THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
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 ~^rVKu*-7 <?K 
 
 J\A^JL t-
 
 "UNFINISHED TASKS 
 
 SOUTHERN PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH 
 
 HOMER McMILLAN, SECRETARY 
 The Executive Committee of Home Missions 
 
 PRESBYTERIAN COMMITTEE OP PUBLICATIOV 
 RICHMOND, VA.
 
 Copyright, 1922, 
 
 By 
 
 Presbyterian Committee of Publication 
 Richmond, Va. 
 
 Printed in United State-* of America
 
 E 
 
 CO 
 
 1 
 
 8 
 oo 
 
 To THE CHURCH'S FAITHFUL HOME MISSIONARIES 
 AND THEIR WIVES 
 
 M WHO IN LOWLINESS AND OBSCURITY 
 
 r 
 
 w ARE LABORING TO BUILD THE KINGDOM OF GOD INTO THE 
 
 LIFE OF THE NATION 
 
 THIS BOOK IR AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED. 
 
 462445
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 INTRODUCTORY STATEMENT 6 
 
 I. HOME MISSION OBJECTIVES 9 
 
 II. LAYING FOUNDATION: f . 31 
 
 III. PAYING A DEBT 53 
 
 IV. THE STRENGTH OF THE HILLS 87 
 
 V. OUR FUTURE CITIZENS 115 
 
 VI. OUR MEXICAN NEIGHBORS ... 145 
 
 VII. THE DEMANDS OF THE TASK. . .173
 
 ENLARGING RESPONSIBILITIES
 
 INTRODUCTORY STATEMENT 
 
 ENLARGING RESPONSIBILITIES 
 
 One of the most striking facts in the work of the 
 Southern Presbyterian Church has been the expanding 
 Home Mission operations. The story of Assembly's 
 Home Missions is a story of increasing responsibility. 
 From small beginnings it has become through constant 
 additions one of the largest and most fruitful agencies 
 of the General Assembly. It is the conviction of many 
 earnest people that the work of the Executive Commit- 
 tee of Home Missions has grown more rapidly than the 
 Church's information concerning its needs. 
 
 Beginning with the single duty of assisting feeble con- 
 gregations in the weaker Presbyteries and newer sections 
 of the Church to support a minister and erect a house 
 of worship, the scope of the work has been enlarged to 
 embrace a task, in its variety and magnitude, that other 
 denominations have as many as five separate Boards 
 to accomplish. 
 
 The first addition of responsibility was the transfer of 
 the Indian work from the Executive Committee of For- 
 eign Missions in 1889. For the next twenty years there 
 was the growth incident to the unusual development of 
 the country, especially in the settlement of the great 
 Southwest. 
 
 In 1909 the General Assembly directed the attention 
 of the Committee to the many thousands of foreign-
 
 ENLARGING RESPONSIBILITIES 7 
 
 speaking people coming into our midst, and laid upon 
 it the responsibility of their evangelization as a divinely 
 appointed and enlarging task. In 1910 the Assembly 
 discontinued the Committee on Colored Evangelization, 
 and this work was made a department of the Assembly's 
 Home Missions. 
 
 In 1911 Dr. E. O. Guerrant transferred to the General 
 Assembly the work of the Soul Winners' Society, con- 
 sisting of eighteen missions and fifty missionaries. The 
 Assembly accepted the responsibility and placed this 
 added burden upon its already over-burdened Commit- 
 tee of Home Missions. The same Assembly still further 
 enlarged its Home Mission work when the Evangelistic 
 Committee was discontinued and this responsibility was 
 placed with the Committee of Home Missions. 
 
 In 1920, in response to several overtures, the General 
 Assembly directed the Executive Committee to consider 
 the advisability of doing something for the evangelization 
 of the Jews, with the result that a Jewish Mission was 
 opened in Baltimore in co-operation with the Home 
 Mission Board of the Northern Presbyterian Church. 
 
 Thus, through the constant enlargement of our Home 
 Mission activities, the territory of the Executive Com- 
 mittee has come to be co-extensive with that of the Gen- 
 eral Assembly. It extends from Maryland to New Mex- 
 ico, and from Missouri to Florida. Some phase of the 
 Committee's operations is found in every Synod and in 
 almost every Presbytery. It is the Assembly's agency 
 for the five-fold work of Home Missions, Church Erec- 
 tion, Colored Evangelization, Mission Schools and Evan- 
 gelism. Its missionaries are found in the mountains, 
 among the immigrants, the Indians, the Negroes, in the 
 cities, and on the plains of the great West. It includes
 
 8 UNFINISHED TASKS 
 
 all races, classes and conditions. In its various activ- 
 ities it represents so many fields, pioneers so many en- 
 terprises, lays the foundation of so many possibilities, 
 places its hand beneath the burden of so many shoulders 
 that in its appeal many voices make their plea. 
 
 It is the purpose of this little volume to tell the story 
 of our Home Mission work as it is related to the Assem- 
 bly's Executive Committee. It reveals only partially the 
 need, the opportunity and the obligation. It attempts 
 nothing new or original, but strives to present in a sim- 
 ple way some of the tasks that our Church shares with 
 other denominations in the common purpose of making 
 America Christian. 
 
 This series of studies was prepared in response to the 
 earnest request of leaders of missionary education who 
 desired a manual covering the Home Mission activities 
 of the Assembly's Committee. It is sent forth in the 
 hope that it will enlarge the interest and quicken the 
 zeal of all true servants of Jesus Christ in their effort for 
 the Christianization of America and the evangelization 
 of the world, which is the supreme aim of every true 
 follower of Jesus Christ. 
 
 HOMER MCMILLAN. 
 
 Atlanta, Ga., February, 1922.
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 HOME MISSION OBJECTIVES
 
 Population of the United States 105,708,771 
 
 Protestant Church membership 26,205,039 
 
 Roman Catholics, including children 15,721,815 
 
 Under 25 years, not in Sunday school 27,274,210 
 
 Over 10 years, not members of church 50,696,890 
 
 Under 10 years, not members of church. . 7,413,240 
 
 Total not members of church 58,110,130 
 
 "If you would point to the weakest spot in the 
 Protestant Church you would put your finger on the 
 army of 27,000,000 children and youth in our land who 
 are growing up in spiritual illiteracy, and 16,000,000 
 other Protestant American children whose religious 
 instruction is limited to a brief half hour once a week, 
 often sandwiched in between a delayed preaching ser- 
 vice and an American Sunday dinner. Let it be burned 
 into the minds of the leaders of the Church that A 
 CHURCH WHICH CANNOT SAVE ITS OWN CHIL- 
 DREN CAN NEVER SAVE THE WORLD. 
 
 "We are fast drifting into a cultured paganism and 
 unless the Church takes important steps to stem the 
 present tide of indifference, luxury, and commercial 
 greed this country will soon cease to be a Christian 
 nation if, indeed, a country in which three out of 
 four of its citizens are without active church relations 
 can be said to be a Christian country now." Dr. W. S. 
 Athearn.
 
 I. 
 
 HOME MISSION OBJECTIVES 
 
 Home Missions is the enterprise through which the 
 combined force of Protestant Christianity is projected 
 on the spiritual destitution of our own land. Its pur- 
 pose is to bring all people into the right relation to Jesus 
 Christ as Saviour and the acknowledgment of his claim 
 to their obedience and service, and bring the redemptive 
 power of the gospel to bear upon the life of the nation 
 in all its phases. 
 
 The Old Home Missions and the New. In fhe 
 early days of our country the Home Mission task in con- 
 trast with the present was a very simple undertaking. 
 It was largely the work of caring for our own people as 
 they moved into new communities that were without 
 gospel privileges, and assisting them to support min- 
 isters and secure houses of worship. The Home Mis- 
 sionary followed the expanding frontier lines as evan- 
 gelist, church builder, pastor and teacher. He was the 
 pioneer who went forth in the advance of civilization, 
 planting the church and the school, and calling the people 
 to a higher intelligence and faith in God. His ministry 
 had to do largely with a people of a single race and 
 tongue. The value of this service to the Church and the 
 nation cannot be estimated. In it all the great denomi- 
 nations had their beginning. The thousands of churches 
 that bless the nation with their conserving and uplifting 
 influence and the majority of the educational institu- 
 tions are the fruits of this work. Leave the Home Mis-
 
 12 UNFINISHED TASKS 
 
 sion enterprise out of the past century of our nation's 
 history and the terms "dark" and "benighted" which 
 are now applied to many other lands might justly be 
 applied to our own. 
 
 The new Home Missions is multiplied and complex. 
 America is a growing, changing and expanding country. 
 Every ten years there is a new America with its peculiar 
 problems and perplexities. New frontiers are emerging, 
 no longer frontiers of geography, but frontiers of need 
 and opportunity. Vast areas of spiritual waste and 
 destitution challenge the Church's zeal and consecra- 
 tion. The present Home Mission enterprise has to do 
 with all the problems of evangelization represented in a 
 population of many races, divers tongues and different 
 faiths. 
 
 Facts to Face. There are certain outstanding facts 
 in connection with America's religious need that must 
 be stated and restated again and again if the Church is 
 to be brought to a full realization of the magnitude and 
 the far-reaching importance of the Home Mission 
 undertaking. Never in the history of the Church in 
 America has there been a time when there was needed a 
 fuller knowledge of the conditions and a more liberal 
 support for the task confronting the Christian forces 
 in this country than in this day of unparalleled need 
 and opportunity for service. 
 
 Our country's religious needs have been presented in 
 this striking statement: 
 
 "The United States of America has been invaded 
 by three enemy armies which threaten our national 
 existence: First, there is within our borders an army of 
 five and one-half million illiterates above nine years of 
 age; Second, there is an army of more than fifty million
 
 HOME MISSION OBJECTIVES is 
 
 people above nine years of age who are not identified 
 with any church Jewish, Catholic or Protestant; 
 Third, there is an army of twenty-seven million Pro- 
 testant children and youth, under twenty-five years of 
 age, who are not enrolled in any Sunday school or other 
 institution for religious training. 
 
 "If these three armies should form in double column, 
 three feet apart, they would reach one and one-fifths 
 times around the globe at the equator. If they should 
 march in review before the President of the United 
 States, moving double column at the rate of twenty- 
 five miles a day, it would take the three armies three 
 years and five months to pass the President. 
 
 "These three interlocking armies constitute a triple 
 alliance which threatens the life of our democracy. 
 Patriotism demands that every loyal American enlist 
 for service and wage three great campaigns a campaign 
 of Americanization, a campaign of Adult Evangelism, 
 and a campaign for the Spiritual Nurture of Child- 
 hood."* 
 
 In the Home Mission program there are four great 
 objectives: 
 
 1. The Salvation of the Individual. This is the 
 supreme purpose of all mission work. All other results 
 wait on this. It was for the salvation of the lost that 
 Christ, looking out over the waiting and yearning 
 multitudes, said to his disciples, "The harvest truly is 
 plenteous but the laborers are few ... go your 
 ways." It is for the salvation of the lost that mission- 
 aries, exemplifying the spirit of the Master, have gone 
 to every land, nation and tribe, enduring hardships, 
 privations and pain, that they "might by all means 
 save some." 
 
 In the vast and varied Home Mission fields the Church 
 
 "The World Survey.
 
 14 UNFINISHED TASKS 
 
 is confronted with the greatest missionary opportunity 
 that has come to any people since the days of the apostles. 
 Of the fifty millions over nine years of age out of church 
 in America, twenty-one million are in the bounds of the 
 Southern Presbyterian Church. Of the twenty-seven 
 million young people out of the Sabbath school, thirteen 
 millions are in the Southern States. Of the five and a 
 half million illiterates, three million are in the South. 
 Is this not a need, vast and appealing? The fact that 
 there are many churches and ministers and mission 
 workers does not in the least relieve our Church of her 
 responsibility, nor rob her of her opportunity for saving 
 these millions. The fact that these people live in 
 America in no sense makes better their condition. It 
 is not a question of residence, but of spiritual destitution. 
 The fact is they are our neighbors, and they are not being 
 reached for Christ. The gospel must be carried to the 
 cities and hamlets and the places where the people are. 
 The command is, "Into every city and place." 
 
 2. The Security of Our Country. To the nation 
 as to the man, to be without God is to be without hope. 
 The moral and spiritual progress of the nation must keep 
 pace with its material development. The Church has 
 made America what it is, and only an enlargement of 
 the Church can make it better. The Church is the 
 salt of the earth. Salt is the thing that saves. If 
 Sodom had contained a church of ten members that 
 great city would have been spared. No one can esti- 
 mate the power of the church in the development and 
 preservation of American life. The Church has been the 
 most important factor in bringing America to its present 
 position of influence among the nations. It is the one
 
 HOME MISSION OBJECTIVES 15 
 
 institution that stands for everything that is right and 
 is opposed to everything that is wrong. 
 
 There was never greater need for the Church and the 
 things for which it stands than at the present time. 
 Many dangers are threatening our national security. 
 R. H. Edmonds says: 
 
 "It would be folly to shut our eyes to the possibilities 
 of evil which surround us. We are too prone, ostrich- 
 like, to close our eyes to the dangers about us. We lay 
 unto ourselves the flattering unction that America is 
 different from other lands and that we shall never have 
 to face the dangers which have brought chaos in many 
 parts of Europe. We are constantly saying to ourselves, 
 'It is impossible that the things which have happened 
 in Europe should happen in America.' But that which 
 seems impossible often becomes the possible. 
 
 "In the early summer of 1914 it would have seemed 
 absolutely impossible that within a few months all of 
 Europe would be one vast slaughter house and that 
 millions and tens of millions of men would be engaged 
 in the greatest death grapple in human history. Even 
 then it would have seemed impossible, beyond the dreams 
 of the wildest visionary, that two million American sol- 
 diers would have to fight on the battlefields of France 
 to save civilization from the destructive powers of bar- 
 barians and atheists. From the beginning of human 
 history the impossible is the thing that has become a 
 reality."* 
 
 The enemy was never more active nor were there ever 
 so many forces of evil at work to undermine the founda- 
 tions of our national greatness. 
 
 (a) The Bible is Discredited. The Bible is the Magna 
 Charta of all free people. It is the foundation on which 
 
 *Manufacturers Record.
 
 16 UNFINISHED TASKS 
 
 our nation was built, and America will be strong and 
 prosperous as the teachings of God's Word are received, 
 believed and obeyed. In all our cities and in many 
 country places there is an insidious campaign against the 
 integrity of the Scriptures. This attack upon the au- 
 thority of the Bible began in Germany. It is one of the 
 many crimes for which she must answer. In the last 
 analysis it is an attack upon the deity of Christ. To 
 question God's Book is to question the author. To 
 doubt God is to doubt His Son. Christ stood across 
 the pathway of German conquest. Thus would Ger- 
 man philosophy and German militarism put Christ, 
 whose teachings convicted and condemned their evil 
 purpose, out of the way. 
 
 Germany is an illustration of the truth that what you 
 would put in your nation you must put in your schools. 
 For three generations the children and youth of the Ger- 
 man Empire were taught a pagan political philosophy, 
 void of God, Jesus Christ, the Ten Commandments, 
 and the Golden Rule. In 1914 sixty-seven million Ger- 
 man people were ready to go forth at the command of 
 their Kaiser to conquer the world. The full fruit of 
 the seed sown in the schools of that nation is seen in the 
 devastations of Belgium and France. The war is over, 
 but the teaching that caused the war is not over. To 
 quote again from R. H. Edmonds: 
 
 "There is spreading over our land the accursed 
 atheistic teaching of German philosophy, more powerful 
 for evil than were all Germany's armies and navies, and 
 if America does not give heed to this menace its downfall 
 will be as certain as was Germany's." 
 
 If America is to be a fit place in which to live and is
 
 HOME MISSION OBJECTIVES 17 
 
 to fulfill her divinely-appointed service to the world, the 
 Bible principles of truth and righteousness must be 
 wrought into the warp and woof of our country's life. 
 But Protestant Christianity has looked on with careless 
 indifference, while the Catholic and the Jew have joined 
 with the infidel and the atheist in the effort to keep the 
 Bible out of the public schools. Millions of American 
 children, the future leaders of the State and nation, are 
 allowed to grow to manhood with no knowledge of God 
 or righteousness or a judgment to come. Whoever 
 would keep the Bible from the people or weaken their 
 faith in its authority is the herald of a decadent civiliza- 
 tion, the prophet of national disaster and the forerunner 
 of a reign of lawlessness. The nation that banishes 
 God's Holy Word has written its own doom. 
 
 (b) The Sabbath is Desecrated. The maintenance of 
 the Christian Sabbath lies at the root of all national 
 morality and civil liberty. The Sabbath is the only 
 safeguard of religion, and religion is the surest stay of the 
 State. John Ruskin said that the thirty minutes on 
 Sunday when the man of God stands forth to speak to 
 ignorant and sinful men are the most important thirty 
 minutes known to society and civilization. About 
 one hundred and fifty years ago Voltaire prophesied 
 that before the close of that century Christianity would 
 have disappeared from the face of the earth. He ad- 
 vised his followers that if they would destroy Chris- 
 tianity they must begin with the Christian Sabbath. 
 Christianity and the Sabbath stand or fall together. 
 
 "The rule is, where there is no church and no church- 
 going there is no Sabbath, and where there is no Sabbath 
 and no Sabbath-keeping there is no religion, and where
 
 18 UNFINISHED TASKS 
 
 there is no religion there is no God, and where there is 
 no God there is no conscience, and where there is no 
 conscience there is no respect for the rights of men, and 
 where there is no respect for the rights of men there 
 is no security for life or property. Now take religion, 
 God, conscience, respect for the rights of men, and pro- 
 tection of life and property out of the American republic, 
 and just how much of what is left would be worth 
 having?"* 
 
 A reliable authority states that four million people 
 in this country are making merchandise on the Lord's 
 Day, and that twenty times that number spend the day 
 in mere worldly pleasure-seeking. Well may we cry 
 out for America, as Pope Pius said concerning France 
 in his day: "Lose not a day, not even an hour, nor even 
 a moment; go and tell France that if she would be saved 
 she must return to the sanctification of the Lord's 
 Day." When the Sabbath is gone, honesty is gone, 
 justice is gone, and that which has been our nation's 
 glory is gone. 
 
 (c) False Faiths Are Active. It is the teaching of his- 
 tory that the religion that holds the conscience of a na- 
 tion will determine the civilization. The greatness 
 and strength of America rests on Christian principles 
 and Christian character. Yet it is a fact that countless 
 multitudes in our land are under the sway of religious 
 conceptions that are openly antagonistic to the Word of 
 God and the Christian faith. These religions are all 
 kinds and varieties. Some are imported and some are 
 the products of our own country Brahmans, Con- 
 fucianists, Buddhists, Mohammedans, Mormons, 
 Theosophy, Christian Science, New Thought, Atheism, 
 
 *Dr. David Gregg, "Makers of the American Republic."
 
 HOME MISSION OBJECTIVES 19 
 
 Infidelity, Bolshevism. While members of Christian 
 churches have been sitting back with a sense of security 
 in their Christianity, the organized forces of evil are 
 actively engaged in denying the deity and authority of 
 Jesus Christ and attempting to overthrow the Christian 
 Church. A writer in the Missionary Review of the 
 World describes this campaign for the destruction of 
 Christianity: 
 
 "Several infidel organizations in New York City are 
 known by various titles that do not indicate their real 
 character. Their favorite methods of attack are: 
 
 "First, aggressive outdoor meetings, at Madison 
 Square and in all the principal thoroughfares at noon 
 and at night whenever the weather permits. At these 
 meetings Jesus Christ and the Bible are held up to 
 ridicule, and many blasphemies are uttered. 
 
 "Distribution of infidel literature is a second method of 
 attack. Books and pamphlets written by Tom Paine, 
 Robert G. Ingersoll, Voltaire, and others are widely 
 distributed to the young men who make up most of the 
 audiences, and who eagerly buy almost anything that 
 is offered in that line. A monthly magazine is also pub- 
 lished for the purpose of 'educating the public and free- 
 ing them from the bondage of religion.' 
 
 "A third form of this Satanic activity is the debate, 
 held sometimes at the public squares and sometimes in 
 halls. The favorite themes at these meetings are: The 
 Resurrection, The Virgin Birth, The Trinity, The Deity 
 of Christ, and The Authenticity of the Bible. These 
 debates are often carried on by educated and able men, 
 who display considerable familiarity with the subjects. 
 The enemy of God has able generals. 
 
 "Another method employed to spread infidelity is the 
 establishment of 'Sunday-schools.' Boys and girls of 
 the neighborhood are brought together and are taught 
 that the Bible is not true and that Jesus Christ was either 
 a mere man or is the mere creation of somebody's dis-
 
 20 UNFINISHED TASKS 
 
 torted imagination. What harvest must we expect 
 from such seed-sowing? 
 
 "This aggressive infidelity and agnosticism are a chal- 
 lenge to the Christian Church to proclaim the gospel by 
 word and deed to the unchurched and unsaved multi- 
 tudes of men, women and children in our cities." 
 
 Mormonism is an American disgrace and one of the 
 most subtle and dangerous of all the enemies of our 
 Christian civilization. It has been described as a "wolf 
 in sheep's clothing. Calling itself a church, it is in fact 
 an absolute monarchy and under the cloak of religion it 
 both teaches and practices crime and treason. Pretend- 
 ing to be loyal to American institutions, it is in sworn 
 disloyalty to our republic." 
 
 The Mormon Church is not yet a century old. It was 
 organized in 1830 in New York State with six members, 
 and in 1920 had multiplied these by one hundred thou- 
 sand. Its missionaries to the number of four thousand 
 go about this country visiting at least three million 
 homes annually and, according to its own claims, added 
 eighty thousand converts in one year, and all from evan- 
 gelical churches. Mormonism is literally a "robber of 
 churches." The first theft occurred when Joseph Smith, 
 its founder, converted four members of his family who 
 were members of the Presbyterian Church. From At- 
 lanta, the Southeastern headquarters, hordes of mis- 
 sionaries go out all over the South, not only men but 
 good-looking young ladies as well. Its missionaries 
 creep into the Sunday-schools, into church choirs, and 
 even into the pulpits of evangelical churches, secretly 
 spreading its doctrine in ever-widening circles. Fre- 
 quently its women missionaries get into the homes, 
 schools and Bible classes. It is time that Christian peo-
 
 HOME MISSION OBJECTIVES 
 
 21 
 
 pie who love the Church and the home were aroused to 
 this danger which threatens the very foundations of the 
 republic. 
 
 (d) The Growth of the City. The movement of pop- 
 ulation cityward is one of the most striking facts in the 
 progress of modern civilization. America is rapidly be- 
 coming a nation of cities. From town and country 
 and beyond the sea there is a resistless stream. Large 
 cities are becoming larger. Great cities are becoming 
 greater. If the rate of the movement of population 
 from country to city which prevailed from 1900 to 1910 
 continues until 1940, there will then be in the United 
 States twenty-one million more people in our cities 
 than outside of them. In the cities are massed the 
 
 "WHERE CROSS THE CROWDED WAYS OF LIFE'
 
 22 UNFINISHED TASKS 
 
 forces that rule, the educational, social, political and 
 financial powers. If the nation is to be saved the citv 
 must be saved. Missionary effort has not increased 
 with the population. The cities are relatively un- 
 churched. In many of them there are fewer churches 
 than there were ten years ago. Population grows faster 
 than Protestant membership. It has been pointed out 
 that in two score and more of our largest cities the 
 Church has grown less than two-thirds as rapidly as the 
 population, and the larger the city the fewer are the 
 proportionate number of churches. 
 
 "If every church of every kind in New York City were 
 crowded to the doors on Sabbath morning, and all the 
 people had started to church, there would be three 
 million of people on the street who could not secure an 
 entrance to a house of worship. 
 
 "If you take all the Protestant population of New York 
 City and add to it all the Roman Catholics, the Greeks 
 and the Christians of every nation in it, you have less 
 than one-third of the entire population. Nearly one- 
 third is Hebrew and more than one-third is atheist, 
 infidel or nothing at all. There are 100,000 nominal 
 Protestants in the city with no church connection what- 
 ever. Only about eight per cent of the population are 
 members of Protestant churches."* 
 
 In 1910 thirty-three of our largest cities were more 
 foreign than American if by American we mean 
 American-born ancestry. We are told by those who 
 claim to know that the American city is the worst gov- 
 erned in the world. Vice and sin and crime abound. 
 The cry of darkest London that broke the heart of Wil- 
 liam Booth is not more pathetic in its appeal than the 
 
 *Stelzle, "American Social and Religious Conditions."
 
 HOME MISSION OBJECTIVES 23 
 
 cry that comes from the submerged millions in our own 
 cities. 
 
 "I could tell how Alexander Duff, who certainly 
 knew the abysses of vice in vice-ridden India, if any 
 observer might be said to know I could tell how Duff 
 came to this fair land in 1854 and, after a visit to the 
 slums of Philadelphia, left this testimony on record: 
 'Anything worse I have never seen. Such vileness, such 
 debasement, such drunkenness, such beastliness, such 
 unblushing shamelessness, such glorying in their crimi- 
 nality, such God-defying blasphemousness, in short, 
 such hellishness, I never saw surpassed in any land, and 
 I hope I never shall. Indeed, out of perdition, it is not 
 conceivable how worse could be." 51 
 
 If the city is to be saved it must be saved by the 
 Church. Legislation will not cleanse. Libraries will 
 not redeem. Social programs will not meet the need. 
 Only the gospel of Christ can do this. 
 
 (e) Disloyal Propaganda. The following statements 
 are taken from an address by Dr. Newell Dwight Hillis 
 on "Alienating Americans from America": 
 
 "All patriots now realize that the German spark has 
 kindled a world conflagration. The attempted revolu- 
 tion in Seattle, the war made by the Bolshevists of 
 Centralia, Washington, upon their returned soldiers, 
 the organization in Detroit of a normal school for the 
 training of Bolshevist orators and organizers, the dis- 
 covery of hundreds of Soviets in our great American 
 cities, the sudden increase of radical newspapers, the 
 seizure of pistols, rifles, bombshells, in various I. W. W. 
 headquarters, and the adoption of this watchword by 
 the radicals, 'Down with God, government and prop- 
 erty,' represent events and forces big with peril. Plainly 
 
 *Dr. J. E. McAfee, "Missions Striking Home."
 
 24 UNFINISHED TASKS 
 
 an invisible enemy is carrying on a secret battle against 
 our institutions. 
 
 "The Department of Justice has warned the American 
 people that there are at least 300,000 people in our coun- 
 try who hate the republic, and are seeking to overthrow 
 its free institutions. 
 
 "The real gravity of the situation is revealed by the 
 fact that there is an organized propaganda for the aliena- 
 tion of Americans from America. In every industrial 
 center of every State the Radicals are engaged in the 
 systematic teaching of revolution. Multitudes of young 
 soldiers, newly returned from France, have been made 
 the subjects of special efforts by Radicals who were 
 trying to undermine the patriotism of our young men. 
 One event and experience will illustrate many. In 
 an oil town in West Virginia a young soldier recently 
 returned from France and employed as assistant to an 
 oil well expert in West Virginia took advantage of a lull 
 in the conversation as to the state of this country, saying, 
 'Never again for me! Never again for me! The next 
 time the plutocrats can pull their own chestnuts out of 
 the fire!' Further questioning developed the fact that 
 the head man was a radical Socialist, and a soap-box 
 orator, and only incidentally an oil well expert. The 
 older man had spent his evenings, for three months, 
 filling the mind of the young soldier with his pet theories. 
 Slowly he had killed patriotism in that boy's soul. 
 One of the latter's friends said that since his return from 
 France, and becoming an assistant to the well digger, he 
 had become a changed man. Washington thought 
 that the white flower of patriotism was the sweetest 
 blossom in the garden of the soul, but some influence had 
 descended like a black frost upon this flower, and slain 
 it forever. 
 
 "In a single high school its principal found that one- 
 third of the students in this boys' high school believe 
 that the political institutions of our country should be 
 overthrown and replaced by an economic Socialist gov- 
 ernment in Washington. In the hands of these boys
 
 HOME MISSION OBJECTIVES 25 
 
 were the Soviet catechism, written by a thoroughly 
 discredited American correspondent who had spent a 
 few weeks in Petrograd and Moscow. 
 
 "Life's critical years are from eight to fifteen. Then 
 the child is wax to receive and steel to hold. Melt 
 your crimson glass, and while it is hot the chaff and 
 straw will stick, but when it cools, no hand can cleanse 
 the ruby glass. If these enemies of society succeed in 
 drilling their anarchistic principles into our boys and 
 girls, the future will be lost before the battle begins." 
 
 (/) Decline in Family Religion. The nation has no 
 greater peril than this. If Christian people were loyal 
 to their duty as Christians and as citizens, the dangers 
 that threaten our national well-being would soon dis- 
 appear. But thousands of people brought up in Chris- 
 tian homes have forsaken the Church and are living in 
 practical neglect of the claims of Christ to their influence 
 and service. A life of religious indifference is a blow at 
 our best American ideals. Our government was es- 
 tablished in the name of God by God-fearing men. The 
 sessions of the Continental Convention in Philadelphia 
 were, upon motion of Benjamin Franklin, opened with 
 religious exercises and prayer to God. If we depart 
 from ihe spirit and practice of our forefathers we do so 
 at our own and our country's peril. 
 
 Henry W. Grady was passing the White House in 
 Washington with a friend. He said, "That is the home 
 of my nation." After spending a few days as a gurst 
 on a Southern plantation where the Bible was read and 
 the family and servants gathered for morning and even- 
 ing prayer, he said, "I was mistaken when I said that 
 glistening pile of marble in Washington is the home of 
 my nation. The home of my nation is that home where 
 the Bible is read; where Jesus is loved; and where chil-
 
 26 UNFINISHED TASKS 
 
 dren are taught to pray." In these days of rush and 
 hurry family worship is almost a thing of the past. A 
 representative of one of the great denominations states 
 that not five per cent of its members have family worship 
 in any form, and even the blessing at the table is rapidly 
 disappearing. The Chairman of the Assembly's Com- 
 mittee on Sabbath and Family Religion estimates that 
 not over twelve per cent of the homes in our Church 
 have the family altar. This modern and efficient age 
 in which we live smiles at the time when "the family 
 altar stood as the opening and closing gates of the day." 
 But the Wall Street Journal says that what America 
 needs is just that. It is not a better banking system 
 that will save us, nor a higher tariff, nor better laws; but 
 a revival of the old-fashion religion which never thought 
 of omitting family worship even in the rush of harvest. 
 Few law-breakers come from homes like that. The glory 
 of the nation is the character of its homes. The homes 
 that make a nation great and strong are the homes where 
 the Bible is read and Christ is honored. 
 
 He is not a super-patriot who makes patriotic speeches 
 and says fulsome things about the flag. The greatest 
 patriot is he who seeks to cast out all the evils and vices 
 that injure and weaken and to secure for his country 
 everything that is noblest and best. Patriotism and 
 Christianity unite in the Home Mission appeal. If the 
 Church is to win its battle for the conservation of the 
 nation's ideals and morals, it must have the loyal and 
 enthusiastic support of every man who calls himself a 
 Christian. Religion is the only defense against un- 
 godliness and immorality. "Our country for Christ" 
 is the only worthy motto of every true Christian.
 
 HOME MISSION OBJECTIVES 27 
 
 3. The Growth of the Denomination. Home 
 Missions is the life of the Church. This fact finds 
 abundant illustrations in the history of every denomina- 
 tion that exists to-day, or that has ceased to be. In pro- 
 portion as churches have stressed the work of Home Mis- 
 sions have they grown in numbers and increased in 
 strength ; as they have neglected the work of expansion 
 have their numbers lessened and their resources di- 
 minished. When a church ceases to go forward it be- 
 gins to go backward. It is either advance or retreat. 
 "For unto everyone that hath shall be given and he 
 shall have abundance; but from him that hath not shall 
 be taken away even that which he hath." It is addition 
 or subtraction, and this principle is as true in the life of 
 the Church as in the life of the individual. 
 
 The present position of power and influence which 
 our Church holds among the great religious forces in 
 this country has been attained through its Home Mis- 
 sion agencies. When the Southern Presbyterian Church 
 began its existence as a separate denomination, the con- 
 gregations were few in number with not many members. 
 As near as can be ascertained the total did not reach 
 more than eleven hundred churches, with about seventy 
 thousand members. In the regions west of the Missis- 
 sippi River there were considerably less than five thousand 
 communicants in one hundred and twenty weak and 
 scattered congregations. After sixty years of Home 
 Mission endeavor the churches east of the Mississippi 
 River have multiplied manyfold, and west of it through 
 the same agency have been developed the great Synods 
 of Arkansas, Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas, among 
 the strongest and most influential in the Assembly,
 
 28 UNFINISHED TASKS 
 
 having more members than there were in the whole 
 C hurch sixty years ago. 
 
 A careful study of the records reveals the interesting 
 fact that over four-fifths of our present congregations 
 were planted and fostered by Home Mission funds; 
 and that the net gain in membership each year equals 
 the increase made in our Home Mission churches. 
 Just in proportion as the work of Home Missions has 
 been pressed, has our Church advanced. If it were 
 not for the increases resulting from this aggressive work, 
 our Church would have become steadily smaller and the 
 place which it now holds among the great denomina- 
 tions would have been impossible. Home Missions is 
 the agency not only for bringing the gospel in its con- 
 verting, uplifting and conserving power to bear upon the 
 destitution of our land, but it is the enterprise through 
 which the church is enlarged and strengthened. In 
 saving America the church is saving itself! 
 
 4. The Evangelization of the World. The Home 
 Mission enterprise has a wider purpose than the saving 
 of America. Its ultimate aim is world redemption. 
 The true Home Missionary is not provincial, but is cos- 
 mopolitan in his outlook. America is to be saved for 
 its own sake and for the world's sake. It is the judg- 
 ment of mission leaders everywhere that a Christian 
 America will make a Christian world, and that an un- 
 Christian America will mean a world continuing in dark- 
 ness and sin. There is no work of vaster import be- 
 fore the Church of Christ than that of Christianizing 
 this great land. A member of Congress recently de- 
 clared: "The next five years will shape the next five cen- 
 turies. The United States will shape the next five 
 years. The church will determine the character of the
 
 HOME MISSION OBJECTIVES 29 
 
 United States." The hope of the world is in America 
 and her idea of Christianity. Home Missions will 
 determine the destiny of the human race. 
 
 Politically, commercially, religiously America touches 
 all lands. Is she prepared to render her divinely- 
 appointed service of evangelist to the nations? She 
 has the material resources, but has she the spiritual 
 equipment and the moral power that all of her contacts 
 with other peoples will be healing and helpful? Before 
 the great war twenty-six nations became republics 
 following our own, but how many have become Chris- 
 tian following the example and leadership of the United 
 States? Can America commend Christianity to the 
 non-Christian lands in a way that they will desire it 
 when two-thirds of the American people are living out- 
 side the enumerated Christian ranks and do not think 
 enough of Jesus Christ and his Program to unite with 
 his church? Dr. Josiah Strong says truly: 
 
 "The greatest hindrances to the conversion of the 
 heathen world come from nominally Christian lands. 
 If America were thoroughly Christian, it would not take 
 long for such an object lesson to work the conviction 
 and conversion of all heathen peoples. If our American 
 Christianity cannot purify our politics and elevate our 
 ethical standards of business and establish just rela- 
 tions between races and classes in our own midst, with 
 our increased facility of communication, which is making 
 the whole world a neighborhood and publishing our na- 
 tional sins on the heathen housetop, this failure will soon 
 paralyze our missionary efforts in all the world and sub- 
 ject our missionaries to the taunt, 'Go back to America, 
 and first cast the beam out of the eyes of your own 
 countrymen and then come and cast the mote out of
 
 What the world has been waiting for through the cen- 
 turies is a sample Christian nation. America has the 
 best chance of being that sample. The only kind of 
 Christianity that is going ultimately to succeed any- 
 where is the kind that works in our own land with our 
 own people. A vigorous and sustained Home Mission 
 campaign will lift the whole level of our Christian living 
 and make our national testimony count for Christ and 
 his kingdom throughout the world. 
 
 QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION 
 
 1. Define the Home Mission enterprise. 
 
 2. Compare the old Home Missions and the new. 
 
 3. What are the four great Home Mission objectives? 
 
 4. Name six perils that threaten the nation. 
 
 5. Which do you consider the most dangerous? 
 
 6. Are there other perils not enumerated? 
 
 7. How are these evils to be corrected? 
 
 8. What is the relation of Home Missions to denominational 
 
 growth? 
 
 9. In what way is Home Missions fundamental to world evan- 
 
 gelization? 
 
 10. What sentence do you consider the strongest indictment of 
 
 Christian America in the entire chapter? 
 
 11. What is the population of your town? The church member- 
 
 ship?
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 LAYING FOUNDATIONS
 
 The conversion of America is vital to the conversion 
 of the world. 
 
 It is given to the Church in America not only to 
 influence, but to determine the destiny of the human 
 race. 
 
 America is to world-wide Christianity what the Amer- 
 ican troops were to the Allies. Is American Christian- 
 ity vital enough and spiritual enough to turn the tide? 
 
 "The next five years will mould the next five cen- 
 turies. The United States will shape the next five 
 years. The Church will determine the character of 
 the United States." -Member of Congress. 
 
 "Surely the future looks black enough, yet it holds a 
 hope, a single hope. One, and one power only, can 
 arrest the descent and save us. That is the Christian 
 religion. Democracy is but a side issue. The para- 
 mount issue underlying the idea of democracy is the 
 religion of Christ and Him crucified, the bed rock of 
 civilization." Henry Watlerson. 
 
 "What is concerning me is the task before the Church 
 of God. I trust that you will go back to your own coun- 
 try and your own people, and in every way that you can 
 urge upon them that in the days, the terrible days 
 ahead of us, the days after the war, the Church shall 
 not fail." General Byng to Christian America.
 
 II. 
 
 LAYING FOUNDATIONS 
 
 There has been considerable discussion in recent years 
 about the conservation of the nation's natural resources. 
 This is a matter that should give us great concern. We 
 are proud of our country and its wonderful wealth. 
 Columns of figures could be multiplied to show that in 
 land, mines, forests, water power, it is the richest na- 
 tion on earth. In fact the terms "boundless" and "in- 
 exhaustible" have been so generally applied to the na- 
 tion's wealth that little thought has been given to the 
 necessity of its conservation. But there has been an 
 awakening. We are being warned that there is a limit 
 to all things material. The wonderful riches with which 
 God has blessed us must be safeguarded and developed, 
 else they will be exhausted and our country materially 
 impoverished. Our generation must not by reason of 
 our prodigality and wastefulness impoverish future gen- 
 erations. The blessings which one generation enjoys 
 are to be held in trust for generations yet to come. 
 
 This same principle of stewardship holds true with 
 respect to the nation's spiritual resources. It is vastly 
 more important to the nation's future well-being that 
 the moral values be conserved and developed. The se- 
 curity of a nation does not rest upon the number of its 
 square miles, but upon the number of its square men. 
 It is moral values and not material resources that deter- 
 mine a nation's greatness. It matters little if we are 
 increased in goods and our sons decay. Bigness must 
 not be confused with greatness, or riches with nobility
 
 34 UNFINISHED TASKS 
 
 of character. Bigness is an attribute of matter; great- 
 ness is an attribute of mind. 
 
 "Not gold, but only man can make 
 
 A people great and strong; 
 Men who for truth and honor's sake 
 Stand forth and suffer long. 
 
 "Brave men who work while others sleep, 
 
 Who dare while others fly 
 They build a nation's pillars deep 
 And lift them to the sky." 
 
 The Place of Christian Leadership. The work 
 of home missions has been one of the greatest factors 
 in the development of our country. Through the 
 agency of the Church, the school and the home, it has 
 sought to make the nation great by making the people 
 righteous. It would be impossible to overestimate the 
 service of the Christian missionary and the Christian 
 minister in the progress and preservation of our nation's 
 life. 
 
 "Every line of human activity depends upon character 
 for efficiency and stability. The rise and fall of the 
 nation depends upon the rise and fall of the people who 
 compose it. Jesus made the transformed individual 
 the starting point for the civilization which he launched 
 upon the world. Every business depends upon char- 
 acter to give it solidity. The stability of the nation 
 depends upon the character of its people. You cannot 
 build a marble house out of mud. The church is God's 
 agency for the production of character and the minister 
 is the leader in this work. Civilization has never failed 
 to go down when the morals of the people declined. 
 
 "This is a matter of history so plain that he who runs 
 can read. The work of the pulpit is fundamental to
 
 LAYING FOUNDATIONS 35 
 
 business because it creates honesty and integrity. It 
 is fundamental to national life because it creates moral 
 stability. The preacher may not be a politician, but 
 he is one of the mightiest forces in building up the moral 
 sentiment which determines the politics of the nation. 
 He is not a diplomat, but he is the leader in building up 
 the moral sentiment which determines what the diplo- 
 mat will do. He may never set foot on foreign shore, 
 but he leads the great movement of foreign missions 
 which is creating a new Orient. After we have said all 
 that can be said for other callings, we must acknowl- 
 edge that the one which has done most for the world is 
 the one that is moved by moral purposes. 
 
 "The influence of kings and warriors and statesmen 
 is not to be compared with the influence of the Church 
 led by her ministers. When Jesus Christ came to earth 
 to build up the Kingdom of God he chose the ministry 
 as the profession through which he could best accom- 
 plish his work. He could have been a statesman and 
 made laws for the upholding of justice; he could have 
 been a philanthropist and fed the hungry and clothed 
 the naked ; he could have been a warrior and led armies 
 in glorious triumph over the forces of evil; but he chose 
 the ministry because through it his influence would go 
 down to the fountains of national life and produce up- 
 lifting statesmen and warriors and philanthropists in 
 countless numbers. The influence of kings, statesmen 
 and warriors is insignificant compared with his. He 
 packed himself into a few men and sent them out to 
 pass that indwelling power on to others; promising to 
 build up a new civilization through them. 
 
 "The students of the rise of civilization credit its up- 
 ward progress to these men. Practically all the great 
 uplifting movements that have marked the progress of 
 Christian civilization have had their source in the teach- 
 ings of the Christian pulpit. The prophets of the Old 
 Dispensation and the Apostles and Preachers of the New 
 Dispensation were the regenerators of the earth. It 
 was not warriors and statesmen, but missionaries that
 
 36 UNFINISHED TASKS 
 
 turned pagan lands, lifting whole peoples from beast- 
 hood to manhood. It was not statesmen nor rulers, 
 hut preachers, that overthrew slavery, by producing 
 among the people a sentiment which made its existence 
 impossible. Augustine the Preacher laid the founda- 
 tion of England's civilization. William Morrison op- 
 ened China to civilization. William Carey did the same 
 for India, and David Livingstone for Africa. Standing 
 before the Cathedral of Wittenberg, Jean Paul uncov- 
 ered his head and said: "The story of the German lan- 
 guage is the story of Martin Luther's pulpit." 
 
 "Daniel Webster, Anthony Froude, Rufus Choate, 
 and many others like them have affirmed that represen- 
 tative government came from Calvin's pulpit in Geneva. 
 Daniel Webster asked: 'Where can you find one spot 
 in the earth where a new social order has been created 
 and the man who has digged the foundation was not a 
 minister?' Where have the life giving waters of civiliza- 
 tion sprang up save in the track of the Christian minis- 
 try? Ruskin said: 'The Puritan pulpits were the springs 
 of American liberty.' The Earl of Shaftesbury said that 
 Charles Spurgeon by the spiritual work he did in London 
 had done more for social reform and progress than any 
 statesman of his era."* 
 
 Promoting Organized Christianity. Home Mis- 
 sions is the agency for the extension of organized Chris- 
 tianity. Along with the growth of the nation has gone 
 the growth of the Church. The preacher and the 
 teacher have followed the pathfinder and the home- 
 steader. As the railroads pushed their way across the 
 plains and over the mountains, the Church sent out its 
 Home Missionaries to gather the people into churches 
 for instruction and worship that they might not forget 
 God in their new environment. In these little groups 
 
 *Dr. J. D. Rankin, "The Choice of a Profession."
 
 LAYING FOUNDATIONS 37 
 
 of Christians of every denomination were men of faith 
 and prayer, women of patience and trust. The mis- 
 sionaries came and went, but their sacrifice was a never 
 failing spring. They prayed and gave, they toiled and 
 suffered that Christ's cause might be kept alive, and 
 faith in God as He has been revealed to men might not 
 perish from the land in which we live. 
 
 Many of the churches thus organized may never have 
 become self-supporting. They had to be aided by mis- 
 sion funds, but they were instrumental in holding back 
 the forces of evil that would have engulfed these new 
 communities in their beginning. To this service Presi- 
 dent Roosevelt pays tribute: 
 
 "It was such missionary work that prevented the pio- 
 neers from sinking perilously near the level of savagery 
 against which they contended. Without this the con- 
 quest of this continent would have had little but the 
 animal side. Because of it, deep beneath and through 
 the national character there runs that power of fierce 
 adherence to a lofty ideal upon which the safety of the 
 nation will ultimately depend." 
 
 Every denomination in this country owes its present 
 standing to its Home Mission operations. From four- 
 fifths to nine-tenths of all the Protestant churches in 
 North America had their origin in Home Missions. 
 Their buildings were erected wholly or in part by Home 
 Mission money. Of the first one hundred and nineteen 
 colleges in this country one hundred and four were Chris- 
 tian colleges. In 1890, of the four hundred and fifteen 
 colleges in the United States, three hundred and sixteen 
 belonged to Christian denominations. There is not a 
 college in the Mississippi Valley over sixty years old 
 that cannot be traced to some Home Missionary. When 
 
 462445
 
 38 UNFINISHED TASKS 
 
 we find that thirty-eight per cent of the names mentioned 
 in the biographical dictionaries are the sons or grand- 
 sons of Christian ministers, we realize what these Home 
 Missionaries and the institutions they founded have done 
 for the laws, the literature and the liberties of the Re- 
 public. 
 
 Increasing Demands. The work of the Church is 
 being enlarged year by year. Our educational institu- 
 tions are making heavier demands upon the resources 
 of the denomination. The colleges and seminaries are 
 seeking larger endowments and better equipment to 
 meet the requirements of their work. For our aged and 
 disabled ministers and for the orphans of the Church a 
 more adequate provision must be made. The work in 
 the foreign field is steadily enlarging and is calling for 
 more workers and for greater financial support. 
 
 The needs of the exceptional and dependent popula- 
 tions at home must be met. If the Church is to continue 
 its effort among the Indians and is to enlarge its work 
 among the millions of immigrants that are pouring in 
 upon us like a flood ; among the mountain people where 
 the need is so urgent and the work so blessed; if the con- 
 gested masses in the cities are to be reached; if the Negro 
 race is to have a gospel of purity and right-living 
 preached unto it; if the 58,000,000 people out of the 
 Church and away from Christ in our own land are to be 
 won, and America is to become a "nation whose God is 
 the Lord," there will be need for many more workers, 
 and still more money will be required to sustain them. 
 As the missionary enterprises of the Church are enlarged 
 the resources of the Church must correspondingly be 
 increased.
 
 LAYING FOUNDATIONS 39 
 
 Increasing Ability. There are two ways for the 
 Church to meet this growing need. 
 
 (a) The Development of Existing Congregations. The 
 present membership can give more. A greater sense of 
 stewardship is one of the mightiest calls of Christ to 
 men today. The members of the Presbyterian Church 
 more and more are recognizing this responsibility as the 
 claim of Christ and his work is presented to them. The 
 growth of our benevolent contributions through the 
 efforts of the Assembly's Stewardship Committee has 
 been one of the outstanding developments of the Church. 
 The whole work of the Church has been put forward as 
 a result of these campaigns. Our Church stands near 
 the head of all the great Protestant denominations of 
 this country in per capita gifts. Yet there are a vast 
 number of churches, containing a large proportion of 
 our membership that have not been reached by the 
 stewardship appeal and have no share in the progressive 
 program of our Church. The campaign must go on 
 until every church is enlisted in the world-wide work of 
 the Kingdom and every member giving to every cause. 
 This is necessary for the safety of the individual, for the 
 prosperity of the Church, and the cause of Christ. 
 
 (6) The Organization of New Congregations. To en- 
 large the Church is to enlarge its resources. There are 
 millions of wealth in the hands of people outside the 
 Church, in places where we have no organization. If 
 the Church can win men who have money and who are 
 making money they will hereafter give of their wealth 
 to help others. The increasing ability of the Church 
 through its Home Mission work is forcibly illustrated 
 in the contributions of the Home Mission States. The 
 Home Mission Synods of Appalachia, Florida, Louisiana,
 
 40 UNFINISHED TASKS 
 
 Arkansas, Oklahoma and Texas, whose churches almost 
 without exception have been organized and sustained 
 by Home Mission agencies, contribute to the single 
 cause of Foreign Missions more than the entire Church 
 spends through the Assembly's Home Mission Commit- 
 tee upon the work of Evangelism, Church Erection and 
 Sustentation in those Synods. Every new church or- 
 ganized in a growing community adds to the ability of 
 the denomination to sustain its ever-enlarging work. 
 
 The advance of God's Kingdom in every field has al- 
 ways been by the way of the little struggling Home Mis- 
 sion churches, which in time become strong, constitu- 
 ting a permanent endowment which yields enormous 
 interest. The great majority of the churches of our As- 
 sembly, those which give most loyally to all mission 
 causes, were begun as Home Mission enterprises. They 
 represent the strength of the denomination, and make 
 possible the support of the great denominational enter- 
 prises that are lighting up the dark places in our own 
 and are carrying the message of light and life to the 
 millions dwelling in heathen lands. 
 
 Opportunities for Growth. The openings for de- 
 nominational expansion have not all been occupied. 
 There remaineth yet very much land to be possessed. 
 
 (a) In the great Southwest, a region with more than 
 twice the area of the original thirteen States, there are 
 vast stretches of territory, rapidly filling up with set- 
 tlers, where our Church has not gone. Texas has a ter- 
 ritory larger than Germany or France, and some of her 
 Presbyteries are. greater in area than some of the east- 
 ern Synods. Oklahoma is larger by 8,000 square miles 
 than all of New England. Arkansas and Louisiana are 
 old States, but are just beginning their real development.
 
 LAYING FOUNDATIONS 
 
 41 
 
 If these States are ever as densely populated as some of 
 the eastern States they will contain more than 125,000,- 
 000 people, so great is the extent and the possibilities of 
 this Southwestern Empire. 
 
 In the early days our fathers built their houses, and 
 then the church close by. Today the church comes last 
 if it comes at all. The gospel privileges in this great 
 region are totally inadequate for the multitudes who 
 need them today as never before. The American Sur- 
 vey reports that 5,000 churches are needed west of the 
 Mississippi River to care for communities now unevan- 
 gelized. In Oklahoma, which is typical of the whole 
 Southwest, only eighteen out of every one hundred per- 
 sons are in the Christian Church. In Arkansas it is 
 possible to have a church of a million members, and not 
 take one from an existing organization. In this state 
 there are twenty-six counties in which the Southern Pres- 
 byterian Church has not a Sunday-school or a mission. 
 In Louisiana, with its vast resources and multitudes of 
 people there are eight parishes without a single Protest- 
 
 "THE NEW AND THE OLD*
 
 42 UNFINISHED TASKS 
 
 ant church of any denomination. In the matter of 
 Christianizing this Empire of the Southwest, the Church 
 has only made a beginning. We are like men on a moun- 
 tain trail. As yet we have only climbed the foothills, 
 the supreme ranges are just coming into sight. If the 
 boundless wealth of this great region is acquired by men 
 who for neglect are not Christians, it will become a 
 menace instead of a help to the forces of righteousness 
 in the years to come. 
 
 (b) The Southeast is just entering upon the era of the 
 largest development. This is evidenced by the rapid 
 growth in population of all the southern cities. Along 
 the line of one railroad over four hundred new industries 
 were opened in a single year, bringing thousands of peo- 
 ple into those communities, the forerunners of the thous- 
 ands yet to come. With the completion of the Muscle 
 Shoals project at Florence, Alabama, and the production 
 of cheap fertilizers for the farmers and cheap power for 
 the manufacturers, the South will be started in the way 
 to unmeasured growth and prosperity. 
 
 In Georgia 600,000 white people are out of the Church. 
 There are fifty-four counties in the state in which the 
 Southern Presbyterian Church has no organized work. 
 The situation in Georgia is typical of all the southeast- 
 ern states. The mining and manufacturing sections of 
 Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia and West Vir- 
 ginia comprise a region of almost limitless material re- 
 sources. The foundations of great industries are being 
 laid. This region perhaps offers more varied and more 
 promising opportunities to extend the borders of the 
 Church and win a great people for service in the King- 
 dom of God than any other section of the country. In 
 many places the missionary organizations have not been
 
 LAYING FOUNDATIONS 43 
 
 able to meet the needs of the growing and congested 
 populations. The forces of evil are organized and multi- 
 plied in number, while scores of communities are with- 
 out the ministration of the gospel by any church. 
 
 (c) In many rural communities there are opportuni- 
 ties for growth. The Presbyterian Church has neglect- 
 ed the country communities to its own disadvantage. 
 In losing the country we have largely lost the city. It 
 is true that in many rural places the church is difficult 
 to maintain. Many of them are unable without assist- 
 ance to support a minister. These churches must not 
 be abandoned, but must be strengthened and encour- 
 aged. They make large contributions to the cause of 
 Christ. Their gifts in money may not be large, but they 
 contribute that which is far more valuable than money. 
 They send their sons and daughters by the hundreds 
 to be workers and supporters of city churches. There 
 are country congregations that for years have been send- 
 ing elders, deacons and Sunday-school teachers to build 
 up the churches in the city. Our city churches could 
 not long survive if it were not for the constant accessions 
 of strength from the country. 
 
 "Whatever there is today of virtue, righteousness, 
 human brotherhood and the fear and love of God in 
 American life is largely the fruit of the labors of country 
 preachers and country churches." 
 
 There are country groups ministered to by a Home 
 Mission pastor that have furnished more ministers and 
 missionaries than three or four self-supporting churches 
 in a city with their hundreds of members. One Home 
 Mission field supported by the Assembly's Committee 
 has in the past eight years furnished four mountain
 
 44 UNFINISHED TASKS 
 
 missionaries, two foreign volunteers, and five minis- 
 terial candidates. The little church at Soddy, Tennes- 
 see, is a conspicuous example of the value of the coun- 
 try church as a ministerial recruiting ground. This 
 church never had more than seventy-five members, and 
 for years received help from Home Mission funds. Since 
 its organization in 1829 it has sent seventeen men into 
 the ministry of the Presbyterian Church. There are 
 Presbyteries that have not made so large a contribution. 
 
 The cause of the country church is too urgent and 
 means too much to the welfare of the nation and of the 
 Kingdom to allow it to be neglected. It is true that 
 many of the old families which were the strength of the 
 church and the community are moving away, but new 
 families are coming in to take their places. There is no 
 greater or more important service that Home Missions 
 can render the cause of Christ than that of sustaining 
 and keeping alive the country church, that its rich red 
 blood may be poured into the currents of the Church's 
 life. 
 
 Two things are needed if the Church is to enlarge its 
 borders and increase its resources. 
 
 1. Greater Evangelistic Effort. The spirit and pur- 
 pose of Evangelism lies at the base of all Christian effort. 
 Dr. Lyman Beecher was once asked, "What do you count 
 the greatest thing a human being can be or do?" He re- 
 plied, "The greatest thing one human being can do is to 
 bring another human being to Jesus Christ as Saviour." 
 To win another to Christ is the first duty and the highest 
 privilege of every Christian. "He first findeth his own 
 brother Simon . . . and he brought him to Jesus." It 
 is the initial step in the conquest of the world for Christ. 
 Conversion and then culture is the order of the King-
 
 LAYING FOUNDATIONS 45 
 
 dom. Men must be led to accept the invitation, "Come," 
 before they can heed the command, "Go." It is only 
 through earnest evangelistic effort that the Church can 
 make any real progress in winning the great multitudes 
 of lost and indifferent in every community. 
 
 The evangelistic situation that confronts the churches 
 in America has been one demanding serious and prayer- 
 ful consideration. During the nineteenth century the 
 Church made great progress in winning souls to Christ. 
 In 1800 only seven persons out of every one hundred 
 were members of the Church. In 1850, the number had 
 increased to fifteen out of every one hundred. In 1900, 
 there were twenty-four church members in every one 
 hundred. Since that date the growth of the Church has 
 not kept pace with the increase in population. The 
 nation has been growing more rapidly than the Church. 
 For several years the Church in America has been re- 
 porting a decreasing number received on profession of 
 faith each year, and the lowest level for thirty-five years 
 was reached in 1919. But there is reason for encourage- 
 ment in the fact that the tide has turned. The Evan- 
 gelistic Commission of the Federal Council reports more 
 additions to the Protestant churches in this country in 
 1921 than were ever received in the same length of time. 
 In 1921 the Southern Presbyterian Church showed the 
 same improvement. We were able to report to the. 
 Assembly 24,369 additions upon profession, the largest 
 number ever received in any one year in our history. 
 
 The Assembly in 1921 adopted the following Evange- 
 listic Program and recommended it to the churches as 
 the goal of their evangelistic efforts: 
 
 (a) Fifteen per cent of membership added upon pro- 
 fession of faith;
 
 46 UNFINISHED TASKS 
 
 (b) Twenty-five per cent increased attendance on 
 church services; 
 
 (c) A Sunday-school enrollment at least equal to the 
 church membership; 
 
 (d) At least one life enlisted for definite religious work 
 for each congregation; 
 
 (e) A family altar in every home; 
 
 (/) The establishment of mission Sunday-schools and 
 churches wherever possible. 
 
 The Executive Committee of Home Missions has been 
 entrusted with the responsibility for the promotion of 
 the spirit and message of Evangelism throughout the 
 Church. In the Evangelistic Department the Committee 
 employs a corps of able evangelists General, Synodical, 
 Presby terial ; and evangelists for special classes Mexi- 
 cans, Indians, Negroes, Mountain people, and prisoners. 
 These workers are engaged in holding evangelistic meet- 
 ings during the year. Every missionary and Home 
 Mission pastor aided by the committee is commissioned 
 as an evangelist. Through the efforts of the workers 
 aided by the Assembly's Committee 8,954 were added 
 (Annual Report 1921) to the Church upon profession 
 of their faith in Christ. 
 
 The Local Church the Unit of Power. It is in the 
 local church that the effort must be made and the re- 
 sults obtained. A special evangelistic service is helpful, 
 and every church should make this special effort, but it 
 should only be the beginning of a soul-winning campaign. 
 No congregation can meet its evangelistic responsibility 
 by having one special meeting during the year, and then 
 resting twelve months before another effort is made. 
 Someone has said, "God rarely goes over a cold pastor 
 to reach a cold session; God rarely goes over a cold ses- 
 sion to reach a cold congregation; God never goes over
 
 LAYING FOUNDATIONS 47 
 
 a cold congregation to reach a cold community." The 
 pastor and session are the ordained leaders and they will 
 awaken the congregation only as they themselves are 
 stirred by their responsibility. When pastors accept 
 the responsibility of leadership, when officers accept 
 their task as a sacred trust, God has an agency through 
 which to work. 
 
 A Congregational Program. The records show 
 that the churches that begin the year with a definite 
 program of work and a definite objective are the churches 
 that close the year with the most encouraging results. 
 While it is a continuous effort to be sustained by earnest 
 prayer and supplication, a dead level in the church's 
 program can be avoided by the stimulus of special days 
 and special occasions. 
 
 The Communion Season can be made a time of in- 
 gathering. While it is true that in many churches souls 
 should be converted every Sabbath, as a matter of fact, 
 the quarterly communion is thought of as the time when 
 conversions take place. 
 
 Decision Day in the Sunday-school is an unusual op-. 
 portunity for pastors, teachers and parents to press the 
 claims of Christ upon the children and youth in the 
 Sunday-school and in the home. In many churches 
 Decision Day is one of the great occasions of the church 
 year. 
 
 Special Evangelistic Service. Every church should 
 have a special series of meetings for one or two weeks 
 during the year. Heart stirring messages day after day 
 are greatly blessed in reaching the lost. 
 
 The Easter Season can be made a time of great in- 
 gathering. In many churches this is made the climax 
 of the church year. It is a season when hearts are
 
 48 UNFINISHED TASKS 
 
 greatly impressed, and many will accept Christ as Sa- 
 viour. 
 
 Membership Day. This is just what the name indi- 
 cates a time for gathering in new members. Everyone 
 is asked to assist in bringing into church fellowship all 
 for whom that church is responsible. In a certain city 
 there was held what was called "Church Letter Day," 
 when a general search was made for certificates of mem- 
 bership and several thousand were found. In every city 
 there are many who are members of churches elsewhere 
 who should be brought into fellowship with the church 
 where they live. 
 
 The Assembly's evangelistic goal will be reached not 
 by any one evangelistic campaign, but by a steady and 
 constant emphasis in pastoral and personal evangelism 
 in all our churches. No greater distinction can be given 
 any Church or denomination than that it is a soul-sav- 
 ing Church. 
 
 2. A Campaign of Church Building. The Church 
 that builds most grows most. Church Erection is only 
 another way of saying Church Expansion. A church 
 cannot hope to prosper or meet its full responsibility to 
 the community in which it is located, without a house of 
 worship. Many newly organized churches are unable 
 to build without assistance either by a donation or loan 
 from a building fund. All great denominations recog- 
 nize this help as a fundamental and necessary part of 
 their Home Mission work. A contribution for a new 
 church building is not a gift but an investment in the ex- 
 tension of the Kingdom. Probably no denomination 
 has been slower to realize the importance of making 
 these investments than our own. 
 
 The total Building Fund of the Assembly's Commit-
 
 LAYING FOUNDATIONS 49 
 
 tee is about $100,000. Other denominations doing mission 
 work in this country have funds from $400,000 to $5,- 
 000,000. Because of this inadequate provision for 
 Church Erection much of the fruit of the labors of our 
 splendid ministers and Home Missionaries has been lost. 
 The tragedy of our Home Mission work has been the 
 number of newly organized churches in places of prom- 
 ise that have been declined assistance, when a small 
 gift or a loan at a critical time from the General Assem- 
 bly would have put them in the way of growth and 
 progress. The records show that the Presbyteries in 
 which the largest number of churches have been helped 
 from the meager funds of the Committee have had the 
 greatest growth. If the Assembly's Committee had been 
 given the means with which to accept a fourth of the 
 promising opportunities to plant new churches in grow- 
 ing centers that it was compelled to decline during the 
 past twenty-five years, the Southern Presbyterian 
 Church could have a membership 'of 500,000 which, at 
 the present rate of giving, would increase our benevolent 
 contributions $1,489,000 per year. The loss to the 
 Church is seen, when it is considered the number of 
 additional missionaries this increased amount would 
 support. Church Extension is fundamental to the 
 Church's world-wide missionary program. Nowhere 
 has there been a sadder denominational neglect or a 
 greater denominational loss. 
 
 Great Loan Fund Needed. This is the time of the 
 greatest growth in our Church's history. There seems 
 to be a general revival of church building throughout 
 the Assembly. Congregations are outgrowing their 
 places of worship. Buildings that answered the purpose 
 of a former day are largely inadequate for the demands
 
 50 UNFINISHED TASKS 
 
 of the present. Sunday-schools are needing new and 
 becter equipment for their work. A survey of the Pres- 
 byteries show a present need of three hundred and thirty- 
 three new church buildings and two hundred and ninety- 
 nine manses and missionary homes, besides a number 
 of mission school buildings and dormitories. The Gen- 
 eral Assembly, because of the opportunities that have 
 been lost to the Church and the necessity for entering 
 many new and inviting fields, urged the immediate im- 
 portance of a $500,000 Building Fund, and placed this 
 amount in the Assembly's Equipment Campaign. 
 
 Such a fund would enable the Committee to help hun- 
 dreds of churches. Many of them would immediately 
 become self-supporting and contribute liberally to our 
 denominational enterprises. Every dollar provided by 
 the Assembly's Committee would mean four dollars 
 provided by the congregation assisted. A $500,000 fund 
 for Church Building would mean the investment of at 
 least two and one-half million dollars in new church 
 equipment. The children of this world are wise in their 
 generation. They are looking ahead; they are doubling 
 their plants, building for the future as well as for the 
 present. Shall the children of light be less wise in their 
 day? 
 
 Fitting Memorial. Thirty years ago Mr. W. A. 
 Moore, an elder in the First Presbyterian Church, At- 
 lanta, Georgia, deeply interested in the extension of the 
 cause of Christ in the world, left $5,000 to the Executive 
 Committee of Home Missions, to aid mission churches 
 secure homes of worship. The Moore Fund has as- 
 sisted one hundred and four churches in building. Is 
 there another $5,000 that has accomplished as much in 
 the upbuilding of the Southern Presbyterian Church,
 
 LAYING FOUNDATIONS 51 
 
 and the extension of the Kingdom of God in the world? 
 These little churches, resonant with Christian praise 
 every Sabbath are better than all the cold marble ever 
 chiseled or bronze moulded to perpetuate the memory 
 of a child of God. 
 
 The Executive Committee of Home Missions will hold 
 sums of $500.00 or more, contributed by church, society, 
 family or individual, as Memorial Funds, bearing the 
 name of the donor, or of any other whose memory it is 
 desired to honor or perpetuate. A memorial fund is 
 loaned at low interest to a worthy church, and when re- 
 paid is loaned to another, and thus goes on reproducing 
 and multiplying itself through the years. Persons de- 
 siring to leave their principal to Home Missions, but 
 who need the income therefrom during their lifetime, 
 can render a very real service to the cause of Church 
 Erection by investing the amount in an Annuity Bond, on 
 which the Home Mission Committee pays interest dur- 
 ing the life of the investor, the money becoming a part 
 of the Assembly's Church Erection Fund at his death. 
 
 "Next to the longing for immortality, which God 
 Himself has planted in every human breast, is the desire 
 to perpetuate our own name or the name of those we 
 love and honor. But the most sanguine builder of monu- 
 ments has never produced a memorial which would 
 either withstand the ravages of time or increase in beauty 
 and strength as the years go by. 
 
 "It is the distinction and glory of a memorial loan fund, 
 that it is strong where other monuments are weak. 
 Here is something of a material nature that has in it 
 the quality of life. It is a perpetual source of benedic- 
 tion, going forth on errands of mercy and helpfulness 
 to return with increased power for usefulness. 
 
 "Bishop H. C. Morrison describes it as an 'everlasting
 
 52 UNFINISHED TASKS 
 
 benediction; an immortal good Samaritan, with wine 
 and oil and bandages for the bleeding and helpless 
 churches of the land.' Going to the West, it fortifies 
 a point; returning to the East it repairs a breach in the 
 wall. It lives for all times and lives for God. It will 
 work on and on after you have ceased to work, and will 
 come to you with exceeding increase in eternity." 
 
 How can men believe without a preacher? And how 
 can a preacher preach effectively without a house in 
 which the hearers may gather to hear? A church build- 
 ing is a logical and necessary part of preaching the gos- 
 pel. It is a vital means in establishing the Kingdom of 
 God in the world. 
 
 QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION 
 
 1. How does stewardship apply to material resources? To 
 
 spiritual? 
 
 2. Prove that Home Mission service is (a) world service; (b) 
 
 patriotic service; (c) denominational service; (d) educa- 
 tional service. 
 
 3. What are some of the increasing demands upon the resources 
 
 of the Church? 
 
 4. What cause is fundamental to the Church's progress? 
 
 5. In what two ways can the Church meet the growing need for 
 
 workers and money? 
 
 6. Is the South adequately churched? Prove your answer 
 
 four times. 
 
 7. In what way is the country church important? 
 
 8. What two things are essential if the Church is to go forward? 
 
 9. What is the Assembly's evangelistic goal? Has your church 
 
 reached it? 
 
 10. What is the value of special days and seasons in the work of 
 
 the Church? 
 
 11. Why is an adequate Church Building Fund a denominational 
 
 necessity? 
 
 12. In what different ways is a "Memorial Fund" a blessing?
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 PAYING A DEBT 
 SECTION I. INDIANS
 
 The Indian of the old trail was a religious being. 
 The very perils and hardships of the chase and war- 
 path created in him a longing for some relationship 
 with the unseen world of mystery round about him. 
 
 But the old Indian has passed on, leaving behind 
 chiefly such vestiges of the old regime as war paint and 
 feathers, bow and arrow, blanket and moccasin. 
 
 The Indian of today is just coming into citizenship. 
 He meets the demands of this new transition period. 
 He has entered upon the highway of knowledge and 
 cannot turn back to the old trails. 
 
 Less than one-third of the Indian population is re- 
 lated to the various Christian communions; approxi- 
 mately 46,000 are neglected by Christian agencies and 
 unreached by Roman Catholic or Protestant mission- 
 aries. 
 
 Nine thousand Indian youths heard their country's 
 call in the late war and left their tribal clans to fight 
 for liberty. Six thousand were volunteers. 
 
 That the Christian churches of this land owe a debt 
 to the Indian, the eternal debt of love forever unpaid, 
 which proximity and the claims of neighborliness 
 bring, no one will question. The long-deferred pay- 
 ment of this debt calls for immediate settlement before 
 the night comes on and the people are left in their dark- 
 ness. 
 
 American Survey.
 
 III. 
 
 PA YING A DEBT 
 I. THE INDIAN 
 
 Of all the peoples that go to make up our great coun- 
 try there is none that has a larger claim upon the 
 Church's interest and effort than the North American 
 Indian. As old as the European settlement on these 
 shores, so old is our debt to this race. The original 
 owners of the continent, they were here to welcome our 
 forefathers who sought in this new world a refuge from 
 the tyranny of the old, but who in turn, with a few 
 noble exceptions, drove the owners from their ancestral 
 lands in utter disregard of moral right or legal justice. 
 Someone has said, "To the Indian we owe a debt of 
 financial obligation that money can never pay; a debt 
 of legal obligation that treaty after treaty has but in- 
 creased; a debt of moral obligation increasing year by 
 year as the Indian is increasingly degraded by vices 
 learned from his white neighbors." 
 
 Not a Vanishing Race. The Indian has furnished 
 more than one essayist and public speaker with material 
 on "The Vanishing Race of Redmen." But he has not 
 vanished! While it is true that some tribes have be- 
 come extinct and some are decreasing, yet the loss has 
 been more than balanced by the gain in others. The 
 last census placed the number in the continental United 
 States at 336,000. They are divided into not less than 
 two hundred and seventy-five tribal bands and clans, 
 all speaking different languages and dialects, scattered
 
 56 UNFINISHED TASKS 
 
 on one hundred and forty-seven reservations and differ- 
 ent communities, in practically every state in the Union. 
 The largest number of Indians in any' state is in Okla- 
 homa, where there are 120,000. The others are largely 
 confined on great reservations in Arizona, California, 
 New Mexico and other western states, or scattered in 
 smaller numbers on small reservations throughout the 
 East. 
 
 Presbyterian Beginnings. The Presbyterian Church 
 from the very first has shown an interest in the Indian's 
 material and spiritual welfare, and has had a part with 
 the other great denominations in the evangelization of 
 the Indian people. At the present time there are, ac- 
 cording to the report of the Indian Bureau, twenty-six 
 different boards representing twenty-one evangelical 
 Protestant denominations at work among them. Par- 
 tial statistics available from eighteen of these denomi- 
 nations show that there are missions in over one hundred 
 tribes and tribal bands, with five hundred churches and 
 as many out stations. More than two hundred and 
 fifty white workers and three hundred native helpers, 
 interpreters and assistants serve these points. The an- 
 nual expenditure of all Indian missions, according to the 
 report of the Home Missions Council, does not exceed 
 $300,000.00. 
 
 The work of the Catholic Church is perhaps more ex- 
 tensive than that of the Protestant. The Commissioner 
 of Indian Affairs reports that there are 58,646 church- 
 going Catholics, while 44,730 are members of the Pro- 
 testant Churches. It is estimated that less than one- 
 third of the Indian population is identified with any 
 Christian Church, and approximately 46,000 are in tribes 
 where there is no opportunity to learn of Jesus Christ
 
 PAYING A DEBT 57 
 
 from either Protestant or Roman Catholic missionaries. 
 There are 26,000 children of school age without school 
 provision of any kind. The Home Missions Coiwicil is 
 undertaking to allocate to the various Churches respon- 
 sibility for these unreached tribes. The Executive 
 Committee of Home Missions was asked to accept the 
 responsibility for an unreached tribe in New Mexico. 
 The Committee was unable, on account of inadequate 
 funds and the inability to find workers, to accept this 
 added responsibility. 
 
 The Work of Our Church. At the beginning of the 
 Civil War the five civilized tribes in Oklahoma sided 
 with the Confederacy. It is estimated that the Choc- 
 taw nation furnished 3,000 soldiers for service, and the 
 Cherokee nation 2,000. The Indian work of the South- 
 ern Presbyterian Church began with the organization 
 of the General Assembly. It has always had a large 
 place in the Church's sympathy and prayers, though 
 the financial support has never been equal to the need 
 and the opportunity. 
 
 The Indian Missions was the first Foreign Mission 
 work attempted by the Southern Presbyterian Church, 
 and for twenty-eight years it was a responsibility of the 
 Foreign Mission Committee. In 1889 the Indian work 
 was transferred to the Executive Committee of Home 
 Missions and since that time has been an important 
 factor in the department of Home Missions. 
 
 In the Minutes of the first Assembly of 1861, this ac- 
 tion is recorded: 
 
 Resolved: 
 
 2. That the Assembly accepts with joyful gratitude 
 to God the care of these missions among our Southwes- 
 tern Indian tribes, the Choctaws, Chickasaws, Creeks,
 
 58 UNFINISHED TASKS 
 
 Seminoles and Cherokees, thus thrown upon them by 
 His providence; missions whose whole history has been 
 signaljzed by a degree of success attending few other 
 modern missions; to a people comprising nearly seventy 
 thousand souls, to whom we are bound by obligations 
 of special tenderness and strength, and whose spiritual 
 interests must ever be dear to the Christians of this land. 
 
 3 so at the very moment of commencing 
 
 our separate existence we find them forming in fact an 
 organized part of our body; and also in the promptitude 
 with which our Church has advanced to their support 
 the Assembly recognizes most gratefully the clear fore- 
 shadowing of the Divine purpose to make our beloved 
 Church an eminently missionary Church; and a heart- 
 stirring call upon all her people to engage in this blessed 
 work with new zeal and self-denial. 
 
 What has Been Wrought? During the sixty years 
 of our service, about three thousand have been received 
 into the Church. At present there are in Indian Pres- 
 bytery twenty-two churches, with seven hundred mem- 
 bers. The Indian churches are all in the country, many 
 of them miles from any railroad. Some have simple log 
 churches. Yet an Indian church has no Sabbath with- 
 out divine worship. If there is no minister, an elder or 
 some member will conduct the service. In this way the 
 church is kept alive. The Indians love their Church and 
 contribute to its work. In every financial campaign the 
 Indian churches have subscribed their quota. The pres- 
 ent small membership is due to the fact that when Okla- 
 homa became a State, and the allotment of the land "was 
 made to the tribes, many of our members moved away 
 from their old homes. While they have been lost to our 
 Church, they are in the membership of other denomina- 
 tions. It has always been difficult to secure ministers 
 for the Indian churches. This has been the supreme
 
 PAYING A DEBT 59 
 
 need and the great lack through all the years. There is 
 no greater field of service for a consecrated minister of 
 Jesus Christ than to be pastor, minister and friend to 
 these grateful and appreciative people. In this work 
 there have been some of the noblest men in our ministry. 
 The following account by a visitor to a recent meeting 
 of Indian Presbytery shows something of the love and 
 devotion of the Indians to their Church: 
 
 "Going to Presbytery with the Indians, does not 
 mean to rush off at the last minute or perhaps wait until 
 the second session, rush through with the most impor- 
 tant business, get leave of absence and rush home before 
 Presbytery closes. On the contrary, every minister and 
 elder is there unless prevented by serious illness, and 
 usually takes the entire family. Many other families 
 go as visitors, especially those whose women are repre- 
 sentatives to the Presbyterial, and all are present before 
 opening session and remain until the close. This Pres- 
 bytery convened Tuesday night and did not close until 
 the following Monday morning. It included a Sunday- 
 school institute and meeting of the Brotherhood, and 
 was truly a time of great spiritual refreshing. Of the 
 one hundred and twenty-five adults present, only three 
 were white people. 
 
 "The five or six families belonging to this church had 
 all moved over and camped in two-room shacks near the 
 church, to entertain the Presbytery. Beds, stoves and 
 dishes galore were in evidence. In one corner of the 
 church, bedding was piled high, and many men slept 
 on its floor. In the camp houses, beds covered the floors. 
 Seven of their nine ministers were present, and fifteen 
 elders, which shows their interest in their church courts. 
 Each day opened with a sunrise prayer meeting. There 
 was the usual eleven o'clock public worship, also at 
 seven-thirty daily. 
 
 "A most encouraging report was: Eleven candidates 
 for the ministry, and two licentiates. Soon their churches
 
 PAYING A DEBT 61 
 
 will be supplied. Again, we could learn a lesson from 
 their faithful devotion. Their membership is so scat- 
 tered, many of them living long distances from their 
 church. Their work is carried on under such handicaps 
 and difficulties as would discourage the average white 
 church of the present, and cause many to abandon the 
 work. The growth of the Indian churches means more 
 of work, of effort and self-sacrifice than we can possibly 
 understand, and is a strong appeal for our interest, sym- 
 pathy and prayers. 
 
 "And the children! What an appeal they are! Think 
 of sixty or seventy children and young people attending 
 Presbytery! We photographed fifty-five and did not 
 get all. Children are taught the Bible, catechism, and 
 to pray. They attend worship and sit quietly and rev- 
 erently, then join in the singing as heartily as their elders. 
 How they love to sing. Their voices are musical and 
 although much of the singing was in Choctaw, the old 
 familiar hymns of our Church were recognized, and one 
 was conscious of their spirit of worship. In every ses- 
 sion we felt the presence of the Holy Spirit, and know 
 that Presbytery means much to these people. 
 
 "Sunday was a wonderful day. It opened with the 
 sunrise prayer meeting. The Sunday-school numbered 
 one hundred and eleven. The eleven o'clock worship 
 was followed by a memorial service for the deceased wife 
 of a minister. At three o'clock there was a strong ser- 
 mon. All professing Christians were asked to rise. It 
 looked like every one did. When those who were not 
 Christians were asked to rise, there were only nine in all 
 that congregation that stood. 
 
 "Monday morning, following the sunrise prayer meet- 
 ing, the entire crowd assembled for farewell, forming in 
 one large semi-circle in front of the church, men on one 
 side, women on the other with a group of young men in 
 center to lead the singing. As they sang one after an- 
 other of the cherished hymns, the members of the local 
 church, children and all, passed down the line shaking 
 hands and telling their guests good-bye. The minister
 
 62 UNFINISHED TASKS 
 
 at head of semi-circle next fell in line, and one by one 
 they followed until finally each had shaken hands with 
 the other and all said good-bye. It was a most impres- 
 sive farewell, and there were not many dry eyes in the 
 gathering. The older ones are rapidly passing away. 
 The coming generation will present a new problem to 
 the Church."* 
 
 The Committee also ministers to the Alabama In- 
 dians, a small tribe near Kiam, Texas. The work was 
 opened in 1881. The missionaries found this tribe, 
 wearing blankets and feathers, heathen in a nominal 
 Christian land. After forty years of service every per- 
 son in the reservation between the ages of twelve and 
 thirty can read English, and practically every adult is 
 a member of the Presbyterian Church. For twenty-five 
 years Rev. and Mrs. C. W. Chambers have labored in 
 this field, Mrs. Chambers as teacher and Mr. Chambers 
 as pastor of the church. Their only daughter, born in 
 the reservation, is now a missionary in Africa. 
 
 Oklahoma Presbyterian College for Girls. It was 
 early recognized that the Church's greatest opportunity 
 is with the youth, and Mission schools have been the 
 chief evangelistic agency in all mission work. Many 
 devoted Christian women whose hearts God had touched 
 with the Indian appeal, gave themselves to the Indian 
 children out of pity and love and a desire to serve. In 
 many communities the mission teacher was the only 
 white person. Largely through their efforts the Five 
 Civilized Tribes have been lifted from paganism into the 
 light of Christianity. With the coming of Statehood 
 and the public school, many of the church schools were 
 discontinued. One of these Indian Mission Schools has 
 
 Mrs. C. S. Everts.
 
 PAYING A^DEBT 63 
 
 grown into the Oklahoma Presbyterian College for Girls. 
 It is the largest and most important missionary institu- 
 tion of the Southern Presbyterian Church in Oklahoma, 
 or all the Southwest. This school wields perhaps the 
 greatest Christian influence of any institution in this 
 new state. Only eighteen per cent of the population 
 of Oklahoma is connected with the Christian Church. 
 Almost without exception the students in this Christian 
 school are brought to Christ, and they go out to found 
 Christian homes and to be leaders and helpers in Chris- 
 tian work. 
 
 The girls attending this school do not all come from 
 the homes of our Presbyterian Indians, but they come 
 from homes that are not Christian, and from homes in 
 remote country districts with little idea of civic improve- 
 ment, home making or sanitation. Being a mission school 
 the charges are very low. Many poor girls are able to 
 work their way through by serving in the dining room, 
 or in the care of the dormitories. They are taken often- 
 times with little or no preparation, and careful teachers 
 lead them through the several grades. They are sent 
 out not only improved in personal appearance and mental 
 development, but strong Christian characters ready for 
 efficient service. The following quotation is taken from 
 a letter written by a sixteen year old Choctaw girl. She 
 came from a home in the Kiamichi Mountains in Eastern 
 Oklahoma : 
 
 "I came here four years ago, and now the college has 
 grown almost as dear to me as my own home, for many 
 different reasons. Not only have I attained knowledge 
 from a worldly standpoint, but I have also attained a 
 better and more trusting conception of Jesus Christ 
 than I ever had before, which I feel has benefited me
 
 64 UNFINISHED TASKS 
 
 more than all the worldly knowledge I could ever mas- 
 ter. I am thankful I am not the only one who has had 
 this experience, but almost all the girls have." 
 
 Another girl, coming from an Indian home, graduating 
 from the College, is President of the District Christian 
 Endeavor Union, a teacher in the public school and an 
 active leader in Christian work in her community. 
 Another came to the College from a town in which there 
 is not a church of any denomination. She was brought 
 to Christ, and sent home a Christian. It is impossible 
 to measure the influence for good of this Mission School 
 in this great and growing state. If the Indian mission 
 work of our Church had accomplished no more than the 
 establishment of the Oklahoma Presbyterian College, 
 as an institution for righteousness in this new state, it 
 would have been abundantly worth while. 
 
 Christian Workers Needed. There is an urgent 
 call for pastors to serve the Indian churches and train 
 them in the way of Christian living; for Sunday-school 
 missionaries to gather the thousands of young people 
 growing up in this new country without Christian train- 
 ing. A great and needy field awaits anyone desiring an 
 opportunity to render a real service to Christ and the 
 Kingdom of God. Our Church acknowledged its debt 
 to the Indians in the beginning, and it is for us who live 
 in this day to see that it is paid. 
 
 Mrs. Bella McCallum Gibbons, who has spent the 
 greater part of her life in work among the Choctaws and 
 who knows their needs perhaps as well as anyone in the 
 Church, says: 
 
 "The Indians are fast becoming civilized, but the con- 
 ditions which surround them are more deplorable than
 
 PAYING A DEBT 65 
 
 they were fifty years ago. Then the missionary had 
 only to fight the traditions, the superstitions and cus- 
 toms of the Indians. Now the greatest battle the mis- 
 sionary has is to 'keep the Indian from falling into the 
 vices with which our own race is fast surrounding him. 
 Sabbath-breaking, drunkenness, divorce, immoral liv- 
 ing, grafting, cheating, are vices that have crept into 
 their country. Some to all appearances have come to 
 stay. Indians are by nature a reverent people. Chris- 
 tian Indians reverence the Sabbath, yet Sunday baseball 
 has been the means of leading hundreds of Indian boys 
 away from home, away from all church influences, away 
 from religion, away from God. Oklahoma is by its 
 Constitution a temperance state, yet unscrupulous per- 
 sons by the hundreds manage to evade the law and sell 
 intoxicating liquors. And the worst thing about it is 
 that it is whiskey of the vilest sort, oftentimes made 
 from chemicals of a poisonous nature. They sell it to 
 Indians by the quart, by the gallon, and by the case. 
 Anyone who knows anything about Indians knows how 
 whiskey maddens and destroys them. 
 
 "The divorce evil, another custom our civilization 
 has given them, is also becoming very common. It is 
 no unusual thing now for Indians to get divorces through 
 our courts. Still, let it be said to their credit, it is not 
 yet so common with them as it is with us, and it is al- 
 most unknown among the older full-bloods." 
 
 An elder from Indian Presbytery, speaking at the 
 General Assembly, said that when the Indians were 
 taken from the East and placed in Oklahoma is the only 
 time on record that an Indian ever beat an American 
 in a land trade. But many of our Indians are now in 
 danger of losing their last home through the dishonest 
 dealings of unscrupulous white men. Is it any wonder 
 that long ago Wendell Phillips said, "The Indian race 
 is the one which the people of the United States have 
 most dread to meet at the judgment bar of Almighty God."
 
 CHAPTER III Continued. 
 
 PAYING A DEBT 
 SECTION II. NEGROES
 
 One out of every ten people in the continental United 
 States is a Negro. The present Negro population is 
 between ten and eleven million, more than double 
 that of 1865. 
 
 In 1916 thirteen Southern States reported Negro 
 populations of more than 200,000. In eight of them 
 the number exceeded 600,000. These thirteen states 
 contained six-sevenths of the Negro population of the 
 country. 
 
 Five out of every eleven Negroes in the United States 
 are church members. In 1916 according to the best 
 information Negro church organizations had 37,773 
 church edifices and 3,618 parsonages. 
 
 The usual type of building and equipment of the 
 average Negro country church consists of an unpainted 
 frame structure, with rough benches, a platform and 
 pulpit for the preacher. Preaching services are held 
 about once or twice a month. 
 
 The minister is usually non-resident, often living 
 and working at some other occupation in a nearby 
 city. He usually conies to the community Saturday 
 night or Sunday morning, and leaves at the close of 
 his Sunday labors. 
 
 Here is a call for Home Mission Boards to send 
 trained men to these neglected people. 
 
 Former Ambassador Bryce once said that the Amer- 
 ican Negro in the first thirty years of his liberation 
 made a greater advance than was ever made by the 
 Anglo-Saxon in a similar period of years. 
 
 American Survey.
 
 III. Continued. 
 
 PA YING A DEBT 
 
 II. NEGROES 
 
 There is another debt the Church frankly acknowl- 
 edged at the very beginning of its organization. Rising 
 above the awful prejudices of the times and ignoring 
 the cruel disappointments and losses of the war, the 
 Assembly of 1865 addressed the following exhortation 
 to the Churches: 
 
 "The General Assembly solemnly admonishes our 
 ministers, churches and peoples, and do enjoin upon 
 them not in any wise to intermit their labors for the re- 
 ligious instruction of the colored people of our land. 
 While the change in their legal and domestic relations 
 does not release the Church from its obligations to seek 
 their moral and spiritual welfare, their helpless condi- 
 tion and their greater exposure to temptation, leading 
 to vice, irreligion and ruin, both temporal and eternal, 
 which result from that change, make the strongest ap- 
 peal to our supplying them with the saving ordinances 
 of the gospel." 
 
 The 4,000,000 Negroes in the United States when this 
 deliverance was made have increased to 10,463,013. 
 The conditions that the Church fathers foresaw and so 
 clearly set forth in the Assembly's exhortation, have 
 come to pass. That resolution accurately describes the 
 Negro's present needs and the Church's most urgent 
 duty. Because that admonition of the Assembly was 
 not fully obeyed, the evangelization of the Negro is an
 
 70 UNFINISHED TASKS 
 
 undertaking that demands a greatly enlarged effort on 
 the part of the Church today. Of the total Negro pop- 
 ulation in the United States about eighty-five per cent 
 live in the South, and fifteen per cent are in the North 
 and West. From 1910 to 1920 almost one-half million 
 colored people moved from the Southern States, in- 
 creasing the Negro population of the North about fifty 
 per cent. They have largely settled in the cities, and 
 the largest numbers in cities where a few years ago the 
 Negro population was relatively very small. In ten 
 years the Negro population of St. Louis increased sixty 
 per cent, Omaha one hundred and thirty-three per cent, 
 Chicago one hundred and fifty per cent, Youngstown 
 two hundred and forty per cent, Cleveland three hundred 
 per cent, Detroit six hundred per cent, and Gary thir- 
 teen hundred per cent. Natural segregation has oc- 
 curred with the result that they constitute Negro cities 
 within cities. The Harlem section of New York City 
 in numbers, in wealth and life has become the largest 
 purely Negro metropolis not only of America but of the 
 world. 
 
 "The Negro faces serious problems when he migrates 
 from his southern surroundings to a northern neighbor- 
 hood. He enjoys larger liberty but pays an excessive 
 rent, to raise which he must crowd his rooms with pro- 
 miscuous lodgers, a danger to health and an impairment 
 to family life. 
 
 "Northern migration brings problems for both the 
 Negro and his white neighbors, but the odds are against 
 the Negro. Keener competition, racial animosity and 
 unfair discrimination are in the scale against him." * 
 
 'American Survey.
 
 PAYING A DEBT 71 
 
 While the great majority of the Negroes doubtless 
 will continue to live in the South, and be peculiarly a 
 Southern missionary responsibility, the people of other 
 sections must have more than a detached interest in 
 them. Since the people of the North have had an op- 
 portunity to study the Negro at close range the two sec- 
 tions are getting on speaking terms when the Negro is 
 the subject of discussion. There is every reason to be- 
 lieve that we are coming more and more into an atmos- 
 phere of reason and moderation in regard to the Negroes 
 and what the whites should do for them and expect from 
 them. It is not the purpose of this brief study to discuss 
 the various phases of the Negro problem, but to consider 
 the many needs of these people and our duty to them 
 from the standpoint of Christianity. There are two 
 sides to the Negro question their side and our side 
 and our side is the more important of the two. 
 
 In its service for the colored people the Southern Pres- 
 byterian Church has organized its work along the fol- 
 lowing lines of effort: 
 
 Stillman Institute for Training Workers. A 
 clean, upright and efficient leadership is primary in the 
 moral improvement of any race. Christianity without 
 education means to the Negro little more than heathen 
 superstition. Many Negro ministers and teachers have 
 had no preparation and are not qualified either by intel- 
 lectual training or moral character to be spiritual leaders 
 and interpreters of God's Word or teachers of the youth. 
 
 (a) Boys' School. To meet the need for a capable 
 colored ministry, the General Assembly in 1876 founded 
 what is known as Stillman Institute, at Tuscaloosa, Ala- 
 bama. Since its organization this school has sent per- 
 haps one hundred colored ministers into our own work,
 
 72 UNFINISHED TASKS 
 
 in the home and foreign fields, and into the work of other 
 denominations. Negro boys over seventeen years of age 
 of good character are given a thorough normal course, 
 including teacher-training, farming, dairying, and other 
 industries, leading to a special course for those who wish 
 to become ministers and missionaries. In the theological 
 department a three-year course is provided, covering the 
 English branches offered in a theological seminary. The 
 teachers are white men who teach by precept and exam- 
 ple. All students are required to work in the shop or 
 on the farm twenty-one hours per week, in part payment 
 of their expenses. Wherever the graduates of Stillman 
 Institute have gone, it is the universal testimony that 
 they have the confidence and respect of both races, and 
 are an influence for good in their communities. 
 
 (6) Girls 1 School. This is a new departure in our work 
 for colored people. The Church has long felt the need 
 of a school for girls, and such a school has long been the 
 desire of our colored ministers. "No race rises higher 
 than its womanhood." Of no people is this truer than 
 of the colored people of the South. If this race is to be 
 elevated and purified, the home is the foundation on 
 which this progress must rest. The mother determines 
 the character of the home. The Church cannot render 
 its full service to any race by means of the pulpit alone. 
 If the immense task of Christianizing the colored race is 
 to be accomplished, the number of Christian women must 
 be multiplied. They are needed to teach the lessons of 
 purity and honesty in the colored public schools. 
 Trained nurses are needed to give instruction in the laws 
 of health and sanitation. There must be workers for 
 the congested Negro settlements of our cities, to teach 
 right living and respect for the law. Missionaries are
 
 PAYING A DEBT 73 
 
 needed to po into the country districts and establish Sun- 
 day-schools. It is the purpose of this school to give a 
 practical Christian industrial training to colored Pres- 
 byterian girls who wish to go out to found Christian 
 homes, and be Christian teachers and leaders of their 
 race. 
 
 Supporting Colored Pastors and Churches. 
 There are in the Southern Presbyterian Church thirty- 
 eight colored ministers who serve fifty-nine churches and 
 missions. These churches are organized into four Pres- 
 byteries which compose the Snedecor Memorial Synod. 
 This Synod sustains the same relation to the General 
 Assembly as the other Synods. Its Presbyteries are 
 represented in the General Assembly on the same foot- 
 ing as the white Presbyteries. The Home Mission Com- 
 mittee aids in the support of the pastors, and assists 
 in the building of their churches and manses. These 
 Presbyteries conduct their own affairs, develop their own 
 leadership, and participate in all the work of the General 
 Assembly. Our colored churches are few in number and 
 usually have a small membership, but every colored 
 Presbyterian pastor stands for a clean home life, rever- 
 ence for God, respect for law and order, and contributes 
 to the friendly relations between the races. It is ad- 
 mitted by all that a Presbyterian Negro is the highest 
 type of a Christian Negro. 
 
 Promoting Colored Sunday-schools Taught by 
 White Teachers. This is one of the largest fields of 
 service before the white people of the South. In almost 
 every community there are Negro children growing up 
 in idleness, ignorance and sin, who can be gathered to- 
 gether on Sunday afternoons for religious training. 
 There is no record of the number of churches that have
 
 74 
 
 UNFINISHED TASKS 
 
 accepted this missionary opportunity, but it should be 
 regarded as a part of the Sunday school responsibility 
 of every white church where there is need for this service. 
 There is no record of a single instance where an effort 
 to establish such a Sunday-school has failed on account 
 of a lack of interest among the Negroes. 
 
 Institutional Churches and Missions. In three 
 southern cities there are well established missions that 
 are ministering to the spiritual, physical and material 
 welfare of the colored people. These missions demon- 
 strate what can be accomplished for the Negroes by 
 capable and conscientious leaders. 
 
 READY FOR SUNDAY SCHOOL
 
 PAYING A DEBT 75 
 
 (a) Presbyterian Colored Missions, Louisville, Kentucky. 
 This is the largest and most important work that is being 
 done for Negroes in any southern city. It is the pioneer 
 in this needy field, and has pointed the way for similar 
 Christian enterprises in other places. The work began 
 in a small Negro Sunday-school conducted by Rev. John 
 Little and his associates, while students in the Ken- 
 tucky Theological Seminary. Mr. Little has been super- 
 intendent of this work since its beginning. The story 
 of this mission from the founding in 1898 is an inspiring 
 record of Christian achievement. It is the story of a 
 man with vision, purpose and unfailing devotion to duty. 
 One possessing less faith and determination could not 
 have succeeded in face of the discouragements and dis- 
 appointments, and the indifference of the churches in 
 the early days. 
 
 The following brief description of the many-sided ac- 
 tivities of these missions is condensed from a report of 
 Rev. John Little, superintendent: 
 
 "The Presbyterian Colored Missions are two insti- 
 tutional churches with their doors open every day in the 
 year trying to put into practice the gospel that is 
 preached on the Sabbath. The religious services run 
 straight through the year; the industrial classes vary 
 according to the season. The idea in the minds of the 
 workers is to help all who enter the doors to be better 
 men, women and children when they go out than when 
 they came in. 
 
 "The activities include religious instruction, sewing, 
 crocheting, embroidery, cooking, canning, shoe repair- 
 ing, chair caning, and simple wood work. Each morn- 
 ing of the three hundred and sixty-five days in the year 
 new problems are presented to the workers by the 1,500 
 different people who enter the doors to attend classes 
 which meet on fixed days and fixed hours.
 
 76 UNFINISHED TASKS 
 
 "The six theological students who founded the relig- 
 ious instruction of the Presbyterian Colored Mission 
 twenty-three years ago with twenty-three pupils, would 
 be surprised to see the two Sunday-schools with eight 
 hundred and forty-two pupils in charge of fifty-four 
 white men and women representing many of the evan- 
 gelical churches in the city. For a number of years five 
 religious services have been held each Sunday one 
 preaching service in the morning, two preaching ser- 
 vices in the evening, and two Sunday-schools in the after- 
 noon. Out of these Sunday-schools has grown a well 
 organized colored church with a consecrated minister, 
 Rev. W. H. Sheppard, as its pastor, eighteen devoted 
 officers and two hundred and twenty-seven members. 
 The people in this congregation are regular in their at- 
 tendance, reverent in their worship, generous in their 
 offerings, cordial to strangers, and deeply interested in 
 the evangelization of the world. 
 
 "Each day in the week from October until June, a 
 class in sewing can be seen in operation. It is hard for 
 one to realize when he steps into the room and sees one 
 of the eleven classes and knows that there are three hun- 
 dred and fifty-one girls and women who receive instruc- 
 tion, that this sewing work had its beginning with one 
 teacher, six girls, and twenty-five cents in material. 
 The sewing school has a regular system of training, lead- 
 ing from the basting stitch to the completed dress. 
 
 "Under the direction of one of the former pupils, who 
 has had the advantages of courses at Hampton and Tus- 
 kegee, each week there are classes in cooking. The girls 
 are taught to prepare wholesome food, and are given 
 many additional lessons that they would not ordinarily 
 secure. In the summer months, at both mission sta- 
 tions, canning clubs are conducted. 
 
 "Under the direction of a graduate of Tuskegee, two 
 nights each week a group of boys gather for training in 
 shoe repairing. Many an old shoe has been made to 
 revive its usefulness at an astonishingly low price. The 
 boys not only repair their own shoes, but the various
 
 78 UNFINISHED TASKS 
 
 members of the family and of the Sunday-school and 
 church patronize the shop. In this, as in all other in- 
 dustrial classes, whoever enjoys its privileges pays for 
 the cost of the material used. 
 
 "The Daily Vacation Bible School has been incorpo- 
 rated as a regular part of the annual program. In 
 July, after the public schools are closed, the church doors 
 are open each morning for the Daily Vacation Bible 
 School. Thirty minutes are devoted to religious instruc- 
 tion; thirty minutes to learning good music; and an hour 
 and a half to some form of industrial work different 
 from that taught in the winter months. The girls cro- 
 chet and embroider; the boys cane chairs, do simple 
 wood work, bind books, and make hammocks. 
 
 "The workers have a feeling of satisfaction that an 
 increased number of pupils are wearing clothes that they 
 made; that many of their shoes have been repaired; that 
 more wholesome food is served in numbers of homes; 
 that many who were sick have been brought under the 
 care of skilled nurses, physicians and surgeons; that an 
 increasing number are daily planning their lives in con- 
 formity with the teachings of Jesus Christ." 
 
 (b) The Seventeenth Street Mission, Richmond, Vir- 
 ginia. This mission is located in the heart of the worst 
 slum district in the city. It was begun by some students 
 in Union Theological Seminary, who started the first 
 Sunday-school by literally going out into the highways 
 and compelling some negro children to come in. This 
 nucleus has expanded into a thriving, graded Sunday- 
 school, with more than three hundred scholars and a fine 
 corps of teachers in every department. A splendid 
 brick building, costing $19,000 has been provided for 
 the mission by the Presbyterian League of Richmond. 
 
 The scope of this mission includes a club for boys, a 
 girls' club, and a sewing school with three teachers. 
 There is a Christian Endeavor meeting and a preaching
 
 PAYING A DEBT 79 
 
 service every Sunday night. The mission is having a 
 marked influence for good in the community. The busi- 
 ness men in the district attest the vast improvement in 
 the social life and morality of both the children and the 
 older people. The mission is given credit for breaking 
 up one of the worst gangs of boys in Richmond, and has 
 abolished a great deal of mischief that formerly gave the 
 Juvenile Court much to do. 
 
 A striking illustration of the influence of the mission 
 in the lives of the Negro boys recently occurred. Three 
 boys were brought into the court charged with stealing 
 clothes. The two older boys promptly denied their 
 guilt, and placed it upon the youngest. The little fel- 
 low in reply to the Judge's question as to whether he 
 had taken the clothes, said, "No sir, before God I 
 didn't take no clothes." The Judge called his attention 
 to the fact that he had used the name of God, and asked 
 him what he knew about God. Immediately he an- 
 swered: "God is Spirit, infinite, eternal and unchange- 
 able in His being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, good- 
 ness and truth." The Judge, in surprise, asked where 
 he had learned that; and he answered, "At the Seven- 
 teenth Street Mission. Investigation proved him to be 
 innocent of the charge. 
 
 (c) Presbyterian Colored Missions, Atlanta, Georgia. 
 This work has two centers, located in the midst of large 
 Negro settlements. The work had its beginning in a 
 colored Sunday-school taught by white teachers. In 
 1918 following the practical example of the Louisville 
 Colored Mission, and with the inspiration and help of 
 Rev. John Little, the Presbyterian Colored Mission of 
 Atlanta was organized along institutional lines, with a 
 full time superintendent and a corps of volunteer workers
 
 80 UNFINISHED TASKS 
 
 from the Atlanta churches. Rev. G. F. Campbell, who 
 had worked in the Richmond Mission while a student 
 in the Seminary and later assisted with the Louisville 
 Mission, was placed in charge. 
 
 There are now two missions with a weekly attendance 
 in the various departments of nearly one thousand. The 
 activities of the Missions touch almost every phase of 
 the communities' life. There are two Sunday-schools 
 taught by white teachers. There are two kindergartens 
 superintended by a colored girl who has been especially 
 trained for the work. A full time teacher is employed 
 for the sewing school, in which there are now three 
 hundred pupils enrolled; a regular system of training 
 has been adopted and the pupils are taught various 
 stitches, and are taken step by step through six classes 
 until they are able to make their own clothing and cloth- 
 ing for others. There are two day nurseries where the 
 children may be left while the mothers are at work. The 
 boys have been organized into clubs, which hold weekly 
 meetings, when the leader gives practical talks on rever- 
 ence, honesty, health, cleanliness, thrift, patriotism, and 
 other helpful topics. The girls are organized into a club 
 for helpful service. The mission supplies food and 
 clothing for the needy; physicians and medicines are se- 
 cured for the sick. Through this work hundreds of lives 
 are being touched every day, and the whole communi- 
 ties are gradually being transformed. 
 
 These Christian industrial missions represent a prac- 
 tical effort of the Church to improve the educational, 
 moral and physical condition of the colored people. It 
 is possible for similar missions to be established in every 
 Southern city. The white churches will always provide 
 the support if they are shown the opportunity, and in
 
 PAYING A DEBT 
 
 81 
 
 every congregation consecrated teachers can be found 
 for this Christ-like service. Such work manifests the 
 Christian interest of the white people and wins the confi- 
 dence and good-will of the Negroes. The gospel is 
 preached to thousands who would not be reached in any 
 other way, and the Negro problem is being solved with 
 the spirit and teaching of Jesus Christ. 
 
 Conferences for Colored Leaders. There is held 
 at Stillman Institute each year a series of conferences 
 which are designed to help the leaders of the colored peo- 
 ple in their Christian life and better equip them for ser- 
 vice in their churches and in their communities. 
 Through these conferences the spirit and ideals of Still- 
 man are being carried into many communities where we 
 have no colored Presbyterian churches. 
 
 (a) Preachers' Conference. This conference is held at 
 the time of the meeting of the Snedecor Memorial Synod 
 and in connection with the closing exercises of Stillman 
 Institute. All the members of the Synod are brought 
 
 "ONE OF THE LEAST OF THESE."
 
 82 UNFINISHED TASKS 
 
 together for ten days of inspiration, Bible study, and 
 conference on their church problems. A helpful pro- 
 gram is arranged by the Stillman faculty. Addresses 
 are delivered by our leading white pastors on Bible 
 themes, evangelism, Home and Foreign Missions, Sun- 
 day-school methods and church work. The value 
 of this conference to our colored pastors cannot be esti- 
 mated. Not only does it afford them an opportunity 
 for Christian fellowship and instruction by outstanding 
 white and colored leaders, but they are encouraged to 
 take part in all discussions. The benefit is seen in their 
 increased efficiency as preachers and in the larger de- 
 velopment of their churches. They are becoming better 
 informed on the work of the Assembly, and are made to 
 feel that they are an integral part of the Presbyterian 
 Church, having a share in all its activities. 
 
 (6) Teachers' Conference. A six weeks Summer School 
 for teachers of Negro rural schools is held in June and 
 July. Many of these teachers have had no preparation 
 for their work. It is estimated that one-half or more of 
 the 30,000 Negro school teachers and professors are un- 
 prepared for their task. From seventy-five to one hun- 
 dred teachers from Alabama attend. The State Board 
 of Education recognizes the work done at Stillman, and 
 co-operates with the Institute in furnishing teachers and 
 lecturers on rural and community problems. The pur- 
 pose of this school is to make better teachers and fit 
 them to be leaders of their people. The results are seen 
 in better homes, more Christian family life, and higher 
 ideals of personal character. The Bible is given just as 
 prominent a place in the summer school as in the regular 
 session. Through this conference the Institute is touch-
 
 PAYING A DEBT 83 
 
 ing thousands of Negro children and youth in hundreds 
 of communities throughout the State. 
 
 (c) Woman's Conference. This conference is a part 
 of the program of the Woman's Auxiliary for the Ne- 
 groes, and is conducted each year by Mrs. W. C. Wins- 
 borough Superintendent. The conference is open to rep- 
 resentatives from all churches. The delegates are col- 
 ored women who have been carefully selected and are 
 sent by an Auxiliary in the town in which they live. The 
 program of the conference is arranged to give the greatest 
 help to these women in their home life and church work. 
 It not only includes Bible study, addresses on missions 
 and Christian living, but competent instructors give 
 practical courses in sanitation, nursing, care of children, 
 sewing, cooking, community service, and other every- 
 day problems. There is no part of the Church's work 
 for the Negro people that has so far-reaching an in- 
 fluence for good. These women are recognized leaders 
 in their churches and communities. This helpful ser- 
 vice is creating a spirit of confidence and trust and is 
 helping to break down the barrier between the two races. 
 That this is true is revealed in this remark of one of the 
 delegates: "I have often wondered if any one really 
 felt interested in or sympathized with the colored wo- 
 man. I have found here a Christian spirit that I have 
 never found before." 
 
 Inter-racial Co-operation. In all its work for col- 
 ored people evangelistic, educational, industrial the 
 Church is striving for better men and women. Booker 
 T. Washington once said, "I cannot hold a man in the 
 gutter without staying in the gutter myself." The two 
 races by divine providence are indissolubly linked to- 
 gether. All along the way, and at every turn they can
 
 84 UNFINISHED TASKS 
 
 help or hurt one another. Radical leaders of both races 
 can cause friction through prejudice and misunder- 
 standing; but the vast majority of Negroes look to Chris- 
 tian white people for justice and fair play. Principal 
 Moton of Tuskegee, recently said that "the better white 
 South was never more friendly to the Negro than today." 
 This is only another way of saying that in the principles 
 of Jesus is the solution of the Negro problem. The 
 Church, the possessor of the gospel of human brother- 
 hood, is given the supreme responsibility for increasing 
 the spirit of helpfulness between the races. 
 
 "One of the greatest menaces to American life is law- 
 lessness as expressed in riots, mobs, lynching. This has 
 borne most heavily upon the Negro population because 
 it has been least protected and respected. During the 
 past thirty years 691 white men, 11 white women, 2,472 
 colored men and 50 colored women, have been lynched 
 without trial. Nearly three-fourths of the Negro men 
 and about 90 per cent of the white men were not even 
 charged with any crimes against women."* 
 
 The Southern Inter-racial Commission, an organiza- 
 tion of Southern white men, has for its objective the 
 cultivation of better feelings between the races. All 
 over the South there should be representative meetings 
 of white and colored leaders to remove misunderstand- 
 ings and promote inter-racial justice and good-will. The 
 principles of the Inter-racial Commission have twice 
 received the endorsement of the General Assembly, and 
 all our pastors and people have been urged to bring the 
 spirit of Christ to bear in al .their dealings with the col- 
 ored people. To help the Negroes is to help ourselves. 
 Race distinctions must not become race discriminations. 
 
 American Survey
 
 PAYING A DEBT 85 
 
 QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION 
 
 1. What three obligations constitute our debt to the Indian? 
 
 2. To what extent has the Christian Church failed in meeting 
 
 its obligation to the Indian? 
 
 3. How do conditions among the Indians to-day challenge Ameri- 
 
 can Christianity? 
 
 4. In what way does the meeting of Indian Presbytery differ 
 
 from other Presbyteries? 
 
 5. What Indian work has the Southern Presbyterian Church? 
 
 6. What was Wendell Phillip's striking statement? 
 
 7. What statistics prove that the Negro is primarily a Southern 
 
 responsibility? 
 
 8. What two sides to the Negro question are mentioned? 
 
 9. How far has the Church met the obligation assumed by the 
 
 first General Assembly? 
 
 10. What must be done if the immense task of Christianizing the 
 
 colored race is to be accomplished? 
 
 11. What four types of work for Negroes are being conducted by 
 
 the Southern Presbyterian Church? 
 
 12. What is the testimony of the South's leading Negro as to racial 
 
 relations to-day?
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 THE STRENGTH OF THE HILLS
 
 The main features of the mountain problem are iso- 
 lation, illiteracy and arrested development. Housing 
 and living conditions are not good and result in the 
 wide-spread prevalence of disease. There are few schools 
 and churches, little knowledge of what goes on in the 
 outside world. 
 
 Travel from place to place is today the great problem 
 among the mountaineers. This upland region is with- 
 out seacoast, inland lake, navigable river, or canal, 
 and for two hundred miles north and south there is 
 no railroad. One writer has aptly said: "Of mountain 
 travel, no true description is favorable, and no favor- 
 able description can be true." 
 
 This vast region of the South is slowly but surely 
 coming to be recognized as one of the interesting fea- 
 tures of America. Speculators are finding it to be a 
 resourceful field for investment for future lumber 
 camps and coal mines. Geologists are busy seeking 
 out valuable ores, and are planning for further research. 
 Antiquarians in studying the similarities of the High- 
 landers of the South with the Scotch Highlanders of 
 two centuries ago, find unceasing features of interest. 
 The hackling of flax, the spinning wheel, the hand 
 loom, the water mill, the whip-saw, the cross-bow, the 
 flambeaux lamp, the patterns of the homespun "bed 
 kivers," the snatches of the cradle songs, the "lining 
 out" of the native hymns, and even the mother's 
 threat of punishment of an unruly child, "Be good, 
 or Claverhouse will catch you," all point back to an- 
 cient times in the land of their forefathers. 
 
 The Southern Highlanders.
 
 IV. 
 
 THE STRENGTH OF THE HILLS 
 
 There is not to be found on this continent a people 
 whose condition is more appealing in its pathetic need, 
 or who are more deserving of the Church's interest and 
 help, than the thousands of American highlanders living 
 at our own doors in the Southern Appalachian Moun- 
 tains. No people are more responsive to the gospel, 
 more appreciative of the school, and at the same time 
 more capable of intellectual and spiritual development. 
 
 Much has been written about their indolence, igno- 
 rance and poverty, but it is not always remembered that 
 their condition is the result of isolation on the one hand 
 and of neglect on the other. Well-nigh impassable 
 mountain ranges have shut them off from contact with 
 the world and its progress, and for generations the 
 Church has neglected them in the barrenness of their 
 life. It is difficult to say who is more to blame, those 
 who have neglected or those who have been neglected. 
 Wherever the responsibility, it does seem strange that 
 conditions should be as they are in the old sections of 
 our country "so near to Jerusalem of so many denomi- 
 nations." Possibly that is the very reason. Nearness 
 is always the severest test of missionary zeal. 
 
 Territorial Unity. The region occupied by these 
 people is the mountain portions of Kentucky, Tennes- 
 see, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia 
 and West Virginia. It is a section about six hundred 
 miles long and about two hundred miles wide, and con- 
 tains an area of more than 100,000 square miles. The
 
 90 UNFINISHED TASKS 
 
 mountain ends of these seven states constitute a great 
 inland empire, twice as large as New York. It would 
 cover all of New England, New Jersey, Delaware and 
 two Marylands, and it is much larger than England, 
 Wales and Scotland together. This vast inland empire 
 contains a population between 4,000,000 and 5,000,000 
 people, who are one in geographical and social interests. 
 
 The fact that this great region is intersected by state 
 lines not only destroys the impression of its vastness and 
 unity, but in a large measure accounts for the backward- 
 ness of the people. It may be necessary for every house- 
 hold to have its back yard, but it is a great disadvantage 
 to the mountains that they have had to furnish back- 
 yards for seven states. The fact is that the mountain 
 sections have largely been cut off from participation in 
 the affairs of the State in which they are a part. Con- 
 sequently they have not developed along with the rest 
 of the country. 
 
 It is an interesting fact that in 1861 because of this 
 geographical oneness, and following the example of West 
 Virginia which seceded from Virginia, it was 'seriously 
 proposed to form the mountain ends of these states into 
 an independent commonwealth, to be known as the State 
 of Appalachia. If this had been done, it would have 
 been the means of taking millions of the best people of 
 the nation out of the back yard and putting them in the 
 way of development and progress. 
 
 Synod of Appalachia. It is the territorial unity 
 and similarity of interest of the mountain Presbyteries 
 that lie back of the great mountain Synod of Appalachia. 
 This great Home Mission Synod embraces almost the 
 same territory as the proposed State of Appalachia. 
 The mountain sections of the Church, just as in the case
 
 92 UNFINISHED TASKS 
 
 of the states, received scant attention from the Synods to 
 which they belonged. There was a disposition to look 
 upon the mountain Presbyteries as dependent mission- 
 ary territory, rather than an integral part of the Synod. 
 They had little voice in the councils of the Church. The 
 formation of these Presbyteries, with their common in- 
 terests and common problems, into a separate Synod has 
 lifted the mountain sections of the Church out of the 
 back yard and has given them a Church-wide promi- 
 nence. The churches of the mountain Presbyteries 
 having the same educational and religious needs are able 
 to develop their own resources, train their own leaders, 
 build their own educational institutions and colleges, 
 and carry out the program of service best adapted to 
 their needs. 
 
 Origin of the Mountaineer. They are the de- 
 scendants of the best people who came to America in 
 the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. They came 
 from the same Scotch-Irish Presbyterians that settled 
 the valleys and the lowlands and who pressed into the 
 mountains and settled there. At first, they were just 
 as cultured and as well-to-do as any of the people of the 
 valleys or seaboard, from among whom they moved, and 
 at the same time more resolute and virile and daring. 
 They have not always been illiterate. Dr. S. T. Wilson 
 says that: "In 1776, out of one hundred and ten pio- 
 neers of the Washington District in Tennessee who signed 
 a petition to be annexed to North Carolina only two 
 signed by mark. In 1780, two hundred and fifty-six 
 pioneers of Cumberland signed the articles of agreement 
 and only one signed by mark." 
 
 They are a patriotic and liberty-loving people. Rev. 
 Jol:n E. White, in "The Home Mission Task," says:
 
 THE STRENGTH OF THE HILLS 93 
 
 "There are three claimants to priority for the Declar- 
 ation of Independence. The mountaineers of East Ten- 
 nessee and Southwest Virginia have their declaration 
 of Abingdon alongside the claims of Mecklenburg and 
 Philadelphia. They contributed to the struggle for in- 
 dependence the twofold service of holding back the 
 hordes of Indians incited by British agents rushing down 
 upon the plains, and at the same time they sent flying 
 columns to the assistance of the embattled colonists. 
 No fact is better established in history than the fact that 
 the battle of King's Mountain was the turning point of 
 the American Revolution. 'That glorious victory,' said 
 Jefferson, 'was the glorious annunciation of that turn 
 in the tide of success which terminated the Revolution- 
 ary War with the seal of independence.' It was a bat- 
 tle mainly of mountaineers, under Shelby and Sevier, 
 who turned immediately back again to drive the Indians 
 beyond the Blue Ridge. They represented probably 
 the bravest and most adventurous elements in the im- 
 migration which settled the Colonies. They simply 
 went a little further than their brothers into the perils 
 of the new land." 
 
 In all the wars in which the nation has been engaged 
 the southern highlanders have responded with a larger 
 percentage of their population than any other part of 
 the United States. East Tennessee is said to have given 
 a larger percentage of its adult male population to the 
 Union Army during the Civil War than any other sec- 
 tion of the entire country. 
 
 Carter County, Tennessee, sent a larger percentage 
 of its population to the Cuban War than any other part 
 of the entire nation. In the World War, the mountains 
 of the South sent a stream of volunteers into the army, 
 leading all other sections of the country. Breathitt 
 County, Kentucky, headed the list by sending twice 
 as many men in proportion to its population as any
 
 94 UNFINISHED TASKS 
 
 county in the United States. Cowardice or a want of 
 patriotism can never be laid to the charge of the moun- 
 tain people. 
 
 Two Classes of Mountaineers. It would not be 
 correct to consider all the people residing in the moun- 
 tains as objects of missionary effort. A well-informed 
 student of the mountain people, who is himself a moun- 
 taineer, has pointed out the fact that "what may be true 
 of one mountaineer, or of one mountain home, or of one 
 mountain community, is not necessarily true of all 
 mountaineers, homes and communities. There are to 
 be found in the mountains, as everywhere else, those 
 social and moral classifications which people naturally 
 fall into according to their differences of birth, breeding 
 and opportunity. . . . There are the lines of moral, 
 mental and material cleavage as sharply drawn in the 
 mountains as anywhere else in this democratic country." 
 
 The population of this vast mountain region is divided 
 into two distinct classes, as far removed in character 
 and environment as it is possible for people to be. First, 
 there are those who live in the fertile valleys along the 
 rivers and the railways, with the very best religious and 
 educational advantages, and who are equal in intelli- 
 gence and refinement to any people in America. Such 
 cities as Chattanooga, Knoxville, Johnson City, Bristol, 
 and Asheville, with their splendid churches, colleges and 
 universities, are the achievements of mountaineers of 
 this class. 
 
 But the people with whom the missionary has to do, 
 and with whom this study is concerned, do not live in 
 these favored valleys, but far back from the main lines 
 of travel in small clearings by the small water courses, 
 almost entirely removed from the outside world, with
 
 THE STRENGTH OF THE HILLS 
 
 95 
 
 few advantages for learning and few opportunities for 
 improvement. The extreme poor live "back of beyond," 
 beyond the towering mountains, locked in narrow coves, 
 without teachers, without physicians, without comforts 
 and conveniences, and without any contact with outside 
 civilization. 
 
 Fruits of Isolation. Why should a people with such 
 ancestry and such acknowledged character and ability 
 be objects of missionary service? There is one answer 
 they are the product of their environment. Mountains 
 make mountaineers. Isolation fosters ignorance. For 
 generations they have lived to themselves. When the 
 tide of progress set in from the lowlands and the countries 
 across the sea, it flowed North and South, and the re- 
 mote mountain communities, unpierced by the lines of 
 travel and commerce, became eddies in the on-going 
 stream. In the march of progress this section was 
 passed by and forgotten, and for ages was lost to the 
 busy world. Poverty of the soil resulted in poverty of 
 
 GROUP OF MOUNTAIN CHILDREN
 
 96 UNFINISHED TASKS 
 
 the people. This in turn deprived them of the advan- 
 tages of church and school, and the uplifting conserving 
 influences of education and the Christian faith. 
 
 Dr. J. E. White, in "The Home Mission Task," cites 
 the Huguenots, who were driven in 1572 into the Vosges 
 Mountains, as an illustration of the deteriorating effect 
 of isolation upon a noble people: 
 
 "There in the little district of Steinthal a community 
 of them lived for one hundred and fifty years without 
 contact of any sort with the outer world. The teachers 
 and preachers who came with them died. Gradually 
 it came to pass that they had no teachers and preachers. 
 Schools worthy of the name, churches, family altars, the 
 influence of religious sentiment and life, were all depre- 
 ciated. When John Frederick Oberlin, the Strasburg 
 professor and missionary hero, found them they were 
 in a pitiable condition. Their numbers had increased, 
 but the type of the brave Huguenot who was their an- 
 cestor was unrecognizable in them. This is an extreme 
 illustration of what isolation carried to its logical con- 
 clusion will work in human character." 
 
 While it is true that the people of the southern moun- 
 tains were never entirely isolated, many of them have 
 lived apart in their own secluded communities, separated 
 from the influence of the progressive movements of an 
 advancing civilization. Long distances and impassable 
 roads discouraged frequent communication and friendly 
 intercourse with other communities. The effect of these 
 conditions operating from generation to generation re- 
 sulted in the general ignorance and deterioration of the 
 people. Thus a distinct class was formed and a race 
 naturally mentally strong and with many noble traits 
 of character became poorer and more ignorant and 
 more exclusive.
 
 THE STRENGTH OF THE HILLS 97 
 
 The Present Conditions. While the character of 
 the homes vary according to the circumstances of the 
 owner, as a rule the houses in the coves and recesses of 
 the mountains are poor and bare a log cabin of one or 
 two rooms, windowless or having rude wooden shutters, 
 with an outside chimney built of stone from the sides of 
 the mountain or nearby brooks. The furniture is a 
 rough table, a few chairs and a shuck mattress. In 
 many sections cook stoves, or other labor-saving devices 
 are unknown. In these cramped quarters live the entire 
 family. Yet withal they are unusually hospitable. A 
 stranger is welcomed and is given the best they have. 
 The men as a class love their families, and divorces 
 among them are unknown. The life of the woman is 
 hard, and they grow prematurely old, through toil and 
 drudgery. Dr. Guerrant says: 
 
 " It is not hard to persuade them that God has a better 
 country for them. It is a continual struggle for bread. 
 The steep mountain sides are soon worn to the rock, and 
 it is a battle with ground hogs and ground squirrels from 
 the time the seed is planted to the day the crop is gath- 
 ered." 
 
 The schools are like the homes. The State has made 
 little or no provision for public schools. Where they have 
 them they are open only for a few months, and are 
 taught by incompetent teachers. In many cases they 
 can do little more than read and write. One little girl 
 before entering a mission school said she had attended 
 five schools, and she had never learned her letters. 
 Another saidshe had gone to three schools, and added, 
 "I never larned nuthin' at ary one of them." 
 
 The churches reflect the conditions of the home and 
 the school. Yet the mountain people are naturally re-
 
 98 UNFINISHED TASKS 
 
 ligious. It is said that there is not an atheist or an infi- 
 del among them. For one hundred and fifty years one 
 generation has taught the succeeding one to believe in 
 one true God and to have faith in the Bible. During 
 the early days the ministers who labored among them 
 laid the foundation of their faith in God and the Scrip- 
 tures. They established log Churches and schoolhouses, 
 and kept the fire burning on many a family altar; but 
 with the later generations, because of their lack of an 
 educated ministry and the consequent ignorance, many 
 corrupt ideas have entered their belief. The sermons 
 they most enjoy are lengthy discussions of doctrinal 
 subjects. They will walk for miles for the privilege of 
 hearing a sermon, and will sit for hours on the rudest 
 benches. An educated missionary once preached, by 
 invitation, in one of the log churches. His sermon was 
 thirty minutes long. At the close, a native preacher 
 asked: "Be yer edicated?" "Yes/' said the missionary, 
 "I am educated." "Fer how long did yer go ter school?" 
 asked the preacher. "Well," answered the missionary, 
 "I went four years to college and three years to the the- 
 ological seminary." Responded the preacher, "Yer 
 don't tell! An, after all that schoolin', ye kin preach 
 but half an hour. Why, any of us home preachers kin 
 preach two hours without goin' ter school at all." 
 
 They are intensely Protestant as were their ancestors. 
 Catholicism can make no headway among these descend- 
 ants of those who were taught the creed of Knox and 
 Calvin. But Mormonism has found its way into the 
 mountains, and for years its missionaries have been 
 searching the remote recesses for followers of its faith. 
 A great spiritual hunger is characteristic of them all, 
 and a desire to learn and rise. "It is too late for me,"
 
 THE STRENGTH OF THE HILLS 99 
 
 was the pathetic cry of an old man, "but I want you to 
 learn my boys and girls." 
 Discoverer of the Mountains. It was Dr. E. O. 
 
 Guerrant who directed the attention of the Church to 
 this great mission field and the possibility of winning a 
 great people for Christ and the Kingdom of God. Dr. 
 W. W. Moore, President of the Union Theological Semi- 
 nary, Richmond, Virginia, in the introduction to "The 
 Galax Gatherers," says: 
 
 "As Sir Walter Scott made the Highlands of Scotland 
 known to the world and turned an endless stream of 
 tourists through those romantic regions, so Dr. Guer- 
 rant has helped to give to the world a true knowledge 
 of this vastly greater and wilder Appalachian region with 
 its four million of untutored and un-Christianized peo- 
 ple, and has done more than any living man to turn a 
 saving stream of evangelists and teachers into its remote 
 and needy recesses. He has been in turn soldier, doctor, 
 evangelist these three but the greatest of these is 
 evangelist. His heart has responded to the sore need 
 of this vast region, as large as the German Empire, and 
 practically without churches, Sabbath-schools, or qual- 
 ified teachers. He has recognized clearly that this home 
 mission work is the paramount obligation resting upon 
 
 our people Notwithstanding all that has been 
 
 done, the field is yet almost untouched; there are many 
 thousands yet unreached; and as Dr. Guerrant says: 'the 
 question is not whether they can be saved without the 
 gospel, but whether we can be saved if we do not give 
 it to them." 
 
 Organized Mission Effort. The story of Mountain 
 Missions of the Southern Presbyterian Church is largely 
 the story of Dr. E. O. Guerrant. It was to meet the 
 educational and religious needs of these millions lost in 
 the mountains, passed by and forgotten by the Church,
 
 100 UNFINISHED TASKS 
 
 that the Society of the Soul Winners was organized. 
 The following account of the beginning of this work has 
 been given by Dr. Frank Talmadge: 
 
 "Many years ago a soldier in Morgan's Confederate 
 Army rode over the mountains of the South. There 
 for the first time he came in touch with the misery and 
 ignorance and nobility of the mighty Highlanders. After 
 the war was closed this brave soldier of war entered a 
 theological seminary and became a soldier of the Cross. 
 Called to one of the chief pulpits of Louisville, he felt 
 that barrack duty was not the place of honor. He longed 
 for the picket line. He wanted to fight at the front, as 
 he did in Morgan's brigade. Called to be a Synodical 
 missionary, at once he accepted the appointment. 
 
 "As the Synodical missionary his thoughts immediate- 
 ly turned to the place of the greatest want and wretched- 
 ness, to the Highlanders of the mountains. He orga- 
 nized church after church. He sent missionary after 
 missionary into the hills. Then the Synod met and 
 began to count its money. Little money was there. 
 Then the officers of that Synod ordered this missionary 
 to retrench and not to build so many churches and 
 schools, as they could not afford to pay for them. Then 
 a wonderful thing happened; wonderful because it was 
 so simple in a man of great faith. 
 
 "Dr. Guerrant resigned as the Synodical missionary. 
 Before the Synod he uttered these words: 'Brethren, if 
 you cannot afford to pay for the schools and churches 
 and the missionaries for the poor Highlanders, God can 
 pay for them.' Dr. Guerrant went back to his home in 
 Wilmore, Kentucky. There he knelt and asked God 
 to help. The money commenced to pour in. Church after 
 church has been established. School after school has 
 been built. Missionary after missionary has been sent 
 to these fields. The orphan children were gathered into 
 a home. Though wonders have been accomplished by 
 this man of prayer, yet only the outer edge of the har- 
 vest has been_ gathered."
 
 THE STRENGTH OF THE HILLS 101 
 
 Presbyterian Work. In 1911, Dr. Guerrant, on ac- 
 count of advancing age, transferred to the General As- 
 sembly the work of the Soul Winners' Society, consist- 
 ing of fifty missionaries and eighteen mission centers. 
 The Assembly accepted the responsibility, and made the 
 Mountain Missions a department of the work of the 
 Executive Committee of Home Missions. Dr. Guerrant 
 continued his interest and help in the work until his 
 death. Under the care of the Home Mission Commit- 
 tee the work has been greatly enlarged, and has become 
 in many respects the most fruitful of any department 
 of the Church's missionary operations. 
 
 There are in the bounds of the Assembly about fifty 
 mountain mission schools under the control of the Pres- 
 bytery, Synod and Assembly. Under the immediate 
 supervision of the Executive Committee of Home Mis- 
 sions there are (Report 1921) fifteen schools and thirty 
 mission centers, from which are being reached forty- 
 seven Sunday-schools and seventy-seven out stations 
 and preaching points. The Committee employs in the 
 Mountain Department sixteen ministers, nine laymen, 
 and seventy-three women missionaries and teachers. 
 Financial assistance is also given to the mountain work 
 of the Presbyteries and Synods. These schools vary 
 one from another in size, in emphasis and in course of 
 study, but never in purpose, for the development of 
 Christian character and Christian leadership is the aim 
 of all. 
 
 People of the Ozarks. In the Ozark Mountains, cov- 
 ering large portions of Missouri and Arkansas, are about 
 one million of the same people, living under the same con- 
 ditions, having the same problems, brought about by 
 the same causes as in the mountains of the East. In the
 
 102 UNFINISHED TASKS 
 
 rush to settle the great plains and prairies of the West, 
 the Ozarks were passed by as were the Alleghanies, the 
 Blue Ridge and the Cumberlands. Harold Bell Wright 
 has discovered these people and introduced them to the 
 nation in "The Shepherd of the Hills," and other stories 
 of this region, as John Fox, Jr., has acquainted us with 
 the people of the mountains of Kentucky. 
 
 At Hollister, the Synod of Missouri has the School of 
 the Ozarks. This splendid institution is the pride of 
 the Synod, and is doing a remarkable work for the boys 
 and girls in that great mountain region. In Arkansas 
 the Assembly's Committee, in co-operation with the 
 Synod, has two mountain mission schools, one at Moun- 
 taincrest, and the other at Womble. These two new 
 enterprises represent the beginning of the Assembly's 
 program of education in the Ozarks. 
 
 Combating Illiteracy. The first great need of these 
 people is education. The school must blaze the way 
 and create the necessity for a better religious and com- 
 munity life. The mountain people cannot be elevated 
 from without; but the improvement must come from 
 within. The State schools are not meeting the educa- 
 tional needs of the people, and the Church through its 
 system of mission schools is endeavoring to help solve 
 the problem of illiteracy, not by supplanting, but by 
 supplementing the work of the public school. The 
 mountain people want the church school, and will give 
 freely of their limited means towards its support. These 
 schools in themselves cannot touch the fringe of the need. 
 One boy or one girl from a family may be privileged to 
 attend, but what of the eight or ten brothers and sisters 
 shut off at home without any opportunity? These are 
 the Church's chief concern, and it is the desire to help
 
 THE STRENGTH OF THE 'HILLS 103 
 
 them that lies back of its mission school effort. By 
 training Christian leaders and Christian teachers, the 
 Church is making it possible for a greater number to 
 receive an education, many of whom otherwise would 
 have no chance to do so. 
 
 The story of one school is the story of all. In almost 
 every instance they are crowded to overflowing, and their 
 usefulness is limited only by their lack of room. The 
 outstanding, insistent appeal of every mountain teacher 
 is for larger buildings and better equipment to care for 
 the army of boys and girls seeking admission. The chil- 
 dren in the city and other more favored communities 
 may regard it as a hardship to go to school and look upon 
 it as a punishment, but the mountain children are so 
 eager for an education that many of them will make any 
 sacrifice to get it. Two small girls walked thirty-five 
 miles to enter a mission school, and when the session 
 closed they walked back home. Two others drove one 
 
 FOR SUCH AS THESE
 
 104 UNFINISHED TASKS 
 
 hundred and twenty miles across the intervening moun. 
 tains in a covered wagon, and were four days on the road- 
 Another came twenty miles leading a pet cow with which 
 to help pay her expenses. 
 
 It is the aim of these mission schools to give each boy 
 and girl the best possible instruction in the class room, 
 teach them lessons in health, sanitation and home-mak- 
 ing, and lead them to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. 
 The Bible is a text-book in every- school, and is taught 
 in each grade. When the students have finished in the 
 school they are sent back to their homes in the remote 
 creeks and coves to help their families and communities 
 to higher and better things. This is the work that is 
 being done by the Church in those splendid mountain 
 mission institutions at Stuart Robinson, Highland and 
 Beechwood, in Kentucky; Grundy and Blue Ridge, in 
 Virginia; Madison, in West Virginia; Banner Elk and 
 Plumtree, in North Carolina; The Ozarks, in Missouri; 
 Mountaincrest and Womble, in Arkansas; Nacoochee, in 
 Georgia; and at scores of smaller schools throughout 
 the mountain regions. 
 
 There is no part of the Church's missionary operations 
 that pays larger dividends in Christian character and 
 potential leadership than the consecrated service of 
 these Mountain Mission teachers. Through their ef- 
 forts the younger generation is learning Christ's new 
 commandment, "Love one another." The old spirit 
 of hatred and revenge that has so long prevailed among 
 families and clans is dying out except in districts that 
 have not been reached by prohibition and the Christian 
 school. 
 
 Sunday-school and Community Workers. In 
 addition to the teachers in the day and high schools, all
 
 THE STRENGTH OF THE HILLS 105 
 
 of whom teach in the neighborhood Sunday-schools and 
 visit in the homes of the people, the Committee employs 
 a number of community workers who give their entire 
 time to Sunday-school and other religious and commun- 
 ity service. Sunday-schools are held in the churches, 
 school houses and the teachers' homes, where the chil- 
 dren are gathered, or as many as can find room. Every 
 teacher's home is a community center. Through the 
 children the workers reach the parents. There is scarce- 
 ly an hour in the day, and frequently in the night, that 
 there is not some call for the service of the missionary. 
 Every community worker must be ready for any emer- 
 gency, whether it is sickness in a family, a funeral, or a 
 wedding. In the remote regions "back of beyond," 
 where doctors and nurses are practically unknown, she 
 must be ready to prescribe for all ailments of man or 
 beast, and must be able to render "last aid" as well as 
 "first aid." Every mountain missionary should have a 
 stock of home remedies, and an unusual supply of com- 
 mon sense, to work among a people who have so little 
 knowledge of sanitation, or the simplest treatment in 
 the case of sickness. 
 
 Epidemics always bring terror to the hearts of the 
 mountain workers. The people are so helpless and so 
 dependent. One woman worker, in the absence of any 
 physician and nurse, visited one hundred and ninety- 
 eight cases of influenza. She served day and night and 
 administered the approved remedies of which she had 
 heard and which alone were available. Her good com- 
 mon sense and tireless fidelity were blessed to such a 
 degree that but one patient died. Such service has its 
 reward in the love and confidence of the people. Many
 
 106 UNFINISHED TASKS 
 
 out of their poverty try to show their gratitude in some 
 kindness done. 
 
 One missionary heard of a family in great need. She 
 walked three miles, through mud and in the rain, to a 
 log cabin on the side of the hill. There was only one bed- 
 room. In that room was the mother ill with influenza 
 and pneumonia, and the father and four children were 
 all in bed. The missionary cared for the entire family, 
 day and night, until her strength failed and she was 
 obliged to return to the mission to rest. In a short time 
 she returned to her nursing. When all were well on the 
 road to recovery, she went elsewhere to administer to 
 others. The man of the house did not say "thank you" 
 when she left. A week later, hearing that the mission- 
 ary was sick, the man, still weak from his recent illness, 
 walked three miles through snow and over frozen streams 
 to bring a ham and two chickens to her. This was his 
 expression of gratitude to one who had been a friend in 
 time of need. 
 
 Free Medical Clinics. Following the example of 
 Dr. E. O. Guerrant, who frequently took physicians 
 and surgeons to various places in the mountains for 
 the benefit of those without physicians and hospitals 
 and who were unable to procure proper medical as- 
 sistance, his son, Dr. E. P. Guerrant, a competent 
 physician and surgeon, accompanied by specialists and 
 nurses who give without charge their time and service, 
 holds each year free medical clinics at three of our largest 
 schools, and devotes several days to treating mountain 
 children and others suffering from chronic diseases. At 
 each of these clinics from one hundred and fifty to four 
 hundred patients are examined. The announcement 
 that a clinic is to be held is carried far and wide. There
 
 THE STRENGTH OF THE HILLS 107 
 
 is a stream of sick and suffering humanity from twenty- 
 five to thirty-five miles back in the mountains to receive 
 treatment. It is like in the days when Christ was on 
 earth, when "they brought unto Him all the sick people 
 and those that were taken with divers diseases." At one 
 clinic a primitive Baptist preacher came twenty-five 
 miles from back in the mountains with his wife and five 
 children. Tonsils were removed from four of the chil- 
 dren and adenoids from one. 
 
 Mountain Hospitals. Hospitals are one of the great 
 needs of the Church's Mountain Mission work, for no 
 people in this great country of ours are more destitute 
 of medical advantages. At Lees-McRae Institute, Ban- 
 ner Elk, North Carolina, there is a splendidly equipped 
 hospital, with competent nurses and a skilled physician 
 in charge. In this mission hospital more than three 
 hundred patients have been treated, from one to six 
 weeks, and most of them for operations. Hundreds of 
 others have been treated without having to remain. It 
 is more than a hospital. It is both a dispensary and a 
 school. Here the students in the Institute are instructed 
 in things pertaining to their own health and safety and 
 the care of the sick room. Twenty-five trained nurses 
 have gone out from this school. 
 
 At Highland School, Guerrant, Kentucky, the Com- 
 mittee has a hospital with a trained nurse in charge, but 
 there is no resident physician to care for the teachers 
 and the pupils or minister to the sick in the community. 
 Hospital facilities must be provided at Stuart Robinson 
 and other centers in this great and needy field. Where 
 could a Christian physician, wishing to minister to the 
 relief of suffering humanity, find a more open field or 
 more inviting opportunity?
 
 108 UNFINISHED TASKS 
 
 Evangelistic Effort. Every mountain school, com- 
 munity center and hospital is intended to be an evange- 
 listic agency. Every minister, teacher, and nurse is 
 striving to make Christ known in His saving power to 
 the people among whom they labor. The Mountain 
 Mission Sunday-schools supported by the Executive 
 Committee have an enrollment of 4,000; and the workers 
 receive into the Church an average of 600 per year upon 
 profession of their faith. In one mountain field in Vir- 
 ginia, one missionary in seven years has built six 
 churches. These are in a county where previously 
 there was not a Presbyterian church. The evangelistic 
 opportunity in the mountain Presbyteries is practically 
 unlimited. Mothers often come to the workers from 
 communities ten to fifteen miles distant, asking that a 
 Sunday-school be started for them, saying: "We don't 
 know nuthin' and we want our children to larn." 
 
 Consecration of Missionaries. Without a single 
 exception the mountain missionaries are willing to spend 
 and be spent in these hard and difficult fields. Many 
 have declined larger salaries in other work, that they 
 might serve these needy people. 
 
 Few of the homes in which these missionaries live have 
 even the suggestion of comforts or conveniences. The 
 houses in many instances were built of green lumber 
 which, when dried, left great cracks through which the 
 winter winds drive the rain and snow, in spite of the 
 many pastings of newspapers which were sent in mis- 
 sionary barrels. One worker tells how she pulled the 
 bedspread over her head when it snowed and in the morn- 
 ing before rising she shook the snow off her bed. Is it 
 any wonder that this same woman now walks on crutches 
 much of the time because of rheumatism? Often water
 
 THE STRENGTH OF THE HILLS 109 
 
 is carried from a distant neighbor's house, or from a 
 spring at the foot of the hill. The coal has to be carried 
 in and the kindling split because there is no man on the 
 place. In addition to her duties as Christian worker 
 and servant of the community, she does all the heavy 
 household work. One worker has had to move six times 
 in three years, and is now living in a donated house with 
 the possibility of having to vacate at any time. It is 
 located on the side of a hill, difficult of approach, with 
 no conveniences, and could properly be designated as a 
 "woman-killer." Oftentimes a missionary lives alone, 
 with never a congenial friend from the outside world with 
 whom to talk. Even the mail is irregular in its arrival. 
 The post-office may be at the foot of the mountain, or 
 it may be three miles away, or it may be seven or ten 
 miles. As of Paul it can be said of them, "In labors 
 more abundant," "in weariness and painfulness, in 
 watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often." 
 If there is any special honor for the soldiers who can go 
 out farthest, stand longest, fight bravest in the hard 
 places of the battle, it should go to the Home missionary. 
 The Church should see to it that these heroic men and 
 women have at least the ordinary comforts of home 
 where they can rest after a day in which their strength 
 has been given in sacrificial service. 
 
 Fruits of Mountain Missions. Rev. E. V. Tad- 
 rock, principal of the Stuart Robinson School, Blackey, 
 Kentucky, says: 
 
 "Instances of the fruitfulness of mountain missions 
 in the state where I labor, can be cited that are so numer- 
 ous and striking as to be conclusive. I recently spoke 
 in one of our fields to a mountain congregation of more 
 than two hundred. The pastor, himself a mountain
 
 110 UNFINISHED TASKS 
 
 man, was the product of the mission church and school. 
 Within six months he has received into the membership 
 upward of one hundred mountain people, and with the 
 help of an assistant is rapidly developing five or six out- 
 lying stations. Recently three hundred were present 
 at Sunday-school. 
 
 "The Synodical evangelist in the same state is also a 
 product of the mountain mission work. This is his 
 story as he told it. 'If you had been looking for me 
 twenty-five years ago, you would have found me in the 
 office of my brother, then sheriff of the county, with a 
 bottle of whiskey in my pocket, a 45 calibre revolver 
 buckled about my waist, and a deck of cards spread out 
 on the table in front of me. If you had spoken to me 
 about religion, I would probably have cursed you." 
 
 "Leading the campaign for the endowment of one of 
 the great schools of America is another product of South- 
 ern Presbyterian mountain missions, one of the most 
 virile and eloquent men who has ever gone out of the 
 mountains. He recently returned to his old home to 
 throw himself into a political campaign to encompass 
 the defeat of a man who was financially and morally 
 bankrupting his county. 
 
 "In the same state, a brilliant young mountain man 
 has been made vice-president of the great mission school 
 of another branch of the Presbyterian Church. He was 
 called from the seminary to the pastorate of the largest 
 church of his denomination in the capital city, but de- 
 clined it in order to give his life to his own people. Sub- 
 sequent calls of the most flattering character have been 
 refused. 
 
 "Mountain missions have also given to the state some 
 of its most honored and useful citizens. In one city 
 alone the banker who is regarded the leading financial 
 authority, the men who compose the largest firm in an 
 important line of business, and the pastor holding the 
 pulpit of one of the first churches, are all mountain men, 
 the products of mountain missions. 
 
 "It is, however, in the mountains themselves that the
 
 THE STRENGTH OF THE HILLS 
 
 111 
 
 great impact of mountain missions is being felt. Go to 
 those communities where missions and schools have been 
 well supported and wisely managed and you will find 
 happy and cultured homes, thriving churches, and God's 
 glorious grace manifested in innumerable ways. 
 
 "Through misunderstanding of the mountain people 
 and the problems of missions in their behalf, many sad 
 and foolish blunders have been committed. Now, that 
 the pioneering has been done, the problem is to find the 
 right workers and the adequate means to support them. 
 When properly conducted, mountain missions give con- 
 tinuous and heartening returns for the labor and money 
 invested." 
 
 Recruiting Ground of the Church. The mountain 
 schools can be made the Church's most fruitful recruit- 
 ing ground for workers, for both the Home and Foreign 
 fields. It has been said: 
 
 "In the cities ninety per cent of all that the children 
 see tells them of man. In the mountains ninety-six per 
 
 CHRISTIAN RECRUITS
 
 112 UNFINISHED TASKS 
 
 cent of all that they see tells them of God. Nearly all 
 our young men who are called of God into the gospel 
 ministry are country reared. In the mountains the rural 
 influences that lead youth to hear the voice of God 
 reach their strongest expression." 
 
 A people that has never failed to send forth volunteers 
 at the country's call, will respond when the call of a needy 
 world is presented to them. The life of a mountain boy 
 or girl is a struggle against difficulties. When they are 
 given a vision of the world's needs and are challenged 
 by the command of Christ to become soldiers of the 
 Cross, they will answer the call to the Church's most 
 difficult fields in larger numbers than will the youth of 
 any other part of our land. 
 
 Changes in the Mountains. In many mountain 
 sections there is a new day with new conditions. The 
 discovery that the hills are covered with timber and un- 
 derlaid with coal, is sending industry and railroads into 
 the most inaccessible nooks and corners. Valleys that 
 once held a single cabin, or two at most, are now crammed 
 with miners' huts. Boys from the mountain homes are 
 earning more in a single week than their fathers earned 
 in a year. A people that have lived apart for one hun- 
 dred and fifty years are turned unprepared to meet the 
 mental and moral strain of modern civilization. This 
 emphasizes the great need of the mountain people for 
 the guidance of the Christian school and the steadying 
 influence of the Christian Church. 
 
 The immediate question for the Church is, shall these 
 people be left to the exploitations of those who covet 
 their rich lumber and ores, or shall they be protected 
 and helped and saved to bless the nation and the world? 
 In the language of another, "We have built light towers
 
 THE STRENGTH OF THE HILLS 113 
 
 at a few centers which cast their beams immediately 
 about them, but the land lying hugely between is not 
 lighted. . . . We have scarcely touched the deeper and 
 darker sections the great interior stretches of life on 
 the ranges where the pathos of backwardness in the blind 
 strength of the mountaineer's child is waiting for us." 
 
 QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION 
 
 1. What are the main features of the mountain problem? 
 
 2. What is the severest test of missionary zeal? 
 
 3. Who discovered the mountains to the Southern Presbyterian 
 
 Church? 
 
 4. Why was the Synod of Appalachia organized? 
 
 5. Who were the antecedents of the mountain people? 
 
 6. What are the fruits of isolation? 
 
 7. Is there a distinction between illiteracy and ignorance? 
 
 8. What are the reasons for mountain mission schools? Why 
 
 are hospitals needed? 
 
 9. Give instances to prove that mountain missions pay. 
 
 10. Why can mountain missions be made the recruiting ground 
 
 for the Church? 
 
 11. Does the industrial exploitation of the mountains lessen or 
 
 complicate the Home Mission task? 
 
 12. Considering the self-denying service of the Church's mountain 
 
 missionaries, do they receive the appreciation and support 
 thev deserve?
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 OUR FUTURE CITIZENS
 
 Our present foreign-born population is about 17,- 
 500,000 and there are some 20,000,000 more of immed- 
 iate foreign extraction. 
 
 Approximately one-fourth of all the children in the 
 United States live in the homes of the foreign-born 
 as the birth rate is everywhere higher among foreign- 
 born than among the native stock. 
 
 The percentage of foreign-born farmers is greater 
 than that of the native-born in a number of our States. 
 
 Some of the biggest foreign cities in the world are 
 to be found in America. 
 
 The foreign language press in America includes some 
 1,500 publications with a circulation of 8,000,000 copies 
 and with a reading public of possibly 16,000,000. 
 
 There are about 4,000,000 Italians living in America. 
 They have 212 newspapers, with a combined circulation 
 of over 1,000,000 copies. 
 
 About 3,000,000 Poles who were born under Austrian, 
 German or Russian rule now live in the United States. 
 They have 100 newspapers in this country with a cir- 
 culation of 1,500,000. 
 
 Four hundred thousand Greeks live in the United 
 States, and they have 26 newspapers, one of them being 
 the largest Greek paper published in the world. 
 
 To be a great nation does not mean to be of one blood, 
 but it must be of one mind. Unity of spirit is of more 
 importance than unity of race. 
 
 American Survey.
 
 V. 
 OUR FUTURE CITIZENS 
 
 Home Mission work among the non-English-speaking 
 peoples has the two-fold aim of making Christians and 
 citizens. Ijt seeks to win them as disciples of Jesus 
 Christ and make them worthy citizens of the common- 
 wealth in which they live. No immigrant can be an 
 American in spirit without the Christian ideals of the 
 American founders and builders. The Home Mission 
 purpose is to Americanize these new citizens by evan- 
 gelizing them. 
 
 "The term 'foreigner' is obsolete in America. With 
 war mingling the blood of several nations in the same 
 red stream, the term 'allies' has become the fitting appel- 
 lation for those sons of other lands who love the truth 
 and fight for the right. The immigrant is now thought 
 of as our future citizen. As such he must be given the 
 opportunity afforded our own sons. Our dream of 
 Christian democracy must be his. Will he catch it? 
 The patient teachings of its ideals will give him the back- 
 ground for making it his own. The practical applica- 
 tion of its principles in dealing with him will help him 
 to possess it. His failure or success depends on us."* 
 
 The Enormity of the Task. The magnitude and 
 importance of this missionary undertaking appears in 
 the fact that since 1820, the beginning of the record of 
 immigration by our Government, 33,200,103 foreigners 
 have arrived. According to the last census, there are 
 about 17,500,000 foreign-born persons living in the 
 
 ""Christian Democracy for America.
 
 118 UNFINISHED TASKS 
 
 United States, and 17,500,000 children of foreign-born 
 parentage which means that about one-third of the 
 entire population is less than one generation removed 
 from their ancestral homes. 
 
 Present events indicate that the tide of immigration 
 will rise higher than at any time in the century of immi- 
 gration which has just closed. It is the opinion of some 
 students of the question that unless there is. legislative 
 restriction, the term "immigration" will no longer be 
 descriptive of the incoming multitudes, but the word 
 "migration" will have to be used. Whole peoples or 
 sections of peoples are w r aiting to be transferred to the 
 United States. They are being drawn here by our free 
 institutions and the opportunity of life, liberty and the 
 pursuit of happiness, and the desire to escape the priva- 
 tions and poverty following the great war, together with 
 the crushing burden of taxation. In fact, America may 
 be likened to Egypt in the days of Joseph: "All coun- 
 tries came into Egypt for to buy corn, because that the 
 famine was so sore in all lands." Europe is hungry and 
 crowded. America has room and plenty. Hence the 
 attractive power of the United States to the millions 
 in poverty and want and lacking opportunity for im- 
 provement. 
 
 "America bears in her forehead the magnetic pole of 
 the world. Towards it the compass of every ship on 
 all the seas is set. The Statue of Liberty Enlightening 
 the World, in the harbor of New York, waves her torch 
 of light to the wanderers of every land, while her bronze 
 lips seem to shout a welcome to every kind of prodigal 
 who has wasted his substance if he ever had any in 
 the riotous poverty of some far country. Gathered from 
 all nations of Europe, like the tributaries of a mighty 
 stream, they become united and centralized here only
 
 OUR FUTURE CITIZENS 119 
 
 to diverge again sooner or later, across the nation or, in 
 a few cases, to return to their native land to die. 
 
 "From every throne of Europe, where for ages men 
 have gilded, kissed or cursed their hereditary bondage, 
 come these heterogeneous millions, attracted by two 
 words liberty and money. They represent a despot- 
 ism which has held its foot upon the necks of men until 
 seemingly every vestige of manhood is trodden out. 
 They are men upon whose lives are written ignorance, 
 bigotry and the foulest passions of the human heart- 
 but they are men. Others have caught a breath of free- 
 dom and with unwisdom construe it into license, and 
 shame to the nation and its manhood is written upon 
 fadeless records. Others still, breaking the fetters of 
 old-world bondage, with clear eyes and hearts of hope, 
 offer to the State a man and womanhood to which the 
 noblest civilization might give a hearty welcome."* 
 
 A World Ministry. In the light of this immigrant 
 tide, the statement so frequently heard, that "As goes 
 America, so goes the world," is not merely a rhetorical 
 phrase, but a truth that each day becomes increasingly 
 evident. America's world influence comes not so much 
 from what we are doing abroad, as from what we are 
 doing at home. Not only does America touch the world 
 through education, commerce and diplomacy, but she 
 has opened wide her gates to as many as will come, 
 thereby touching and uplifting Europe, Asia, Africa and 
 the islands of the sea, through the representatives from 
 these distant lands that have come to live within her 
 spacious borders. It is through immigration that the 
 peculiar relation of America to the world is seen. And 
 among the many great tasks confronting American 
 Christianity there is none that is more important or 
 
 *Rev. Fred H. Allen, "The Problem of the City."
 
 120 
 
 UNFINISHED TASKS 
 
 that is so far-reaching in its power for good or evil as it 
 is accepted or neglected, as the opportunity presented 
 by the presence of so many million foreign-speaking 
 peoples. Dr. R. S. Storrs has said, "The future of the 
 whole world is pivoted on the question of whether the 
 Protestant churches of America can hold, enlighten and 
 purify the great numbers born or gathered within our 
 borders." 
 
 Greatest Mission Field. 
 
 "The greatest foreign mission land on the globe today 
 is our own America. Here we do not go in search of the 
 the millions; the millions come to us. We are not com- 
 pelled to learn their language; they are eager to learn 
 ours. We are not obliged to conform to alien customs; 
 they are here to adopt ours. We are not a little group 
 engulfed in hundreds of millions of alien faith; we are 
 
 NEW AMERICANS ARRIVING
 
 OUR FUTURE CITIZENS 121 
 
 the majority. Our faith is ingrained in the very fiber 
 of the government, established in the customs of the 
 land. These strangers from all the shores of the world 
 are here cut loose from their native governments and 
 religious customs. A hiatus between the old and the 
 new exists in both their political and religious thinking. 
 That hiatus, that pause in thought, is the open door for 
 the entrance of new and better things. We are not com- 
 pelled to uproot and displace old-established beliefs. 
 That process is already begun by the very fact of their 
 migration. They are in the pioneering, adventurous 
 mood. They expect new experiences, different condi- 
 tions. This is the great open world field for the Church. 
 While she need not neglect her foreign markets, she must 
 not forget that the markets of the world are pressing to 
 her doors, asking for her wares. 
 
 "In stable, office, mill and shop these millions are 
 here Americans in the making. We are providentially 
 appointed masters to bring them on into the rights and 
 privileges and responsibilities of citizenship. The teach- 
 er in her crowded school, surrounded by a polyglot 
 throng of restless, ill-kempt, jabbering children, rnay 
 lose heart and seem to herself to be engaged in a fruitless 
 struggle, a losing fight; but with patience, brave heart, 
 and love out of that throng will come teachers, artists, 
 singers, writers, inventors, financiers, statesmen and 
 substantial business men. What mission school ever 
 established in foreign field can compare with this in 
 present opportunity and range of possibility? The same 
 is true of all our efforts at religious instruction." 11 
 
 Influence of Environment. In the early days 
 when the immigration was from the North and \Vest of 
 Europe and was made up in large part of English, Irish, 
 Scotch, German and Scandinavian, a representative of 
 the Church met the immigrant and his family at the 
 
 *American Missionary Society.
 
 122 UNFINISHED TASKS 
 
 port of entry. He was protected against exploitation, 
 and was helped to locate where there was opportunity 
 to have a home and get ahead. Churches were founded 
 and they were given ministers who could speak their 
 tongue. They speedily became American in spirit as 
 well as in name, and constitute the great strength of the 
 nation of which they are a part. 
 
 Today the immigrants are from the South and East 
 of Europe. They come from countries where the Bible 
 is largely a closed book. Many of them bring a super- 
 stitious faith and hatred of the Church they know, and 
 a suspicion or hatred of the government they have ex- 
 perienced. The Church does not meet them at the port, 
 and they are not protected against the exploitation of 
 thieves and robbers. Instead of settling in those sec- 
 tions where they could find a home and become a help- 
 ful part of the community, they are permitted to herd 
 in groups by themselves with the result that there are 
 foreign cities and foreign towns in the heart of America, 
 which are as alien in thought and feeling and as difficult 
 to reach with the gospel as they would be in the lands 
 from which they came. 
 
 Thirty-three of our largest cities are more foreign than 
 American. New York City is both an illustration and a 
 prophecy of what other great centers will become. Its 
 increase in population during the past twenty years in 
 Russians, Italians, Austrio-Hungarians, was greater in 
 each case than the native population. 
 
 "New York is no longer an American city. It is the 
 largest Irish city in the world. It is the largest Hebrew 
 city in the world, having a Jewish population fifteen 
 times as large as the Jewish population of Jerusalem, 
 and ten times as large as the Jewish population of all
 
 OUR FUTURE CITIZENS 123 
 
 Palestine. There are only two nations that as nations 
 have a Hebrew population equal to that of New York. 
 It has more Germans than any German city except Ber- 
 lin, there being more residents of the city with German 
 parents than with American parents. It has a larger 
 Italian population than any city in Italy except Naples 
 and Rome."* 
 
 Some one has pointed out that New York is owned by 
 the Jews, ruled by the Irish, and rented to the Americans. 
 
 Responsibility of the Church. It is not always easy 
 to make good Christians and good Americans of people 
 who live under the best conditions, in the best surround- 
 ings, but the task is made increasingly difficult when the 
 surroundings are bad. Three-fourths of the immigrants 
 live in cities in crowded tenements, or in huts and shacks 
 in the mining regions and industrial centers. They see 
 'little of the true America, and do not come in contact 
 with the best Christian people. Possessing fine churches 
 of our own, we have endeavored to serve them, if at all, in 
 old unused grocery stores and dilapidated buildings on 
 the side streets. Gates of wickedness unlike anything 
 known to their simple life in the homeland open to 
 them on every turn. This is the idea of Protestant 
 Christianity and American democracy that many re- 
 ceive. 
 
 The Church cannot dismiss these people on the plea 
 that it is impossible to make good Christian Americans 
 out of ignorant degraded foreigners. That they are 
 ignorant is not their fault; that they are degraded may 
 be ours. The fact is, the great majority wish to become 
 good Americans and want to be taught the way. They 
 were drawn here by their desire for freedom. Exper- 
 
 *The City and the Kingdom.
 
 124 UNFINISHED TASKS 
 
 ience proves that many of them are just as open to the 
 gospel and capable of fine Christian character and fine 
 Americanism as \vere our Anglo-Saxon forefathers, if 
 given the same chance. If they sell their votes it is 
 because they are following the example of others, and 
 some American patriot is buying them. Call the roll 
 of the nation's foremost citizens, the leaders in every 
 department of our country's life religious, educational, 
 commercial, political, financial and find how many were 
 born in homes of poverty and want beyond the sea whose 
 coming here was in response to a desire for the higher 
 privileges of American education and citizenship! Why 
 should we look down upon these people, and think of 
 them as a menace, when with the proper instruction and 
 guidance they are capable of so much. 
 
 The Future American. Our nation is too young, 
 and the elements entering into its life too many and di- 
 verse, for America to have developed a distinctive phy- 
 sical type. But it will come. God works slowly, but 
 He works none the less surely. Ruskin reminds us that 
 out of an unlovely handful of common dust, clay and 
 soot, in the slow laboratory of the ages, God can build 
 walls of sapphire and diamonds. 
 
 We are all ready to admit the unequalled contribution 
 made to the nation by the older immigration, to which 
 the most of us trace our lineage. But the Slav, the 
 Italian and the Jew now head the list of the immigrants. 
 These races have been sending their sons and daughters 
 to us by the hundreds of thousands. We have thought 
 of them as inferior to ourselves. Bishop E. H. Hughes 
 has brought together a list of conspicuous services ren- 
 dered by these races which he thinks makes all mankind 
 their debtor.
 
 OUR FUTURE CITIZENS 125 
 
 "When we look up into the heavens we must remember 
 that it was a Slav named Copernicus who, in the early 
 days of the sixteenth century, long before Newton came 
 with his discovery, gave us the theory of the sun and 
 earth and skies that still bears his name. 
 
 "When we go into the schoolroom we must remember 
 that it was a Slav named Comenius who, losing all his 
 property and writings by Romanish persecution, fled 
 in the seventeenth century to Poland and became- the 
 greatest educational pioneer and reformer of his age, 
 long anticipating Froebel and Horace Mann. 
 
 "It was a Slav named Sobieski who, in 1683 overthrew 
 the Turkish army in front of Hapsburg, and so became 
 a mighty stay against the flood of Mohammedanism 
 that pushed toward Europe and the West. 
 
 "It was a Slav named Kosciusko who, coming in the 
 impulse of freedom to aid our continental armies, planned 
 the fortifications at Saratoga, and became chief engineer 
 in constructing the fortifications at West Point. He was 
 thanked by Congress and advanced to rank of Brigadier 
 General. 
 
 "It was another Slav, of noble family, named Pulaski, 
 who volunteered in the American service against the 
 British, and in the siege of Savannah poured out his life 
 as a titled martyr to the principles of American democ- 
 racy. 
 
 "By many the Italian is classed with the undesirables. 
 He has succeeded the Irishman as the digger of ditches 
 and builder of roads. He has won the epithet of 'Dago.' 
 But what have his ancestors done for the world that he 
 should merit our respect? 
 
 "Among other things, the Italians gave us the con- 
 ception of law and government that entered, in such a 
 marked way, into the moulding of our Christian faith; 
 and those highways along which the feet of Paul and the 
 early disciples went on their missionary journeys. 
 
 "They gave us Raphael, del Sarto, Angelico, and a 
 host of the world's greatest artists, reaching the human 
 climax with Michael Angelo.
 
 126 UNFINISHED TASKS 
 
 "They gave Galileo in astronomy, Dante and Virgil 
 in literature, Mazzini and Garibaldi in patriotism, the 
 Cabots in exploration, and Columbus for the discovery 
 of our continent. 
 
 "They gave Volta, who is memorialized by the word 
 'volt;' Galvani, who is memorialized by the word 'gal- 
 vanic;' and the discoverer of wireless telegraphy in Mar- 
 coni." 
 
 Sympathy and Understanding Needed. Miss 
 
 Myrtle Mae Haskin of the Ensley, Alabama, Italian 
 Missions, gives the following illustrations out of many 
 in her experience: 
 
 "They are strangers in a strange land. Many times 
 they have need of a friend, a real friend in this land 
 where they have come to live. One Italian lad worked 
 and saved enough to send for his mother. He had a 
 tiny place rented and ready for her when she came. But 
 she had been in America just fifteen days when they 
 brought back her boy from the plant where he worked, 
 mangled and dead. Everything in life for her was gone. 
 Everything a blank. She awoke in a hospital where 
 she could not understand a word said by the doctor and 
 nurse. She could not eat the food. She had never seen 
 anything like it before. With only a bitter memory 
 for company she must pass the days away. Thus I 
 found her. The doctor said there was nothing the mat- 
 ter with her but a broken heart. She had nothing to 
 live for and did not wish to live. They could do noth- 
 ing but let her waste away. 
 
 "Friendless and crushed with sorrow in a strange land, 
 far from home and friends. There are many such in 
 America." 
 
 "One idea which they bring with them to America is 
 that God is a great Judge watching to see when He can 
 punish them. And this is why they each have their 
 patron saint whom they honor and pray to. This saint 
 is to act as their lawyer and argue their case with God,
 
 OUR FUTURE CITIZENS 127 
 
 the great Judge. They never think of Him as a loving 
 Father trying to help them in their struggles and want- 
 ing them to win in Jesus' name and through His grace, 
 But when they once get a heart knowledge of Jno. 3:16, 
 they have a faith in their Father that often puts us to 
 shame. Often they express their faith in ways which we 
 cannot forget. 
 
 "When Dominic Faglione prayed in the hospital for 
 his wife's recovery, after she had been given up by all 
 medical skill, he pleaded, 'God is love, He will let her 
 stay with me and the two babies who need her so much.' 
 He prayed until he got his answer and with shining eyes 
 he said, 'Me no can say it just like you, but me feel it 
 here,' and he put his hand over his heart. He had faith 
 to believe it, and God did let her stay. 
 
 "Get back of the why? and understand them. One 
 volunteer helper said to me, 'I cannot understand Ar- 
 nold and Caesar Bennecchio. They do not seem to be 
 such bad boys, but I can't make them stop drawing 
 their faces. They have done it so much that I believe 
 they do it without knowing it now.' She was quite 
 right, they did it unconsciously because their mother is 
 a mute, and they were used to talking to her that way 
 to make her understand. They did not do it to annoy 
 the teacher. When I told her this, she said, 'I have had 
 my lesson. Never again will I attempt to stop a thing 
 and criticize until I get back of the why, and understand 
 what causes it to exist.' 
 
 "Let us also get back of the why and understand them, 
 not criticize from the distance." 
 
 Patriotism of These New Citizens. If possible the 
 patriotism of many foreign-born is more intense than 
 that of many native Americans. A great deal has been 
 said about "hyphen-ates," "dual citizenship," and 'di- 
 vided allegiance." There are some, but not all are like 
 that. Liberty is sweet to men who have been in a dun-
 
 128 UNFINISHED TASKS 
 
 geon. "They know the pit from which they were 
 digged." 
 
 "We talk about the immigrant as though he was not 
 a part of us. Yet what a revelation comes from reading 
 the casualty lists from the battlefront overseas! One- 
 fourth of the arm-bearing power of our nation is foreign 
 born. A morning newspaper picked up at random is 
 evidence of the fact that we are all largely Americans 
 by adoption. In the lists of killed and wounded we find 
 officers and privates alike whose names read as follows: 
 Shanoff, Winkler, Marosco, Nazzareno, Vaillancourt, 
 Walczak, Papernick, Koskoka, Adamowyzc, Olgivie, 
 Balicki, Neitzke, Helwig, Liddi, Haig, Svegan, Bekas, 
 Gotschall, Pelarz, and the like. Why not recognize 
 that in meeting the question of Christian democracy for 
 the non-English-speaking people of the United States 
 and those who will come later, we are solving our own 
 problem? This query gains importance when we con- 
 sider the way in which our entire industrial system is 
 carried on by those we have unjustly called 'foreigners.' 
 
 "Our guests are become more than alien visitors. They 
 are of our own household, and patriotism is as fervent 
 with them as it is with us. The great industries that 
 made possible the speediest victory and termination of 
 the war were manned largely, if not almost entirely, by 
 men from other countries. How far the ofttimes de 
 spised immigrant has measured up to his task in increas- 
 ing and improving output is a matter of common knowl- 
 edge. His support of the Red Cross, his war savings, 
 and his Liberty Loan subscriptions compare with the 
 record of any other proud patriot of the oldest stock in 
 America."* 
 
 Perils of Neglect. While these foreign-born hold 
 great possibilities for good, they also present great ele- 
 ments of danger. Whether they are to become Christians 
 
 '"Christian Democracy."
 
 OUR FUTURE CITIZENS 129 
 
 and patriots depend upon the efforts of the Church in 
 their behalf. 
 
 It is said that Trotzky's companion in America was 
 converted in a mission and that he is now a tireless Chris- 
 tian worker, and a loyal, patriotic citizen. The night 
 before Trotzky sailed for Russia, he gathered his fol- 
 lowers together in a room in Eastside, New York, in 
 what was intended to be a secret meeting, but which 
 was attended by a secret service man, and said: "I 
 want you to remain in this country and bring on one 
 revolution after another, until you overturn this dirty, 
 rotten American government, while I go to Russia and 
 overturn that government and stop Russia's war against 
 Germany." The difference between Trotzky, the Bol- 
 shevist and assassin, and his converted friend, the pa- 
 triot, is Christianity. 
 
 Having wrought havoc in Russia, the Bolshevist agents 
 are preaching their accursed doctrines in every part of 
 the world. They are reaching out into India, and China, 
 and into Africa, and into all of continental Europe. 
 Thousands and tens of thousands are at work in Amer- 
 ica. It is stated from Washington that 300,000 Bol- 
 shevist agitators are stirring up strife and discord in this 
 country. Americanization alone will not meet a situa- 
 tion like this. It must be Christianization. The propa- 
 ganda of the Bolshevists must be met by a campaign of 
 evangelization, not only among the foreigners, but among 
 the Negroes, the Indians, the mountaineers, and the 
 well-to-do, careless and indifferent Americans. Bolshe- 
 vism will make no headway among people who believe 
 in God and the Bible and who support the Church and 
 its work.
 
 130 UNFINISHED TASKS 
 
 What the Church is Doing. The Southern Pres- 
 byterian Church is making an earnest effort to reach, the 
 immigrant with the gospel. While the Church has al- 
 ways felt a measure of responsibility for all needy classes 
 in our midst, and individual congregations ministered 
 to the few immigrants that chanced to be in their com- 
 munities, the Immigrant Work of the Executive Com- 
 mittee was started in 1910. Until this time the immi- 
 grants had settled almost entirely in the North and 
 East. With the development of the large industrial 
 centers in the South, and the opening of the coal mines 
 in the southern mountains, thousands were turned in 
 this direction. The work has been enlarged as rapidly 
 as the Committee has been able to find workers and pro- 
 cure the equipment. The workers of the Assembly are 
 now preaching the gospel among the Mexicans, in Texas; 
 Cubans, in Florida; French, in Louisiana; Italians, in 
 Birmingham, Alabama; New Orleans and Baton Rouge, 
 Louisiana; and Kansas City, Missouri; Bohemians, in 
 Virginia; Hungarians, in Louisiana and in the coal fields 
 
 SYRIAN CHILDREN, ATLANTA MISSION
 
 OUR FUTURE CITIZENS 131 
 
 of Virginia and West Virginia; Syrians, in Atlanta; 
 Chinese, in New Orleans; Hebrews, in Baltimore. 
 
 A few illustrations are given descriptive of the work 
 and the results. In most cases these people are open 
 and responsive, and generally appreciative of the service 
 the Church seeks to render. 
 
 Italian Mission, Kansas City, Missouri. This is 
 the largest and best equipped Italian Mission of the 
 Southern Presbyterian Church. It is owned and super- 
 vised by the Central Presbyterian Church, and aided 
 by the Assembly's Committee. This Mission is under 
 the charge of Rev. J. B. Bisceglia, a finely educated and 
 efficient minister of our Church, assisted by Mrs. Bis- 
 ceglia, and a resident worker and kindergarten teacher. 
 Some of the finest physicians, surgeons and specialists 
 in the city conduct the clinics. The clubs for the boys 
 and girls, the music and sewing classes, are served by 
 volunteer workers from the churches in Kansas City. 
 This mission with its varied activities is rapidly becom- 
 ing one of the best of its kind in the country. It is 
 proving its real worth and usefulness among the 10,000 
 Italians in Kansas City. The mission publishes its own 
 paper, The Italio-American Review. Through this 
 monthly magazine the mission is rendering a large service 
 in the evangelization and Americanization of the Ital- 
 ians, not only in Kansas City, but throughout the 
 United States. 
 
 The following program of work is carried out week after 
 week, thoughout the year, adding to it the Daily Va- 
 cation Bible School in the summer and a number of 
 entertainments from time to time. 
 
 Sunday: Bible-school, Christian Endeavor, preaching 
 service.
 
 OUR FUTURE CITIZENS 133 
 
 Monday: Kindergarten, three clinics women's di- 
 seases, surgery, general diseases; junior girls' club. 
 
 Tuesday: Kindergarten; junior boys' club; library. 
 
 Wednesday: Kindergarten; young Italians' music 
 club; Americanization class. 
 
 Thursday: Kindergarten; clinic women's diseases; 
 girls' club; prayer-meeting. 
 
 Friday: Kindergarten; piano lessons; social evening. 
 
 Saturday: Violin lessons; piano lessons; sewing school; 
 boys' work; clinic eye, ear, nose and throat. 
 
 The following account of the mission and its work is 
 given by Mr. Bisceglia, the minister in charge: 
 
 "Ours is the only institution of its kind that ministers 
 exclusively to the Italians, reaching in various ways dur- 
 ing the year, at least 5,000 people. Most of the Italians 
 here are from the southern part of Italy; seventy -five 
 per cent come from the agricultural districts of Sicily, 
 possessing therefore all the good and bad qualities, the 
 advantages and disadvantages of the farmers transplanted 
 at a rather mature age in a large industrial city where 
 the climate, the language, the customs, the working con- 
 ditions and the people are altogether different from what 
 they have been accustomed to since their childhood. 
 
 "The results so far have been very encouraging and 
 the fruits fairly abundant. Our clinic, started about 
 six or seven months ago, is well attended. During this 
 time hundreds of cases have come to our clinic, a dozen 
 of operations for tonsillitis have been performed at the 
 Settlement House, a number of minor operations and 
 several major operations were performed in the hospitals 
 by our surgeons. During the small-pox epidemic hun- 
 dreds of men, women and children were vaccinated by 
 paying a small fee of thirty cents, which covered the 
 expense of vaccine and dressing. The consensus of 
 opinion among those connected with our work is that 
 the clinic has been a marked success. 
 
 "The kindergarten has an average attendance of fifty
 
 134 UNFINISHED TASKS 
 
 in the summer time, and twenty-eight during the school 
 year. The sewing school on Saturday afternoon is 
 attended by over one hundred children. There are 
 forty pupils in the music department. The Junior 
 Boys' Club has a membership of thirty-five; the Girls' 
 Club has a membership of fifty; and the Junior Girls' 
 Club has a membership of thirty. The boys' work, on 
 Saturday from 9:00 a. m. to 5:00 p. m., has a very bright 
 future; in a few weeks we have enrolled more than fifty 
 boys. The Sunday-school has an enrollment of one 
 hundred and thirty-five, with an average attendance of 
 over one hundred. The Christian Endeavor Society 
 was organized the first week of this year and has an 
 average attendance of thirty-five. Our church member- 
 ship is now over one hundred, and the preaching ser- 
 vices on Sunday evening and prayer-meeting on Thurs- 
 day evenings are well attended. 
 
 "One well-established fact in work for the Italians is 
 that the parents bring their children to the mission, and 
 not the children their parents. About two years ago 
 two children, a boy of seven and a girl of eleven, came 
 to our Sunday-school. They had been very regular in 
 their attendance and always on time. During the Daily 
 Vacation Bible School the boy learned all the memory 
 verses and was therefore presented with a copy of the 
 Bible. It was not long before the girl came to me and 
 asked for a copy of the Bible in Italian for her father 
 who had already read a great part of it in English, but 
 he wished to read it in the mother tongue. I visited 
 the man and found a great big strong fellow of about 
 thirty-five, one of the most straight-forward men I have 
 ever met in this whole community. When I gave him 
 a copy of the New Testament he was so happy and so 
 eager to read it like a man who has been thirsty for 
 a long, long time, and all at once discovers a fountain 
 of clear, fresh water. He began to attend the services 
 at the Mission. He read the Bible devoutly to his 
 household and to his friends, and at the first communion 
 service he was received on profession of faith in Christ,
 
 OUR FUTURE CITIZENS 135 
 
 and at the following communion service he presented 
 his two daughters to be admitted to membership. 
 
 "The Roman Catholic priests in order to discredit the 
 work among the Italians have sent broadcast a statement 
 that though the Italians come to our meeting places, 
 when it comes to 'sacred rites,' like baptism, marriage 
 and burial, they humbly return to the mother church. 
 This is not true of our Mission. Every child born in a 
 family identified with the Mission is baptized by the 
 minister; every marriage contracted by one of the mem- 
 bers of the Mission is performed by the minister, and 
 every funeral is conducted by the minister. 
 
 "During my pastorate several girls from our Mission 
 have requested that their future husband identify him- 
 self with the church before being united in matrimonv 
 About three years ago a girl came to our Sunday-school 
 and later she brought her sister and brother. We called 
 on her family, and they all came to our preaching ser- 
 vice. We gradually gained the confidence of the girl 
 and we learned that, the father being a strict Catholic, 
 they had to go first to mass on Sunday morning before 
 they could come to our Sunday-school. Gradually they 
 received permission from the father to be absent from 
 mass, but they were not allowed to join our church. 
 About a year ago a young man from a distant state 
 asked the father of the girl the privilege to become his 
 son-in-law. After receiving her father's consent the 
 first thing the girl thought of was to send the young 
 man a copy of the Bible and inform him that she would 
 be married by a minister. He came to Kansas City and 
 became very much interested in our mission work. The 
 father finally consented to the girl being received into 
 the church; the young man followed her; and they were 
 married in our Mission. They both began to work in 
 our Sunday-school, and she taught in our Daily Vaca- 
 tion Bible School. Being unable to find employment 
 in Kansas city, he returned to his home town where his 
 old position was waiting for him. They placed their 
 letter at once in the American Presbyterian Church, and
 
 136 UNFINISHED TASKS 
 
 have been very faithful and very active in the Master's 
 work." 
 
 Cuban Mission, Tampa, Florida. In the cosmo- 
 politan city of Tampa where thirty-five languages are 
 spoken and sixty per cent of the population is foreign, 
 there are 30,000 Spanish-speaking people. This colony 
 is a section of Cuba transferred to the United States, 
 bringing the Church face to face with the problems of 
 Sabbath desecration, brutal sports, illiteracy, and 
 corrupt religion. Cuba is our near neighbor. The 
 people freely go and come between the two countries. 
 The United States gave Cuba her political freedom and 
 many other material blessings. She is looking to 
 America for guidance in many things. She followed 
 the United States into the world war on the side of the 
 Allies by an immediate declaration of war upon Ger- 
 many. 
 
 There has been an attempt to define the sphere of in- 
 fluence of the various denominations working among the 
 Cubans in Tampa. Our Church has been given the re- 
 sponsibility for a section covering sixty-four city blocks, 
 with a population large enough to occupy our attention 
 for years to come. A large majority of the Cubans have 
 repudiated the dead formalism of the Roman Catholic 
 Church. If Protestant Christianity does not claim them 
 and offer them something better, they will drift into 
 skepticism, infidelity and false beliefs of all sorts, as is 
 always the case with a people who give up their tradi- 
 tional faith. Our mission, under the direction of a splen- 
 did Cuban pastor, is reaching a large number through 
 the Sunday-school, Christian Endeavor, and the regular 
 church services. The mission is gradually building up
 
 OUR FUTURE CITIZENS 137 
 
 a protestant constituency that is making its influence 
 felt throughout the Cuban colony. 
 
 Bohemian Work. These people are from the new 
 nation of Czecho-Slovakia, of which Bohemia forms the 
 larger part. The center of this mission is in Prince 
 George County, Virginia, in East Hanover Presbytery. 
 It was seriously interrupted during the war, when the 
 pastor, Rev. J. A. Kohout, returned to the old world to 
 do his part in the Allied Cause. During the absence of 
 the pastor the work was carried on by an elder and his 
 wife, and the little flock was held together. Services 
 and Sabbath-schools are conducted at four points. This 
 is a permanent settlement, the members being mostly 
 farmers who have procured their own homes. While 
 the Czecho-Slovaks are nominally Catholic, a great 
 number have broken absolutely with Catholicism, and 
 have entered the evangelical churches, or become infi- 
 dels and "Free Thinkers." Bohemian unbelievers are 
 the most bitter enemies of the Church. They form so- 
 cieties which declare their infidelity in their very consti- 
 tution, and publish newspapers which heap contempt 
 upon Christianity. 
 
 In estimating the worth of these people, we must not 
 forget that one of their ancestors, named John Huss, a 
 full century before Martin Luther started the Reforma- 
 tion, was a martyr to the Protestant faith. 
 
 This little Bohemian congregation, only a few years 
 old, under the leadership of their devoted leaders, takes 
 part in the Progressive Program, and contributes to 
 every Church cause. It has given two religious workers 
 to the Czecho-Slovaks in Russia, one young man, a 
 Seminary graduate, is pastor of a Bohemian church in 
 Ohio; two young women are doing missionary work
 
 138 UNFINISHED TASKS 
 
 among their own nationality in Pennsylvania; one young 
 woman is nursing in a hospital in Pittsburgh; two are 
 teachers in the public schools. 
 
 Hungarian Missions. In the coal fields of Virginia 
 and West Virginia the majority of the foreigners are 
 Hungarians. With Norton, Virginia, as a center, Rev. 
 B. Csutoros conducts services at twelve points, and at 
 these places he has more than two hundred members, in- 
 cluding thirty elders. Mr. Csutoros grew up in the 
 Reformed Church of Hungary, and is an honored mem- 
 ber of Abingdon Presbytery. He is preacher, pastor, 
 adviser of all the Hungarians of that section. He is 
 greatly beloved by the people, and is highly esteemed by 
 the coal operators, who aid in the work by providing 
 preaching places and in other ways. 
 
 In all the coal fields of these two States there are many 
 Hungarian Protestants without any church privileges. 
 In one community a large number signed a petition ask- 
 ing for the organization of a Presbyterian church, but 
 there was no minister to send. In one year a missionary 
 from another field made several visits to this place, and 
 baptized twenty-one children, and held communion for 
 the believers in the community. 
 
 We cannot afford to neglect these people, and leave 
 them without the protection of the Church, when so 
 many radicals, socialists, and other opposing influences 
 are at work. The Hungarians come to America ex- 
 pecting to become citizens. Failure to make Christian 
 Americans out of these ignorant but good Europeans 
 may mean disaster; but faithfulness in the task of min- 
 istering to them in the gospel will mean loyal and faithful 
 citizens of the Republic.
 
 140 UNFINISHED TASKS 
 
 Work for the Jews. This is the latest undertaking 
 of the Executive Committee. For years there has been 
 a deepening conviction on the part of many that the 
 Presbyterian Church should seek in a definite way the 
 conversion of Israel. During the past fifty years one- 
 fourth of all the Jews in the world have come to the 
 United States. Investigations show that out of a pop- 
 ulation of more than 1,750,000 Jews in New York City, 
 between eighty and ninety per cent have lost all connec- 
 tion with the Synagogue. In this great multitude not 
 more than 5,000 have acknowledged Jesus Christ as the 
 Messiah, the Saviour of the world. The Home Missions 
 Council reports that eighty per cent of the Jews in Amer- 
 ica are not actively connected with the churches of their 
 own faith, and fully half of this eighty per cent are hos- 
 tile to Christianity. 
 
 A leading Jewish Rabbi states: "We Jews have given 
 religion to the world, but have little ourselves. We 
 gave God to the world, but we have little of God in our 
 own hearts. The Jews are not studying their own Bible, 
 other people are studying it. Our tremendous indif- 
 ference is our worst ailment. We are troubled with 
 agnostic atheism, materialism, and .Christian Science. 1 ' 
 A prominent Christian Jew, a minister of the Presby- 
 terian Church, U. S. A., says: "The Jews in this coun- 
 try especially they number about 3,750,000 are drift- 
 ing rapidly away from the faith of their fathers and are 
 either becoming anarchistic socialists, or worse still, 
 moral degenerates. Some are hungering for the Truth, 
 for something that will enable them to live cleaner lives, 
 but there does not seem to be a helping hand to show 
 them the true way." 
 
 In response to the instructions of the General As-
 
 OUR FUTURE CITIZENS 141 
 
 sembly that the Committee consider the advisability of 
 opening a mission for the Jews, an invitation was accep- 
 ted to unite with the Presbyterian Church, U. S. A., in 
 the support of a Jewish mission in Baltimore, under the 
 joint control of the two Assemblies. A suitable build- 
 ing has been secured in the midst of a Jewish settlement 
 of 45,000. A superintendent with an able corps of 
 workers has been engaged. The work requires great 
 patience and tact. It is looked upon by the Jews with 
 suspicion. The mission employs the ordinary methods 
 literature, reading rooms, Sunday-school, children's 
 work, Daily Vacation Bible School. The work has 
 passed the experimental stage. The Jews are being 
 reached with the gospel, and many have accepted Christ 
 and are enduring bitter persecution at the hands of 
 their people on account of their faith. 
 
 In the opinion of many the godless, atheistic Jew is 
 the most dangerous element in our nation's life. At 
 least tw r o and a half millions have broken with the faith 
 and traditions that held them, and are without God in 
 the world. The ranks of the Bolshevists are being filled 
 from this class. It is stated upon reliable authority that 
 eighty per cent of the leaders of the Bolshevists, those 
 who were responsible for Russia deserting the Allies in 
 the great war and who are now in control of Russia's 
 affairs, are atheistic Jews who were formerly res'dents 
 of the United States and received their training in the 
 schools of anarchy and infidelity in this country. From 
 Russia, these same Jews, aided by others in America, 
 are doing all in their power to blot out of the human 
 mind all thought of God. Quoting the exact words of 
 Bolshevist pamphlets, widely circulated, it is said: "To
 
 142 UNFINISHED TASKS 
 
 hell with all churches, all synagogues, all governments. 
 We are atheists, we are anarchists." 
 
 To meet a situation like this, certainly no true Chris- 
 tian can do less than his utmost through the support of 
 the Church's Home Mission program to bring the reign 
 of Jesus Christ in the hearts of American people every- 
 where. 
 
 Returning Immigrants. Not all foreigners remain 
 in the United States. Many after a time return to their 
 country and people. What message shall they carry 
 from America? A message of love, faith and hope; or 
 shall they, like Trotzky and those that went with him, 
 go to disseminate anarchy and a bitter hatred of all re- 
 ligions? It is said that four-fifths of all the Chinese 
 that have come to America in the past fifty years have 
 returned to China. Many of them found Christ in 
 America and have gone back Christians. Many have 
 gone back in love with our institutions. Is it not a 
 striking fact that the great new Republic of China should 
 have been born in the province of Canton, the province 
 that has given us practically our entire Chinese immi- 
 gration? In our Chinese mission in New Orleans dur- 
 ing the years of its service hundreds have been brought 
 under Christian influences, scores have been reached 
 for Christ, and brought into the Church. Many have 
 returned to their own land to continue the good work 
 there. Italians from the missions in Birmingham, 
 New Orleans and Kansas City have carried back to 
 their native land the message of evangelical Christianity 
 and American democracy. Czecho-Slovaks have gone 
 from Prince George County, Virginia, and Hungarians 
 have gone from the coal fields of Virginia, and from the 
 plantations of Louisiana. The presence of the stranger
 
 OUR FUTURE CITIZENS 143 
 
 and sojourner presents the greatest missionary oppor- 
 tunity that has come to any people in any age. 
 
 QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION 
 
 1. What is the aim of Home Mission work among non-English- 
 
 speaking peoples? 
 
 2. Would it also apply to all Home Mission work? 
 
 3. What proportion of our population is foreign? 
 
 4. Why is "foreigner" an incorrect appellation for the immigrant 
 
 to-day? 
 
 5. What wonderful opportunity does the public school teacher 
 
 find? 
 
 6. Contrast the old and the new immigration. Which is re- 
 
 garded as the more desirable? 
 
 7. What racial groups have done most for the advancement of 
 
 the world? 
 
 8. What elements make to-day a "day of crisis" for the Church 
 
 and the nation? 
 
 9. Tell where the Home Mission Committee is conducting work 
 
 for foreigners. 
 
 10. Do you know of any considerable group of foreigners in the 
 
 South who are unreached by Home Mission work? Are 
 there any in your community? 
 
 11. Describe the service rendered by the Italian Mission at Kansas 
 
 City. To what do you attribute its success? 
 
 12. Why is Jewish evangelization so difficult, and so important? 
 
 13. Show the value to Foreign Missions of evangelizing the for- 
 
 eigners in this country. 
 
 14. What is the most impressive item in this chapter?
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 OUR MEXICAN NEIGHBORS
 
 The total number of Mexicans in the United States 
 is perhaps conservatively estimated at a million and a 
 half. 
 
 They reside chiefly in the Southwest. Their lan- 
 guage is Spanish. Many of them can neither speak 
 nor read English. 
 
 Their religious and moral conceptions have grown 
 out of an environment and traditions quite different 
 from our own. 
 
 Ignorance, superstition and prejudice are obstacles 
 to be overcome. 
 
 In the Southwest these new arrivals are doing almost 
 every conceivable sort of labor. 
 
 They work on the railroads, tend cattle, care for 
 sheep, pick oranges and walnuts, work with irrigation, 
 do construction work, raise flowers, work in the sugar 
 beet fields, produce vegetables, and in fact take an 
 important part in practically all of the industries in our 
 southwestern States. 
 
 The survey reports for the southwest show that in 
 general the living conditions of the Spanish population 
 are considerably lower than those of the older Ameri- 
 can stock, that their homes are poor, their general 
 environment unsanitary, their educational facilities 
 scant and often there is no organized religious op- 
 portunity of any sort for them. 
 
 It is well-nigh universal testimony of religious 
 workers that they are open to the message of the gospel 
 when properly approached. 
 
 American Survey.
 
 VI. 
 
 OUR MEXICAN NEIGHBORS 
 
 A distance of less than a mile measures trie difference 
 between the Church's Foreign and Home Missionary 
 labors for the evangelization of our Mexican neighbors. 
 For 1,833 miles the two fields overlap, being separated 
 by a river and an imaginary line. For one-half of this 
 distance the Rio Grande flows between Texas and 
 Mexico. From El Paso, Texas, to San Diego, California, 
 the boundary through the sand and cactus is marked by 
 a barbed wire fence. There is no essential difference 
 between the need of the Mexican people residing in 
 either country. Racial characteristics and Romanism 
 produce similar results wherever found, and the same 
 problems are presented in either case. 
 
 As there are different grades and classes among all 
 people, so are there among the Mexicans. There are a 
 few prominent in financial and commercial affairs, 
 bankers and business men; a few with high culture, who 
 have surrounded themselves with the refinements of art, 
 the comforts and appointments of the best in modern 
 civilization. These are, however, the exceptional and 
 there remains the other ninety per cent who have never 
 had a chance. These have suffered many things at the 
 hands of many physicians. They have been the victims 
 of the plundering avariciousness of crooks for four hun- 
 dred years. They are in the condition of the man on the 
 Jericho road, and there is need for a good Samaritan. 
 
 Who is This People? They are said to be the de- 
 scendants of the best civilization of ancient America
 
 148 UNFINISHED TASKS 
 
 and of the earliest civilization of modern America. The 
 Mexicans are an interesting race, needing only to be 
 known to be admired for many noble qualities. Pos- 
 sessing an amiable and courteous disposition they have 
 been characterized as "ignorant as slaves and more cour- 
 teous than kings, poor as Lazarus and more hospitable 
 than Croesus." A study of their national history and 
 their prolonged struggle for liberty reveals them as a 
 people of heroic blood. 
 
 Dr. J. W. Skinner, President of Texas-Mexican In- 
 dustrial Institute, Kingsville, Texas, has this to say 
 about them: 
 
 "The Mexicans have a history dating back into the 
 shadows of the unrecorded and unknown. Three re- 
 lated tribes are pre-eminent in the earlier records the 
 Chichimecas, the Toltecas, and the Axtecas or Mexicans. 
 The latter were the founders of the City of Mexico in 
 about the year 1325. These tribes possessed a care- 
 fully wrought out system of government, and a religion 
 in which sacrifice was the key-stone. They were expert 
 irrigation engineers and skillful agriculturists, peaceful 
 and pastoral in their disposition. They attained a pe- 
 culiar skill in artistic and decorative lines, and no small 
 ability in architecture. 
 
 "From these original tribes, with a slight intermingling 
 of alien blood, have descended more than eighty per cent 
 of present day Mexicans. This peace-loving, intensely 
 religious, artistically-temperamented, unsophisticated 
 people were subjugated but never conquered by a band 
 of filisbustering Spaniards under Cortez in 1519. The 
 domineering foreigners imposed upon this gentle people 
 with an iron hand the Spanish language and the Spanish 
 form of religion. But the wreckers of the nation reck- 
 oned not with the slumbering spirit of a people who for 
 centuries had breathed the air of freedom. The bondage
 
 OUR MEXICAN NEIGHBORS 149 
 
 of the alien over-lord was broken, but his language and 
 his form of religion remained. 
 
 "In some quarters the impression prevails that the 
 subjugation of Mexico by Cortez in some mysterious 
 metamorphosis changed the people into Spaniards and 
 that they are to be thought of as Spanish people. Noth- 
 ing could be more erroneous, though he speaks the Span- 
 ish language. One of the greatest insults that can be 
 offered a Mexican is to be called a Spaniard, or to speak 
 of his people as Spanish. He is, and has a right to be 
 called a Mexican. They are people of a wonderful 
 past, who cling to its memories with great tenacity. In 
 some way, perhaps after the methods of the border min- 
 strels of Scotland, they have kept alive and transmitted 
 to their children, a mingling of facts and fancies from 
 a past golden day. Their history holds a wealth of 
 romance and realism, of tragedy and comedy, of great 
 dreamers and great heroes, of human struggle, suffering 
 and victory, rich as their fabled mines of precious ores. 
 
 "The first school on the Western hemisphere was es- 
 tablished by followers of Cortez with Mexican pupils 
 in 1520 one hundred years before the pilgrims landed 
 at Plymouth Rock. The first printing in America was 
 done in Mexico City in 1619, about the date of the found- 
 ing of Jamestown, Virginia. Fruit is expected from 
 trees of fruit-bearing age. About ten per cent of the 
 Mexican people are well educated and cultured, another 
 ten per cent has picked up a smattering of primary cul- 
 ture, and the remaining eighty per cent have not the 
 ability to read or write. It appears that while they 
 have been engaged in the herculean task of breaking an 
 alien bondage, and its heritage of stagnation, the great 
 trade winds of civilization have largely swept them by. 
 With a hundred years the start of neighbors who had 
 poorer environment, it is natural to ask why national 
 progress and development has lagged so far behind. 
 Education and Christian culture are a sure test of na- 
 tional progress. The Spanish system of education was 
 limited to the children of a few selected families, and the
 
 150 UNFINISHED TASKS 
 
 Spanish brand of religion withheld the Bible from the 
 people, and substituted empty forms for life and power. 
 The Spanish theory of education and the Spanish type 
 of religion have utterly failed in Mexico." 
 
 All Mexicans Not Foreigners. It is incorrect to 
 think of all Mexicans as immigrants. Texas and the 
 southwest portion of the United States were originally 
 a part of Mexico. When this great territory was an- 
 nexed to the United States, the Mexican residents in 
 those states became citizens of our country. It is their 
 native land. Many never came from Mexico. They 
 were here when the Americans came. Instead of being 
 foreigners, they look upon Americans as intruders 
 and as alien people. In many families the land grants 
 are shown which were given by Spanish kings ceding the 
 land to them and their heirs. These are the first fami- 
 lies of the Southwest. The life and civilization they de- 
 veloped in the early days has left its impress on all this 
 great region, and is seen in the language, the religion, 
 and many of the social customs. 
 
 A MEXICAN IIOMK
 
 OUR MEXICAN NEIGHBORS 151 
 
 Mexican Immigration. It is those who have come 
 across the border since the annexation that are classified 
 as immigrants. Some authorities say that one-tenth of 
 the entire Mexican nation has come to the United States 
 in the past twenty years. While there has always been 
 an emigration of Mexicans to the United States, it is 
 only in recent years that they have come in sufficient 
 numbers to attract particular notice. The political 
 overturnings that have occurred in such rapid succession 
 in that turbulent country have sent thousands across 
 the border. Some are political refugees, but the ma- 
 jority are simple peons who have found conditions 
 intolerable in Mexico, and have come with their fami- 
 lies, having been attracted by the superior economic and 
 educational opportunity that the United States seemed 
 to offer. The World War and the great demand for 
 labor in the United States brought many more thous- 
 ands. 
 
 In many places in Texas the Mexican has entirely dis- 
 placed the Negro in many fields of labor. This state 
 is now at the very head in the procession of agricultural 
 states, and the one thing that has made the rapid ad- 
 vance possible has been the labor supply. They can 
 raise cotton, corn, fruits, and vegetables. Mexican cow- 
 boys care for thousands of cattle, and the Mexican herd- 
 ers tend millions of sheep. The loneliness of these 
 occupations has no terror for the Mexican. They work 
 on the railroad and in the shops, work with irrigation 
 and do construction work, and take part in practically 
 all the industries of the western states. The universal 
 testimony is that the Mexican is a good, faithful worker, 
 always quiet and orderly, superior in every way to the 
 Negro. Mr. J. S. Stowell says:
 
 OUR MEXICAN NEIGHBORS 153 
 
 "The Mexican who comes across the international 
 line to work in the United States does not, however, come 
 alone. He brings his wife and family with him. This 
 is true Mexican custom, for the Mexican has been accus- 
 tomed to take his women folks along to provide food, 
 even when he has been serving in the army. It is quite 
 different from the customs of immigrants from many 
 other countries. Possibly the nearness of Mexico to the 
 United States and the ease with which the journey across 
 the line can be made have something to do with the mat- 
 ter. On a recent visit to an immigration office on the 
 border, a card picked at random from the files showed 
 that the Mexican whose record it contained had brought 
 with him a wife and nine children into the United States. 
 This instance is more or less typical, for the Mexican 
 families are large. A group of Mexican laborers, there- 
 fore, means at once a new Mexican settlement in the 
 United States or an old one enlarged, and since an over- 
 whelming proportion of the Mexicans who come into 
 the country are very poor various social problems are 
 more or less inevitable in every Mexican colony. When 
 the average Mexican immigrant arrives he brings little 
 or nothing with him except the clothes on his back, yet 
 what he brings represents his entire earthly posses- 
 sions."* 
 
 It is estimated that there are 1,750,000 Mexicans in 
 the United States. Texas has the largest number of 
 any state, where there are from a half million to three- 
 quarters of a million. They are found not only on the 
 border from Brownsville to San Diego, but by the thous- 
 ands in Colorado, Oklahoma and other states both East 
 and West. The largest Mexican colony in any city is 
 in San Antonio, Texas, which has a Mexican population 
 of 50,000; and the second largest colony is in El Paso, 
 
 *"The Near Side of the Mexican Question."
 
 154 UNFINISHED TASKS 
 
 Texas, where there are 45,000. Within a margin of 
 sixty miles in width, on the Texas side of the Rio Grande 
 it is estimated that there are from ten to twenty Mexi- 
 cans for every American. Leaving out the larger towns, 
 the proportion would perhaps he greater. There are 
 many towns where the English language is rarely spoken, 
 and where the Roman Catholic religion and Spanish 
 language and Mexican customs predominate. In the. 
 city of Laredo, for example, half of the streets are named 
 for Mexican heroes, while the avenues are named in 
 honor of the Catholic saints. 
 
 Product of Environment. There, is practically no 
 difference between the Mexicans of the United States 
 and of Mexico. To understand the conditions of the 
 Mexicans in the United States, it is necessary to under- 
 stand the environment out of which they have come. 
 They are in Texas just what they were in Mexico. The 
 Spanish conquest of Mexico was for the purpose of ex- 
 tending the authority of the Catholic Church quite as 
 much as to extend the political domination of Spain. 
 Up until 1867 Catholicism had no competition from 
 Protestant Christianity. 
 
 "In the early days the natives were 'converted* to 
 Christianity at the rate of thousands per day practi- 
 cally at the point of the gun. It was inevitable that this 
 acceptance of Christianity could be only a formal mat- 
 ter. The Cross was substituted for or became an affix 
 to some pagan ceremony. Even today in our Southwest 
 the Cross is an ever-present wayside decoration in scores 
 of communities where vital Christianity is unknown. 
 Heathen rites and Christian ceremonies became merged 
 in something which was partly Chriatian in nomencla- 
 ture and pagan in spirit and reality. Such wholesale 
 extension of formal Christianity could result in nothing
 
 OUR MEXICAN NEIGHBORS 155 
 
 else. Christianity became a matter of form and cere- 
 mony, and Christianity as a way of life received little 
 attention. 
 
 "Religion and morality either became entirely di- 
 vorced or religion became a convenient device for mak- 
 ing immorality safe and innocuous. The 'Bull of Com- 
 position' is said to have permitted the priests to relieve 
 persons who stole property from the obligation of mak- 
 ing restitution, provided that a certain sum, based on 
 the value of the stolen goods, was paid to the priest. It 
 was understood, however, that the same person could 
 not purchase more than fifty of such licenses in one year. 
 As late as 1914 John Wesley Butler writes of Mexico, 
 'Indulgences are still sold publicly.' 
 
 "In 1865 Abbe Emanuel Domenech came to Mexico 
 as Chaplain of the French troops. Later he was asked 
 by the Vatican to make a tour of the country and report 
 upon the 'moral and religious conditions of the clergy 
 and Church.' The following is quoted by John Wesley 
 Butler from Abbe Domenech's report: 'Mexican faith is 
 a dead faith. The abuse of external ceremonies, the 
 facility of reconciling God, the abuse of internal exer- 
 cises of piety, have killed the faith in Mexico 
 
 The idolatrous character of Mexican Catholicism is a 
 
 fact well known to all travelers The mysteries 
 
 of the Middle Ages are utterly outdone by the burlesque 
 
 ceremonies of the Mexicans The Mexican is 
 
 not a Catholic. He is simply a Christian because he 
 has been baptized. I speak of the masses and not of 
 
 the numerous exceptions to be found The 
 
 clergy carry their love of the family to that of paternity. 
 In my travels in the interior of Mexico, many pastors 
 have refused me hospitality in order to prevent my seeing 
 their nieces and cousins and their children.' It should 
 be remembered that these are the words of a Roman 
 Catholic who has endeavored to understand the actual 
 situation in Mexico."* 
 
 ""The Near Side of the Mexican Question."
 
 156 UNFINISHED TASKS 
 
 Protestant Opportunity. It is from such environ- 
 ment that the Mexicans have come. The Catholic 
 Church for four hundred years had absolute sway over 
 their mental, moral and material welfare, and their 
 present condition is the result of ignorance, poverty and 
 religious oppression. While they are nominally Roman 
 Catholic, many thousands are in revolt against the only 
 Church of which they know anything. It is said that 
 forty per cent of the Mexican immigrants are lost to the 
 Catholic Church. A large number of the men are Free 
 Thinkers, and arc among the bitterest enemies of Rome. 
 Many of the women have broken with their traditional 
 faith, and have lapsed into darkness and hopeless infi- 
 delity. The only religion they have ever known is a re- 
 ligion of rite and ritual, form and ceremony. Their 
 Christ is a dead Christ. Their lives have been barren 
 of any true fellowship with the living God. Their spir- 
 itual hunger and religious needs give the Protestant 
 Church a supreme opportunity to teach them of a loving 
 heavenly Father, and give them a gospel of love and faith. 
 The eagerness with which many of them respond to the 
 gospel appeal is one of the most encouraging things in 
 our Mexican mission work. 
 
 Providential Beginnings. The beginning of our 
 Home Mission work among the Mexicans was clearly the 
 Lord's doing, and this undertaking of the Church has 
 been marked by many unmistakable evidences of His 
 favor. From its inception there seem to have been raised 
 up specially prepared leaders just at the time they were 
 particularly needed. Our Mexican mission had its ori- 
 gin in an humble Mexican Christian named Jose Maria 
 Botello, who had been converted by reading a religious 
 tract. He united with the Brownsville Mexican church,
 
 OUR MEXICAN NEIGHBORS 157 
 
 which was a part of the work of the Foreign Mission 
 Committee, and later was made an elder. In 1883 
 Senor Botello removed from Brownsville to San Marcos, 
 Texas, in the interior of the State. Through his earnest 
 efforts ten Mexicans were converted. They were bap- 
 tized and received into the membership of the San Mar- 
 cos Presbyterian Church. In 1887 our first Mexican 
 Presbyterian Church was organized at San Marcos with 
 twenty-six members. On the day that this church was 
 organized Rev. W. S. Scott, who was born of Scotch 
 parents in Mexico and acquainted with Spanish from 
 his infancy, was taken under care of Western Texas 
 Presbytery as a candidate for the ministry. In April, 
 1892, Mr. Scott was ordained as evangelist to the Mexi- 
 cans in Texas, and since that day has given his entire 
 time to his chosen people, always pushing forward into 
 new fields where no other church is at work. 
 
 In 1892 God sent to the Mexican Mission a timely 
 gift in the person of Dr. H. B. Pratt, formerly a mission- 
 ary of our Church at Barranquilla, South America, and 
 who gave to the Spanish-speaking people what is ac- 
 knowledged to be the best translation of the Bible in 
 that language. While Dr. Pratt rendered valuable 
 assistance as evangelist and pastor, his greatest service 
 was in training several young M.exicans for the ministry, 
 who were needed for waiting fields and who ever since 
 have been great powers for good among their own 
 people. In 1899 the missionary force was increased by 
 the coming of Rev. and Mrs. R. D. Campbell, who had 
 been missionaries to Mexito, and knew the language, 
 the people and the problems. In 1907 Rev. and Mrs. 
 C. R. Womeldorf, formerly of our Brazil Mission, were 
 added to the list of workers. For a time they were
 
 158 UNFINISHED TASKS 
 
 jointly supported by the Home and Foreign Mission 
 Committees, another illustration of the oneness of the 
 endeavor of the Church to proclaim liberty to a gospel- 
 needy people in whatever country they chance to live. 
 In 1912 when the work had progressed to the point 
 where a school for Mexican boys was imperatively 
 needed, it seemed a part of God's providence that Dr. 
 and Mrs. J. W. Skinner were sent to lead this important 
 undertaking. From the very beginning of our Mexican 
 work until the present time it has been blessed in the 
 character of the workers that have come to it in the time 
 w T hen their services were especially needed. The Mex- 
 ican pastors are without exception men of character and 
 devotion. It is doubtful if any mission field of our 
 Church is served by more capable and consecrated 
 workers. 
 
 Success of the Work. Beginning in 1887 with one 
 small church of twenty-six members, there are now 
 twenty workers serving twenty-six organized churches 
 and twenty-six other preaching points, with a present 
 membership of more than two thousand. All the Pro- 
 testant Churches thus far have enrolled only about 
 10,000 members among the more than 1,750, (100 Mexi- 
 cans in this country. Our Church, with its small force 
 and inadequate equipment, has received one-fifth of the 
 total. The statistics do not tell the whole story. During 
 the thirty years fully as many as are at present on our 
 rolls have been converted in our missions and returned 
 to carry the gospel to their o\\ n people and contribute 
 to the evangelization of their own country. The be- 
 ginning of the mission at Linares, Mexico, was due to 
 the return of a converted Mexican from Texas. Many 
 have moved to other comn unities in the Southwest
 
 OUR MEXICAN NEIGHBORS 159 
 
 and united with other Churches. To quote again from 
 Dr. Skinner: 
 
 "It is always 'moving day' with many Mexicans. They 
 are constantly seeking a better place. This is largely 
 due to their occupations. Few are either land or home 
 owners. Many ars tenant farmers. Some are riders on 
 the cattle ranges. Some are wood choppers and land 
 clearers. Others are in the railroad construction camps, 
 or with the section gangs. Some are in the sulphur 
 mines and rice fields; some are in the swampy lumber 
 camps; while each summer brings its moving army of 
 cotton pickers. The latter often enter the cotton fields 
 of the Rio Grande Valley in June and trek northward as 
 the cotton opens, closing the cotton picking in Decem- 
 ber. And then begins the slow, and seemingly enjoyed, 
 return, with a little covered wagon, two or three burros, 
 the father and children walking, the mother and babies 
 in the wagon. 
 
 "The record of the evangelistic work is such as to cause 
 a thrill of justifiable pride. It is a story of heroism, 
 sacrifice and achievement. It is little known to the 
 Church because of the modesty and self-effacement of 
 those engaged in it. They have published a few finan- 
 cial and statistical tables but have left untold the story 
 of the 'blazed trail,' the weariness and loneliness of the 
 way, the dinnerless days, the sleepless nights because 
 the dirt was a hard bed and other small annoyances. 
 There is the joy of a hew company of worshippers gath- 
 ered in thirty days and then a heartache the next month 
 to find that all had 'folded their tents like the Arab and 
 as silently stolen away.' Often there is the after-dis- 
 covery that here and there one who had heard, remem- 
 bered the message and was telling 'the old, old story,' 
 to a little group gathered around a camp fire near a 
 cotton field, and that another was using the big room in 
 the three-room cottage as a meeting house for song and 
 prayer. The record of the evangelistic work among 
 these migratory people has been a literal fulfilment of
 
 160 
 
 UNFINISHED TASKS 
 
 the command, 'In the morning sow thy seed and in the 
 evening withhold not thy hand, for thou knowest not 
 whether shall prosper either this or that, or whether 
 they both shall be alike good.' ' 
 
 The Annual Camp Meeting. One of the great 
 evangelistic agencies in the work for the Mexicans is the 
 Camp Meeting. Two of these are held in the Texas field. 
 In August just before cotton picking time the members 
 and families of the various churches gather for the an- 
 nual Camp Meeting, under the trees on the banks of 
 some river. The meetings continue for a week with four 
 services a day. Surrounding the big tent where the 
 services are held there are from fifty to seventy-five 
 camps, with two to four families each. The daily aver- 
 age attendance is over three hundred, and on Sundays 
 as many as a thousand people are at the services. The 
 preaching is done by the Mexican pastors and evange- 
 lists, frequently assisted by missionaries and well known 
 
 A MEXICAN CAMP MEETING
 
 OUR MEXICAN NEIGHBORS 161 
 
 ministers from Mexico. Many are reached who other- 
 wise would never hear the gospel. There are often as 
 many as fifty conversions. Some of our best members 
 have been received at these meetings. It is more than 
 a special evangelistic effort. The Camp Meeting is also 
 a training school for the Mexican churches. A day is 
 given to the Young People, and a day to the Sunday- 
 school, and a day to the Woman's Work. The Camp 
 Meeting is the annual get-together time for the Mexican 
 churches. It accomplishes much in a social way and 
 helps create the spirit of brotherhood among the Mexi- 
 can Christians. It is the outstanding event of the Mexi- 
 can Church year. 
 
 Mexican Christians. The important factor in de- 
 termining the success of missionary effort among any 
 people is the spiritual results. A striking illustration 
 of the earnestness and devotion of the Mexican Chris- 
 tians is the fact that nearly every congregation has its 
 own house of worship, the people themselves out of their 
 poverty giving the means and the labor to make it pos- 
 sible. Few of us, no matter how poor we may be, know 
 poverty as the Mexicans know it. Except the city 
 missions, where buildings are necessarily more costly, 
 very little assistance has been given by the Assembly's 
 Committee to the Mexican congregations for church 
 buildings. Eleven churches and two manses in our 
 Mexican work have been completed by the sacrifice and 
 service of the members themselves. This is a feature 
 of our Mexican work that makes it unique in work for 
 foreigners. There is nothing like it in the work of any 
 other denomination. Services are held every Sabbath 
 in every church, and in the absence of pastor or evange- 
 list, usually they are conducted by an elder. They
 
 162 
 
 UNFINISHED TASKS 
 
 regularly have family worship in their homes, and we 
 have not a Mexican elder who will not pray in public. 
 
 There are some honored names among our Mexican 
 members which show that there is an "aristocracy of 
 faith" in this race. In 1895 Margarito Rodriguez united 
 with the Presbyterian Church upon profession of faith. 
 Five years later he was made an elder. On the day he 
 was ordained, his wife and several of his relatives made 
 a profession of their faith and united with the Church. 
 When the church was built he gave liberally of his means 
 and labor. Through all the years from the day he pro- 
 fessed his faith he did much by his active labors and ex- 
 emplary conduct to develop the work of the Presbyterian 
 Church for the Mexicans throughout that part of the 
 state. He made frequent trips in his own conveyance at 
 
 A CHRISTIAN MEXICAN FAMILY
 
 OUR MEXICAN NEIGHBORS 163 
 
 his own expense to mission churches seventy-five miles 
 distant to help in the work and encourage the believers. 
 As a result of his exemplary life and earnest labors forty 
 of his adult relatives were won to Christ and the Church. 
 Not the least achievement of his splendid Christian ca- 
 reer was the rearing of his own family. One of his sons 
 is an honored minister of our Church, having taken the 
 full course in Austin Theological Seminary. Another 
 son is a promising student in Austin College. One 
 daughter is the wife of an honored Presbyterian minister 
 and another daughter is the wife of a deacon. One son 
 is an elder, and another son is a deacon in the same 
 church. While exceptional in some respects Senor 
 Rodriquez is a typical Mexican Presbyterian elder. We 
 have many such in our Mexican Presbyterian churches. 
 It has been due as much to them as to our ministers 
 that our work has made the progress it has. With such 
 godly men for officers, with well prepared ministers 
 coming from the Seminary at Austin, with loyalty to the 
 great doctrines of grace and the blessing of God, what 
 may we not expect of our Mexican churches in another 
 decade? Is it too much to hope that we will have a 
 Texas-Mexican Synod, which will be the pride and joy 
 of the whole Church? 
 
 Need for More Aggressive Effort. With all that 
 has been done \he Protestant Church has not touched 
 the fringe of need. Not more than one in one hundred 
 is connected with any evangelical Church. The other 
 ninety-nine must be reached. There are between 500,- 
 000 and 750,000 of these people in Texas. There are 
 many in Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arkansas, and Louis- 
 iana. It is said that there are at least one thousand 
 Mexican communities in Texas along the railroads and
 
 164 UNFINISHED TASKS 
 
 far back on the ranches where there is no Protestant 
 work. A Christian woman residing in a village on the 
 Mexican border, asking for a church and a minister, 
 says that she and her husband are the only Americans 
 and Protestants in a community of one hundred and fifty 
 Mexican families; there is no school, no church, and no 
 religious work being done by any denomination except 
 three or four visits per year from an illiterate Mexican 
 priest. This village is fifty miles from the nearest rail- 
 road and one hundred miles from the nearest church of 
 our denomination. The conditions in this community 
 can be duplicated in hundreds of places in Texas, and 
 are an illustration of the waiting fields calling for min- 
 isters and workers that must be supplied. 
 
 Educational Work. In every mission field the evan- 
 gelistic work upens the doors and then the call becomes 
 insistent for education. The Presbyterian Church has 
 always stood for education, as well as for evangelism in 
 its work, and the teacher and the school have gone hand 
 in hand with the Church and the evangelist. Our first 
 educational work for the Mexicans was that done by 
 Dr. H. B. Pratt, who secured three young men and took 
 them into his own home to train them for the gospel 
 ministry. From that beginning can be traced the grow- 
 ing need of the Mexican Church for a native leadership, 
 and the intense desire of the Mexican people for a Chris- 
 tian industrial training for their children that they might 
 be better fitted for their place in life. 
 
 Texas-Mexican Industrial Institute. The Church 
 has undertaken to meet this need of the Mexican people 
 at the Industrial Institute, Kingsville, Texas. Under 
 the leadership of Dr. J. W. Skinner this Christian school 
 is rapidly coming to a position of great power and influ-
 
 OUR MEXICAN NEIGHBORS 
 
 165 
 
 ence among the Mexicans, not only as an evangelistic 
 agency, but in preparing Christian leaders and teachers. 
 The aim of this school is to give worthy Mexican boys 
 a thorough training in industry and agriculture, and 
 equip them in mind and heart to teach their own chil- 
 dren in the home, in the public school, and enable them 
 to preach Christ to their own people. This school is 
 located on a great farm of 669 acres, and is conducted 
 on the plan of half day work and half day study. It 
 was begun in 1912 with fifty students. The plant when 
 completed will provide for two hundred boys. The 
 farm, the stock raising the dairy, and the shop afford 
 opportunity for practical instruction for the students and 
 
 TEACHERS' TRAINING CLASS, AUSTIN, TEXAS
 
 166 UNFINISHED TASKS 
 
 the product of their labors contributes to the support 
 of the school. 
 
 Experience proves Mexican boys to be efficient and 
 capable when given a chance. These boys come from 
 homes of ignorance and poverty. They are receiving 
 the best possible training by competent Christian teach- 
 ers. This school has little material equipment for its 
 work, but it has a wealth of mind and heart that is price- 
 less and measureless. It has teachers who are filled 
 with a genuine missionary spirit and who can see the 
 possibilities locked up in their pupils, and who are able 
 to inspire them to be something and do something worth 
 while. Some of the boys having received their start here 
 will go to other schools for further training and will be 
 fitted to serve their people as teachers, editors, physi- 
 cians, ministers, and in other places of leadership and 
 responsibility. One of the students of this school won 
 the University of Pennsylvania scholarship at Mexico 
 City. The University of Mexico City has offered a po- 
 sition to another student who spent three years here and 
 then graduated at Austin College. This mission school 
 took these boys out of their surroundings, gave them a 
 start and an ambition to go forward, and put them on 
 the way to useful careers. It is impossible to estimate 
 the power for good or for evil of one Mexican boy. 
 
 "In 1877, in Central Mexico, there was born a lad of 
 Indian blood, Doroteo Arango, whom friendship seems 
 to have passed by. Instead his youth was embittered 
 by the murder of an official who had outraged his sister. 
 He became an outlaw and took the name of Villa. And 
 for years he has been a menace not only in Mexico, but 
 to the peace of all America as well. In 1806, there was 
 born in Southern Mexico another lad of Indian blood,
 
 OUR MEXICAN NEIGHBORS 167 
 
 Benito Jaurez. Left an orphan at the age of four, he 
 found a friend in a charitable merchant, who fostered 
 and educated him. And rich dividends did the mer- 
 chant's friendly care return. For Jaurez, after a term 
 as Governor of his native State, Oaxaca, left it the most 
 prosperous in the country. He led his people in their 
 successful struggle against the French and Maximilian. 
 Thrice was he elected President of the Republic. And 
 even now, almost five decades after his death, he still 
 lives in the mind of the Mexican peon as '1 he Great 
 Liberator.' I hope that we can turn these lives from 
 the path of Villa to the path of Jaurez."* 
 
 Mexican Department, Austin Theological Semi- 
 nary. Mexican mission work halts for the lack of min- 
 isters to supply the new churches that are organized by 
 the evangelists. There has been no provision in our 
 Church for training Mexican ministers and missionaries. 
 We have had to secure our workers from Mexico or from 
 other denominations. In order to meet this urgent need, 
 the General Assembly asked the Board of Trustees of 
 the Austin Theological Seminary to consider the ad- 
 visability of creating a Spanish-speaking Department 
 to give special training to our Mexican students for the 
 ministry. The Assembly authorized the Executive Com- 
 mittee of Home Missions to provide temporarily the 
 salary of the professor of this department, and expressed 
 the judgment that the support of this important and 
 distinctively missionary service of the Seminary by the 
 creation of an adequate endowment was a cause worthy 
 of the generous benefactions of the Lord's stewards. 
 It is the expectation that the boys' school at Kingsville 
 will send a number of picked men each year to the Sem- 
 
 *Fred Eastman, "Unfinished Business."
 
 168 UNFINISHED TASKS 
 
 inary. The plans for the Mexican Department also 
 contemplate training lay workers, both men and women, 
 not only for our own work in the Home Field, but for 
 the work of our Foreign Mission Committee in Mexico 
 and in Cuba. 
 
 School for Mexican Girls. The next great educa- 
 tional need is a Christian Industrial School for Girls. 
 The girls of our Mexican churches must be given an op- 
 portunity for a Christian training. No race can pro- 
 gress if the women are left in ignorance. It is a distress- 
 ing fact that many of our Mexican Presbyterian girls 
 cannot read or write. They are naturally bright and in- 
 telligent, but they have not had a chance. The public 
 schools do not meet their need. Very few Mexican girls 
 reach the high school, and almost none graduate. The 
 language is a serious difficulty; their poverty is another; 
 and there is the question of race prejudice. While the 
 Mexicans are classified as "white," they are generally 
 treated as inferiors. The Church is trying to lay the 
 foundation of a great Mexican Synod in Texas. The 
 
 REASONS FOR A MEXICAN GIRLS' SCHOOL
 
 OUR MEXICAN NEIGHBORS 169 
 
 girls as well as the boys must be included in the Church's 
 educational program. 
 
 The failure of the Mexican girls to receive an educa- 
 tion is a serious handicap in the Church's work. The 
 Mexican Church cannot progress unless both the men 
 and the women have the help of a Christian training. 
 It is said that in our 2,000 Mexican Presbyterians there 
 are not five girls that have a high school education or 
 its equivalent. The boys who have had an opportunity 
 at the Industrial Institute and at the Theological Sem- 
 inary look for their life companions among the girls of 
 other Churches who have been able to secure an educa- 
 tion in their denominational schools. An industrial 
 school for girls is imperatively necessary in our Church's 
 work for the Mexicans. From such a school will go a 
 stream of Presbyterian girls, trained in the science of 
 health, sanitation, and home-making, and to be Chris- 
 tian teachers and leaders in their churches and commun- 
 ities. Many of them will go into the training school at 
 Austin, to become missionaries and wives of our Mexican 
 ministers. 
 
 Harmful Propaganda. The very ignorance of the 
 Mexicans furnishes a fertile field for agitators and prop- 
 agandists of many sorts. The I. W. W. and other rad- 
 ical organizations have taken advantage of their break 
 with the Church and are at work among them. In- 
 flammatory literature against Church and State is being 
 distributed in all the important Spanish-speaking cen- 
 ters of the Southwest. 
 
 "The literature for this propaganda is not limited to 
 tracts, however; many books are used, such as 'Jesus 
 Christ Never Existed,' 'Mary Magdalene, the Mistress 
 of Jesus,' 'An Imaginary God, the Child of Fear,' and
 
 170 UNFINISHED TASKS 
 
 others of like nature. How deeply the seeds of atheism 
 and radical socialism have been implanted up to date it is 
 difficult to say. The work has gone far enough, however, 
 to warrant the undertaking of aggressive steps to coun- 
 teract such harmful agitation. It is significant that a 
 member of the Mexican national legislature returned, 
 after a trip throughout the Southwest among Mexicans, 
 to report in Mexico City that 'the United States is be- 
 coming I. W. W. and atheistic.' It is also significant 
 that in the Bisbee deportation sometime ago one-third 
 were Mexicans. The ignorance of Mexicans makes a 
 fertile field for the planting of all sorts of corrupting 
 ideas, and nothing but a counter-attack along lines of 
 education, and the implanting of the Christian princi- 
 ples of individual responsibility for and service to the 
 group will protect them from this insidious propaganda 
 which is continually being spread among them."* 
 
 Another organization that is seeking to take advantage 
 of the simplicity and ignorance of the Mexican people 
 is the Mormon Church. To quote again Mr. Stowell: 
 
 "In the very center of the Southwest in the Salt River 
 Valley of Arizona which has risen almost overnight from 
 the wilderness and clothed itself with verdure of remark- 
 able beauty and economic value, the Mormons have 
 quietly established themselves on thousands of acres 
 of the most productive soil. They have reared their 
 neat chapels, and now they have projected a Mormon 
 temple to cost at least $600,000. This will make the 
 Salt Lake River Valley the great Mormon center of the 
 Southwest, and from it will go out scores of missionaries 
 to work among Mexicans both above and below the 
 border. Already many adherents of Mormonism are 
 reported in Old Mexico, and a recent report indicates 
 thirty-seven Spanish-speaking Mormon missionaries in 
 the four States of Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and Colo- 
 
 *J. S. Stowell, "The Near Side of the Mexican Question."
 
 OUR MEXICAN NEIGHBORS 171 
 
 rado. It is reported that a considerable number of 
 Mexican converts to Mormonism in the United States 
 have already been baptized."* 
 
 International Good-Will. The Mexican work is 
 a vast and far-reaching undertaking. It has to do with 
 the people of the two nations, and has an important 
 bearing upon our relations with the Republic of Mexico. 
 International comity must be based upon confidence 
 and trust. There cannot be mutual understanding and 
 good -will if there is distrust or suspicion. The gospel 
 is the agency of brotherhood between the races. The 
 missionaries interpret the spirit and heart of America. 
 The Mexicans are naturally appreciative and responsive 
 to kindness. Hundreds of them will go back to Mexico. 
 Every one of them is a potential friend of America, or a 
 potential enemy. The Church can make them friends. 
 Someone has said that if the money spent by the Gov- 
 ernment on the punitive expedition into Mexico in 1916 
 had been given to the Church for missions, the Mexican 
 border would be as safe as the Canadian border where 
 for four thousand miles there cannot be seen a fort, a 
 gun or a soldier on either, side of the line. The differ- 
 ence is Hcme Missions, and Home Missions is Chris- 
 tianity. We can have such a neighbor on the South, 
 with all that it means of mutual trade, mutual under- 
 standing and mutual good-will, if we will give the gospel 
 a free hand. 
 
 *"The Near Side of the Mexican Question."
 
 172 UNFINISHED TASKS 
 
 QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION 
 
 1. What is the ancestry of the Mexican? 
 
 2. How many are there in America? 
 
 3. Why can we not class all the Mexicans as foreigners? 
 
 4. Do the religious needs of the Mexicans in the United States 
 
 differ from the Mexicans in Mexico? 
 ."). Who was the first worker of our Church among the Mexicans? 
 
 6. What other Americans have been and are engaged in the work? 
 
 7. What test determines the success of missionary effort for the 
 
 Mexicans? 
 
 8. What is one interesting feature of the Mexican work? 
 
 9. Do the unoccupied fields constitute a challenge to larger 
 
 effort? 
 
 10. What evil forces are at work among the Mexicans? 
 
 11. Why do the Mexicans in the United States offer Protestantism 
 
 an unusual opportunity? 
 
 12. What effect have missions on international good-will? 
 
 13. What is the most striking or impressive statement in this 
 
 chapter?
 
 CHAPTER>II. 
 THE DEMANDS OF THE TASK
 
 If we were to make an aeroplane survey of the work 
 conducted and aided by the Executive Committee of 
 Home Missions we would travel more than 10,000 miles 
 through seventeen States; 
 
 We would look down upon 612 workers pastors, 
 evangelists, teachers, community workers preaching 
 and teaching in eleven languages in 731 churches, 
 schools and missions; 
 
 We would see missions for Americans, Indians, Ne- 
 groes, Mountaineers, French, Italians, Bohemians, 
 Russians, Hungarians, Cubans, Mexicans, Syrians, 
 Hebrews ; 
 
 We would see 15 missions in the various fields, need- 
 ing larger and bettor buildings; 333 congregations 
 needing churches and chapels, and 299 Home Mission 
 pastors and community workers needing houses in 
 which to live; 
 
 We would see millions of people of all classes and con- 
 ditions lumbermen, miners, industrial workers, peo- 
 ple on farms and in the cities who are yet without 
 Christ and His Church; 
 
 We would see that the necessities of this Home Mis- 
 sion task are as many and varied as the needs of the 
 people that go to make up this great nation in which 
 we live.
 
 VII. 
 THE DEMANDS OF THE TASK 
 
 Home Missions is the work of making and keeping 
 America Christian, through the agency of the Church, 
 the school, and the home. In it is involved the two-fold 
 duty of converting and of conserving. It is no small 
 job, though the Church has been working at it in a 
 small way. It must now be undertaken in a large way 
 or America will go the way of all nations that have for- 
 gotten God and His claims to their obedience and ser- 
 vice. In his book, "The Fundamentals of Prosperity," 
 Mr. Roger W. Babson says: "Friends, let us Americans 
 never kick down the ladder by which we climbed up. 
 Let us not forget the foundations upon which all perma- 
 nent prosperity is based." The fundamentals of pros- 
 perity are not natural resources, but intelligence and 
 virtue and faith. 
 
 The Church has built the "ladder" by which the na- 
 tion has come to its high position of power and influence 
 in the world. Home Missions has made the Church 
 what it is. The only way to prevent the triumph of 
 evil, and insure the security and permanency of our 
 Christian institutions, is through the extension of the 
 Church to all parts of the land. 
 
 There are several necessities of the Assembly's Home 
 Mission work that must be supplied if this fundamental 
 enterprise is to be lifted out of the sphere of comparative 
 indifference it now occupies into the place of supreme 
 interest it deserves in the thought and prayers of the 
 Church.
 
 176 UNFINISHED TASKS 
 
 1. An Understanding of its Importance. 
 
 (a) To the Nation. Home Missions has for its ob- 
 jective a saved America, and all that is implied in the 
 Scriptural warrant that the people are most blessed 
 whose God is the Lord. The strength of a nation does 
 not flow down from the halls where its laws are enacted, 
 nor from the courts where its judgments are executed, 
 nor from the offices where its business is done; it flows 
 up from the homes and the firesides of the people. A 
 nation's glory is not measured by its worldly resources 
 but by the higher qualities of mind and heart. 
 
 "I am saddened when I see our success as a nation 
 measured by the number of acres under tillage, or of 
 bushels of wheat exported, for the real value of a country 
 must be weighed in scales more delicate than the bal- 
 ance of trade. The gardens of Sicily are empty now, 
 but the bees from all climes still fetch honey from the 
 tiny garden plot of Theocritus. On the map of the 
 world you may cover Judea with your thumb, Athens 
 with your finger tip, and neither of them figures in the 
 prices current, but they still live in the thought and ac- 
 tion of every civilized man. Did not Dante cover with 
 his hood all that was in Italy six hundred years ago. 
 And if we go back a century, where was Germany unless 
 in Weimar? Material success is good, but only as the 
 necessary preliminary of better things. The measure 
 of a nation's true success is the amount it has contrib- 
 uted to the thought, the moral energy, the intellectual 
 happiness, and the spiritual hope and consolation of 
 mankind."* 
 
 It is everywhere manifest that the communities that 
 were occupied by the Church in the beginning of their 
 
 "James Russell Lowell.
 
 THE DEMANDS OF THE TASK 177 
 
 settlement, are the communities that are the sources 
 of the nation's greatest strength today. The failure of 
 the Church to follow the people into new territory, leav- 
 ing the scattered communities without adequate relig- 
 ious advantages, accounts for some of the Church and 
 national problems that now confront the Christian forces 
 of this country. Students of American religious condi- 
 tions affirm that the failure of the evangelical churches 
 to enter Northern California in force and with adequate 
 organization in the early days when the life of that new 
 country was taking form, is responsible for the slow 
 growth of Christian idealism there during the years 
 since. If Home Missionaries had been sent in adequate 
 force to the moving populations in the Mississippi Val- 
 ley in 1830 when Mormonism was striking root, there 
 would probably be no Mormon Church, which today is 
 one of the most dangerous and subtle of all the enemies 
 threatening our Christian civilization* Home Mission 
 agencies, in the poverty of their resources, have not 
 always been able to serve the moving multitudes at the 
 time the saving influence of the Church was needed 
 most. Not being sure the new settlement would be 
 permanent, they could not risk the chance of the "field 
 moving away," forgetting that the world is the Church's 
 field and if the people move from one community they 
 will take the Kingdom with them and bless the com- 
 munity to which they go. 
 
 "In no part of the service of God is there greater need 
 for that faith which is the substance of things hoped for 
 and the evidence of things not seen, or greater need for 
 that spiritual vision which can see not only the things 
 which are but also the things which shall be. Missions 
 in America deals not with culminations but with begin-
 
 178 UNFINISHED TASKS 
 
 nings. Its function is not to sing the triumph song of 
 harvest, but to sweat with the labor of the days of plow- 
 ing and planting. It must fall into the ground and die, 
 to the end that others afterward may reap thirty and 
 sixty and an hundred fold. By its very nature Home 
 Missions works in the day of small things. Materially, 
 it has no beauty that it should be desired. It wears 
 no glamor of earthly glory. It has no gala day. It 
 hears no world applause. The loneliness of the picket 
 line and the poverty of the pioneer are the cross and the 
 crown of its daily life. But this is fundamental to the 
 progress of the Kingdom. Churches do not spring forth 
 full grown by the fiat of the Almighty. It is a Kingdom 
 of Life and it comes by the normal operation of the laws 
 of life. It is first the grain of. mustard, smallest of all 
 seeds, but growing until the birds of heaven find a home 
 in its branches. It is first the blade and then the ear 
 and afterwards the full corn in the ear."* 
 
 (b) To the Church. Marshal Foch has said that no 
 battle would ever be won by an army on the defensive. 
 It is not enough to hold a line; the Church must push 
 forward into new and stronger positions. Home Mis- 
 sions is the Church on the offensive, carrying the forces 
 of righteousness into those places where danger lurks 
 and the need is greatest. It is the chief agency for the 
 extension of the Church's borders. It blazes the trail 
 into unoccupied territory, organizes new churches that 
 become centers of Christian influence, lays the founda- 
 tions and develops the resources that support our entire 
 denominational activities both in the Home and For- 
 eign Fields. 
 
 "The advance of the Kingdom is along the line of the 
 weak, struggling, little churches monuments of the faith 
 
 *Rev. Arthur G. Jones, "Home Missions and the Kingdom."
 
 THE DEMANDS OF THE TASK 179 
 
 and heroism of men and women who believe the prom- 
 ises of God outposts pushed across the line of the 
 Usurper's domain the advance guard of the Kingdom 
 I see it yonder the little church at the front plain 
 and bare no artistic beauty no glory in the eyes of 
 the world but it is Bethel, the House of God, the Gate 
 of Heaven. Immortal souls out there where life is hard, 
 passing through into the City of God. If so be that the 
 gates of the City are pearls, then yonder humble little 
 chapel is one of God's jewels, and the keeper of the gate 
 not only a shepherd of the scattered sheep of today, but 
 a herald at the front proclaiming the coming of the 
 King."* 
 
 It is estimated that at least ninety per cent of all the 
 Presbyterian churches in the United States had their 
 origin in the Home Mission enterprise. If there had 
 been no Home Missions there would be lacking from 
 our rolls at least 3,000 congregations, including some of 
 the strongest and most influential in the whole denom- 
 ination. In its Home Mission work, the Presbyterian 
 Church stands at the door of almost unmeasured oppor- 
 tunity. There are openings in new and growing centers 
 for church organizations, which if accepted will mean 
 more to our denominational growth the next ten years 
 than the past twenty-five years have done. 
 
 (c) To the Man. A nation is a composite of persons. 
 To bring men and women to a saving knowledge of Jesus 
 Christ is the highest duty of Home Missions. All other 
 results and considerations, however desirable and worthy, 
 are the by-products of the spiritual regeneration of the 
 individual. There are within the bounds of the Assem- 
 bly 21,000,000 people outside the Church, and who ac- 
 cording to their own profession do not acknowledge 
 
 *Rev. Arthur G. Jones, "Home Missions and the Kingdom."
 
 180 UNFINISHED TASKS 
 
 Christ's claims to their love and service; 13,000,000 chil- 
 dren and youth, the future leaders in every department 
 of the nation's life, are outside of all churches and Sun- 
 day schools, growing up with no knowledge of God, or 
 righteousness, or a judgment to come; 3,000,000 illit- 
 erates who can neither read nor write, and who if their 
 salvation depended upon their ability to read God's 
 word for themselves would be lost. These multitudes 
 of unevangelized, uneducated, and unenlightened, em- 
 phasize the magnitude and importance of the Home Mis- 
 sion enterprise. It involves the welfare of the nation, 
 the growth of the Church, and the salvation of the man. 
 2. A Knowledge of Its Bigness. The General As- 
 sembly has assigned the Home Mission Committee a 
 task that includes more and varied interests than any 
 agency doing mission work in this country. By the 
 direction of the Assembly the Executive Committee has 
 been made responsible for the following important 
 duties: 
 
 1. To occupy fields in the frontier Synods and growing 
 centers, where Presbyterian churches ought to be estab- 
 lished. 
 
 2. To build houses of worship for newly organized 
 churches, mission buildings, manses and missionary 
 homes. 
 
 3. To Christianize the millions of foreigners now pour- 
 ing into the South Italians, Bohemians, Hungarians, 
 Mexicans, Cubans, Chinese, Syrians, French, Spanish, 
 Russians and Hebrews. 
 
 4. To meet our denominational responsibility for the 
 Christianization of the nine million Negroes within our 
 doors, including the support of Stillman Institute for 
 boys, and the Schools for Girls at Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
 
 THE DEMANDS OF THE TASK 181 
 
 5. To maintain mission schools for the religious train- 
 ing of the backward children and youth in the moun- 
 tains, among the Mexicans, Indians, Negroes, Italians, 
 and others needing help. 
 
 6. To promote the spirit and message of evangelism 
 throughout the Church, and support a corps of compe- 
 tent evangelists, including evangelists for the special 
 classes Negroes, Mexicans, Indians, mountain people, 
 and prisoners. 
 
 7. To co-operate in the publication of the Missionary 
 Survey, with the Assembly's Stewardship Committee 
 and the Woman's Auxiliary, and conduct a continuous 
 campaign of missionary education in the churches, Sun- 
 day-schools and missionary societies, for the purpose of 
 creating a deeper interest in the great task of saving 
 America. 
 
 8. To co-operate with other Christian denominations 
 in the Christianization of a strong home base that the 
 evangelization of the world may be speedily accom- 
 plished. 
 
 This is the outline of a task which in its variety and 
 magnitude some denominations have as many as five 
 boards or committees to accomplish. Some Churches 
 have: (a) an agency for Home Missions, which is the 
 work of extending the denominational borders; (b) an 
 agency for Church and Manse Erection, with the single 
 duty of providing churches and manses for new congrega- 
 tions; (c) an agency for Colored Evangelization, with 
 no other responsibility than that of looking after the 
 religious and educational needs of the Negro; (d) an 
 agency for conducting Mission Schools in the mountains; 
 and (e) an evangelistic committee, which has direction 
 of all the evangelistic activities of the denomination. 
 In the Southern Presbyterian Church these five impor-
 
 182 UNFINISHED TASKS 
 
 tant and far-reaching responsibilities have been assigned 
 to the Assembly's Home Mission Committee. The sup- 
 port of this work on its present basis demands approxi- 
 mately $750,000 per year. It will require in the near 
 future an annual support fund of at least $1,000,000, 
 if it is to fully accomplish its task. 
 
 3. A Larger Financial Support. Notwithstanding 
 the many additions of responsibility which from time to 
 time have been made to the work of the Home Mission 
 Committee, there has been no corresponding increase in 
 the Committee's financial support. A secretary of an- 
 other denomination, appealing to the students in the 
 Theological Seminary for service in the Home Field, 
 said: "I bring you, young men, a three-fold promise. 
 The Board of Home Missions will guarantee each of you 
 a living salary if you will devote yourself faithfully to its 
 service; the Board of Church Erection will guarantee 
 you a place in which to gather your people for worship; 
 the Woman's Board will furnish you a parsonage." 
 
 The secretary's three-fold promise to the young men 
 of the United Presbyterian Church brings in striking 
 contrast the poverty of the provision made for Home 
 Missions by our Church, and the unequal burden placed 
 upon the Executive Committee compared with the sup- 
 port given Home Missions by other denominations. Even 
 the wholly inadequate amount assigned this cause in the 
 Progressive Program is not received. The discrimina- 
 tion against Home Missions begins with the Assembly 
 in the small percentage given it in the Benevolent Bud- 
 get, perhaps the smallest of any denomination. Many 
 Synods, Presbyteries, Sessions, and Auxiliaries con- 
 tinue the discrimination by still further reducing even 
 the small percentage assigned, and by withholding the
 
 183 
 
 small amount apportioned Assembly's Home Missions, 
 which work is fundamental to the Church's development 
 and progress and which underlies the Church's advance 
 in every field. 
 
 Because of the failure of the Church to provide suffi- 
 cient funds to accomplish its five-fold work, the Home 
 Mission Committee cannot guarantee the young men in 
 the Seminary and the young women in the Training 
 School a living salary if they will volunteer for life ser- 
 vice in the Home Field. It cannot guarantee them a 
 building in which to gather their people for worship and 
 instruction. It cannot guarantee them a comfortable 
 home in which to live. It can only make an appeal for 
 service, with no positive assurance being given that the 
 great Church they are asked to serve will adequately 
 support them in their sacrificial undertaking. 
 
 (a) More Money is Needed for Salaries of Workers. 
 The Assembly's Committee aids in the support of six 
 hundred and twelve missionaries pastors, evangelists, 
 teachers, community workers not including the wives 
 of missionaries unless specifically employed for a defi- 
 nite service. The Home Mission pastor's wife is not 
 on the pay roll of any committee. It is her privilege to 
 serve without pay. These missionaries must have ade- 
 quate support. They do not ask for opulence, but they 
 have a right to expect that they will be provided with at 
 least the necessities of life. They cannot render the 
 fullest and freest service if they continually find them- 
 selves in financial straits. Many of them are making 
 sacrifices that the Church does not understand. Serv- 
 ing mission fields and teaching in mission schools, they 
 can never expect a large or increasing salary. They are 
 representing the Church on the firing line, where the
 
 184 
 
 UNFINISHED TASKS 
 
 burden is heaviest and the fighting is the hardest. They 
 have to deny themselves many comforts, not to speak of 
 luxuries. They are not able to buy many books, or 
 attend many conferences, or have the privilege of travel. 
 They are in these hard fields because there is need and 
 opportunity for service. Many could improve their 
 situation by accepting work in other and more inviting 
 fields, but it would mean deserting a people that needs 
 their ministry. The Church owes it to them that their 
 support be adequate and regular. The Church cannot 
 expect her sons and daughters to volunteer for service 
 in the mountains, among the foreigners, the Indians, 
 in the cities, in the mining camps and other places of 
 
 MISSION HOUSE
 
 THE DEMANDS OF THE TASK 185 
 
 destitution and need, unless they are given assurance 
 that they will be supported in a way that they can render 
 their best service and make their life count for the most. 
 
 (6) More Money is Needed for Church and Mission 
 Buildings. The workers must have a suitable place in 
 which to work. This is the outstanding and imperative 
 need of the Assembly's Home Missions. It is almost a 
 tragedy to send these brave men and women against 
 the conditions they are called to face without proper 
 equipment. The Committee has never been able to 
 plan its work in a large and adequate way. There have 
 been no funds with which to provide the buildings 
 needed in the various fields. The workers have been 
 obliged in many instances to gather their people for 
 teaching and worship in rented halls and borrowed 
 buildings wholly unsuited for the purpose. The small, 
 and oftentimes unsafe and unsanitary, school buildings 
 and churches have been acquired largely at the expense 
 of the workers, by the use of contributions that justly 
 should have gone to them. 
 
 (c) More Money is Needed for Manses and Missionary 
 Homes. Out of their meager salary many Home Mis- 
 sion pastors must rent a house. Can a minister and his 
 family live decently and pay rent on $1,200 per year? 
 Some Home Missionaries receive no more than this. In 
 addition to the rent, which they are unable to pay, they 
 always face the possibility of having to move. There 
 are Home Missionaries living in places they cannot be 
 called homes that are a disgrace to the great Church 
 they are asked to serve. Workers in the mountains, 
 among the immigrants, Negroes and Indians, often are 
 compelled to live in houses that have not even a sugges- 
 tion of convenience or comfort. When these faithful
 
 186 UNFINISHED TASKS 
 
 men and women give themselves day in and day out 
 without stint to their work, they certainly are entitled 
 to a home with all that is implied in the word where 
 they can rest in comfort before going out again. 
 
 Equipment Needs. In considering the Home Mis- 
 sion buildings needed it should be remembered that the 
 Executive Committee has had only very meager funds 
 for building purposes, and in consequence the entire 
 Home Mission work of the Church is practically without 
 equipment. When the great expansion in the Home 
 Mission work became necessary the past few years the 
 Committee was unprepared for the advance. Reports 
 from the Home Mission Committees of the eighty-eight 
 Presbyteries in the General Assembly show that there is 
 a present need for churches, manses, schools, chapels, 
 dormitories, teachers' homes, community houses, and 
 hospitals, totaling $3,301,950. 
 
 A careful survey of the various fields and departments 
 of the Assembly's Home Missions, in the mountains, 
 among the Indians, immigrants and Negroes, and the 
 Home Mission Presbyteries of the weaker Synods for 
 churches, manses, schools, dormitories and hospitals, 
 reveals needs totaling $1,500,000. This amount was 
 approved by the General Assembly and was included in 
 the budget of the Assembly's proposed Equipment Cam- 
 paign. We are living in a new day. The Home Mis- 
 sion provision of former years will not meet present de- 
 mands. No Church was ever served by a more devoted 
 or capable body of workers, and no workers were so in- 
 adequately equipped and supported in their task. The 
 call is not so much for an advance, but for the Church to 
 come up to the support of the army that is already in 
 the field contending against almost overwhelming odds.
 
 THE DEMANDS OF THE TASK 187 
 
 4. A Greater Appreciation of the Worker. The 
 
 Home missionary is doing the work of a patriot just as 
 truly as the man who wears the nation's uniform. He 
 is laboring at the fountain head of the nation's moral 
 resources, and is striving to make the nation strong by 
 making it Christian. 
 
 "When the historian writes the history of national 
 progress in the nineteenth century, he will first of all 
 take account of the Home Missionary. The march of 
 our civilization is to the music of our religion. This . 
 gave the inspiration. Without that music the pioneer 
 had not marched to such victory." 
 
 In no nation where the gospel has gone has the mis- 
 sionary of the Cross accomplished so much. It is be- 
 cause of a century and a half of Home Mission labor and 
 Home Mission sacrifice that America is the hope of the 
 world today. It is because the Home Missionary has 
 been willing to serve and suffer for the maintenance of 
 the Christian faith and Christian ideals that America 
 stands as a beacon light to the nations that are groping 
 their way through the darkness to higher and better 
 things. It is not too much to say that all the armies and 
 navies and congresses and courts which an enlightened 
 civilization has devised for the protection and govern- 
 ment of the people have not influenced the life of the 
 nation as profoundly as these humble soldiers of the 
 Cross, who battled in lowliness and poverty and ob- 
 scurity, and many of whom at the end of their service 
 did not have enough of this world's goods to erect for 
 themselves a lowly stone in the graveyard. But through 
 faith they subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, 
 and out of their" heroic labors there are in this land thous-
 
 iss UNFINISHED TASKS 
 
 ands of congregations of God's people singing the songs 
 of the heaven bound and who rejoice in the work that 
 God through their fathers wrought. 
 
 "The story of Christian enterprise and Christian con- 
 quest in the United States has never been written, ex- 
 cept in the most meager and fragmentary form. When 
 American church records of the last hundred and fifty 
 years have been faithfully consulted and the facts prop- 
 erly set forth they will furnish a narrative of devotion 
 and heroism unsurpassed. In the spirit of self-sacrifice 
 and in the record of actual accomplishment, the Ameri- 
 can Home Missionary holds a place second to no am- 
 bassador of the gospel in any part of the world. In the 
 face of difficulties he has done his work well. In the 
 midst of all sorts and conditions of men, under the most 
 adverse circumstances, with heart-breaking discourage- 
 ments, and often on a starvation salary, he has wrought 
 like a hero and his labor has not been in vain. The 
 thousands of churches and the majority of educational 
 institutions between the Mississippi and the Pacific are 
 the fruits of Home Missionary work. They constitute 
 the power that makes for righteousness in that great 
 empire. He has gone forth quietly, with no ostentation. 
 He has ever been a patient, uncomplaining hero. Too 
 often neglected and undervalued, his work unapprecia- 
 ted and forgotten, he has toiled and struggled steadily 
 on, winning triumph after triumph, until at the present 
 day we are just beginning to awaken to the fact in the 
 mighty enterprise of building this nation, he has accom- 
 plished the labors of a Hercules."* 
 
 We have hundreds of noble men and women who are 
 pouring out their lives in the service of the Church in the 
 redemption of their country on the margins and fron- 
 tiers where there is no glamor of romance and no stim- 
 
 *Rev. W. E. McCullough, D. D., "Christianizing America."
 
 THE DEMANDS OF THE TASK 189 
 
 ulus of applause to support them in their sacrifice. It 
 would help these workers in their hard and difficult 
 fields if they thought that the Church knew and appre- 
 ciated their sacrifices. They are not serving for appre- 
 ciation, but appreciation would help them to serve. 
 
 5. More Earnest Prayer. If you would become in- 
 terested in the Home Mission cause, pray for it. If you 
 would help the Home Mission workers, pray for them. 
 Prayer is the power that makes known the will of the 
 Master, unlocks the resources of heaven and unites all 
 hearts in the bonds of a common service. By prayer 
 we can have a share, through Christ and His spirit, with 
 every worker in the field. When the Church unitedly 
 lifts this great work to God daily in earnest and believ- 
 ing prayer, His blessing will be poured out and His 
 Kingdom will come to the mountains, in the cities and 
 on the plains. 
 
 It is a tremendous task before the Church in the evan- 
 gelization of America. When we think of the unoccu- 
 pied fields, the unevangelized multitudes, the spiritual 
 indifference on the part of many Christians, the perils 
 that threaten our national life, the great foes with which 
 we have to contend, the social unrest and the industrial 
 discontent that are everywhere rife, surely it is evident 
 that we are confronted with an undertaking that will 
 require unswerving loyalty and devotion to Jesus Christ. 
 
 In the light of this tremendous task, the greatest need 
 is not Home Mission information, though information 
 is needed; it is not more workers, though workers are 
 needed for the waiting fields and the plenteous harvests; 
 it is not money, though money is needed; the greatest 
 need is the ministry of intercession on the part of God's 
 believing people.
 
 190 UNFINISHED TASKS 
 
 Alongside this great need there is seen the great lack. 
 The Church is not praying as it should. Christ's people 
 are not praying as they should. There is a temptation 
 to depend too much upon organization and movements, 
 upon plans and programs, and too little upon God's 
 spirit which He has promised to bestow. There is no 
 greater service that can be rendered the cause of Home 
 Missions than the daily use of the Calendar of Prayer, 
 praying by name for the workers and the fields they serve. 
 Let there be a revival of prayer for the evangelization of 
 America and all else will be supplied. There will be a 
 deepening of our interest in the Home Mission cause, 
 an out-going of our sympathy for the workers, and the 
 giving of our means for their support. When the Church 
 begins to pray for the salvation of the lost multitudes 
 in America, the redemption of America will begin. 
 
 6. Greater Loyalty to the Church's Home Mission 
 Program. The Home Mission work of the Church 
 must not be confused with many good and useful non- 
 denominational undertakings that are crowding in to 
 claim the attention and the resources of Christian peo- 
 ple. The Church has a definite responsibility for the 
 evangelization of the unsaved multitudes and for the 
 religious training and spiritual enlightenment of the 
 millions of children and youth that are growing up in 
 our own land without religious instruction. This is the 
 first great purpose of Home Missions. Other agencies, 
 inspired by the Church, are working for a better coun- 
 try and a better world. The Church is not in competi- 
 tion with any helpful institution. It is not in conflict 
 with any organization that is striving to bring about bet- 
 ter moral and social conditions. It is the teaching of 
 the Church that nothing is foreign to any Christian that
 
 THE DEMANDS OF THE TASK 191 
 
 concerns his fellowmen. The Church welcomes the 
 assistance and co-operation of all agencies that are striv- 
 ing to bring in the rule of Christ in the world. But no 
 institution can take the place of the Church. "The soul 
 of reform is the reform of the soul." 
 
 The Church has its distinctive work in the spiritual 
 regeneration of mankind. This is a task that cannot 
 be shifted or evaded. It is the reason for the Church's 
 existence and it is the source of its power. We owe our 
 first allegiance to our Church and its organized work. 
 No organization or cause, no matter how worthy, should 
 be given the help that is needed by the Church for the 
 gospel enterprises for which it is responsible. Our Home 
 Mission progress is being hindered for the want of adequate 
 funds. Other organizations over which the Church has 
 no control are pushing in to claim the help that the Home 
 Mission work should have. If the Church is failing in 
 her great mission of evangelizing the masses through the 
 preaching of the gospel it is because she is not receiving 
 the loyal and sympathetic support of every member. 
 Our first concern should be for the work for which our 
 Church is definitely responsible. 
 
 The Home Mission enterprise represents the combined 
 effort of Protestant Christianity to make real in Amer- 
 ica's life the ideals and hopes of the nation's founders 
 who sought through the establishment of this Christian 
 nation to open to the ignorant and oppressed of the world 
 an opportunity to come to a knowledge of the Truth. 
 This faith has been fittingly expressed in the magnifi- 
 cent monument to the honor of the Pilgrim Fathers, 
 erected on the rocky summit overlooking the bay where 
 the Mayflower first anchored. Bishop Galloway says:
 
 192 UNFINISHED TASKS 
 
 "That colossal statue is at once a miracle, a parable, 
 and a prophecy; a miracle of artistic genius, a parable 
 of Christian civilization, and a prophecy of increasing 
 national glory. On the corners of the pedestal are four 
 figures in a sitting posture, representing Law, Morality, 
 Freedom and Education. Standing far above on a 
 lofty shaft of granite is a majestic figure, symbolizing 
 faith, holding an open Bible in one hand, and with the 
 other uplifted pointing far away to the throne of God. 
 
 "What a sublime conception! How true to the facts 
 of our heroic history! That open Bible is the Magna 
 Charta of America, and that uplifted hand symbolizing 
 trust in the God of our fathers is the condition of our 
 national stability and continued prosperity." 
 
 It is for the realization of the great purpose of a Chris- 
 tian America that the Church is asked to give her means, 
 her service and'her prayers. No greater cause can en- 
 list the love and labor of every true follower of Jesus 
 Christ. 
 
 QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION 
 
 1. Give a comprehensive survey of Assembly's Home Missions. 
 
 2. What measures the real value of a country, and in what do you 
 
 think Americans should feel the most satisfaction? 
 
 3. Contrast the task of the Executive Committee of Home Mis- 
 
 sions with the Home Mission agencies of other denomi- 
 nations. 
 
 4. What three factors emphasize the imjwrtance of Assembly's 
 
 Home Missions? 
 
 5. Contrast with other denominations the provisions made for 
 
 Home Missions, and show the need for larger support. 
 0. What six things does the Home Mission task specifically need? 
 
 7. Do you think the Church deals justly with its Home mission- 
 
 aries in matter of salary, homes and equipment? 
 
 8. What does the Home Mission enterprise represent? 
 
 9. What has most impressed you in this chapter? 
 
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