent was the dean of the social service speakers throughout the campaign of the *'Men and Religion Forward Movement." He also conducted the Home Mission Week Campaign for the Home Missions Council and the Council of Women for Home Missions, and was Secretary of the Com- mission of the Church and Social Service of the Fed- eral Council during the first year of its existence. By arrangement with leading publishers a library of considerable size has been collected. In addition, bibliographies on various social subjects have been supplied to ministers, social workers and schools of various grades. Presbyterian Leadership. It will thus be seen that the work of the Board's Bureau of Social Service was chiefly educational — assisting ministers and laymen to meet the problems arising in their own parishes. While the Presbyterian Church has the distinction of being the first denomination in this country to estab- lish and carry on such a department other denomina- tions in the United States, Canada and Europe have now inaugurated similar movements. These bodies have not been slow to acknowledge their indebtedness to the leadership of our Church. The Boston Herald some years ago remarked editorially : "When the Presbyterian Church in this country a few years ago established its Department of Church and Labor in connection with the Home Missionary Society, it established a precedent among American Protestant Churches and did the most statesmanlike thing to be chronicled in the history of American CITY MISSIONS AND SOCIAL SERVICE 169 Protestantism during the past decade. The results have justified the innovation." In 191 1 speciahzed study of country church condi- tions and of conditions of work among foreigners were transferred respectively to the direction of the Rev. Warren H. Wilson, D.D., and of the Rev. Wil- liam Payne Shriver, D.D., who are continuing to have charge of these vital phases of home mission service. Specialized city work, having increasingly to do with congested immigrant populations, has also been placed in Dr. Shriver's care. Thus three essential features of the Social Service Bureau are now maintained. Its educational propaganda has been taken up by presby- teries and churches and the social interpretation and application of the gospel are being steadily advanced. In many centers the community life, inspired by the community church, is proving the gospel's power to bind people into the close and helpful bonds of the Kingdom of God. By the exigencies of the World War, in which our country and the Powers associated with us are en- gaged in the struggle "to make the world safe for Democracy," a new and startling meaning has come into the community service of the churches. For this, the seed sowing of the Presbyterian Church during the past fifteen years has not been in vain. The principles she has announced and the methods she has advised have come to unexpected flower and fruitage. A new home mission obligation has arisen, enforced by all the old sanctions and now, in addition, by every patri- otic spirit and impulse. The saving of American com- munities has an intensified meaning. It is necessary, as we have long maintained, to save the higher life of 170 THE SOUL OF AMERICA America. But also it is necessary to make it sure that: America will do her share in the economic, political and moral reconstruction of the world. Church Federation. In this view community serv- ice transcends all sectarian lines. If in past years we have had an academic interest in church federation and have longed with more or less fervor for the union of communions, these convictions and longings sieze us now and demand that they shall be realized as the condition of the very existence of our Christianity. It is proper, therefore, that this chapter should conclude with a reference to what the Churches of to-day are doing to realize this dream of the ages. The two interdenominational bodies that stand pre- eminently for a common Christianity are the "Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America" and **The Home Missions Council." Both are girding themselves for this new advance. At the Annual Meeting of the Home Missions Council (January, 19 19) the following statement was adopted : "The war-time conditions make it most necessary that the Christian forces of rural communities be thor- oughly unified in order that they may be equal to the responsibilities resting upon them. The return of the soldiers from the influence of a unified service of all the Churches through the Y. M. C. A. makes it of prime importance that the Churches meet them in the same spirit. These men will not be interested in Churches which manifest a greater interest in sec- tarian polity and prestige than in community service." What are the new responsibilities thus thrown on home mission forces? They were cogently presented CITY MISSIONS AND SOCIAL SERVICE 171 by the War-Time Commission of the Churches at the last Annual Meeting of the Home Missions Council and may be summarized as follows: New Responsibilities. Apart from the Church's perennial task of ministering to the higher life of the nation, there are special things she should do at this time. First. She must care for our soldiers and sailors in their individual religious lives and minister to the homes from which they came. Second, She must care for the exceptional popula- tions which the war has brought into existence and provide them with the spiritual sustenance and help which they need. Third. She must seek to keep alive the interna- tional consciousness to which Christ has committed His Church. Fourth. She must prepare the way for those large enterprises of reconstruction which will be required after the war. IX THE COUNTRY CHURCH AND MOUN- TAINEERS IN his admirable book, "The Church of the Open Country," Dr. Warren H. Wilson gives us a good text for this chapter : *'It is the common opinion of rural leaders that country life in America has fallen out of repair. The household, the church, the school and the store in the country show the effect of the change. They are not what they were twenty-five years ago. These changes are seen all over the United States with slight local variation. They are uniform from Maine to Missis- sippi. Young people are leaving the country for the city, teachers of country schools move almost every year and many ministers have despaired of the coun- try church." The country church has always been a mighty factor in the developing of the national life. Of course, in the early days nearly all churches were either in the country or in villages. Cities and their many prob- lems had not arrived. The strength of Christianity was in the hills. And in those hills great characters were nurtured. The farmers lived an independent and solitary Hfe. Out of that independence and solitude sprang great leaders in Church and state. Life was a struggle. That struggle developed the best that was 172 CHURCH AND MOUNTAINEERS 173 in men. Hence the country pulpit largely shaped the country life. The country church was the prime factor in the growth of the community. The Strength of the Hills. The dependence of the country on the country church of the eighteenth cen- tury finds nowhere a better illustration than in Litch- field County, Connecticut. It is one of the banner coun- ties of the country in the number of distinguished men it has produced, specially in the number of Christian leaders. Here the influence of the pulpit has its most signal expression. Thirteen villages in that county since 1668 have had the honor of leading one hundred and sixty-eight young men into the ministry, by far the larger number of these getting their training from their pastors, and far more in the eighteenth century than in the nineteenth. Thus, the first pastor in Norfolk, the Rev. Ammi R. Robbins, began a fifty-two years* pastorate in 1761, and in that time personally trained and fitted for col- lege one hundred and thirteen boys, a number of whom became eminent in secular and religious life. A list of the men of ranking powers and influence from that one hill country of Connecticut would take far more space than is at our command, but a partial list of these country preachers of the earlier day, min- istering in small villages in a single county, may sug- gest to our young ministers that all chances for noble and illustrious lives are not tied up to city pulpits. Thus, Dr. Joseph Bellamy, the greatest preacher of his day stayed in his pastorate in the village of Bethle- hem all his life. More than any other minister he shaped the theological thinking of that period. His successor in that village was Dr. Azel Backus, who i;^4 THE SOUL OF AMERICA later became President of Hamilton College. Dr. Ed- ward D. Griffin, a pastor in the hamlet of New Hart- ford, became President of Williams College. Dr. Eb- enezer Porter, after serving for many years as pastor in the secluded village of Washington, became a pro- fessor in Andover Theological Seminary. From that same village the Pond brothers (the Rev. Samuel W. and the Rev. Gideon A.) went out to evangelize the Dakotas in the far Northwest. Dr. Noah Porter, from the village of New Milford, became professor and then President of Yale College. Dr. Jonathan Edwards, pastor in the country vil- lage of Colebrook, became President of Union Col- lege. Dr. Ralph Emerson, the second pastor in Nor- folk, was called to a professorship in the Theological Seminary at Andover. Dr. Lyman Beecher, after sixteen years in the beautiful village of Litchfield, was called to Boston and then to Lane Seminary at Cin- cinnati. His six sons were ministers, all able men and one of them the prince of the American pulpit. Dr. Nathaniel W. Taylor, the father of what is called "the New Haven theology," came from New Milford. Dr. Horace Bushnell, who took a command- ing place in literature and in the pulpit, came from Litchfield. So also came the Rev. John Pierpont, who was lawyer, clergyman and poet — not often men- tioned now but who has left poems that have taken their place in the American anthology. Dr. Charles G. Finney, the great evangelist and the founder of Ober- lin College, came from the obscure village of Warren. This is a selective list. It might be much extended. It is cited here to say to young preachers : There were giants in those days who counted a country parish the A Typical Country Churcii. larrold's \'allc\'. West X'iryinia, Suiidax School. CHURCH AND MOUNTAINEERS 175 field for their best gifts and the training of an illus- trious career. That such a galaxy of stars of the first magnitude should have shed their glory on the hill-girt hamlets of a single county, in a time when colleges were far ofif and universities non-existent, tells us again that solitude is often the nursery of great spirits and that we, of what we count the superior advan- tages, have no reason to look with patronage on the leaders of pioneer days. But now the times have changed. The change began notably in the middle of the nineteenth century. Stu- dents are not in any numbers being trained for col- lege in the study of the country minister. Positions of far-reaching influence are not as a rule held by men in country villages. The great preachers still get a start in the country, but no longer do they remain forty or fifty or sixty years in the same village pulpit. Pro- fessors and presidents of colleges are now sought, not in the back country but in the university. Rural Changes. What has induced the change? In a general way one may say it is the centripetal tendency of our civilization. Individualism no longer reigns. Men are not nurtured in solitude but in crowds. More specifically the villages are largely disappearing. In the West especially they are growing into towns. The towns are becoming cities. And the cities are de- pleting the country. Let one take a census of the lead- ers of affairs in our great commercial centers and it will be found that nine out of ten of those leaders have come from the country. They had their first training in the little red schoolhouse and in the country church. The result is, "Country Life has fallen out of repair." 176 THE SOUL OF AMERICA It is not only in church matters that the decHne is apparent. It appears in the abandoned farms of the older eastern states; in changing process in the Middle West, by which the farming has so largely passed into the hands of tenant farmers. It is seen in the little red schoolhouse with broken windows and the door off the hinges, and often in a general demoraliza- tion of back country communities. Depleted Families. How this depletion of country life affects the family is strikingly portrayed in a pic- ture of Dr. Wilson's personal experience. "I remember driving in my early ministry from a prosperous farming section into a weakened com- munity, whose lands had a lowered value because they lay too far from a railroad. My path to a chapel service on Sunday afternoon lay past seven successive farmhouses, in each of which lived one member of a family clinging in solitary misery to a small acreage which had a few years earlier supported a household. In that same neighborhood was one group of descend- ants of two brothers which had in two generations pro- duced sixteen suicides. *They could not stand trouble' the neighbors said. The lowered value of their land, with consequent burdens, humiliation and strain, had crushed them." Now it is for the Church to meet and lift this strain. She cannot do it by perfunctory church services on Sunday. The new conditions must be met by new expedients. The country church must be vitalized and recover its old-time power in the community. Community Life. For that, two things are essen- tial. The first is a movement away from individualism into a sense and practice of community life. The sec- CHURCH AND MOUNTAINEERS 177 ond is country leadership in the pulpit like that of the eighteenth century. Ministers must get a new vision of the opportunity of the open country and dedicate themselves to it for a lifetime of country service. Such leadership will be quick to recognize the changed conditions of country life and will be cour- ageous to meet them. It will see that men must be pulled out of their selfish individual life and brought to see that only that life is worth living which lives in and for the community. It must see that churches are not merely seed plots for immortality but gardens for time — places in which stimulus shall be imparted that will make all life sweeter, nobler and more suc- cessful. It will, therefore, consider the school and establish it with competent and permanent teachers. It will consider the relations of neighbors to each other and by granges or clubs seek to bind them to- gether in common interests and pursuits. It will help to recover the wornout soil by the application of scien- tific methods of farming. And specially it will make the church the center of Christian inspirations and of such social service as will build a really Christian com- munity. Then only will the despair of bad changed conditions in the country be lifted and be succeeded by a joyful appreciation of this life and a happy prepa- ration for another. Governmental Action. The changed country con- ditions have challenged the attention of our Govern- ment. The definite national movement on behalf of the country church dates from 1909 when the Roosevelt Country Life Commission summoned the churches to their task. But earlier attention was given by the national Government to the needs and problems of .1^ 178 THE SOUL OF AMERICA country life. As long ago as 1870 Land Grant Col- leges were established by the Government and the Homestead Act of about the same date. To make rural life more attractive the Rural Free Mail De- livery has been put into operation and later the Parcel Post, the Good Roads Movement, and last of all the Federal Farm Loan Board by which the credit of country life may be put at its best. During the years 1909-1919 the United States Gov- ernment with state cooperation has, in obedience to the Smith-Lever Act, instituted a County Agent sys- tem, under which agents are now in 1919 serving ninety-seven per cent, of the habitable counties of the United States, a Woman Farm Demonstrator in over sixty per cent, and a Boys' and Girls' Club Worker in about one-half of the counties. In all, four thousand local workers for better farms, better homes and better sons and daughters. The Government, thus alive to the urgency of so guarding country life that it will hold and increase its population, is an example the Church should be swift to follow. And she has. The dangerous changes of country life have been gradually coming to the notice of the Church and have awakened her to a quickened sense of responsibility to meet and overcome those conditions and bring the country regions back to that position which in earlier days made them the prime factors of our national up- building. The changes in rural life which forced its deterioration were easily discovered. They are worn- out lands, absentee landlordism, foreign population and, as the result of all these, a steady moral decline. CHURCH AND MOUNTAINEERS 179 Country Uplift. The Board of Home Missions in 191 1 recognized the call to specific service for the uplift of the country. To that end it organized the Church and Country Life Department and placed at its head the man who has since conducted it — the Rev. Warren H. Wilson, D.D. A year earlier he had en- tered on the service of the Board and was assigned to the holding of institutes and conferences among coun- try churches. Immediately demands for service to rural presbyteries and invitations from country churches began to flow in to the Board. An increasing force of workers has been assigned to such fields. The sketch of the work as presented to the General Assembly in 1918, and quoted here, strikingly sum- marizes the results of eight brief years: "The following are the accomplishments which may be claimed on behalf of the Board in its work for country churches: "Among the rural churches whose work was most discouraging we have initiated a movement which last year resulted in a twenty-nine per cent, increase in the churches under the charge of the Board over other churches of their class. Pastors in this work are soul- winners. Every one of them is working for the bring- ing of men to Christ as the first task in his program. And the community service which characterizes this work in particular is itself a great evangel. The church that serves the community is the best gospel agency. Surveys. "This religious movement has been guided by a campaign of investigation. It began in a survey made at the request of Huntingdon Presbytery in Pennsylvania, and covering the counties of the pres- i8o THE SOUL OF AMERICA bytery. A similar survey in the Presbyteries of Bloomington and Springfield, in Illinois, was the sec- ond. Since that time, in Indiana, Missouri, Tennessee, Maryland, Arkansas, Minnesota, Ohio, California, Oregon, Kentucky and Delaware, the Church and Country Life Work of the Home Board has made scientific surveys to bring before the presbyteries all the work the Lord has laid upon their hands. "Another phase of this religious movement has been one of administration. This work was initiated by Salt River Presbytery, in Missouri, which, with the concurrence of the synod, asked that, through the then existing Church and Country Life Department, the Board promote that rural presbytery for a period of three years. In the years following, successive re- quests have come from the Presbyteries of French Broad, Cumberland Mountain, Dallas, Austin, Fort Worth, Columbia-A, Arkansas, Fort Smith, Box Butte, Sheridan, Olympia, Jonesboro, Iowa, Fort Dodge, Hobart, Logan and others, and from the Synod of Mississippi. After careful investigation, work has been undertaken by the Board in these presbyteries under the name of Demonstration Parishes. Demonstration Parish. "Briefly, the Demonstra- tion Parish method is to place a responsible, well- trained minister as a resident pastor in the country parish for a period of five years and to instruct him to carry on a campaign beginning in evangelism and a program including any service needed by the com- munity. "Foremost in the group of country life workers under the Board was Miss Anna B. Taft, who came to the Board in 1910 from a career of missionary ad- CHURCH AND MOUNTAINEERS i8i venture in rural Massachusetts to which she had been called by the Congregationalists of the state out of a life of assured comfort and ease. The Rev. Matthew Brown McNutt, a pastor of distinction in Illinois, came in 1912, and in the same year the Rev. Clair S. Adams, an evangelist. The Department used in sur- vey work Anton T. Boisen, E. Fred Eastman, Ralph A. Felton and Hermann N. Morse, young men who, entering the ministry in the work of investigation under this Department, have all gone into rural service of distinction. Two of these men have since been added to the official staff of the Board — the Rev. Her- mann N. Morse in 1914 and the Rev. E. Fred Eastman in 1919. "Some results of this religious movement may be noted : "First. The young men who have been employed in survey work and propaganda under the Church and Country Life Work of the Board in the last eight years have all gone into rural service. Volunteers. "Second. A result has been that many young men have volunteered to work in the country. For the past six years there has been in McCormick Seminary a standing group of between forty and fifty young men either pledged to go into country service as a life work or consecrated to that work as a preferred form of service. But the extension of the work in the state universities and agricultural colleges is an even more hopeful factor. A year ago, in the State Agri- cultural College at Manhattan, Kansas, there were found fifty young men and women personally and definitely interested in rural Christian service. In the State College of Agriculture at Columbus, Ohio, forty- i82 THE SOUL OF AMERICA nine young men were found definitely interested in the work of the country church. "Third. In the mountain country such hope has been inspired as to create the Cumberland Mountain Presbytery, recently erected by the Synod of Ten- nessee and put under the Board's Church and Country Life Work for a period of ten years for the purpose of making a great rural presbytery. "The Church and Country Life Work of the Home Board has brought about similar work in other great communions. The Methodist Episcopal Church has created a department similar to our own. The North- ern Convention of the Baptist Churches has taken action looking toward the same end and now has a su- perintendent for this work. The Disciples, the Mo- ravians and others have created commissions or de- partments for this purpose. Rural Fields Committee. "The Home Missions Council has created a Rural Fields Committee, under the leadership of men interested in the country church, to work among churches throughout all denomina- tions. "The centering upon the person and work of Jesus Christ of this whole movement, which is national, edu- cational, economic, sanitarian, has been the great achievement of the Presbyterian church. Since the time of President Roosevelt all of the United States have been considering, through many national and state agencies, the affairs of the farmer. Interest in country life has been everywhere increasing. The task of the Presbyterian Church has been to turn this in- terest toward evangelism. In the Country Church Program successively adopted in the conferences, the CHURCH AND MOUNTAINEERS 183 first of which was with the Massachusetts Agricultural College at Amherst, 1909, the first feature has always been that the program of the country church begins with evangelism." The work thus inaugurated is only in the beginning. More remains for the future than is easily recognized to-day. The future of our country depends on noth- ing more than on a thrifty, self-respecting, intelligent and moral country population. The ideal of such a population, united in the achievement of best results in life and government, is increasingly threatened by the varieties of people from many nations coming more or less into all our rural regions and by the eco- nomic changes going on whereby stability and perma- nence of social conditions become steadily more diffi- cult. To this is to be added the continued depletion of country life by its young and strong elements being drawn into the city. The loneliness of pioneer days in many regions menaces the life of the farmer. Writers speak of the movement back to the country. But the movement of city people to seek elegant sum- mer homes among the hills (and only in this sense is there any such movement) does not build the places made waste by the cityward exodus. The problem of rebuilding the country church and reestablishing it as a spiritual power is not less but more difficult than it was fifty years ago. Then it was simply to educate and spiritually stimulate a homo- geneous community already inclined by inheritance and surroundings to hear and obey tlie gospel message. Now it is complex to harmonize and uplift elements i84 THE SOUIv OF AMERICA at variance socially, economically, racially and re- ligiously. A Country Nation. The nation is still more than fifty per cent, agricultural. Over half the population still resides in communities of less than twenty-five hundred and a large proportion of those residing in centers classified as cities are directly dependent on agriculture for subsistence. It is estimated that sev- enty per cent, of our Presbyterian churches are located in towns and villages of less than twenty-five hundred population or in the open country. The Board's Country Work, whether estimated on the basis of the modern difficulties which attend it or on that of its actual size, is one of prime and increasing importance. Federation of Country Churches. One of its most hopeful signs is in the spirit of the federation of coun- try churches represented by the Federal Council and the Home Missions Council. This movement is in its infancy, but it is growing. The State of Maine, under the leadership of the late President W. DeWitt Hyde of Bowdoin College, and the Rev. A. W. Anthony, D.D., from 1891 to 1918 Secretary of the Church Fed- eration of Maine, has made distinct progress toward this ideal. The rural population in Maine is decreas- ing. Fewer churches are, therefore, needed. The ipopulation is also homogeneous. Federation, there- fore, in that state has had a fair chance and has scored a good success. Similar results have been achieved in Massachusetts and Rhode Island by the New Eng- land Federation under the leadership of its Secretary, the Rev. E. Tallmadge Root. In Vermont the churches in 1918 after conference of state leaders adopted a plan of federation by which in a period Poultry Club, Rocky Fork, Teiniessee. Cauuiug Club, Rocky Fork, CHURCH AND MOUNTAINEERS 185 of seventeen months twenty-two unions and federa- tions of churches in the smaller communities in the state had been effected. The result is that nine whole towns have been given over each to the care of one Protestant Church, fourteen ministers were *'con- served," or freed for service elsewhere, fourteen min- isters are now receiving a more adequate salary, nine- teen hundred dollars of home missionary money was freed for use in more needy fields. While sufficient data is not in hand for asserting it of every case, of the changes as a whole it can be said that there has been increased church attendance, greater influence of the church on community life and enlistment of "out- siders" in church work. The final success of federation will not come until there has been developed a strong sense of the need and value of community life and service. People will be slow to unite in bonds of church worship until they have learned how to live helpfully and hopefully to- gether in the social and economic relations of life. Given the community feeling, the community federa- tion will follow as a natural consequence. Home Missions Council. The Home Missions Council, which represents in its organization and ac- tivities nearly all the Protestant bodies of the coun- try, is giving itself definitely to the solution of the country church problem by means of cooperation and federation of the churches. Although young in its plans and enterprises it has already achieved marked success. It has taken part in the active work of or- ganizing State Councils in home mission territory and in cooperation with home missionary authorities. Since 191 3 such service has been rendered New York, i86 THE SOUL OF AMERICA Ohio, Kansas, Oklahoma, North and South Dakota, Montana, Oregon and Utah. New York Country Church Council. In New York State the desired work is represented in the New York State Country Church Council, which is now a dele- gated body of the Baptist, Congregational, Methodist, Reformed and Presbyterian bodies in the state. Its program is a very definite one. It proposes and has carried out County Evangelistic Campaigns. The State Sunday School Association cooperates in making a survey of the county. The Country Church Council organizes the campaign by which the gospel is preached simultaneously in every school district in the county in a certain fortnight. The churches of the county subse- quently organize for whatever program they have discovered and deem necessary. This is the working program for that state. It might profitably be emu- lated by other states as a means of bringing country churches into closer sympathy and definite partnership in service, even though it does not at present lead on to church federation. The life and stimulation of country churches demands the cooperation of all good people of the community along lines of united service. During the year closing March thirty-first, 1918, there were forty-one ministers, fifteen community workers, in the nine Synods of Alabama, Arkansas, Iowa, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Wash- ington and Wyoming. In all those states the efficiency of some churches has been increased by the specific plans and endeavors of the Country Life Department. Logging Camps. A word should be given to what may properly be called country Hfe work. It is esti- mated there are approximately three hundred thou- CHURCH AND MOUNTAINEERS 187 sand men engaged in lumber work in the woods chiefly in the Northwest. They are away from home, in lonely places, only each other for company, enduring many hardships and exposed to many temptations. The Presbyterian Board with Boards of other com- munions are working together for the moral and re- ligious care of these people. By the agency of the Home Missions Council the regions of the logging camps have been districted among the bodies doing or contemplating special work for such camps. Northern Wisconsin and Minne- sota have for ten years been the scene of heroic labors for the loggers, instituted first by the inspiring service of Frank E. Higgins. It is now in prospect to extend these labors to such parts of the Pacific Northwest as may be assigned to the Presbyterian Board. The Mountaineers John Fiske, in his "Old Virginia and Her Neigh- bors," says : "In a certain sense the Shenandoah Valley and ad- jacent Appalachian region may be called the cradle of modern democracy. In that rude frontier society life assumed many new aspects, — old customs were for- gotten, old distinctions abolished, social equality ac- quired even more importance than unchecked indi- vidualism This phase of democracy, which is destined to continue so long as frontier life retains any importance, can nowhere be so well studied in its beginnings as among the Presbyterian population of the Appalachian region In the eighteenth century." Scotch-Irish. The astute philosopher here records several Important facts. Thus, as Mr. Roosevelt has i88 THE SOUL OF AMERICA said, those mountain people were mostly Presbyteri- ans, of Scotch and Scotch-Irish extraction. It fol- lows, therefore, that they had an inherited love of edu- cation. In 1776, out of a hundred and ten pioneers of that district who signed a petition to be annexed to North Carolina, Mr. Roosevelt found only two who signed by mark. In 1780 two hundred fifty-six pioneers of Cumberland signed articles of agreement and only one by mark. We mistake, therefore, if we think their present illiteracy is in the blood. Those pioneer democrats first erected the rude church build- ing and immediately after the schoolhouse. And yet to-day the illiterate percentage is alarmingly large. Taking the Appalachian region as a whole over six- teen per cent, of the voters are illiterate. That, it is computed, indicates that of the white population over ten years of age about fifty per cent, are illiterate. How shall we reconcile the intelligence of the eight- eenth century with prevailing illiteracy a hundred years later? It is not too easily accounted for. The main factors producing that result, however, were probably the severe struggle for bare existence which made families careless of all things beyond that struggle and especially the isolation which shut them in from all currents of intelligence flowing around them. And referring again to Mr. Fiske we must not for- get that the present generation appealing so cogently for help from the outside were emphatically the most self-helping of all the American communities. In their sense of absolute social equality they relied on one an- other in mutual dependence and built up the most thor- ough type of American democracy. With the self- A Lumber Camp of the Northwest. A "Loading: Donkey" and Crew. CHURCH AND MOUNTAINEERS 189 reliance learned in their school of hard times and im- minent perils they combined a manly courage which contributed to American independence for out of pro- portion to their numbers. It was they who drove out the Indian hordes perpetually threatening their settle- ments. It was they who drafted the first document against British rule. First Note for Liberty. As early as 1775 in the Valley of the Blue Ridge a council met mostly com- posed, as Bancroft says, "of Presbyterians of Scotch- Irish descent" w^hich resolved "never to surrender but to live and die for liberty." Several months later in the same year those same people in the lowland hills of North Carolina issued the immortal Mecklenburg Declaration, separating one county in North Carolina from the British Crown. This was a year before the Philadelphia Declaration of Independence. Four years later the fate of the colonies was still in doubt. Battles in the South had been going against them. Washington said he had almost lost hope. It was then that Presbyterian frontiersmen, with Presbyterian elders leading the columns, fought the decisive battle of Kings Mountain which more than any other single battle turned the tide and assured the American inde- pendence. Those people, thus justly entitled to high praise for intelligence, democracy, courage and social spirit, ap- peal to the Christian people as one of the most urgent of all our missionary fields. And that along two lines. For the reason given they need the schoolhouse, with all that it implies. And they need the Christian gospel and Church. For they have fallen back during the century, not only from inherited intelligence but also 190 THE SOUL OF AMERICA from inherited character. Their isolation has worked disastrously on their morals. More than we realize we lean on each other. Society has a steadying influence. For lack of it the mountaineers in so many cases by sheer force of their strong individuality press unhin- dered into lives of immorality and often of crime. The feuds of Kentucky had been impossible in the close friendly neighborhoods of Ohio. We have referred to the early missionary labors in the Appalachians. Into them and over them went much of the best brains as well as stoutest muscle of the American pioneers. They made our first west- em civilization. But for reasons given their descend- ants lost the intelligence of the first settlers. They did not, however, lose their Christian inheritance. It only slumbered. It needed but the touch of the old gospel to waken again to newness of life. That gospel in the last half century came to them first in the ministry of the Baptist and Methodist preachers, often only traveling evangelists, giving their message and passing on. That message was often crudely given and not sustained by Christian education and institutions. And because the Presbyterian Church, true to her historic standards, insisted in the South, as elsewhere, on a trained ministry she lost some of her prestige among the Appalachians to which her history entitled her. Nevertheless her maintenance of her traditions and her devotion to education laid foundations in the mountains which are now beginning to receive the superstructure of enlightened communities. The creed for new territories was "Christ and His Church — Education and its Schoolhouse." CHURCH AND MOUNTAINEERS 191 First Acadamies. So Dr. Samuel Doak in 1783 secured a charter for Martin Academy and in 1818 he founded Tusculum Academy. Dr. Hezekiah Balch in the eighties established an academy at Greenville. Dr. Anderson in 1802 founded Union Academy at Knoxville. Colleges grew out of these academies. Indeed, all of the early colleges in the mountains were of Presbyterian origin. Washington College chartered in 1795, Greenville and Tusculum in 1794, Blount Col- lege, now the University of Tennessee, Maryville Col- lege, founded as "The Southern and Western Theo- logical Seminary in 1819, — all were of Presbyterian origin. Out of these small colleges sprang many of the great leaders in church and civic affairs through all that mountain region. We have alluded to the fact that the Church lost the educational preeminence which it had in the early days. The reasons were in part lack of ministers. If it is difficult now to secure even for our advanced communities an adequate supply of trained men, how much more then, when men were at a premium, when every man was needed for the rougli and exigent work of subduing a wilderness and hold- ing savages in check. Poverty was another reason for the lack of minis- ters. There was no Home Board and no resources among the settlers which could be drawn upon. Get- ting a living was a stern fight. Such superfluities as education and the building of churches must wait a while ! In addition to all else the mountains were drained by the alluring West. When the fertile plains across the Ohio and the Mississippi dawned on the mountain igi THE SOUL OF AMERICA horizons there was an exodus to greener pastures. The alert and capable went West. The easy-going and indolent stayed at home. So the mountains had a hard time. Rev. Isaac Anderson, D.D. The name of a hero who sought a daring way to increase the number of missionaries for the West must here be recorded. The Rev. Isaac Anderson, D.D., was a missionary pioneer to eastern Tennessee. The religious destitution ap- palled him. Taking a long journey to seven-year-old Princeton he pleaded for help. But the students there had no vision. He went home discouraged but not dismayed. If eastern boys would not go West he would raise them up on the field. He founded at Maryville "The Southern and Western Theological Seminary." That school of the prophets has not much mention in, modern Christian literature; but that pioneer educator had the joy of seeing a hundred and fifty of the graduates of his school enter the Presby- terian ministry. It is said The Bdinsburgh Review was founded "on a little oat meal." There was not much more than oat meal in the founding of that first western seminary. It is a question whether later richer institutions can present a better record. Within those humble halls, and by the one-man faculty, were trained men who moulded a growing empire when the material was plastic. Many pioneer preachers out of that and other schools gave valiant service in the early years of the nineteenth century. Their names and record is more on high then here below. But gradually as the years wore on one vast stumbling block stood in the way z; 2; CHURCH AND MOUNTAINEERS 193 of missionary progress. There was a steady decline of intelligence, an increasing absence of schools. A gospel message was not sufficient. Foundations must be put in. Mountain Schools. At this point in the history we come to a new era. It is the era of the mountain mis- sion school. Here begins the story of the response of Presbyterian women to the voiceless appeal of the southern mountains. It is not too much to say that the first really constructive work done for the moun- taineers in later times was that of the Woman's Board, which forty years ago went into those solitudes with the Christian school. The story is full of interest verging on romance. It can here be only touched. Rocky Ridge. The first mission school for moun- tain children was opened in 1879, only a year after the organization of the Woman's Executive Committee. Miss F. E. Ufford began it in a windowless log cabin at Rocky Ridge, three miles from Concord, North Carolina. She began with twenty-two pupils. In three weeks the school outgrew the cabin with an en- rollment of sixty. Mr. James B. White had given the cabin, with four acres of land. In his honor a two- story building was erected and named White Hall. In 1891 the building was burned. Miss Ufford went to Washington and presented the call of the home- less school. The money was promptly given and in memory of Miss Sunderland, whose love for missions the women of the Washington Presbyterial Society desired to commemorate, the Laura Sunderland School entered on its enlarged career. It now has a staff of teachers with seventy-two pupils to whom a four years' course is given covering the grammar 13 194 I'HE SOUL OF AMERICA grades and, in addition, a good deal of household eco- nomics. Many of the girls go on to higher educa- tion in the Normal Collegiate at Asheville. The Woman's Board, seeing here a great oppor- tunity, opened one school after another as the Church, in response to appeals, provided the equipment. In 1887 Dr. and Mrs. Luke Borland started a small day school in their own home for the children of Hot Springs, North Carolina, who were absolutely without a school of any description. In 1893 the Woman's Board took up this work. It now became a boarding vSchool for girls. In a few years a farm was purchased two miles away which in 1896 offered a chance for fifty boys to learn how to farm, and also to get school- ing at the Borland Institute, by a daily walk of four miles. In 1910 a fire destroyed the building of the Institute but a larger and better one promptly took its place. And so the double work of school and farm goes prosperously on. Asheville Schools. In 1887 a boarding school for girls (now the Home School) was opened at Ashe- ville to give mountain girls "mental, physical, in- dustrial and spiritual training." From the first it has been a great success. Miss Florence Stevenson, prin- cipal for thirty years, has been its inspiring genius. Wherever she has told the story of mountain work the funds have been freely given. Five hundred full graduates have gone back into the mountains to make more beautiful homes. Two hundred have availed themselves of a chance for higher education in the Normal Collegiate just across the campus. This latter institution opened its doors in 1892. The name of that great missionary for mountaineers, Dr. A Missionary's Home as She Finds It. •■<'■■ ./ • ,1 A Missionary's Home as She Develops It. CHURCH AND MOUNTAINEERS 195 Thomas Lawrence, will always be associated with this school, over whose development he watched with lov- ing devotion until 1907. Mr. John E. Calfee is its competent president. Beautifully housed and thor- oughly equipped, it offers four courses of study, — normal, collegiate, domestic arts and domestic science. It is the keystone of the Appalachian school system. About five hundred students have graduated, of whom about two hundred are now teachers, many in their home localities. Not one graduate but is a professing Christian — a most remarkable record. With the Asheville schools should be mentioned the fine Farm School nine mile away where, on a farm of four hundred twenty acres secured by the munificence of the Rev. D. Stuart Dodge, D.D., so long President of the Home Board, the mountain boys are learning at once the art of making mountain farms productive and the art of Christian living. Other schools of the Woman's Board are the Lang- don Memorial at Mt. Vernon, Kentucky, the Pattie C. Stockdale Memorial in West Virginia, and the Juniper School in Tennessee. Public Schools. We come now to the time when a change of mountain conditions had necessitated changes of policy. In the course of the years the mountain communities, awakened by illustrations of what schools will do for people, have taken steps toward a more adequate public school system. It has never been the policy of the Woman's Board to re- lieve any community of responsibility for its own de- velopment. For many years, therefore, a sort of partnership has existed between the \A^oman's Board and the communities by which the Board has supplied 196 THE SOUL OF AMERICA teachers for the two or three or four months that the pubHc funds have permitted and then out of its treas- ury has continued the school for other months. This plan has not been without criticism. It has always by the Woman's Board been regarded as a temporary ex- pedient to enable the communities to get on their own feet and secure public schools of proper character for a proper length of time. Change of Policy. Rapidly, therefore, as public schools have been installed, the Woman's Board has withdrawn its day schools and in their place has carried on community service in the homes of the people. In the course of their twenty years of day- school service they had accumulated many school buildings, with cottages adjoining for the use of teach- ers. These buildings were in many cases sold to the public authorities for school purposes and on such terms as made it easier for the commimities to assume the work which the Woman's Board was so anxious they should undertake. In other cases the property was turned over to the Home Board for preaching sta- tions and settlement work. The Home Board was now turning its attention to its country life work in which community service played so large a part. The Woman's Board had laid the foundation for it in scores of mountain neighbor- hoods. The two Boards, therefore, cooperated in this new form of mission work. Community Service. The transition from the school work to the new form of community service organized by the Country Life Department of the Home Board is one of the most significant signs of the times. Let it be understood that the work of both WA ^f, HI tl t! Ill S ^ llll ,;- Minm^i'f^iiiiiir ^f*vTY« Xormal and Collegiate Institute, Asheville, North Carolina. CHURCH AND MOUNTAINEERS 197 Boards in that region was in no sectarian interest. Neither in church or school was the prime object to increase the number of Presbyterians. Had that been the aim it would be necessar}^ to say, after all these years of devoted service, the work has been a good deal of a failure. Visible church results have not been in proper proportion to the energies expended. But the Boards had a far larger purpose, — the uplift of the mountain people and their restoration to the level of their inheritance. To that end schools have sought to give intelligence and the churches to give the evan- gelistic gospel a message by which other communions as well as the Presbyterian should share in the com- mon blessings. Steadily holding this purpose, when the Woman's Board had by its schools so implanted a general de- sire for popular education that the state or the county was aroused to a willingness to assume the burdens of public schools, the Board gladly turned its schools one by one to the authorities ready to accept the responsi- bility. Then, as we have stated, the idea of com- munity service arose. Teachers released from the schoolroom were prepared for the missionary service from house to house. But more was needed. The uplift of mountain communities needed more than a schoolhouse and a church. They needed a broad Christian ministry which would take note of every defect and need. We have noted that the mountain isolation was one of the handicaps of mountain people. They must get in touch with each other. Society has saving qualities. Therefore, roads must be built on which neighbors could become neighbors, on which people could travel 198 THE SOUL OF AMERICA to reach the various hands of help that were being held out. Then, too, lands that had treasures which good farming could evoke had been left to lie fallow. The farm people needed not so much scientific lectures as agricultural demonstration. Also mortality among mountaineers had been un- necessarily large. In those ozone realms people should live a hundred years. And they did not. They needed proper elemental hygiene and sanitation. They needed doctors, nurses and hospitals. Here then emerged the chance for the further serv- ice of the Woman's Board and of the Country Life Department. Here they could grandly cooperate. The most significant sphere for such cooperation was fur- nished by the French Broad Presbytery in North Carolina, in which a large part of the work of the Woman's Board had been done. Here was an oppor- tunity for a great experiment. Miss Frances L. Goodrich. The transition from school work to community work gathered about one missionary personality. Miss Frances L. Goodrich had for many years been the pioneer of the Woman's Board in building one schoolhouse after another, one cottage after another and on securing teachers for schoolhouse and cottage moving on to some more des- titute region and doing the same thing again. When in 191 3 the Country Church Department took charge of the work of the French Broad Presbytery to in- augurate comprehensive country service and test its ideas of demonstration parishes, Miss Goodrich's ex- perience and knowledge were urgently needed and she was transferred to the Home Board. CHURCH AND MOUNTAINEERS 199 The Rev. W. E. Finley, D.D., a missionary for many years in that presbytery, became supervisor of the new form of work. Together he and Miss Good- rich have opened up new stations, secured funds for developing them and made the whole plan a marked success. Laurel Hospital. The most substantial achieve- ment in this work has been the establishing of the Laurel Hospital at White Rock, North Carolina. The task, under the leadership of Miss Frances L. Good- rich, has occupied the past three years. It is the cul- mination of a purpose which she has cherished since she began her long period of service on the Laurel. Five years of medical work through this region by Dr. George H. Packard prepared the way for this fulfill- ment of her dream. Before then there had been no licensed physician within sixteen miles of White Rock. Little by little he has educated the mountain people out of their prejudices and primitive beliefs to a recog- nition of the need of a physician's care. The visit to White Rock in 191 5 of Miss Anna B. Taft gave impetus to this building project and the first fifteen hundred dollars toward the cost was later given as a memorial to her. The building stands on land given by two mountain neighbors — one of whom owes his life to Dr. Packard's skill. The actual construction was begun in April, 191 7, and has proceeded without a cent of debt and without burdening the regular re- sources of the Board's income. The staff moved into the hospital quarters in May, 191Q. The final cost of the building is little less than thirty-five thousand dollars, and its equipment is so complete that it insures adequate facilities for a permanent and eflfective 200 THE SOUL OF AMERICA health service not only to this Laurel region but to the whole of Madison County. The plan of Demonstration Parishes thus begun in this presbytery has now been inaugurated in eighteen presbyteries from North Carolina to Washington. There were in 1918 fifty such parishes. They provide adequate pastoral service and adequate equipment for localities unable to provide them for themselves ; and they are meant to prove an example to all country churches of that region. In general, the plan secures a resident pastor, an undivided field in which that pas- tor serves the whole community and for a period long enough to prove the value of the work. It is in line with the modern idea of service without competition, and so far wherever undertaken it has demonstrated its success. ,^i^^ In^^ Bri-^ifg^ --.-am' B^^^ ^ npw^ Community Headquarters, White Rock. Xorth Caroliii; ^ B^IMBj^BffiBBB^^^pMW ^wH HHH^^H^^^^^HR^^^i^^— ' ' '■H^^H '■^H^^^"'- '^^sSHJll ^1 BK^ ^ ^^^^^BHI^HiiJ^HHHHii^HiHIHBBHHi hbi Laurel Hospital, White Rock, Xorth Carolina. Southern Mi)umaineer'> iiunie. X SPANISH-SPEAKING PEOPLE IN introducing the consideration of our mission work in the Antilles, it is worth while to note the impressions and conclusions of the Panama Con- gress of Christian Workers, which have been summed up by Dr. Harlan P. Beach of Yale University, as fol- laws: General Conditions in Latin America. "Roman Catholicism in varying degrees preserves the aspect of a state religion and professes to occupy adequately all of Latin America, for which it desires to assume sole religious responsibilty — resenting and opposing the proffered help of Evangelical churches. Scientific can- dor, based on the best testimony of Roman Catholic and Protestant sources, compels the belief that the Latin Church is unable to do for those republics what their inhabitants need to see accomplished. Its priests, with few notable exceptions, are discredited with the thinking classes. Its moral life is weak and its spir- itual witness faint. It is weighed with medisevalism and other non-Christian accretions." The facts thus cited and a multitude of other and similar facts forced on the Christian mind of North America the conclusion that the foundations laid and the moral and religious superstructure erected in Latin America would not meet the fundamental conditions of free government as, of course, they would not ad- 201 '202 THE SOUIv OF AMERICA vance the spiritual interests of the people. When the extensive and thorough survey which the Panama Con- gress inaugurated was completed it became alarmingly evident that for the conservation of democratic ideals on this continent there must be an intellectual and moral uplift of Latin America. Not alone did North America realize this fact. Political as well as Christian workers in South America confessed it. The Spanish-American War opened new doors for the Board of Home Missions. The guns of the Battle of Santiago revealed Cuba and Porto Rico as home missionary opportunities. Approach to Porto Rico. When General Miles landed on the western coast of Porto Rico with his lit- tle American Army he found an army wholly unnec- essary, for the people turned out to greet his soldiers as deliverers and to welcome the flag which they car- ried. At about the same time several denominations considered it their duty to enter this new and inviting field. Mission Board secretaries of four communions — Baptist, Congregational, Methodist and Presbyterian, met to consider the enterprise on which they were about to enter as that of a single and united purpose to pro- claim the Gospel of Christ to a million of Spanish- speaking people to whom that gospel would come as a glad surprise. Comity in Plans. They mapped ofif the Island and agreed upon a territorial division. The Congregation- alists chose the eastern end of the Island, the Presby- terians the western end, the Methodists and Baptists the two sections covering the remainder of the Island. So they purposed to work not only without conflict but in entire harmony to manifest to the population, accus- SPANISH-SPEAKING PEOPLE 203 tomed to the boastful unity of the Roman Catholic Church, the essential unity of the Protestantism our missionaries were there to advance. Since then several other denominations have come into the Island, but all under the general agreement that there should be no overlapping of missionary ef- forts. The agreement has been substantially kept to the present time and a spirit of comity, approaching now an act of federation, has ruled in all the counsels and actions of the respective Boards. The first two Presbyterian missions were located, one at San Juan, the Capital — and so, by the compact, free to all denominations — and the other at Mayaguez, which grew to be the center of the Presbyterian work on the western side of the Island. Dr. J. Milton Greene was put in charge of the work at San Juan and under his energetic leadership it was not long before a sub- stantial church was built and a large congregation gath- ered. More missionaries were sent down in succeeding years because the response of the people to the gospel message was suggestive of a great opportunity of which instant advantage should be taken. Many mission sta- tions were opened along the coast and up into the hills with always the same result of full houses and earnest inquirers. In 19 19 seven American missionaries and thirty-eight native helpers trained in the Theological School at Mayaguez were serving the various districts assigned to Presbyterians. Educational Question. The educational question early began to press on the mind of the Church as well as the Government. When Porto Rico passed under American control there was not a school building erected for that purpose anywhere in the Island. But 204 'I'HE SOUL OF AMERICA the people manifested a hunger for education and so, under the direction of the Woman's' Board, at that time a department of the Board of Home Missions, a number of mission schools were opened. The school work, it was soon found, needed to be supplemented by community service. In the Marina part of Maya- guez a mission school was begun in 1901. In 1907 its functions were enlarged so that a day nursery — the first on the Island — was added to its equipment. In- dustrial work on a small scale is also carried on. Part of the mission was destroyed by the earthquake in 1918 ; but the work goes on, — a source of great bless- ing to a very needy section of the city. In Aguadilla, where one of the first schools had been established, a like extension of work has been found necessary. In 191 1 a new building was erected for the school and teachers' home. An industrial department, a kindergarten, day nursery and day and evening classes completed the equipment. Early in the progress of work in the Island a valu- able property was secured for church and school pur- poses at the Capital and called the Hugh O'Neill Me- morial. Recently the Presbyterian Church has united with the Methodist Episcopal Church — the two occupy- ing the commodious building of the Methodist Epis- copal Church. The work at the Memorial Church is continued for the native church and an important com- munity service reaches the hemes of the Porto Ricans in that dense part of the city. Polytechnic Institute. But this primary education was not sufficient. Porto Ricans had an appetite for fuller preparation for their life work. In 1910 the Rev. J. Will Harris opened an industrial school at San Ger- President's New Home, Polytechnic Institute, San German, Porto Rico. Class in Physics, Polytechnic Institute, San German, Porto Rico. SPANISH-SPEAKING PEOPLE 205 man, a beautifully stiuated town twelve miles from Mayaguez. The school rapidly outgrew both its sched- ule and its appointments. With the hearty endorse- ment of the Educational Department of the Govern- ment Mr. Harris appealed to friends in the North and to the Porto Ricans. In both directions the response was encouraging. One hundred and fifty pupils of both sexes availed themselves of its privileges. With the help of the *'boys" large and commodious buildings are being erected, the curriculum is enlarged to meet the increasing demands and an endowment is now be- ing sought toward which the people of Porto Rico ex- pect to raise one hundred thousand dollars. It is now named the Polytechnic Institute and is supported and patronized by people of all the denominations having missions on the Island. Training School. As In foreign missions, so in Porto Rico, the Presbyterian Church early perceived the necessity of raising up a native ministry into whose hands the entire work could soon be transferred. Mayaguez was selected as the location and the Rev. J. A. McAllister was chosen to superintend it. It has had a striking history. As many as twenty-five students have at one time been within its walls and it has gradu- ated nearly all the native missionaries now in the serv- ice. The earthquake in 1918 seriously damaged the fine building which houses the school, but the school con- tinued its regular course undisturbed by the repeated reminders which followed the first shock. In this school also the various denominations cooperate. The spirit of fraternity prevailing in all branches of the great missionary undertaking is one of the most beau- tiful and encouraging signs of the times. 2o6 . THE SOUL OF AMERICA Thus the educational system which found the Island without any schools has developed from the little mis- sion class among the hills to higher education reaching up to academy and theological grades. San Juan Hospital. It was not long before the sad physical condition of the natives attracted the atten- tion of the missionaries and in 1901 a hospital was opened by the Woman's Board at Santurce, a suburb of San Juan. In 1904 three buildings were dedicated. These were soon thronged with patients. It was rec- ognized as the leading hospital of the Island. It soon outgrew its accommodations and in 1917 a fine and thoroughly equipped new hospital building was dedi- cated, in which now many thousands find relief and healing every year. The new dispensary is capable of treating three thousand out-patients each month. It has a training school where many Porto Rican nurses and probationers are trained for service. As they graduate they fall into the hospital staff or serve as district nurses throughout the Island. Miss Jennie Ordway has been superintendent from the first and Dr. E. Raymond Hildreth now since 1906 has been the resident physician. In order that swift medical and surgical help might also be given the western side of the Island near the many home mission stations a small hospital was opened at Mayaguez. This, named the Rye Hospital, was transferred from the Board of Home Missions to the Woman's Board and was so seriously damaged by the earthquake that service there has been suspended. The report of the year 1918 Indicates that the work of the Presbyterian Boards is firmly established along SPANISH-SPEAKING PEOPLE 207 the three lines indicated, namely, evangelistic, educa- tional and medical. Early in the missionary history of Porto Rico, as might have been expected from the compact entered into by the four leading denominations who first es- tablished mission work there, a strong tendency toward close fellowship between the different bodies mani- fested itself. The steps looking to closer federation may best be presented here in the report of the Com- mittee on Cooperation in Latin America, formed to continue the work outlined at the Panama Congress. This report was presented to the Home Missions Coun- cil at its Annual Meeting in January, 1918, and may be summarized as follows: An Evangelical Union. An Evangelical Union has been formed which more closely unites the evan- gelical forces in the Island. A union printing plant has been establshed, making the Presbyterian paper, Puerto Rico Bvangclico, serve equally all the denomi- nations. A series of evangelistic meetings maintained jointly by all the Societies doing work in the Island is continued from year to year with most important re- sults. There is working harmony in the support of educational institutions. Three mission institutions maintained by three denominations have made provi- sion for pupils from all missionary bodies. The most advanced step now being taken in joint work relates to the founding of an interdenominational training school. This is the most pressing need of the field and will doubtless soon be realized. Four bodies are now considering the question of or- ganic union, the United Brethren, the Presbyterian, the Congregational and the Disciples. 2o8 THE SOUIv OF AMERICA Mission to Santo Domingo. One of the most in- teresting missionary signs is the movement of the na- tive churches to estabHsh a mission in the neighboring Island of Santo Domingo. There are thousands of Porto Ricans in that Island and the home churches are intensely interested in sending the gospel to their less favored brethren. It is believed that a plan will soon be worked out on which the various Societies may agree and that from Porto Rico a joint effort will be made to evangelize Santo Domingo. The statistics of the mission work in Porto Rico last reported to the General Assembly indicate that there are twenty-seven missionaries in charge of thirty-three churches with two thousand three hundred and six communicants. Beginning in Cuba. Home mission work in Cuba was begun in 1902. Dr. Greene, who had been for some years Superintendent in Porto Rico, was trans- ferred to Cuba to have charge of the new enterprise there. He found the conditions much the same as those he had met in Porto Rico with perhaps less, however, of Americanism inasmuch as the Republic was not a part of the American Union. Development of the work has been slower, but in both schools and evangelistic services there has been a steady progress. Several of the stations have good church and school buildings. In 1918 Dr. Greene retiring from the service the Rev. E. A. Odell, who had been his successor in Porto Rico, was transferred to the superintendency in Cuba. The most notable advance in this Island is in the spirit of comity and cooperation which has seized on all the communions. SPANISH-SPEAKING PEOPLE 209 Immediately following the Panama Congress in 1916 a Regional Conference was held in Havana which formed a "Committee of Conference in Cuba" to fos- ter interdenominational cooperation. Its first work was a survey of the evangelical situation in the Island. The result was a comprehensive program for all phases of evangelical work. The following steps were taken: Cooperative Plans. The question of a Union Theo- logical Training School was discussed and awaits defi- nite action at a later date. A union literature depository was established and a union paper was planned for. A social service program was also outlined, involving settlement work in cities, extension of the Playground Movement, enlistment of social workers in humani- tarian and other enterprises of the Evangelical Church, and also industrial training in the mission schools. An Evangelistic Committee similar to the one in Porto Rico was also formed. The union movement in Cuba has not advanced as rapidly as in Porto Rico. It has encountered peculiar difficulties. But the signs are bright for a more rapid advance in the future. In one respect the movement toward Church union has been more pronounced in Cuba than in Porto Rico. They have not, indeed, ad- vanced so far in the discussion of plans of federation as in the sister Island, but instead of increasing they have reduced the number of denominations at work. In 1908 the Home Missionary Society of the Congre- gational Church decided that the Presbyterians could take over their work without any loss for the Kingdom while they would thus be set free to do a larger service in some other place. The Presbyterian Church, there- 14 2IO THE SOUL OF AMERICA fore, assumed the responsibility of the work that had belonged to the Congregational Society. In 191 7 the work of the Foreign Christian Missionary Society of the Church of the Disciples was transferred to the Presbyterian Board. It consisted of churches at Matanzas and Union, with several small connecting missions. In 1918 the Southern Presbyterian Church turned over all its work to the Board of Home Mis- sions, save only a large school which they are conduct- ing at Cardenas. The work thus transferred consists of nine organizations with seven hundred and sixteen church members. The Cardenas school which now is the crown of the educational system of the Northern and Southern Pres- byterians, continues to be supported by the Execu- tive Committee of Foreign Missions of the Southern Church. It continues under the principalship of the Rev. R. L. Wharton, who by the union arrangement is superintendent of all the school work in Cuba under the Woman's Board. This is a good illustration of the spirit of cooperation, as there is no finer work than that which the Southern Presbyterian Church was doing. Mexicans By the treaty with Mexico in 1848 there came to us an unnumbered alien element of Spanish and In- dian blood, an element alien in speech, in customs, in tradition, in religion and in thought. Their out- standing characteristic was the lack of initiative, sharp- ly separating them from the body of people of which they were henceforth to form a part. This lack of initiative was not due to intellectual inferiority, for in their veins ran the blood of the greatest pioneers the SPANISH-SPEAKING PEOPLE 211 world has ever known; but it was due to a system of intellectual and spiritual servitude that crushed the in- dividual mind and aspirations. The population that thus came to us by the fortunes of war was largely of the peon class, with the exception of a few large land owners in Colorado and New Mexico and a large number of the old families in Cali- fornia. In religion, in agriculture, in every department of human activity, their morale was that of the mass and their eyes ever upon their leaders. Under the new order they came in contact with the most aggressive and the worst elements of our American life. For four hundred years they had been taught to fear and hate everything that savored of Protestantism, and their contact with American adventurers and outlaws did not tend to soften their prejudices. But at the middle of the Nineteenth Century a new day began to dawn. Beginning. The first Protestant Church to enter New Mexico was the Baptist. The Rev. Samuel Gor- man, the first missionary to the Pueblo Indians in 1854, erected in Santa Fe the first Protestant Church in New Mexico. The Civil War came soon after and the work was abandoned. The Congregationalists began school work for Mexi- can children in 1888. In about fifteen years they estab- lished six schools with about four hundred pupils. Their evangelistic work has been inconsiderable, reg- istering only a few native evangelists and a few native churches. The Methodist Church entered New Mexico in 1850. For several years the work was discouraging. In 1855 212 THE SOUL OF AMERICA a superintendent was sent to examine and report on the field. This visit, however, led to no results and the small beginnings that had been made in a few places were given up. In 1866, however, a Methodist preacher called "Father Dyer" on a horseback ride through New Mexico, found such alarming moral con- ditions that he wrote stirring appeals in Church papers which induced the General Conference in 1868 to make New Mexico a district in the Colorado Conference and to appoint Father Dyer presiding elder. This was the beginning of an enlarging work. They now have many church buildings, prosperous schools and a growing church membership. The first Presbyterian missionary to New Mexico seems to have been the Rev. W. J. Kephart, who went to Santa Fe in 1850. The first sermon known to have been preached by a Presbyterian missionary in the capi- tal city was in November, 1866. It was given in the Senate Chamber, on the same day, the first Protestant Sabbath school in New Mexico held its session. The missionary was the Rev. D. F. McFarland, who had been sent out under commission of the Board of Do- mestic Missions. He organized the First Presbyterian Church of Santa Fe on January thirteenth, 1867, with twelve members. In June, 1868, the Presbytery of Santa Fe was or- ganized. "Father o£ Mexican Work." A man who has been called the "Father of our Mexican work" was the Rev. John A. Annin, who opened a mission at Las Vegas in 1869. There he met a young Mexican who greeted him with these words, "I have been praying for a mission- ary. You can depend on me for anything I can do." SPANISH-SPEAKING PEOPLE 21.^ They became fast friends and partners in a large ad- vance in mission work in the following years. But the results have been worth while. The evangelistic work reported in 191 8 was represented by three presbyteries with an enrollment of fifty-one ministers, sixty-five churches and twenty-nine hundred communicants. School Work. The school work has from the first been under the direction of the Woman's Board of Home Missions. It was early recognized that only by Christian education could good foundations be laid. But it was difficult work. Hoary superstitions must be met and prejudices overcome and a foreign language be learned. But these difficulties vanished under the splendid enthusiasm of the consecrated young women sent out by the Board to open plaza schools in scores of villages. In the face of opposition, often amounting to persecution, the brave band found nothing too hard but pressed on, winning victories over the worst condi- tions and the most determined resistance. The light began to break among the Mexicans. The children went back to their homes with a new vision, and the homes themselves took on some appearance of order and comfort. But the plaza school implied something more. For many pupils the elementary education only created an appetite for more education. So the Woman's Board founded schools for a higher education. The first was the Allison School at Santa Fe, named after a beloved teacher. Miss Matilda L. Allison reached the capital in May, 1881. The only property she found was an adobe building, the wreck of a small mission school es- tablished several years previous. She repaired the building and began. Soon by help from New York she 214 THE SOUIv OF AMERICA was able to erect a suitable building and open a board- ing department. From the first it was crowded. The waiting list grew. In 1902 it had eighty boarders and one hundred were sent back to their dreary homes be- cause there was no room for them. Here, as in other schools of the Woman's Board, industrial features so necessary for Mexican people were added. It has wrought great changes in Mexican homes. A super- intendent of education for New Mexico, himself a Ro- man Catholic, declared the Santa Fe school had done more for Mexican girls than any other institution in the Territory. In honor of Mrs. Darwin R. James, re- cent President of the Woman's Board, Miss Allison, the school now bears the title of the Allison-James School. Menaul School. In 1886 a boarding school for boys and girls was opened at Las Vegas. It was crowded almost from the first. In 1896 it was removed to Al- buquerque. Only boys were admitted and in honor of the Rev. James Menaul, who for seven years had been Synodical Missionary of New Mexico, it was named the Menaul School. The attendance has constantly taxed the capacity, some years hundreds being turned away. Here, too, industrial training is emphasized. The boys work with heads, hands and hearts. Many public schools in New Mexico are being supplied with teachers from this school. Mention should be made of the Forsythe Memorial School. With new equipment it is doing a fine edu- cational work for the Mexican children of Los Angeles. Other schools among Mexicans are those at Agua Negra, John Hyson Memorial at Chimayo, Chacon, SPANISH-SPEAKING PEOPLE 215 Embudo, Pyle Memorial at Taos, El Prado and Tre- mentino. The need of a qualified native ministry so pressed on the Home Board that in 1902 the Albuquerque Training School was established. It was conducted in connection with the Menaul School, with Dr. Henry C. Thomson in charge. In its first year it had ten stu- dents for the gospel ministry. During the summer months the yotmg men are employed as evangelists among their own people, and with many gratifying re- sults. It suggests the plain way for the evangelization of our rapidly increasing Mexican population. In Los Angeles. On the Pactific Coast the work began later and because of the lack of prepared men of their own race the progress has been slow. Los An- geles with a Mexican population of fifty thousand, has a strong and thoroughly organized church, with a man of strong personality and splendid equipment at its head. Located within easy distance of the Forsythe Memorial School there is perfect cooperation between the two, and the pastor, Rev. Jose Falcon, is doing much to develop a noble spiritual life among the pupils. At Other Points. Eleven other points in California are occupied by Presbyterians; ten in Arizona, nine- teen in New Mexico, twelve in Colorado and five in Texas are actively occupied by Presbyterian forces. El Paso and San Antonio are the two strategic points in Texas. The former has a Mexican population of fifty thousand and the strongest and most progressive Mexican church in the Southwest. The influx of hundreds of thousands from Mexico because of the state of anarchy that there prevails has introduced a new element that brings both anxiety and 2i6 THE SOUL OF AMERICA hope. No nation, and especially no democracy, can safely retain a large alien element within its borders. The new element comes with all the old prejudices, but as they come in touch with our schools and evangelical churches and experience the kindly sympathy and help- fulness of Christian people in their loneliness and need the prejudices disappear and there is a rapid absorption of American ideals. Since 1912 the Rev. Robert McLean, D.D., has been the efficient Superintendent of the whole Mexican work, but is now (1919) succeeded by his son, the Rev. Robert N. McLean, for four years in charge of the Spanish Department in Dubuque Seminary. The new poHcy in Mexican missions looks to safeguarding our institutions as well as evangelizing the Mexicans, hence English will be taught in all our schools. Prof. Steiner says in "From Alien to Citizen": ''Blood is thicker than water, but language is thicker than blood," and no foreign-language citizen can ever be in harmony with our democracy. Castelar said long ago : "The genius of America is the spirit of Liberty." And that spirit is touching with new life this element so long suppressed but so great in possibility. The effort to secure interdenominational action with reference to the Spanish-speaking people has not yet reached full success. But steps are in process which later it is believed will have far-reaching influence. A Permanent Interdenominational Council on Spanish- Speaking Work in the Southwest has held five annual meetings. A survey made by this Council reported in 19 1 8 that there was an increasing Spanish population and great need of more and stronger missions. An SPANISH-SPEAKING PEOPLE 217 Evangelical Union Church, in which the denominational work should be merged, was discussed, but the ma- jority of the bodies were not yet ready for such a step. The Council, however, repeated its adherence to the plans of cooperation already formed. A union evan- gelical training school and an interdenominational evangelical paper in Spanish were also considered, but definite action was deferred. XI WOMAN'S BOARD OF HOME MISSIONS FOR a number of years before 1877 the Home Board had felt that more should be done for the belated peoples of our country than in the terms of its Charter it felt able to do. In the mountains of the South and on the deserts of the West and up in ice- bound Alaska an educational work was calling for which the Board was not equipped. Women's Societies. From time to time the claims of these people on the help which only Christian agen- cies could give were pressed on the Assembly. In 1876 it took the forward step by recommending the organi- zation of Women's Missionary Societies in the churches "for such help as Christian women might be able to give to these stranded populations." Special funds for school work having come into the hands of the Board, teachers were sent to Utah to open schools under the supervision of missionaries. In 1877 the school work of the Board was formally inaugurated. In December of that year sixteen teachers were appointed with sal- aries amounting to fifty-four hundred dollars, which sum the women of the Church were asked to raise. The Assembly fully approved this forward move- ment and recognized it as a distinct department of the Board. We copy from Dr. Wilson Phraner's account of the organization of the Woman's Board as follows: 218 WOMAN'S BOARD OF HOME MISSIONS 219 "In the years preceding, and especially since the re- union, several local women's missionary societies had been formed, such as the Woman's Missionary Society of New York, organized in 1861, of which Mrs. Dore- mus was president, also the Santa Fe Missionary Asso- ciation, and the Board of the Southwest and the Long Island Women's Missionary Society. These were carrying on work independently of each other, and of the Assembly, both in the home and foreign fields. But a convention of women specially interested in the home field was held at Pittsburgh in connection with the meeting of the Assembly in 1878, at which a committee of twelve representative women from different parts of the Church was appointed to bring together, if possible, these several local societies and interest them in this great work among the exceptional populations of our land. This committee met in the city of New York, and, after a comparison of views, it was found that some specially favored the home, while others pre- ferred the foreign field. As in their deliberations this fact became apparent the hope of union in one effort and in one field was abandoned. But although the rep- resentatives of these several societies could not see their way clear to union and cooperation as one organi- zation, yet, from their meeting and conference together, came new aspiration and impulse to the women of the Church, and from that time our women's work has come to the front, and become a leading feature in all departments of our Church work. Organization. ''On December 12, 1878, the com- mittee appointed at Pittsburgh together with those who had been designated by some of the synods, met in the Bible House, New York City, and organized the Worn- 220 THE SOUL OF AMERICA en's Executive Committee of Home Missions, auxiliary to our Board of Home Missions, since 1897 known as the Woman'g Board of Home Missions. Mrs. Ash- bel Green was elected president and Mrs. F. E. H. Haines and Mrs. A. R. Walsh were chosen secretaries. The object of the organization was to cooperate with the Board of Home Missions in work on behalf of our exceptional populations. After consultation with the Board as to plans and methods of work, they adopted the following program as outlining and defining their branch of work: ''First. That the Women's Executive Commitee co- operate with the Board of Home Missions and under- take no work without the Board's approval. "Second. That the objects aimed at by the committee shall be first, to diffuse information regarding mission work; second, to unify as far as possible women's work for home missions; third, to raise money for teachers' salaries and for general home mission pur- poses ; fourth, to superintend the preparation and dis- tribution of home missionary boxes; fifth, to secure aid and comfort for home missionaries and missionary laborers in special cases of affliction and destitution." Incorporation. The great work thus outHned was carried on as a department of the Board of Home Mis- sions with ever increasing success. In 1914 steps were taken looking to the incorporation of the Woman's Board as a separate agency. Report of it was made to the Assembly of 191 5, in which it gave the object of incorporation to be the carrying on "the work of mis- sions through schools, hospitals and educational insti- tutions generally in connection with and auxiliary to the work nov/ being carried on by the Board of Home WOMAN'S BOARD OF HOME MISSIONS 221 Missions. Also to receive, take charge of and disburse all property and funds which at any time and from time to time may be entrusted to said Board for its mission- ary or educational purposes." Under this Charter the Woman's Board is now push- ing on its ever enlarging plans. By its thorough or- ganization it reaches through synodical societies, which in turn are composed of presbyterial women's mission- ary societies and local societies known by various names and including the women, children and young people of the Church, a constituency of more than three hundred fifty thousand. In preceding chapters we have given details of edu- cational and medical work conducted by the women while their Board was an auxiliary of the Board of Home Missions. In order to give, so far as possible, a connected story we gave in detail the work thus car- ried on from 1878 to 1915, when the Board became a separate organization. These phases of the work con- tinue to be stressed as heretofore. Policy. The policy of the Board so incorporated may be briefly stated as follows : 1. The establishment of day schools in sections where there is a genuine educational need, and the gradual withdrawal of these and the substitution of community work therefor, as soon as the public school development is such as to meet the requirements, the principle of coooperation and not competition with the public school being always kept in the foreground. 2. The maintenance of boarding schools for the training of Christian leaders in communities where normal advantages of Christian home training and or- dinary cultural opportunities do not exist. 222 THE SOUL OF AMERICA 3. The development of medical work along the lines of constructive philanthropy v^^here the physical needs of the people can be met in no other way. 4. The opening of no work in states which by reason of their financial resources, educational development and Christian advantages may reasonably be expected to respond effectively to their educational needs. But regions being supplied with school facilities needed moral and spiritual guidance to make the schooling of the most account. The schoolhouse could no longer be the center of missionary work. That cen- ter must be the home and the community. In a careful consideration of the whole matter the Board concluded that there must be an advance toward community re- generation and that this must be effected by the devel- opment of Christian leadership. The higher grades of mission schools must train the leaders, — the communi- ties around them must be the sphere of their leadership. Harlan County. Such a development of community service is illustrated in the community plans for Harlan County, Kentucky. It is worth while, therefore, to present It somewhat fully. A community school was agreed upon to be located at Smith in the above named county. It was opened in July, 1918, and its purpose is thus described: After the fire which destroyed the Harlan school dormitory at Harlan, Kentucky, it was deemed advisa- ble not to rebuild directly in Harlan but to locate at some other point in Harlan County. As a result plans have been evolved for a new Harlan County project known as a Community Life School. This has as its basis community development, spiritual, intellectual, and economic. To this end it is about to open a co- WOMAN'S BOARD OF HOME MISSIONS 223 educational boarding school department for sixty pu- pils, minimum age twelve, grades five to eight, inclu- sive, with one-half day for academic work, the other half for industrial training, all instruction to be of the most practical nature and aimed to fit students for their probable environment, at the same time preparing the exceptionally gifted for the county high schools or other institutions of similar grade; it has already provided public school instruction by assisting in the develop- ment of a model public school at the expense of the community and under its direction ; it plans to provide a four weeks' mid-winter extension course for pupils so environed that longer attendance is impossible, and a four weeks' course along Denmark folk school lines for adults, both married and single; It maintains ex- tension work during suitable seasons and in varying neighboring communities along general lines of work ; it provides through the nurse and home science teacher an instructive program of sanitation and medical relief for as wide an area as is feasible ; it develops and main- tains Sunday schools and Bible classes at as many points in the immediate vicinity as can be covered from the central plant and promotes the religious growth of the general community by every practicable means. Great stress is laid upon a policy of cooperation with the state and national forces, that are now working in the field of community betterment. The cooperation of the State Health Department, of the State Agricul- tural Bureau and of the National Department of Agri- culture Is earnestly solicited. The institution serves as a center for demonstration work on the part of these various agencies. 224 THE SOUL OF AMERICA Dorland-Bell School. Another illustration of the out-reach of this community service is given in the ex- tension work at Dorland-Bell School at Hot Springs, North Carolina. As elsewhere noted, there are two in- stitutions there — the institute in the village and the farm two miles down the river. It is proposed to com- bine the boys' department at Dorland-Bell School with the farm, known as "The Willows," and establish a "Folk School" there. The general policy in regard to it is to provide intellectual, aesthetic, economic and spirit- ual stimuli for post-adolescent members of the commun- ities within the radius of the schools' influence by means of short-term courses given as frequently during the year as conditions warrant. The courses of instruction will cover a very wide range. In addition to academic branches, there will be courses in all kinds of domestic science, in sanitation and nursing, in practical agricul- ture, in citizenship, and in rural sociology. Of course, religious organizations will hold a prominent place. It is thought that the region to be served in western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee will be a territory with a radius of fifty miles from Hot Springs. The farm will continue to be operated on a profit basis and be made available in every way possible as a Demonstra- tion Farm. Further extensions of community service should be noted as follows : Mexican Schools. The Allison-James School at Santa Fe has long proved its right to existence. It has sent many fine young girls back to homes in the desert or the mountain to brighten and cheer and ele- vate those homes. But for many of them there is a higher calling if they are able to fulfill its conditions. WOMAN'S BOARD OF HOME MISSIONS 225 Trained and educated Mexican teachers is the urgent demand in plaza towns and remote sections. And now more than ever they must be able to Americanize the schools. In the past, schools have been taught in Span- ish and with little purpose to train the scholars to be intelligent Americans. The Allison-James School stresses an endeavor to remedy this defect in the edu- cational life of New Mexico. It is devoting its energies to train teachers and leaders from among the Mexican population itself. The War has accentuated the ur- gency of this need. A similar movement is in progress in Menaul School at Albuquerque. This school has in past years been fruitful in training young men for useful lives, as is indicated by the fact that of the seventy-six graduates eight are now ministers of the gospel, two are students for the ministry, four are doing missionary work, five are school principals and eleven are school teachers. By reason of the great inflow of Mexicans into New Mexico the capacity of Menaul needs to be greatly en- larged and its equipment strengthened. An interesting new movement for Mexican evan- gelization is in the federation of various denomina- tions doing missionary work among the Mexican peo- ple, by which a common program, pushed unitedly by all the societies, will mean swift results where for gen- erations they have been lamentably slow. The Islands. Similar progress is to be noted in the Islands. In no place is there a louder call for com- munity service than in Porto Rico, — and perhaps in no place in Porto Rico more than in xA^guadilla and Maya- guez, so severely shaken by recent earthquake shocks. With inadequate equipment the faithful workers there, 15 226 THE SOUL OF AMERICA stirred by the awful sufferings the people have under- gone, have been tireless in their personal ministries and in clubs and classes for all kinds of service to the often homeless people. When the neighborhood houses, which they now see only in vision, shall become em- bodied facts they will open the door to the Kingdom for a sorely suffering community. The work in Cuba has entered on a new stage. The Woman's Board had for many years conducted three important schools, — the Kate Plumer Bryan Memorial at Guines, opened in 1903, the Sancti Spiritus School, begun in 1904, and the school at Nueva Paz, opened in 1904. But in 1918 the Board took over from the Board of Home Missions and from the Southern Presby- terian Church most of the educational work which those agencies had been conducting. Therefore, the Woman's Board, which had been conducting three schools on that Island, is now responsible for nine which vary in grade from elementary to full high schools. Rev. R. L. Wharton, D.D., the superintend- ent of all this school work, sees a chance for great ex- pansion if only suitable equipment can be provided. In Cuba^ as in New Mexico and Porto Rico, a trained native leadership is an absolute essential to the best kind of progress. It is believed that the large school at Cardenas with an enrollment of four hundred will greatly help to meet that need. Americanization, The women of the Presbyterian Church have been especially active in meeting the edu- cational and spiritual claims of the foreigners who have come to our shores. It is true the War has largely ar- rested their coming. But it is also true that conditions brought about by the War have made more insistent WOMAN'S BOARD OF HOME MISSIONS 227 demands on missionary labors. The Americanization of foreigners appeals today in a new light. For our own sake, as for theirs, we must rise to the full measure of our Christian duty. The Woman's Board has an Indirect relation to work for immigrants whether done by the women's societies alone or in cooperation with synods and presbyteries. The plan of cooperation agreed upon is as follows : "(a) Funds to be expended for work among immi- grant populations shall be sent to the Treasurer of the Woman's Board and shall be returned at once to the appointed authorities; but shall be acknowledged and recorded as a separate fund and shall be so reported at the close of the fiscal year. ''(b) This work shall not be budgeted by the Wom- an's Board and shall not have any claim on the funds of said Board. The amount expended shall be an ad- vance over and above the sum required for the support of the national work. "(c) The workers shall not be commissioned but listed by the Board, and it shall have no supervision of such work." Two years before incorporation, January, 1913, the Board took action looking toward the training of women for service in immigrant communities, both as foreign-speaking visitors and directors of religious, so- cial and educational work. In 1919 to give effect to the purpose so recorded the following policy was adopted : "The Board proposes to establish not less than ten fellowships of two hundred fifty dollars a year to be given to young women, preferably college graduates, who shall pursue a course of training to fit them for leadership in work for immigrants. Such candidates 228 THE SOUL OF AMERICA shall be chosen by the Board in such manner as it may indicate and shall be understood and expected to ren- der such service of leadership in immigrant communi- ties after the completion of such training." This policy is now in process and will meet the very crux of the immigrant problem, — namely, the Ameri- canization of foreigners by leaders specially trained for that service. Statistics. There are 41 boarding and day schools with 238 commissioned workers with an enrollment of 3,542. There are 24 community stations with 35 com- missioned workers with 1,569 in Sunday school attend- ance and an addition of 46 to church membership. In these communities these missionaries paid 13,687 visits. The Woman's Board conducts seven hospitals and medical stations, where eighteen commissioned phy- sicians and nurses minister to the healing of the body and to the spiritual help of the soul. These hospitals report 32,720 patients and 815 operations. The financial report for 1919 shows a total of re- ceipts (including immigrant work and gifts for the Freedmen) of $799,997.66. Missionary Education. The great increase that has come to this branch of missionary service is due in con- siderable measure to the energy and capacity with which the Board has pressed the Department of Mis- sionary Education. Persuaded that interest in missions depends on knowledge they have stressed the study of missions with persistent enthusiasm. During the year, reporting in 19 18, they listed one thousand five hun- dred and seventy mission study groups. Institutes and conferences led by strong representatives have been WOMAN'S BOARD OF HOME MISSIONS 229 giving the claims of missions in fourteen colleges and in summer schools. Home Mission Monthly. Their literature has shared the rapid growth of other departments, their magazine, The Home Mission Monthly, in thirty-one years of its existence having turned forty-three thou- sand dollars into the treasury of the Board after meet- ing every expense of publication. This is probably a record mark in the profits of missionary periodical lit- erature. The magazine owes much of its success to the wise management of its first editor. The classes reached by the operations of this Board are Alaskans, Indians, Mexicans, Mormons, Moun- taineers, Cubans, Porto Ricans, and foreigners. De- tails of the work among these exceptional peoples are found in the chapters covering each class. Statistics for 1919 are as follows: The leaders. This statement will not be complete without a passing mention of the women who in years gone by guided this great enterprise along its pros- perous way and who have now entered into rest. Mrs. Ashbel Green and Mrs. F. E. H. Haines were among its wise and devoted founders. Mrs. Darwin R. James gave many years of consecrated enthusiasm to her great leadership. Mrs. Frederick H. Pierson for ten fruitful years was accepted throughout the Church as an ideal secretary. Mrs. Delos E. Finks was for twenty-five years editor of The Home Mission Monthly, and during the first six years served also as General Secretary of the Board, her long association making her a valued counselor. Ofiiccrs of more re- cent years need not be specially named. They all have 230 THE SOUL OF AMERICA served, or are serving now, with the fidelity and devo- tion without which the Board had not attained the measure of usefuhiess in which it now rejoices. Council o£ Women. The Woman's Board co- operates not only with the other Woman's Boards of the Presbyterian Church, but also with the Woman's Boards of Home Missions of other denominations in the Council of Women for Home Missions. The dis- tinct object of this organization is "to create commu- nity, interdenominational, Christian fellowship in home missionary interests ; to stimulate interest in and to in- crease knowledge of home mission fields and conditions by a thorough study of home mission textbooks through study classes and lectures." For the carrying out of this purpose the Council has the following standing committees: Home Mission Day of Prayer, Home Mission Study Courses and Literature, Home Mission Interests in Schools, Colleges and Summer Confer- ences, Home Mission Interests Among Children, Home Mission Interests Among Immigrants, Home Mission Comity and Cooperation, and Home Mission Summer Schools. In addition to these constituent denominational Boards, the National Board of the Young Women's Christian Associations and the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union are consulting Boards of the Council. General Council. An achievement in the direction of coordination of the work of the Woman's Boards both Home and Foreign came about by a conference called in November, 191 5, in Chicago. It was a fine gathering of Presbyterian woman, synodical and pres- byterial presidents and members of Mission Boards, f WOMAN'S BOARD OF HOME MISSIONS 231 leaders from every part of the country expressing a desire for cooperation. In June, 1916, at a meeting in New York, the Gen- eral Committee organized the General Council of Woman's Board of Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America. It repre- sents six Woman's Boards of Foreign Missions and the Woman's Board of Home Missions, with a mem- bership in which these Boards are equally represented. Definite policies of co5peration for the seven Boards are now being worked out, consisting of recommenda- tions concerning young people's work, missionary edu- cation, financial matters, publications and items of gen- eral interest. Concerning its value it is written : "In a single generation, from the somewhat limited activities of the sewing circle and the ladies' prayer meeting, the women of the Church have developed a great missionary organization of societies and Boards requiring a clearing house for their manifold activities. Such an organization is the last achievement of the Chi- cago Conference, the General Council of Woman's Boards of Missions whose purpose is 'to secure a larger vision of the mission work of Presbyterian women, and to unify as far as possible the policies and methods of the Woman's Boards.' " The present officers of the Woman's Board are as follows: President, Mrs. Fred S. Bennett; First Vice-President, Mrs. Augustus S. Crane; Second Vice-President, Mrs. A. C. Mc- Millan; Third Vice-President, Miss V. May White; Record- ing Secretary, Miss Emma Jessie Ogg; General Secretary, Miss Edna Renard Voss ; Assistant Secretary, Miss Mabel M. Sheibley; Treasurer, Miss Mary Wallace Torrence ; Su- perintendent of Schools, Marshall C. Allaben; Secretary for Missionary Education, Mrs. M. J. Gildersleeve ; Secretary for Young People's Work, Miss M. Josephine Petrie; Editor of Home Mission Monthly, Miss Theodora Finks. XII THE CALL OF THE HOUR. IN this closing chapter of a historic sketch it will not be inappropriate to face about for a time and consider to what present duty the home mission enterprise is called. The whirligig of these swift days has run history and prophecy so close together that no contemplation of one is quite complete without a recog- nition of the other. The impetus of yesterday flings us into tomorrow. By the title of this chapter we would stress the in- stant home mission call. Like the war through which we have gone that duty comes upon us with a sort of dramatic military action. The spirit of reconstruction is abroad. It will not be confined to the Peace Conference. It is world recon- struction and will invade every realm of life. The moral and spiritual care of America must own it, not for tomorrow but for today. Some duties decline post- ponement. To postpone were to miss the floodtide of opportunity. To now miss that floodtide in the mis- sionary call were to set back the cause indefinitely. Some occasions refuse to repeat themselves. The purpose of this chapter is to sketch a few of the conditions of adequate missionary response to the reli- gious demands of the times. What must the Church be and do to get into line with a new world movement ? No longer must we be content with small enterprises 232 THE CALL OF THE HOUR 233 and conventional plans and methods. To fail to swing into the great current that is about to envelope every shore of human thought and activity is to be stranded. It is for the Church to choose to be content with little local eddies on the margin of the world river, or to ac- cept the world-challenge and swing out for big con- quests, by unusual ways, it may be, but by compelling inspirations. New Frontiers. Of course, old home missionary duties remain, with their tried methods and their limi- tations. The frontiers are not exhausted. New ones are coming. The march to which the fathers set their steps must go on. Congested populations will be more congested. Rural life must yet be saved from its dis- couragements and failures by the old applications of Christian truth. Strange languages in which to preach the gospel must continue to be learned. Home mis- sions must learn foreign mission lessons. So the ma- chinery of missions, which past generations have taught and the present generation is emphasizing, must still and increasingly be pushed. But there is suddenly an added meaning to missions both abroad and at home. In ways we had not thought and to a measure we had not dreamed America is the cynosure of all nations. And there is here no choice for us. Events far beyond our control have flung us to the forefront of human affairs. And the most steadying thought that can come to us In these days is in the question, **Who is sufficient for these things?" Christian Ideals. In the advance to which the na- tions are springing today programs of material inter- ests are held back. The question that most concerns peoples Is not that of physical power or resources, but 234 THE SOUL OF AMERICA that of moral and spiritual ideals and their place in the conduct of life. Toward them, often blindly and in revolutionary ways, the nations are striving. They will not be content till they shall have learned to live and to adjust their relations to each other somewhat along those lines. It is not national egotism to say that America will have some share in bringing on this new order of Hfe. How shall she be fitted for it? By what discipline will she be made equal to so tremendous a calling ? In a word, we must in fact become that people to- ward whom our announced principles point, owning God as our God and proposing to shape our national life on the model of Christian ideals. Our Christianity must become penetrative, not only to illumine our thinking, pointing out the higher life to which men and nations should attain, but also and chiefly to give us spiritual power to lift us to the level of our principles. It is the common fault of individuals that their profes- sions are so far ahead of their performances. And that equally is the fault of nations. They seldom attain to the best of their thinking. Their flag is so far ahead of their columns. How shall America visualize to herself and illustrate to others the high moral creed she re- ceived as an inheritance and has in part worked out as an achievement? This question may find an answer along these lines. Spiritual Power. I. The Church must more deeply spiritualize her life and her institutions. If she is to do the tasks now coming she must have a vast increase of power. The doctrine of the Scriptures in this is that the Spirit of God is the motive power of the Church. All else is machinery. This is the dynamo. THE CALL OF THE HOUR 235 The standing illustration is in the beginning of Chris- tian history. The Acts of the Apostles tells the story. Only a spirit-filled Church could be of any use in starting the regeneration of the world. What marvel- ous things happened when that Spirit descended on the little company in the upper room. The Spirit was "poured out." That means a plentitude of power. It overflowed the humble lives into which it came and shook the very place of their meeting. And it produced alarming effects. The people ''were amazed." It pro- duced consternation. "Fear came upon every soul." Work of the Spirit. When that Pentecostal pas- sion passed on into the quieter life of the Church its main characteristic still was that the Holy Ghost di- rected and controlled. It was that Spirit who "quick- ened" their every enterprise. Into their daily rounds of service we are told, they were "led by the Spirit." The fruits of happy and courageous lives they were permitted to live were "the fruits of the Spirit." They were spirit-surrounded as by an atmosphere, so that it could be said of them "they walked in the Spirit." The marvels they wrought are nowhere ascribed to their characters or their endeavors, but always to the pres- ence of the Holy Spirit. In a way the mission of the American Church is not wholly unlike that of the Apostolic Church. She too encounters an overwhelming mass of religious indif- ference and not a little active opposition. Her enemies are indeed deprived of fagot and sword. Perhaps a studied disregard is even more difficult to overcome. Let us never think that these finer times have taken away the need of a Church that is "filled with the Holy Ghost." The prime question of the day is not one of 236 THE SOUL OF AMERICA how many ministers, churches and institutions we have but "Have you received the Holy Ghost?" Alas, if even yet the question comes back, ''We have not known that the Holy Ghost had come." We have been so full of our good purposes and plans that the "still small voice" has not been heard, the "rushing wind" even has not been recognized. Immanence o£ God. The Church is fortunate in having the immanence of God forced upon her by the crash of events. She has somewhat held Him off in regions of distant thought. She has enshrined Him in her creeds, hidden Him in her cathedrals and been con- tent. But now, through the flashes of our World War, He has come out and claimed His place in human af- fairs. He refused to be confined to pious thoughts of individuals or religious plans of organizations. He will take His place on life's road whether that be the road of the lowliest pilgrim or the proudest empire. H. G. Wells. The war has had a manifest effect on our theology. A change has come over the reasoning of thinkers. The most conspicuous is in the experience of the English writer, Mr. H. G. Wells. A few years ago he wrote a book called "The Invisible King." It was really a critique on the Christian God. It was an attempt to devise a new God built out of his moral con- sciousness. But since then Mr. Wells has been brought close to the war. Its terrible experiences gripped his theology. Bishop Scrope, of whom he wrote, was a comfortable ecclesiastic. In the course of time visions of a possibly practical and helpful Christianity come to him. Wells now leaves his philosophy, "There grew in Scrope's mind the persuasion that he was in the presence of THE CALL OF THE HOUR 237 God." The war, the author says, brought the whole world back to elemental things. God was everywhere about him. ''This persuasion was over him, about him, a dome of protection, a power in his nerves, a peace in his heart. This indeed was the coming of God." The change of attitude thus expressed was confirmed in the trenches. Many books by soldiers have declared how doubts vanish in the light of exploding shells and how men who never had confessed God before find themselves suddenly sustained by the sense of divine presence. Henceforth, no more shall God be an ab- straction. He is m this world, the master of all its af- fairs. A Church that shall realize that elemental fact, that will understand that she is as truly walking with God as the two disciples were walking with Jesus on the Emmaus road, will not lack for power. It will flame in her messages and throb in her institutions. The world will not pass by regardless. The old "amazement" will come back and *'fear" will again take hold of people. And is not this the demand of the times? The God whom the urgency of battle has thrust into the con- sciousness of thinkers and soldiers — the God to them of an awful emergency, is the God they have a right to expect will be, above all emergencies, the daily com- panion and inspiration of His people. They will get skeptical if this be not so. Standards of Service. H. The Church of the im- mediate future must be a Church of higher standards of service. The Christian cause cannot be adequately advanced in America unless the Church can rise to more of daily heroisms. The heroic is not confined to battle fields. Rather Christian life now has battles of 238 THE SOUL OF AMERICA its own for which conventional church service is quite inadequate. And that because, as in any conflict, swift conclusions must come. Missionary adventure to meet the inrush of new conditions must be swift. Too much is at stake in our country now, both as regards domes- tic Hfe and foreign relations, to admit of slow marches on well worn roads. At nearly every turn of the national life the Church meets resistance, — sometimes in the popular thought, sometimes in conduct, individual or social, and only by a purpose, lofty enough and swift enough to be called heroic, can she make the conquests on which the future of America depends. The world is coming to a battle not to be measured by guns or swords. It is wholly new only in its explosive force. It is as old as history. The "demos" thronging the forum in Athens with minatory demands has modern duplication in all our centers of population, whether social, political or in- dustrial. The "demos" is abroad now as never before. Look at the clashing waves of popular uprising in Russia. See it also in a dozen turbulent nations. It is said the world is to be made safe for democracy. A more difficult task and just as insistent is to make de- mocracy safe for the world. The people are coming to their own. The voice of the people, which is said to be the voice of God, sounds remote and faint across deserts where Armenians are dying, across marshes where Poles are starving, over mountains where Balkan States are struggling in un- governed fury ; but it will be general and clear and de- fiant when the war-engendered carnival is past. And in one form or another it is coming to America. And the Church of Christ has the onl}' branch that can THE CALL OF THE HOUR 239 sweeten or quiet the waters. But it must be the Church for the occasion. It must get back on apostoUc ground and have the courage of unusual service that it may do unusual things. In these eventful days the missionary adventure has somewhat shared the common exalta- tion. Preachers have flung themselves into exhausting service at home or abroad. Christians have proven themselves stewards of the gifts of God. Money has streamed into all good channels in most unwonted measure. Women have left the quiet of their homes to serve wherever they were called. Girls have left the home or the school and put on the uniform of service. It has been a willing and glorious response to a glo- rious day. Now will the Church that has been lifted to the plane of sacrificial service keep that level in the com- moner days? Or will she sink back to the common- place life in which the chief requirement was that our Christianity be respectable? Two million soldiers are coming back. Their life has been tense and lifted. Will the Church of Christ appeal to them unless in her they find some of the temper that marked their army days? Will they readily heed the missionary call if it has no bugle note? There is a ringing home mission call in the question, "What can we do for the returning boys?" They have come from extraordinary days. An ordi- nary Church will not hold them. Not only must our ideals be high. This they have always been. They must become instinct with a certain passion of service. They must prove their reality by their power to wheel men into lines of daily and sacrificial service. Too long have we merely preached at people. Now we must 240 THE _SOUI. OF AMERICA walk among them and enlist them and go with them into the battle for righteousness in America. It will take us and them into places of strange speech, of alien life, of clashing social theories, of social injustice on the one hand and social resentment on the other, into poverty that fosters vice and vice that breeds poverty, into ignorance that does not understand us and wicked- ness that fights us, but thereunto as never before is the Church called today. This is home missions in its most critical aspect. A New Alignment. III. There must come a new alignment of Christian forces by a new relation of sects to each other. It is not clear there will come an answer to Christ's prayer ''That they all may be one" by a union of denominations. Its desirability may even be doubted if by "union" be meant an absolute ecclesias- tical fusion. There may not be an abolition of regi- ments. But there must be one army. The value of unity of organization and of command has just been illustrated on the great world theater. It is no less es- sential for the Church. This may be one of the by- products of the war. How finely "the boys" stood to- gether in religious thoughts and exercises ! How nat- ural it seemed for the Jewish soldier to press the Cross to the lips of a dying Catholic comrade. At home the Churches have been busy demonstrating their essential oneness; even though it were done sometimes under the pressure of a coal famine it was worth while. They found they could worship and work together even after coal was plentiful. Churches have been so busy knit- ting and giving and praying together that have not had time for their "isms." And when the time comes, as come it must, when "isms" are small and almost neg- THE CALL OF THE HOUR 241 lected because the Kingdom is so large and insistent it will not mean a denial of what has been precious in church history. It will only mean an ultimate absorp- tion in the biggest thing on earth. The comradeship of sundered Allies — Japan, France, America, suggests a higher and holier alliance. The united ranks of Christendom is more than a dream. On its realization the salvation and safety of the world depend. And as America must have a strong hand in the final outworking of a world's destiny she can do it only by a federation of all the elements of her strength. And the Church, as the mightiest of those elements, must in very fact be one Church. Christ's prayer must not longer wait for answer. This new alignment of forces will not be secured by the leisurely contemplation of terms of union. No ecclesiastical debates can bring it on. Only the com- pulsion of a great necessity. Again the World War suggests the illustration. The unity of the army came about only under the stress of battles. In earlier stages there were soldiers under this or that flag, supremely led by this or that national leader. It was the pressure from the outside that forced the change of policy, not any conviction coming from cabinets or councils. And when the boys got into the trenches they were all one. The democratization was accomplished on the instant. High and low in the social scale, plutocrat and coal miner, learned and ignorant, it was all one when the guns began to shoot. The stern compulsion of neces- sity In our country will democratize the Church. When we realize the size of the Church's task In the New Era, brotherhood will spring up as it did in the army. 16 242 THE SOUL OF AMERICA Then people will not look to socialism for brotherhood. They will find it in the ranks of the Church. Finally, the tasks that call for a spiritual Church, with higher standards of service and with closed col- umns and a democratic spirit, are too manifest to re- quire amplification. In general, they are to make Chirst's ideals and policies regnant in individual lives and in the thought and policies of communities and states and nation. In particular, with the end of the war comes a thrilling chance for the Church to meet after-war conditions. Four millions of soldiers and sailors are to be demobilized. It will be the work not of a day nor a year, but of years. The Church of Christ must welcome them home by a loving Christian ministry. It must open institutions of learning for those whose educational career was arrested, — institu- tions on both sides of the Atlantic. It must meet them in the various war industries with not only the message of the gospel but all its helpful service. It must open ways of self-support for an army of disabled soldiers. It must make smooth and safe the process of demobili- zation so that every soldier and sailor stepping out of the ranks will step into something else worth while. It must give itself with abandon to the Americanization of all our people in the best that that word implies. Then only will we be true to such an opportunity and responsibility as never came to the Church of God be- fore. Let us have a new confession of faith. In the words of Dr. William Adams Brown : Dr. W. A. Brown. "A confession of faith in the power of the Church under the vivifying touch of the Divine Spirit to lift itself above the parochial tasks with which, like the nation, it has been too long content ; to THE CALL OF THE HOUR 243 become conscious anew of those reserves of spiritual energy laid up in its heart and brain for the service of the new world waiting to be born ; to vindicate through its demonstration of the fact that churches, hke free peoples, can function effectively and unitedly for great causes, those principles of democracy for which we and our Allies are fighting ; and so to recover again for the Church of Jesus Christ that place of leadership in the affairs of men and nations to which we believe in the Providence of Almighty God she is called." 246 APPENDIX Superintendents of Schools George F. McAfee, 1893-1905. David R. Boyd, 1910-1912. Robert M. Craig, 1906-1909. Marshall C. Allaben, 1912- The following is a list of the officers of the Woman's Board of Home Missions from the beginning: Presidents Mrs. Ashbel Green, 1878-1885. Mrs. Fred S. Bennett, (Acting Mrs. Darwin R. James, 1885- President 1908-1909) 1909- 1909. Secretaries Mrs. F. E. H. Haines, 1878- Mrs. O. E. Boyd, 1891-1892. 1886. Mrs. F. H. Pierson, 1892-1902. Mrs. A. R. Walsh, 1878- Mrs. J. F. Pingry, 1897-1903. Mrs. D. M. Miller, 1882-1884. Miss V. May White, 1902- Miss F. A. Dyer, 1884-1885. Mrs. Ella A. Boole, 1903-1909. Mrs. C. E. Walker, 1886-1889. Miss Julia Eraser, 1909-1913. Mrs. D. E. Finks, 1886-1892. Miss Edith Grier Long, 1914- Mrs. A. C. Miller, 1891-1894. 191 7. Miss Edna R. Voss, 1918- Recording Secretaries Mrs. J. D. Bedle, 1878-1879. Mrs. Augustine Sackett, 1903- Mrs. S. B. Brownell, 1880- 1916. 1896. Miss Emma Jessie Ogg, 1916- Miss V. May White, 1896- 1903. Young People's Secretaries Miss E. Wishard, 1893-1896. Miss M. K. Jones, 1896-1898. Miss M. J. Petrie, 1898- Treasurers Mrs. M. E. Boyd, 1878-1890. Miss Dora M. Fish, 1910 Miss S. F. Lincoln, 1890-1909. 1916. Miss V. May White, (Act- Miss Edna R. Voss, 1916- ing) 1909-1910. 1918. Miss Mary Wallace Torrence, 1919- INDEX PAGE Adams, Rev. Robert N.., 132 Alaska, 1 17-126 Alaskan Statistics, 125 Allison, James, School,. 214 Allison, Miss Matilda L., 213 American Home Mis- sion Society, 104 Americanization, 226 American Presbyterian- ism, 27 Anderson, Rev. Isaac, . . 192 Anderson, James, 40 Andrews, Jedcdiah, 30 Annin, Rev. John A., . . 212 Anthony, Rev. A. W., .. 184 Appeal to Scotland, .... 59 Asheville Schools, 194 Baer, John Willis 132 Balch, Rev. Hezekiah, . . 191 Beach, Dr. Harlan P., . . 201 Bible Translation, 96 Blackburn, Gideon, .54,60,76 Board of Church Erec- tion, y:^ Board of Home Mis- sions, Incorporation of, y^ Organization of, 64 Brady, Rev. John G., . . 120 Brainerd, David, 22 Brown, Rev. William Adams, 242 PAGS Calfee, John E., 195 Christian Ideals, 233 Christian Societies, 32 Church Federation, 170 City Missions, 150 American Parish, . . . 158 Church Extension Committee of, 156 Difficulties in, 153 In New York, 155 Principles and Policies, 162 San Francisco, 159 Specialists in, 151 Coal Mining Region, . . . 137 Colonies, Scotch Interest in, 28 Comity in Alaska, 123 Community Life School, Kentucky, 222 Community Service, 196 Cook, Rev. Charles H., . 91 Council of Women, 230 Country Church, 172 Council of New York, 186 Federation of 184 Country Life, Commission of, 177 Demonstration Parish, 180 Department of, 179 Depleted Families, . . . 176 Surveys 179 Volunteers for, 181 247 248 INDEX PAGE Cuba, 208 Beginnings in, 208 Cooperative Plans in, 209 Woman's Board Schools in, 226 Cumberland Body, 63 Cumberland Union, 109 Czecho-Slovaks, 147 Declaration of Independ- ence, 47 Dickson, Rev. Cyrus, . . . 106 Division of Synod, 43 Dixon, Rev. John, 132 Doak, Rev. Samuel, 191 Dodge, Rev. D. Stuart,. 132, 195 Donaldson, Rev. Robert M., 132 Donaldson, Rev. Robert S., 160 Dorland-Bell School, . . . 224 Dorland Institute, 194 Dorland, Rev. and Mrs. Luke, 194 Doughty, Rev. Francis, . 23 Duncan, Rev. Wm 120 Dwight School, 89 PAGE Federal Council of the Churches, 170 Felton, Ralph A., 181 Finks, Mrs. Delos E., . . 229 Finley, Rev. W. E., .... 199 First Church of New- York, 41 First Executive Commis- sion, 42 First Home Mission Fund, 33 First Presbytery, 29 First Synod, 39 Fiske, John, 187-188 Foreign Missions, 46, 66 Forsythe Memorial School, 214 Fullerton, Rev. Baxter P., 132 Fund for Pious Uses, .. 40 Greenbaum, Rev. E. S.,. 148 Greene, Rev. J. Milton, 203, 208 General Council Wom- an's Boards, 230 Goodrich, Miss Frances L., 198 Early Missionaries, .... Eastman, E. Fred, Eliot, John, Enlarged Committee on . Missions, Executive Committee for the West 54 Haines, Mrs. F. E. H., . . 220 181 Hall, Rev. John, 132 20 Harris, Rev. J. Will, . . . 204 Hellyer, Rev. H. L., .... 148 63 Henry Kendall College,. 90* Higgins, Rev. Frank E., 187 71 Hildreth, Dr. E. Ray- mond, 206 Falcon, Rev. Jose, 215 Holt, Rev. Wm. S., 132 INDEX 249 PAGi-: Home Mission Commit- tee, 41 Home Missions Council, 170, 185 Rural Fields Commit- tee of, 182 Home Mission Monthly, 229 Hugh O'Neill Memorial, 204 Indian Evangelization, . 19 Indian Missions, 45 Indian Massacre, 84 Indian Policy, 100 Indian Territory, 86 Indians, Origin, 75 Six Nations, The, ... 78 Pacific Coast, 97 Nez Perces, 79 The Dakotas, 83 The Five Tribes, .... 86 The Pimas, 92 The Navajos 95 Immigration, 134 Board's Dept. of, 141 Church's Responsibil- ity, 139 Immigration Fellow- ship, 139 Goverment Relation to, 138 Net results of, 136 Ports of Entry, 145 United Survey of, 144 Woman's Board Work in, 146 Irwin, Rev. William. ... 131 Jackson, Rev. Sheldon,.. 92, 112, 114, 119, 122 PACK James, Mrs. Darwin R., 214, 229 Jewish Evangelization, . 148 Kearns, Rev. Wm. H., . . 132 Kellogg, Miss Francis E., 121 Kendall, Rev. Henry, . . 106 Kephart, Rev. W. J., ... 212 King, Rev. Wm. R., 133 Labor Temple, 157 Latin-America, General conditions in, 201 Laura Sunderland School, 193 Laurel Hospital, 199 Lawrence, Rev. Thomas, 195 Lindsley, Rev. A. L., ... 118 Local Supervision, 71 Logging Camps, 186 Lord Cornbury, 35 Makemic, Francis, 25 Marquis, Rev. John A., . 133 Mayflower, 15 Mecklinburg Declaration, 189 Menaul School, 214 Merle-Smith, Rev. Wil- ton, 133 Mexican Schools, 224 Missionary Education, . . 228 Missionary Impulse, ... 31 Missionary Magazine. . . 70 Missionary Societies, ... 58 Missions to New Jersey, 26 Missions to Pennsylva- nia, 26 Alormon Field, no 250 INDEX PACE Morse, Rev. Hermann N. i8i Mountaineers, 187 First Academies, 191 Mountain Schools, ... 193 Rocky Ridge, I93 Mt. Pleasant, 113 McAfee, J. Ernest, 132 McAfee, Rev. George F., 88 McBeth, Miss Sue, 81 McDowell, Rev. John, . . 133 MacFarland, Mrs. A. R., 119 McFarland, Rev. D. F., 212 McLean, Rev. Robert,... 216 McLean, Rev. Robert N., 216 McMillan, Rev. Duncan J., 113,131 McNutt, Rev. Matthew B., 181 Native Pastors, 82 Native Presbytery, 85 New Frontiers, 233 New Mexico, Beginnings in, 211 Congregational Church in, , 211 Dyer, Father, 212 Methodist Church in,. 211 School Work, 213 Nuyaka School, 90 Occupation of the West, 68 Odell, Rev. E. A., 208 Old Northwest, 67 Olin, Harvey C, 132 Ordway, Miss Jennie, . . 206 PAGE Pacific Coast, Reaching of, 107 Packard, Dr. George H., 199 Persecutions in Mary- land, 24 Phraner, Rev. Wilson, .. 218 Pierson, Mrs. Frederick H., 229 Plan of Union, 51 Pond, Rev. Samuel W.,. 83 Pond, Gideon A., 83 Porto Rico, Approach to, 202 Comity Plans in, 202 Community Service in, 225 Educational Question in, 203 Evangelical Union in,. 207 Polytechnic Institute,. 204 Training School in, . . 205 Presbyterial Authority, . 61 Presbyterian Church in U. S., Organization of, 105 Presbyterian Coopera- tion, 18, 50 Presbyterian Govern- ment, 17 Presbyterian Patriots, . . 48 Public Schools, 195 Puritans, 15 Reindeer, Alaskan, 122 Religious Literature, ..46,53 Reunion, 105 Riggs, Rev. Stephen H., 83 Roberts, Rev. Wm. C, . . 131 Root, Rev. E. Talmadge, 184 INDEX 251 PAGE Rural Changes, 175 Rye Hospital, 206 Salt Lake Collegiate In- stitute, 112 San Juan Hospital, 206 Santa Domingo, Mission to, 208 Scotch Irish, 43, 187 Self-Supporting Synods, 127 General Principles of,. 129 Shriver, Rev. Wm, P.,,. I37i 160 Snow Hill, 30 Social Service, 165 Bureau of, 166 New Responsibilities in, 170 Presbyterian Leader- ship in, 168 Principles of, 165 Society for Propagation of the Gospel, 19 Spanish and French Population, 74 Spanish-Speaking Amer- icans, Interdenomina t i o n a I Council on, 216 Work among, 215 Spaulding, Rev. H. H., . 80 Standing Committee of Missions, 52 Statistics, Indian, 102 PACP, Stelzle, Rev. Charles, ... 165 Stevenson, Miss Flor- ence, 194 Synodical Home Mis- sions, 57 Taft, Miss Anna B., . 180, 199 Theological Education, 45,69 Thompson, Rev. Charles L., 131 Walsh, Mrs. A. R., 220 Western Colleges, 68 Wharton, Rev. R. L., 210,226 Whitman, Dr. Marcus, . 80 Williamson, Rev. Thomas S., 83 Wilson, Rev. Warren H., 169, 172, 179 Wishard, Rev. Samuel E .17 Woman's Board, Change of Policy, . . . 196 Incorporation of, 220 Officers, 231, 246 Organization of, 219 Policy of, 221 Statistics, 228 Woman's Executive Committee, 114 Women's Societies, 218 Young, Rev. S. Hall... 120, 122, 125 Theological Seminary- Speer Librar' 1 1012 01092 4332 Date Due 1 i F . o fP- FACll: FACiJLT'^ FACULTY *^ " -:l m ^^^'- asi4.,... ^j^^^'^^^F' m^ ^NfV^lMiMI PHHm ^