10. Work in Later Accessions

Oregon treaty made sure possession of the Far Northwest and the discovery

Accessions. of gold opened the Californias to the world. Home missionaries, ordained in the East, promptly started for the Pacific Coast, reaching their destination by way of Cape Horn and the Sandwich Islands. The strategic position of the coast missions, as related to foreign missions in China and Japan, was keenly appreciated by the churches of the East and their missionary boards; money was contributed more freely than ever, and many of their ablest preachers went forth cheerfully to lay the foundations of Christian society on the sunset shores of the republic. The Mexican Cession, one of the fruits of the Mexican war, including Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah, opened still another belt of peculiar missionary need, which, in spite of ancient superstitions and modern delusions, has proved a rich and rewarding field of missionary effort. Perhaps the most significant feature of these early missionary movements thus far considered was their close connection with the historic development of the nation. Yet "connection" is hardly the word to describe their real influence. More truly they were an integral and saving part of that development.

Two events belonging to the latter half of the nineteenth century were destined to have a marked influence on home missionary history.

11. Work for Negroes and Immigrants

The close of the Civil War introduced, at the South, a missionary problem ab solutely new, which immediately st- tracted, and continues to absorb, the attention of the Northern churches to an extraordinary degree. Four million blacks. hitherto inaccessible to missionary effort, were suddenly emancipated. At once the National Government opened its bureaus of relief, and mis sionary boards of the North hurried forward preach ers and teachers. To the missionary himself there was in this call a certain element of peril which, so far from checking, only stimulated his zeal. At first the Northern preacher and teacher were not well received by the white of the South; social ostracism was their frequent lot, and even violence to their persons and destruction of their property were not uncommon in the early days. An ugly spirit of caste included the teacher of the negro with the negro himself, and young women, delicately reared in the best homes of the North, suffered, not merely from social neglect, but occasionally from open indignity. These early conditions have greatly softened and are passing away. Appreciation, and even gratitude, have taken their place as the results of these mis- sionary efforts have become more apparent. Such fruits appear, not only in organized churches for the negro race, but in a long array of universities, colleges, academies, normal institutes, and industrial schools, opened exclusively for the benefit of the blacks, all of them specifically Christian, and all of them originally planted and supported by the freewill offerings of the North. Howard, Hampton, Fisk, Atlanta and Tougaloo, Talladega and Straight, Shaw and Richmond, Nashville and Bishop, Wayland and Leland, and a host beside, are names that are becoming as familiar to the educational world as Harvard, Yale, or Princeton. They were all made possible by negro emancipation, and they are all the creation of home missions. See Missions Among the Heathen, B, III., 1, § 3. Another fact, as marked in its influence upon the home missionary spirit of the churches, has been foreign immigration, beginning to attract attention as early as 1840, and growing, decade by decade, in its insistent demand for treatment, until to-day it vies with the missionary call of the West and South for prompt, wise, and far-sighted consideration on the part of the churches and their missionary boards. The figures used to measure the volume of this problem are too familiar to need rehearsal here. Sufficient to say that up to 1840 the total of foreign immigration had not exceeded 500,000 in the previous history of the country, while during the year 1906 alone more than twice that number were landed in the United States. Here is a gigantic problem, sufficient to tax not only the wisdom of rulers and lawmakers, but appealing in a special way to the missionary spirit of the churches and to the thoughtful interest of every lover of his country. It is only true to say that the exigency of this problem revolutionized the home missionary appeal. To the peril of domestic heathenism, which stirred the zeal of Connecticut and Massachusetts in 1798, has now been added the larger fear of imported barbarism; and thus for several recent years foreign missions in America have come to be of burning interest to American home missions. All branches of the Church, without exception, have taken part in this work through their organized agencies. No nationality has been overlooked; Germans, Scandinavians, Bohemians, Poles and Russians, Hollanders and Hebrews, Spanish, French and Italians, Armenians, Syrians, Japanese and Chinese--every sort and condition of foreigner, however apparently hopeless, has been made the subject of home missionary effort and culture. The results have astonished the most sanguine; they have rebuked the most despairing, and have all but silenced the prophets of evil, ever ready to foretell the direst consequences from the infusion of so much foreign blood into the moral, social, and political life of the nation. Many times over it has been demonstrated that every grade of alien is susceptible to religious development, is entirely capable of being both civilized and Christianized, and is in fact being rapidly assimilated into a hopeful type of American life. Twenty-five years ago there was hardly a foreign-speaking missionary in the employ of any home missionary society. To-day they are numbered by the thousands, who preach and teach in twenty different

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tongues, planting Protestant churches for the foreign-born and gathering into them intelligent members by tens of thousands. It is beginning to be recognized that one powerful solvent of the evils of immigration has been found. Great migrations are not the dread they were forty years ago. Disturbing fears have been quieted, and, with all the natural apprehension that remains and must remain, our native American people are viewing with less and less alarm what but a few years ago almost crazed them with apprehension. This era of hopefulness is due, in no small measure, to the undoubted success of American home missions in enlightening and Christianizing adopted citizens. See Emigrants and Immigrants, Mission Work Among, II.; and Slavic Missions In the United States.

To attempt any adequate summary of the fruits of home missions at the end of 100 years would require a survey of the history of

12. Sum- fifty States and Territories, so vitally mary. have the home missionary and his work entered into the early development of most of the commonwealths. A few salient facts must suffice. In the first place, the growth of organizations is significant. Beginning in 1798 with a single society, the first of its kind in history, having in its treasury a capital of $600, the home missionary movement, then started, has given birth, during the last 100 years, to thirty-five distinct societies, all Protestant, all Evangelical, all national, collecting and disbursing during the last calendar year more than $6,000,000 for the Christian instruction of communities which, without such help, might have lived and died in religious destitution. Together these organizations have disbursed $150,000,000 for the planting of churches alone. Their chief agent has been the Church, with its ordained preachers and its divinely appointed ordinances, and for the Church these millions have been given. This total, however, takes no account of those cooperating agencies which have been called into being to serve this missionary work of the churches. Add, therefore, Sunday school planting, Bible and tract printing, church building, and Christian colleges, all of which have sprung up in the path of home missions and are among its legitimate fruits, and the grand total of home missionary expenditure, root and branch, in organized form, is found by careful computation to be not less than $360,000,000. Not a dollar of this immense fund has been paid, in any commercial sense, for value received. All of it has been given, a free-will offering of Christian people, to mark their intense conviction of the peril of a nation with out the Gospel and their supreme faith in its leaven ing power. But beyond the growth of mere or ganizations and the multiplication of missionary capital, what have these agencies and these millions accomplished, and what visible fruits remain to justify the cost of the effort? It is a fact not gen erally known, and when known, not sufficiently appreciated, that the great ecclesiastical bodies of the United States-Baptist, Congregational, Dis ciple, Episcopal, Methodist, Presbyterian, Reformed -trace the origin of most of their church organiza-

tions directly to home missions. It is admitted that about nine-tenths of all the Evangelical churches in this country were either planted or, in periods of distress, were helped and maintained, by the aid of home missionary grants. It becomes, therefore, a fair question to ask, what and where, but for home missions, would be these great ecclesiastical bodies, which are acknowledged to be the conservers of American Christianity? But what does all this mean in the religious development of the country? The figures at this point palpitate with life. In the year 1800, when home missions began, the United States had one Evangelical communicant in 14.50 of the population. In. 1850 that ratio had grown to one in 6.57; in 1870, to one in 5.78; in 1880, to one in 5; in 1890, to one in 4.53; and in 1900, to one in 4.25; which is to say, that in less than 100 years Evangelical church-membership increased thirty-eight fold, while the population grew only eleven and eight-tenths fold. Church-membership increased three and one-half times faster than the population, and this in spite of the foreign flood. It is no vain boast, but an obvious truth, that by far the larger part of this magnificent growth is due to the direct agency of American home missions, since in its own carefully planted gardens most of this splendid growth has taken place.

J. B. Clark.

The reader should compare the articles on City Missions; Jews, Missions To the; and, for home mission work in Germany, Innere Mission.

Bibliography: The literature is extensive; only a selection of the later works is attempted here. A useful view can be obtained, from the denominational standpoint, of early mission work in America from the American Church Histort' Series, 13 vols. (especially vol. xiii., L. W. Bacon, Hist. of American Christianity), New York, 1893-97. Useful and from another point of view is the American Commonwealth Series, Boston, 1901 sqq. (still in progress). Consult further: L. Bacon, Genesis of the New England Churches, New York, 1874; W. Salter, Life of Joe. W. Pickett, Iowa City, 1881; W. F. Bainbridge, Along the Line at the Front; . . Baptist Home and For eipn Missions, Philadelphia, 1882; The Church Revived; . Parochial Missions in England, Canada, and the United States, New York, 1886; S. Loomis, Modern Cities, ib. 1887; A. HaygOOd, Pleas for Progress, ib. 1889; G. F. Magoun, Life and Times of Asa Turner, Boston, 1889; R. Storrs, The Puritan Spirit, Boston, 1890; H. Caswell, Life among the Iroquois Indians, ib. 1892. J. Strong, Our Country, New York, 1891; idem, The New Era, ib. 1893; D. Dorchester, The Problem of Religious Progress, ib. 1895; W. Puddefoot, The Minute Man on the Frontier ib. 1895; A. Dunning, Congregationalists in America, Boston, 1897; S. L. Gulick, Growth of the Kingdom q% God, New York, 1897 R. Hill, Cuba and Porto Rico, ib. 1898; B. T. Washington, UP from Slavery, ib. 1901; W. Mowry, Marcus Whitman and the Early Days of Oregon, ib. 1901; E. H. Abbott, Religious Life in America, ib. 1902; E. Adams, The Iowa Band, Boston, 1902; L. W. Bef, The Leaven in a Great City, New York, 1902; S. Doyle, Presbyterian Home Missions. Philadelphia, 1902; J. Rüs, The Battle with the Slums, New York, 1902; R, Thompaon, The Hand of God in American History, ib. 1902 J. Tillinghast The Negro in Africa and America, ib. 1902; G. Warneck, H(atory of Protestant Missions, ib. 1902; H. Whipple, Lights and Shades of a Long Episcopate, ib. 1902; J. Clark, Leavening the Nation, ib. 1903; W. Du Bois, Souls of Black Folk Chicago, 1903 R. Hitch ~ok, The Louisiana Purchase, Boston, 1903; B. Brandenburg, Imported Americans ew York, 1904; J. Horton, The Burden of the City, ib 1904; H. B. Gross, Incoming Millions ib. 1905; P. F. Hall, Immigration and its Effects upon the United States, ib. 1906; H. Holt, Life Stories of Undietinpuished Americana, ib. 1906; A. L. Phillips, Call

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of the Home Land; A Study of Home Miesiom, ib. 1906; A. M. GubrnseY. Citiaens of Tomorrow, ib. 1907. Further literature in to be dieooveted in the histories of the eeps rate denominations, most of which deal with the home mission work of the respective denominatki,