GEORGE A. GORDON
The Old South Church, Boston, has had a prominent and patriotic part in American history since early days. It was a Puritan immigrant and layman of this church, Samuel Sewall, who was one of the first to speak out against human slavery in his tract, “The Selling of Joseph”; and it was in this church that the five patriotic addresses, published in 1917 under the title, “The Appeal of the Nation,” were delivered by George Angier Gordon, pastor of the church since 1884. The Rev. Dr. Gordon, who was born in Scotland in 1853 and received his common school education there, came to the United States in 1871. In 1881 he obtained the degree A.B. from Harvard. He has since served his Alma Mater frequently in the capacity of University preacher, and many Harvard men will recall his inspiring talks in the college chapel. In the following selection he manifests the poignant homesickness, the sterling loyalty, and the noble aspiration so common in the writings of the immigrant.
THE FOREIGN-BORN AMERICAN CITIZEN: COST, PRIVILEGE AND DUTIES OF HIS CITIZENSHIP
The Republic of the United States is in fact a nation of immigrants, a nation of aliens. All have made the great migration, all have come hither from other parts of the earth. The only difference among Americans is that some came earlier while others came much later, indeed as it were yesterday, to these shores. The only aboriginal American is the Indian. This historic fact should be forever borne in mind. We came hither first or last, across the ocean, and from the ends of the earth.
There is however a ground of distinction among Americans; they are rightly divided into native citizens and citizens foreign-born. The native citizen has grown into the being of the society that his alien ancestors helped to form. He has in his blood an American inheritance; his instincts have been fed with native food; he is alive to nothing else as he is to the American Republic. We foreign-born Americans acknowledge his distinction, we rejoice in his happiness, we count ourselves fortunate to stand with him in the great communion of free citizens. We ask him, in his turn, to read in the story of our migration the struggle of his ancestors; we remind him of what we left behind, what we brought with us, and at what cost we gained our American citizenship.
In the words that I have chosen as my text[9] we have a foreign-born Roman citizen. Exactly where he was born we do not know; we do know that he was born outside Roman citizenship. He was, therefore, an adopted citizen of the Roman Empire, and to this he refers in the words that I have quoted, “With a great sum obtained I this citizenship.”
There are three implications in these words: the cost of citizenship to this man; the privilege of citizenship to him; his duty as a Roman citizen. These three points will be a convenient guide to us in our discussion of the subject of the morning—“The Foreign-born American Citizen.”
1. First of all, then, there is the cost to this man of citizenship in the Roman Empire. He obtained it with a great sum; to get it made him poor.
There are few among native-born American citizens who understand the sacrifice made by the foreign-born citizens of the heritage of childhood and boyhood in the wonder world of early life. There is the bereavement of the early mystic, unfathomable touch of nature that comes to one only through one’s native land. Never again to see the sun rise and set over the dear old hills, with the hero’s mantle like the bloom of the heather resting upon them, and the shadow of an immemorial race, is truly a great bereavement. Never again to see the green pastures, with the flocks quietly feeding in them, under the shade of the plot of trees here and there mercifully provided by the humanity of previous generations, nor to hear the music of the river that has sung into being and out of being forty generations of human lives; never again to see the fields covered with corn, nor to hear the reaper’s song among the yellow corn; never again to see the light that welcomed you when you were born, that smiled on you when you were baptized, that went with you to school, that watched your play, that constituted the beautiful, the glorious environment of your early days; never again to hear the song of the native birds, the skylark in the morning, the mavis at nightfall, and the wild whistle of the blackbird under the heat of noon from his thorny den,—all this is simply inexpressible bereavement. Nature is inwoven with the soul in its earliest years; its beauty, its wildness, its soul becomes part of the soul of every deep-hearted human being, and never again can nature be seen as she was seen through the wonder of life’s morning.
It is this spell of nature over the young soul that gives its exquisite pathos to Hood’s world-familiar melody: