A Call for Sacrifice
A call to home mission service is thus presented by Dr. Goodchild, who would carry religion more fully into the settlement idea: "We need for the solution of this problem that young men and women who go to the great cities from the strong churches of the smaller towns and villages should identify themselves with mission churches rather than to seek ease and honor in wealthy churches where unused talent is already congested.
The Living Example
"We need young men and young women to go down among these people and live Christian lives in the midst of them. I do not believe that any one should take his children there to rear them. But young men in groups, or young women in groups, or young couples without children, who are able to earn their own living could contribute greatly to the solution of these problems if they would live among these foreigners and help in the process of digestion and assimilation. And there is nothing that can do that work so quickly and effectually as for Christian men and women to dwell among these people, as Christ once left his home on high to dwell among the sinful ones of earth. And if there are young men and young women who are willing to give themselves wholly to work for these people, and will live among them, and seek by the power of divine grace to lift them up, it surely is very little for you and me to sustain them while they toil."
How the Work Grows
Wherever earnest effort has been put forth, the progress of the work has been most encouraging. As an illustration of this, when Dr. H. A. Schauffler some twenty years ago began his pioneer missionary work among the 25,000 Bohemians of Cleveland, he could not learn of any fellow-laborers in the Slavic field except a Bohemian theological student in New York, a Bohemian Reformed Church pastor in Iowa, and another in Texas. But in 1905 there met in Chicago an Interdenominational Conference of Slavic missionaries and pastors, and that gathering comprised no less than 103 Slavic workers, of whom sixty-four were pastors and preachers, fourteen women missionaries, and twenty-five missionary students; while the conference represented forty-nine churches in thirteen states, and five evangelical denominations. Mr. Ives says truly: "It has been forever established that foreigners are as convertible as our own people, that in many instances their faith is more pure and evangelical than the American type, that their lives are transformed by its power to an extent that sometimes puts the American Christian to shame, that their children are easily gathered into Sunday-schools, their young people into Endeavor Societies, and their men and women into prayer-meetings, where in many different tongues they yet speak and pray in the language of Canaan. The immigration problem is not the same menace that it was. A mighty solvent has been found."
Inspiring Difficulties
There is no escaping the fact that a prodigious amount of difficult lifting must be done in order to elevate the aliens to the American social and religious level. But the very vastness of the home mission task is inspiring rather than discouraging to heroic souls. As someone says, "The American loves a tough job." Difficulties will not hinder him a moment when once he is moved with the divine impulse, sees the thing to be done, and sets himself with God's help to do it. Present conditions call to mind that passage in "Alice in Wonderland," where by the seashore
The walrus and the carpenter were walking hand in hand,
And wept like anything to see such quantities of sand.
"If seven maids with seven mops, swept it for half a year,
Do you suppose," the walrus said, "that they could get it clear?"
"I doubt it," said the carpenter, and shed a bitter tear.
A Hopeful, not Hopeless Task