Education is one of the expressions of the passionate desire and purpose for betterment of those who gave their impress to our national life. Hamilton Mabie says: "Among Americans education is not only a discipline, a training; it is also a symbol. It means living an ampler life in a larger world."
The church-Home Missions—from the beginning has been the largest factor in the spread of schools and colleges—the greatest single educative force of this country.
The record of the Home Mission activities of the various denominations tells the story of the founding of academies and colleges, throughout the length and breadth of the land. In Kansas the State Normal School, State Agricultural College and the State University were founded by Home Missionaries.
Of the great Eastern universities and colleges it will be recalled that many were established by the Christian church. Among these are Harvard, Williams, Columbia, Princeton, Rutgers, Vassar and many others.
Home Missions is still an active and deeply needed educative force. It brings the most powerful influence to the great groups of the neglected in our land, giving them visions of bettered physical conditions, yearnings after higher spiritual purposes, and determinations for a fuller realization of life in all its meaning, with the power of attaining these ideals.
IV
A HEALING FORCE
"During the spring months an epidemic of diphtheria and other infectious diseases visited a district of nine or ten villages in New Mexico. Many children succumbed to these diseases, the number of those who died being about one-tenth of the entire population of the district.
"No people in the world are kinder-hearted than the Mexican people. Everybody, even the children, visits the sick, and attends the velorios (wakes) and funeral rites of the dead, without regard to the contagious character of the disease.
"This fatal custom is re-enforced by a fatalistic philosophy. Whatever befalls one, he receives it with an 'Asi me toco' (It was my fate). Whatever comes, he says: