Loss of the American Sunday
Let us be just in this matter. The loss of the American Sunday is undoubtedly due in great measure to immigration; due in part to the weakness and dereliction of American professing Christians who have surrendered to the foreign elements and fallen in with their ideas instead of maintaining public worship and insisting upon respect for law at least. Let the blame fall where it belongs, and let the Church members recreant to duty take their share. When the sea threatened Holland her resolute people built the dykes and maintained them; American Christians have failed to stop the leaks in the church dykes, and we have had a Sunday submergence in consequence. The effect of it upon our national development is already evident and is most disastrous to our highest interests. Sabbath-breaking and progress-making never go together. Sunday work and pleasure combined form the peril alike of the American workingman and of Christian civilization.
General Deterioration
Along with this inflow of alien ideas in religion goes a lowered morality and a lower tone generally. Not that the sins of those in high places are to be charged upon the poor immigrant, for he rarely if ever belongs to that class. The statement may be true that the great rascals are of native stock. But that only increases the peril. The masses that come to us from southern Europe certainly will not raise the moral or commercial, any more than they will the political or intellectual, level. If we do not raise them they will tend to lower us; and much of what they see and hear can have nothing less than a demoralizing effect.
The Only Safeguard of Liberty
Where shall we find the zealous and consistent Christians who by sympathetic contact will represent the true spirit of Christianity, and make the elevation of the aliens possible? The supreme truth to be realized is that nothing but Christianity, as incarnated in American Protestantism, can preserve America's free institutions.
Spread of Socialism
Ex-President Seelye, of Amherst, said that socialism is the question of the time, and this is more apparent with every passing year. Socialism has its source in the foreign element. It is not native to America. Its swelling hosts are composed almost entirely of immigrants of recent coming. It is found not only in the great cities but is spreading through the farming sections. Now, there is a truth in socialism that must be intelligently dealt with; and there is a Christian socialism that should become dominant. And this is the only force that can check and counteract the foreign socialism that would sweep away foundations instead of ameliorating conditions and remedying evils.
Migration a Severe Test
In the same way, Protestant Christianity is the only agency that can save us from the moral degeneracy involved in migration, even if the immigrants were of our moral grade before coming. As Dr. Strong says, the very act of migration is demoralizing. All the strength that comes from associations, surroundings, relations, the emigrant leaves behind him, and becomes isolated in a strange land. Is it strange, then, that those who come from other lands, whose old associations are all broken and whose reputations are left behind, should sink to a lower moral level? Across the sea they suffered restraints which are here removed. Better wages afford larger means of self-indulgence; often the back is not strong enough to bear prosperity, and liberty too often lapses into license.[85]