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THE MIGRATING NATIONS:
AMERICA’S OPPORTUNITY

The Migrating Nations:
America’s Opportunity

By BISHOP E. R. HENDRIX, D.D., LL.D.

•

Smith & Lamar

PUBLISHING HOUSE OF THE M. E. CHURCH, SOUTH

NASHVILLE, TENN., DALLAS, TEX.

1908

INTRODUCTION.

The United States’ recent immigration, in number and charac-
ter, is without a parallel in history. In 1907 she admitted 1,285,-
349 aliens, representing forty different races of people. These
foreigners in our midst constitute both a peril and an opportunity.
Foreign in ideas and ideals, segregated in the large cities, and
dominated by political bosses, they are a menace to our free in-
stitutions. At the same time they are the men from Macedonia,
whose presence and conditions make mute appeal to our Protest-
ant Christianity : “Help us ere we die.”

In “The Migrating Nations: America’s Opportunity” the au-
thor manifests an optimism that is born of faith in God and his
direction in the affairs of men. With the grasp of a Christian
statesman and vision of a modern prophet he sees in the mighty
movement “America’s opportunity” for the furtherance of the
gospel. Americanized and Christianized, these aliens will return
missionaries to pagan and papal nations.

Always thoughtful to the thinking, in this new contribution to
our missionary literature Bishop Hendrix is profoundly thought-
provoking. With a wide range of reading and characteristic in-
vestigation he searches for causes and traces with the pen of a
ready writer the providential courses of events.

John R. Nelson.

THE MIGRATING NATIONS:
AMERICA’S OPPORTUNITY.

Four hundred years after the discovery of America, when we
have had time to develop a distinctive type of civilization, when
with multiplied millions of acres uncultivated, vast mines un-
developed, and the largest railroad mileage of the world and
constantly increasing, alike in size and demands, and all soliciting
immigrants from every land, we suddenly wake up to the fact
that since 1820 more than 25,318,000 have already come, and
that for the past three years more than a million have come
each year. Even should the number not increase annually, we
can readily see that with the natural rate of increase in our pop-
ulation it would take but four generations, or say one hundred
and thirty-four years, for the population of the United States
to reach 950,000,000 — a population as dense as is to be found
on any part of the planet to-day. Can we assimilate this im-
mense population ? Will we Americanize it, or will it European-
ize or even paganize us? When Great Britain and Germany
each sent over more than two hundred thousand every year,
there was so much already in common that the work of absorp-
tion and assimilation was less difficult, and we were uncon-
sciously getting allies for the larger task of assimilating more
than three-quarters of a million to a million annually, coming
from a circle with Constantinople as a center. These are for
the most part Russians, Hungarians, Italians, Greeks. The for-
mer migrations had made Boston an Irish city, St. Louis a Ger-
man city, Chicago a German-Scandinavian city, and New York
a Hebrew-Italian-Hungarian city. The Scandinavians already
hold the balance of political power in Minnesota, North and
South Dakota, and are very strong in Illinois, Wisconsin, Michi-
gan, and Montana. These states have seventy-six electoral votes,
and that fact may lead to a Scandinavian, born in this country,

8 The Migrating Nations: Americans Opportunity.

becoming the opportune man always sought for at a national
election. Although nominated by the political party in the mi-
nority, already such a man has been twice elected Governor of
the great state of Minnesota largely through the votes of Scan-
dinavians who cannot forget that both his parents were born in
Sweden. The imperial commonwealth of Illinois had Altgeld
as its chief executive at a time when the Governor was not sim-
ply the mouthpiece of the foreign voters, but apparently of social-
ists and even anarchists as well, defying the power of the Federal
Government which had to be used to suppress the Debs insur-
rection.

I.

It must be remembered that in nineteen of our Northern
states the number of the foreign-born and their immediate de-
scendants exceeds the number of the home-bom or native popu-
lation. In some cities like New Bedford, Mass., and Milwaukee,
the foreign-bom make up eighty-five per cent, of the population.
With her low birth rate among the native born and her high
birth rate among the French-Canadians, the Italians, and the
Irish, New -England, the home of the Pilgrims, is fast becoming
Roman Catholic. President Eliot told me some five years ago
that he supposed that the majority of the population of Massa-
chusetts was even then Romanist no less than foreign. Have
we not more reason to fear the population whose center is Con-
stantinople than that whose center is Peking or Tokio? The
immigrants from Southeast Europe and Asia Minor are con-
fessedly fleeing from religious persecution. Russia, with her
attacks upon the Russian Jews, and Turkey’s frequent persecu-
tions of the Armenians, have led hundreds of thousands to seek
an asylum in America. Doubtless they have come from good
motives and with the kindliest feelings toward America. So,
too, the hundreds of thousands of Austro-Hungarians and Ital-
ians are coming to America because they expect a kindly recep-
tion here in this “land of opportunity.” America is the land of
“Try Again” for people of every nation. A brave United States
Senator, Hannibal Hamlin, and one who as Vice President pre-
sided over the Senate of which he was for twenty years in all

9

The Migrating Nations: America’s Opportunity.

(before and after his Vice Presidency) an honored member, did
not hesitate to declare, “Free immigration is the natural right of
man.” That does not imply that suffrage is too, for each nation
can determine for itself its own voters; but the right of every
man to seek an honest livelihood in any part of the world is
denied only by despotic governments or by savages. The na-
tions that recognize the unity of the race, that God has made of
one blood all nations of men to dwell on all the face of the
earth, have welcomed their brothers of every land, unless it ap-
peared that they belonged to the criminal classes, or were unfit
and undesirable citizens destined to fill our almshouses, or in-
sane asylums, or prisons. It is the privilege of every nation to
safeguard its own citizens against the physically or morally un-
fit. This is now being done by proper inspection both at the
ports of embarkation and of arrival, foreign governments ren-
dering, as does Italy, most valuable aid. The sovereign State
must protect its own people against barbarism also, as we do in
case of certain Asiatics and degenerates of every nation.

II.

Paul gave the true philosophy of history in his speech on
Mars Hill when to the Greeks who despised the cultureless bar-
barians, whose very language was harsh, he declared : “God has
made of one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face
of the earth, having determined their appointed seasons, and the
bounds of their habitation; that they should seek God, if haply
they may feel after him. and find him.” Alike the origin of
men and their adjusted diffusion on the earth is God’s work,
that all men might find God. If there was a Babel with its con-
fusion of tongues to defeat man’s hatred and defiance of God,
the heavenly Father never left himself without witness of his
eternal power and godhead. By the very configuration of the
earth, with its sentinel mountains and wide-separating seas, God
determined the bounds of man’s habitations until he could be
trusted to make of these barriers bonds. The visitations of Provi-
dence in fruitful seasons or the denial of ample harvests has de-
termined the times no less than the places of men’s occupation

i *

io The Migrating Nations: America’s Opportunity.

and habitation. Israel waited four hundred years to enter on the
land of promise because the iniquity of the Amorites was not yet
full. God guards the vilest heathen nation in its rights. Abra-
ham could confidently plead for Sodom and Gomorrah before the
Judge of all the earth, who must do right; nor did his prayer
cease until it blended with the supreme and gracious will of God.
Nor have any ever wept over the fate of the Cities of the Plain
when the righteous Father gave sentence.

III.

The profoundest conviction of mind and heart is that God is
doing the best possible for man. The earth itself is the temperate
zone of the solar system;. If we were only half our present dis-
tance from the sun, with its heat inversely as the square of the
distance, we should have four times as much heat as now. At
two-thirds our present distance we should receive more than
twice as much heat. If twice the distance that we are now from
the sun, we should have only a fourth as much heat. In any of
these events the human race must perish. Any considerable
change of the seasons or increase of the length of the day or night
would change the destiny, if not cut short the life, of the race.
The heavenly Father, who gave us our place in the universe, would
have us ever remember that ours is a universe with a common cen-
ter, where God has made of one blood all nations of men to dwell
on all the face of the earth ; but whatever their habitation, all are
to share alike in the gospel. All things are thus from God, through
God, and to God. He made men ; he places nations, determining
their boundaries and seasons; and the purpose and aim of crea-
tion and Providence is to unite all things in one. The human
race is not orphaned and forgotten. The heavenly Father knows
where all his children are, and would bring them all back to
him. He would have the elder brother help, saying not, “This
thy son,” but, “This my brother” has come again. In every
false religion the element of selfishness controls, so that a god
and a man make every other religion but one. The Christian
religion requires three persons: God, a man, and his fellow-
man. God is not a solitary being, and offers no solitary heaven.

The Migrating Nations: America’s Opportunity. n

The gates of heaven are wide enough for two, but not for one.
Unless we can bring our neighbor, we have no promise of en-
trance.

IV.

Now there are choice temperate regions of earth as there are
of the solar system. Lands of promise are these to which the
less favored may at times turn for religious and civil liberty.
Famine may turn them to the land of plenty whose fields the
Lord of the harvest blesses that through them all the nations of
the earth may be blessed. They come to help us till these fields
and to gather in these harvests. Remember the stranger that is
within thy gates, remembering that thyself wast also a stranger
in the land of Egypt. “Say before Jehovah thy God, a Syrian
and ready to perish was my father; and he went down into
Egypt and sojourned there, few in number; and he became there
a nation, great, mighty, and populous.” Wherever Israel was,
it was the land which the Lord her God had given her until she
came into the land of promise, in order that through her all the
nations of the earth might be blessed. Yet when Paul pro-
claimed the mystery which had been hid in God from the founda-
tion of the world, that “the Gentiles were fellow-heirs and fel-
low-members of the body and fellow-partakers of the promise
in Christ Jesus through the gospel,” the Jews were everywhere
ready to stone him. Peter dared not open the doors to the Gen-
tiles until he saw the vision of the sheet let down from heaven
and heard the divine command afresh which had been slumber-
ing in his mind since Pentecost and the Ascension. So, alas,
of the Church of God in all ages; she seems to think that the
keys are to lock out rather than to open the doors unto the
nations. She has forgotten the Lord’s other sheep.

V.

God has made even the continents as if they were intended to
help and not to corrupt each other when the time came for the
nations to break over their barriers of mountain and sea. The
stronger, by virtue of more favorable location, were intended to

12

The Migrating Nations: Americans Opportunity.

help the weak. Asia has a pendant in Australasia where even
now many Asiatics may be found, but, being without the true
religion and its fruits in a higher civilization, they have no up-
lifting power. Europe has a pendant in Africa which she is both
exploiting and Christianizing from her colonies as centers. The
mountain ranges which largely shut out Hannibal and his ele-
phants are now tunneled until there are no more Alps. North
America has her pendant in South America which is almost her
double, but being in the tropics needs both light and strength
from the people of the temperate zones. Now the mountain
ranges of Asia and Europe run east and west, protecting alike
from the heat and the migrations from the tropics. The more
favored people in the temperate zone of these continents move
westward along their own parallels until the Aryan nations
reach the Atlantic seaboard and ultimately cross the ocean to
America. The mountain ranges of the American continent run
north and south to bar Asiatic nations an entrance on the
Pacific, but opening to the mixed races of Europe the immense
plains east of these mountain ranges in both North and South
America. The path across the planet seems marked out of God
for the migrating nations. The very curse of confusion of
tongues seems lifted when the oracles of God given through
Hebrew prophets find in the perfect speech of Greece, the lan-
guage of the literature and commerce of the world, a fit vehicle ;
while the wonderful Roman roads furnish the highways for the
march of the conquering gospel. Then comes the great Anglo-
Saxon race, with its colonies on every continent and its own
language of literature and commerce, to teach civil and religious
liberty in all lands. The Englishman is the pioneer, with the
American a close second, in this great work of civilizing and
Christianizing the nations. Our mixed blood in each case ex-
plains much of our power. “Saxon and Norman and Dane are
we,” sings the Briton whose aptest scholars have been those of
the Italian Renaissance, as Chaucer and Shakespeare and Milton
and Browning. The land of Dante and of Savonarola, of Leo-
nardo and of Raphael and Angelo, has immeasurably enriched the
barren isles conquered by Julius Caesar.

The Migrating Nations: America’s Opportunity. 13

VI.

Now history proper is the biography of states or of nations,
both in respect of their internal affairs and in regard to their
dealings with one another, whether those relations be warlike
or friendly. Up to that time when political communities are
formed whose rise, progress, and affairs as nations make what
we call history, the consideration of man belongs simply to Nat-
ural History, or to that part or branch of it that we call Anthro-
pology. We become interested in man’s original condition and
home, the time and mode of his dispersion, and the tendencies
to group into more or less fixed communities. Genesis is an ac-
count of man’s creation and of his families until the time of the
great dispersion, when nations began to be formed; then come
the names of the seventy nations which appear after the con-
fusion of tongues at Babel. From these seventy nations, their
migrations, their wars, their conquests, when reenforced by
migrations and new conquests are planned, we have the begin-
nings of history. Often an entire change of national history fol-
lows large numbers of immigrants, as when the Medes thus re-
enforced from the East were able to undertake the invasion of
the Assyrian Empire in force, and ultimately to invest and cap-
ture Nineveh, dividing the spoils with Babylon. Sometimes
whole nations migrated and changed the course of history by
their alliances. Sometimes a captive nation gave up her landed
territory and changed to within the limits of another nation,
consenting to fight her battles as the price of life, and tO' re-
nounce an historic name as the condition of an alliance. Thus,
whether by reason of war or famine, nations began to have an-
nals as they changed their boundaries and often their entire
homes. Empires were formed of combined nations until in times
of later wars the nations were fused and welded under some im-
perial will, as Alexander’s or Caesar’s. It is usually the breaking
away from their original boundaries when these annals begin
either by the incoming of captive peoples, whose vacated terri-
tory is colonized from a common center, or by the planning of
yet fresh conquests by their combined armies. The individual
family is of little worth in history, and only helps to make his-

14

The Migrating Nations: America’s Opportunity.

tory in combination with other families that form nations. And
nations changing their boundaries change the map of the world.
The stories of the world’s great wars are stories of such alli-
ances. Europe has had few great wars between individual na-
tions. It is the nations in commotion that make history, either
by migrations or alliances

i ^ ' H ■ VII.

Now it is not only true that the history of the world begins
with the migrations of the nations, but it is equally true that
only the progressive nations migrate. The tropics have no his-
tory save one that is exotic, the story of conquerors from the
temperate regions. Where nature supplies all the simple needs
of human life, there is lacking the motive which comes from
.hunger or the desire to improve one’s physical condition. If
.'•ever the tropics enjoy the blessings of a high civilization, they
•must come from without. The “big brother” must bring them
*to his “little brother.” So it is with Africa to-day as Europe
lias planted her colonies on all her shores, and so the more in-
terested the great powers in behalf of the wretched natives
among whom, the colonies have been planted. Egypt that was
once a world-power is now little more than a province of En-
gland, but better ruled than in the days of her greatest extent
and power. England, Germany, Italy, Portugal, and Holland,
together with France, are giving Africa a new civilization until
the Great Sahara Desert is being exploited in the hope of recov-
ering somewhat of its glory, when a dense population once dwelt
there. Africa, if left alone, would have continued her course of
degeneracy and deterioration. Under English rule Egypt may
again become the granary of three continents, as the stored and
distributed waters of the Nile are turned into her ever-widening
grain and cotton fields. More than we are aware the economic
factors enter into the migrations of the nations. Famine in
Palestine sent a future nation to Egypt to sojourn where they
remained hundreds of years. A potato famine in Ireland sends
to America immigrants by the hundreds of thousands. With
every famine in Asia begins a new migration in that land of na-
tions. Plenty invites as famine dismisses the moving nations.

The Migrating Nations: America’s Opportunity: 15

Drought in western Kansas adds thousands to the population of
Oklahoma, as better prices for farm stuffs and more fertile lands
have shifted much of the population of New England to the
Western Reserve of Ohio and to the great Northwest. God
writes history with the migrating nations, and has done so since
history began with her first great immigrant, Abraham, the He-
brew, “the man who crossed over” from' Ur of the Chaldees to
the Land of Promise. Lot, who was in his company, seemed
content with the immigrant’s usual motive to better his condi-
tion and his fortunes, while Abraham was never unmindful that
God was leading him.

VIII.

The good seed have ever been “children of the kingdom.”
God’s usual method is to scatter men and, if need be, nations.
The Aryan or Indo-European group of nations tells of God’s
methods of husbandry when he would prepare Europe to be the
future seed-plot of nations. Celts, Teutons, Slavs, Greeks, and
Latins came from' their distant home in the highland plateaus
beyond the Caspian, while Persians and Hindoos sought new
homes nearer the sea, safeguarded by mountain passes. Some-
times the nations are seed and sometimes they are soil. Just
now, when the Sultan of Turkey forbids the preaching of the
gospel in Albania that furnishes him his bodyguard as well as
his prime minister, God has sent thirty thousand Albanians
to this country to hear the gospel. Scattered children of
Israel became seed and awakened universal expectation of the
coming of the Messiah, who was to them the King of the Jews,
but to others the Desire of all nations. So, too, the apostles
and early disciples became seed as the winds of persecution
scattered them into all the lands of the Mediterranean. Modern
missionaries, too, are such seed, and enrich the soil of many
lands with precious bones and blood, but saving many nations
as well. The islands of the sea, where a century ago could not
be found a Christian but where now cannot be found a pagan,
have been transformed by the good seed which have come from
Europe and America. The children of missionaries bom in

16 The Migrating Nations: America’s Opportunity.

heathen lands, and speaking the language with even greater skill
than their parents, are an asset which Rome acknowledges be-
yond any that she possesses.

IX.

Now in early times nations migrated sword and spear in
hand. They made homes for themselves by first destroying the
homes of less savage and less powerful nations. Worshipers in
Asia of the forces of nature which overpowered them, they came
in contact in Greece with worshipers of man whose conquests of
nature made new epochs, in time to be assimilated by them, until
later, under Rome, they became worshipers of society, the or-
ganized State, the Roman Empire. But when the Roman prov-
inces became part of a great empire, they began to learn of a
greater than Caesar, One whose throne was to endure forever,
for the birth of the Roman Empire and the birth of Christ were
almost synchronous. The empire began to decay, but the “City
of God” continued to grow. The savage conquerors of Rome,
the Goths and Huns and Teutons, were in turn conquered by the
Prince of Peace. The very Holy Roman Empire changed its
seat from the banks of the Tiber to the region of the Rhine, and
Frankfurt rather than Rome became its capital, while Charle-
magne became first the conqueror, then the civilizer, of Europe.
Roman culture added to German strength made possible his
mighty conquests. A new amalgam was formed when the Ro-
man taught the Teuton both arms and letters, but far more when
was given also the Christian religion. Tire woods of Germany,
which had sheltered the wild worshipers of Woden and Thor,
were to become the seats of the great universities which gave the
world a Luther and a Melanchthon, a Neander and a Tholuck,
a Leibnitz and a Goethe. Prussia, once the home of illiterate
men clad in the skins of wild beasts which they had slain, was to
become the most highly cultivated land of Europe.

X.

By virtue of the migration of the nations Ancient History
culminated in Rome, and Roman History culminated in the rise

The Migrating Nations: America’s Opportunity. 17

of the Empire. The nations were conquered under the Republic
and fused under the Empire. There never was an empire that
so united in itself the cultivated nations of the world as did the
Roman Empire. The Emperor Augustus erected the Golden
Milestone in the Forum to signify that Rome was the center of
the world. All roads led to Rome, and distances were meas-
ured from that Golden Milestone. Over these wonderful Roman
roads journeyed men of distinction to gain knowledge of the
world. Roman legions were constantly recruited from the prov-r
inces on the Danube and the Rhine, in Syria and in Britain.
Auxiliary troops were never stationed in their native cantons,
but soldiers lost their provincialism of life and speech as they
were sent to remote lands, proudly bearing the Roman eagles
at their head. Their highest reward of distinguished service was
Roman citizenship. Graeco-Roman culture filled the Empire.
The very language of Rome was more Greek than Latin, while
the Latin tongue toyk the place of the native speech in the west-
ern provinces. In the common law Rome gave the world a
mighty bond of union. The Roman spirit ruled in the domain
of government and law, the Greek in that of art and science, and
the Oriental in religion and life. The hand of old Rome was
too heavy to rule until gloved with Greek culture and softened
by Oriental religion. The conquered East brought her the true
faith. One name, Jesus of Nazareth, on the tax list of distant
Syria was to be the greatest name in Roman or human history;
while a Jew of Tarsus who was born a Roman citizen, with all
the privileges of Roman citizenship, was to be known when every
Csesar is forgotten, himself the noblest Roman of them all. One
of her smaller provinces added this great luster to the Roman
name and fixed this star of greatest magnitude in the Roman
firmament.

XI.

Nor was the great influence of Italy confined to the days of
the Republic and of the Empire. It was the Italian commercial
cities that broke up the Dark Ages and gave to modern nations
that impulse that set them forward in their career of social re-
finement and liberty. It is doubtful whether England would

1 8 The Migrating Nations: Americans Opportunity.

have ever had a Milton had not Italy given the world a Dante.
To Italian history and genius was due Shakespeare’s Julius
Csesar, “foremost man in all the world,” and the plots of his
greatest dramas; while the Brownings sang their sweetest and
highest notes under Italian skies. The canvas and marble of
all nations are indebted to Italian painters and sculptors. Italians
are still pronounced the brightest people in Europe. The modern
Italian comes to us not with the sword of the Caesars, but with
the sickle and the pruning hook and the spade. The successor
of the old Roman has become the modern road-builder of the
world and the harvest laborer of two hemispheres. Moving
freely between the continents, the Italian peasant (fit successor
of the old Roman soldier) gathers in the grape harvest of sunny
Italy and the coffee harvest of Brazil and the grain harvest of
Argentina, all in one season. He builds our subways and tun-
nels and waterworks, and covers the continent with our railways.
Obedient to orders, temperate, industrious, responding to kind-
ness, peaceable, he is the most esteemed of all unskilled laborers.
He may yet prove the greatest of American agriculturists in the
East and South, as the Chinaman or the Japanese has done in
the West, draining the swamp lands and gathering in harvests too
bountiful to be saved without his labor. Even the Italian organ-
grinder or fruit-vender of our streets is the successor of the
Italian monks under St. Augustine, who came to try to make
angels of the Angles that Gregory the Great so admired in the
slave markets of Rome and would himself have fain gone to
them with the gospel. America is the melting-pot of the nations,
as was Rome in her day. Refractory metals are fused only by
extraordinary heat. How diminutive the territory of Rome in
her proudest days, and how small her population compared with
our hundred millions on the mainland and in our island posses-
sions and dependencies, where are represented nearly all the false
religions of the world! Shall Islam or Christianity prevail in
the Philippines? Shall the “Black Pope” of the Jesuits or Prot-
estantism: win in Manila? Shall Puritan New England become
Papal? or New York become Hebrew?

The Migrating Nations: Americans Opportunity. 19

XII.

“The dividing mountains and the estranging sea” have in a
large measure ceased to be barriers between the nations. The
very ocean has become a bond rather than a barrier, and the
skillful spade of man is cutting canals where God made an isth-
mus against the time when men could be trusted with the ex-
plosives of modern chemistry to tunnel mountains and unite the
waters of separated seas. These boundaries served their pur-
pose in keeping men provincial when their ideas could not cor-
rupt the whole earth. The discoveries of science, like the great
productions of literature and the blessed gospel, are now for all
who are able to receive them. Carlyle taught that the three great
forces in modern civilization were the discovery of the uses of
gunpowder, the invention of the printing press, and the spread
of the Protestant religion. The one breaks down barriers by
land and sea, and the other two are for the spread of the truth.
The printing press and the discovery of America caught the at-
tention of the world at the same time. But it took a hundred
years after the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers, and more than
two hundred after the discovery of America, before (aside from
the Aborigines, who probably never numbered much more than
now) we had as many as a half million of population in America,
and those mostly British and Dutch colonists. The colonial ex-
pansion of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries changed the
whole aspect of the world.

The mediseval conditions so long prevailing in Europe, when
the French Revolution shook all Europe and America as well
with its motto of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, conditions
that forbade people without special passports to pass from one
parish to another, much less from one country to another, —
these mediaeval conditions disappeared in the movements of men
as “citizens of the world,” with the inherent right of expatria-
tion soon recognized in all international treaties. Only the
criminals must no longer find a Botany Bay in some distant land.
The mentally or physically feeble destined to become imbeciles
or paupers must be kept at home. Those suffering from deep-
seated disease, if they escape the inspectors on the other side,

20 The Migrating Nations: America’s Opportunity.

are sure of rejection on this side, and must be transported back
to their homes at the expense of the ships which brought them
to America. As many as sixty-eight to eighty thousand in a
single year have been either excluded or rejected, despite the
fact of being already provided with transportation. Only the
fit are^ welcome. The tragedy of the rejected immigrant, when
it meant separation of parents and children, has been known to
culminate in self-inflicted death rather than face alone the un-
toward conditions on either side of the Atlantic. It is lament-
ably true that in the congested conditions which await the im-
migrant for the first year in America his moral and physical
wretchedness exceeds that of his former home. Hundreds of
thousands do not remain to become naturalized. Hard financial
conditions have sent back not less than five hundred thousand
within a year. At the same time we have not less than fifteen
millions remaining, a number increasing rapidly every year, de-
spite the considerable numbers who 1 return home.

XIII.

Doubtless foreign nations reluctantly part with those fit for
military service and the large number of males, sixty per cent,
of whom are between fifteen and forty years of age. Every
able-bodied man who comes to us represents at least one thou-
sand dollars, being not only the amount represented by the cost
of his bringing up, but the reasonable amount which during the
rest of his life he is supposed to add to our national wealth, even
as an unskilled laborer. By reason of that fact, his presence is
sought among us and his family are made welcome that he may
be content to remain. Steamship companies have thousands of
agents in both Europe and America selling steamer passage,
even on the installment plan, to be used either by the purchasers
or those to whom steamer tickets are sent. While contract labor
is discouraged by law, yet hundreds of thousands of immigrants
are assured that, if they keep their counsel, plenty of work is al-
ready contracted for in the mines and by railroads in all parts
of America. These stringent laws which forbid contract labor
by immigrants leave from a third to a half of them to increase

The Migrating Nations: America’s Opportunity. 21

the already too great congestion of our seaboard cities with their
appalling vices. The “white slave” traffic, which lands thou-
sands of unsuspecting girls in the disreputable houses of our
great cities, preys constantly upon the immigrants, despite the
rigid laws for its suppression. “All hope abandon, ye who enter
here,” another Dante might well write over the portals of that
modern hell which receives into crowded city quarters a great
mass of our immigrant population. The peril of America to
the immigrant is often greater than the peril of the immigrant
to America. If return is impossible, revenge is still possible.
Hence the bomb and the torch. The socialist, and even the an-
archist, finds the soil ready for his dragon’s teeth in the hearts
of the discontented immigrant. What we have welcomed as de-
sirable citizens, adding to our wealth and the wealth-producing
population of our land, may through mismanagement become a
menace to our lives and property and to the stability of our
government. American citizenship does not have the attraction
which Roman citizenship had to the provincials from the Danube
or the Rhine. What have we to substitute the “Bread and
Games” which diverted the Roman populace from their squalor
and wretchedness? A Pantheon indeed we have where all who
have any religion at all can meet in synagogue or temple, for
ours is a land of religious toleration. The Greek is undisturbed
as he recites his Athanasian creed, and the Romanist can repeat
his “Filioque” in every cathedral. But it is to be feared that
millions of immigrants parted with their religious beliefs before
leaving their native land. Anarchy and atheism are usually
found together. Whatever may be true of a despotism or a
monarchy, religion is absolutely necessary to a republic. Unless
we can see to it that the religious well-being of the immigrant is
safeguarded, we sow to the wind to reap the whirlwind.

XIV.

While Nature may be the revelation of God in space, History
is the self-evolution of God in time. If the one shows God’s
natural attributes, as power and wisdom, the other reveals his
moral attributes. History is not an organization; it is an or-

22 The Migrating Nations: America’s Opportunity.

ganism, a growth from within, since all nations form but one
family, having one origin and one destiny. History proceeds
on an eternal and unchangeable plan of infinite wisdom, and
tends like creation itself to a definite end, the glory of God
through the free worship of intelligent beings. “The history
of the world is a judgment of the world,” said Schiller. It is
not the only judgment, but it is a judgment, where nations re-
ceive even here their sentence of doom. There are not only dead
nations whose death was self-inflicted, but there are moribund
or dying nations whose cup is rapidly filling, like the cup' of the
Amorites which it took four hundred years to fill. God is pledged
to no one nation, although he weeps over the chosen nations that
have disappointed him when in them he intended that all the
nations of the earth should be blessed, saying: “If thou, even
thou, hadst known in this thy day the things that belong tO' thy
peace ! But now they are hid from thine eyes.” God makes his-
tory through the migrating nations whose economic laws are in
his hand. Surely he who cares for the migrating birds, giving
them: their meat in due season, has not forgotten his promise to
man, “While the earth v remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold
and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night, shall not
cease.” The Good Shepherd still leads us beside the still waters
and makes us to i lie down in green pastures, for he has the
whole earth to choose from when he would lead his flock into
new pastures. His bow spans the whole firmament with its
promise and pledge. And all of these changes of seasons and
boundaries of residence are that men may seek after God, if
haply they may find him. It was thus that Abraham, educated
by a promise, led the first migratory nation of history to a land
of promise where they found God, and led other nations to him.
Every movement of the nations from the distant highland pla-
teau of Asia has been toward God. The soil has often been
brought to the seed and the sower has found the responsive na-
tion at his feet, as when the Teutons conquered Rome only to be
conquered by the Christian religion. False religions were segre-
gated until the God of history could bring men together where
the Sun of Righteousness was shining with healing in his wings.

2 3

The Migrating Nations: Americans Opportunity.

XV.

It was God’s messenger, that man of Macedonia, who brought
Paul to Europe with his gospel that he might get ready a con-
tinent which no false prophet or pagan faith could ever conquer.
Had the true faith been dependent on Asiatic peoples for its
final spread, we might be stretching out our hands to Japan or
China to-day. The great Sierra Nevada and Rocky Mountain
ranges showed that God did not intend that it should come that
way, but that we, with our great power of initiative, were to
bear it to Eastern Asia. Despite the relatively few Orientals
who have come to our Pacific coast, some of the best workers in
China and Japan and Korea found Christ in this country where
the soil had come to the seed. At a recent missionary meeting
in Canton, where there were fifty Chinamen who were engaged
in Christian work as native preachers in their own land, it
transpired that twenty-five out of the fifty had been converted
during their stay in America. Who can question that God had
brought the Asiatics here that they haply might seek after and
find God? The peril which we most need to fear is not the
“Yellow Peril” of an insignificant immigration from Eastern
Asia (not less than ninety-five per cent, of our immigrants have
always been Europeans), which God permitted to come as the
wise men from the East to the West to find him that was born
King of the Jews and take back the news; but the White Per-
il, a nation, as Voltaire sneeringly said of the English, who
imagined that God had become incarnate only for the Anglo-
Saxon race. Infidelity that sneers at our selfishness cannot re-
sist our true missionary spirit. Nations and religions perish as
they become selfish. Why should not ours be the Land of Op-
portunity to the immigrant as it was to the colonist, to the
persecuted of all lands to-day, as to the Huguenot and the Puri-
tan of two and three centuries ago. Let us not through our
selfishness deserve the curse pronounced upon Columbus by the
Jewish mother because he had discovered America where her
sons had lost their faith. Better far that they retain their old
faith than to be robbed of all faith as if God had altogether for-
gotten them. God has brought them here that they may find him.

24 The Migrating Nations: America's Opportunity.

XVI.

It is but just in our estimate of the migrating nations, who
come to us not as threatening armies or colonists consumed of
land-hunger and swearing loyalty to a foreign prince in whose
name they come to colonize our country, but coming as individu-
als and as families seeking freedom and fortune, that we judge
them by their best rather than by their worst representatives. We
judge a tree by its best fruit, not by what is worm-eaten and de-
cayed. So should we judge men and women in whose language has
been spread by thousands of agents (one company alone having
thirty-five hundred salaried agents seeking steerage passengers) *
the news of our land of religious and civil liberty which welcomes
the immigrant to our shores. There are no more devout people
than the members of the Greek Church who' are coming to us by
the hundreds of thousands with their Greek Testaments. Let us
remember that Hungary gave the world a Louis Kossuth, who
both inspired the Hungarian people and was inspired by them.
Bohemia gave us a John Huss and a Jerome of Prague, martyrs
for the true faith. Poland gave us both a Copernicus and a Kos-
ciusko. The Greeks, who are coming to us with that passionate
love of freedom that has been the world’s admiration, are the
successors of a nation of believers in Jesus Christ, who 1 in the long
oppression of four hundred years since the Greek Empire fell,
with the fall of Constantinople, has never given a single apostate
from the Cross to the Crescent. Among other brave men that
defended Constantinople were thousands of Venetians and Geno-
ise. Brave Genoa, that was the defender of the faith in the East,
was to furnish the discoverer of America in the West, who 1 should
take possession of the new continent with the uplifted cross of
Christ. The millions of Italian Christians whose bones sleep in
the catacombs of Rome, the stanch defenders of the Christian
faith for centuries, send forth their successors to Christian Amer-
ica. We give them a welcome “in His Name,” and send them
back, let us hope, if they return at all, better Christians than when
they came, and knowing more of the Christ who bought them
with his own precious blood.

The Migrating Nations: Americans Opportunity. 25

XVII.

Do the Russian Jews come in such numbers that in five years
more enter our harbors than there are Protestant communicants
on all Manhattan Island? Then let us remember Lord Macau-
lay’s famous saying that “every country has the ^ind of a Jew it
deserves.” Russia sends us the Jew as she has made him ; let us
re-create him by our love of humanity, and tell him of the lowly
Saviour already King of nations and destined to become King of
the Jews. Remember that it was a scarred little Jew who gave
the gospel to Europe, and who felt himself a debtor to Jew and
Greek, to barbarian and Scythian, to bond and free, and as much
as in him was gave the gospel to every creature. Let us look at
the best and remember the best. Who ever saw a Jew or an Ital-
ian beggar? Who ever saw an abandoned Jewish wife or mother,
or an abandoned or drunken Italian wife or mother? The Jews
and Italians have charitable societies of their own to look after
their poor in this country, and seek to distribute them to suitable
fields. If only Jews appealed to divorce courts, many a judge
would lose his bench and his judicial robe. Scandinavians, in-
cluding all Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, were the first to es-
pouse the cause of Protestantism and help to sing Luther’s great
“Battle Hymn” in the remotest forests and plains of our land.
There is good in every land whose enterprising citizens or sub-
jects seek an asylum or home in our own favored country. We
will find what we are looking for in immigrants from every coun-
try, and it will be largely our fault if we do not make them what
we wish them to be with our gospel. Whether they stay or re-
turn, they will bear for the future the seal and stamp of our asso-
ciation. For the most part we think that they have come hoping
for the best that we can give them. Let them have our best — our
Sabbath, our faith, our love of native land and of the home. Let
them not be disappointed in our love and enthusiasm for hu-
manity.

XVIII.

Now what can we do about the incoming millions of immi-
grants to whom our doors stand open ? Can we blame them for

26 The Migrating Nations: America’s Opportunity:

wanting to come to what we claim and they believe is the fairest
and most promising land in the world, where they can worship
God according to the dictates of each man’s conscience? After
excluding the weak in body and in mind, and members of the
criminal classes, we have no excuse for refusing all who have a
reasonable prospect of earning an honest living. To attempt to
do otherwise is to violate our treaties with the different nations
and to make possible the exclusion of our own citizens who may
wish to reside abroad, and so endanger our commerce and re-
strict our culture and even the privileges of foreign travel, with-
out a system of passports which would be oppressive, if not pro-
hibitory. We cannot build a Chinese wall in the twentieth cen-
tury when the last of the Hermit Nations has no longer such a
barrier. The waters of the rivers of all lands mingle in a com-
mon ocean as the waters of the oceans mingle first in a common
atmosphere before the rivers hurry them onward to the sea.
Man is such an atmosphere, the medium of communication be-
tween all the continents, until humanity becomes the common
reservoir and beneficiary of all the fruits of the soil, the loom,
the intellect of the planet.

Is it too much to hope that here in America the Jew, our
Lord’s kinsman according to the flesh, may yet find the Land of
Promise, because he here finds his Messiah? The Jewish popu-
lation of the world is estimated at 11,585,202, and one-sixth of
them are in America. We with our 1,777,185 are third in our
number of Jews, being exceeded only by Russia with her 5,215,-
800, and Austria-Hungary with her 2,075,000. They are com-
ing to us in such large numbers annually (153,000 in 1906 and
134,113 in 1907) that we will soon rank second in our Jewish
population, with Russia’s number ever decreasing in our favor.
Our present Jewish population exceeds that of the combined
Jewish population of all these countries, namely: the British
Empire, Germany, France, Italy, Morocco, Turkey, Spain, China,
the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Peru, and Crete. Boston
has more Jews than residents of any other nationality, while in
New York City alone there are 600,000, nearly twice as many
as in the whole British Empire, which has only 361,638; and

The Migrating Nations: Americans Opportunity. 27

more than Turkey, where there are 468,683 — Turkey that em-
braces Asia Minor and the original home of the Jews in Pales-
tine.

XIX.

Since we cannot stop immigration, or materially restrict it
beyond what we are already doing, may we hope to regulate and
assimilate it? Shall it be our menace, or shall we make it our
opportunity? This is a question alike for the nation and the re-
ligion that has made us a Christian nation, as declared by our
Supreme Court. Twice during the last decade, or a little more,
our nation has had to confess to Italy respecting the treatment
of Italians in New Orleans, and to Japan respecting the treat-
ment of Japanese children at the hands of the San Francisco
School Board, what for years we have been confessing to China
respecting the massacre of Chinese by Wyoming and California
mobs, that as a nation we cannot control the action of citizens
of the states that compose our Federal Union. These citizens
of the Union may precipitate a war as foreign battleships enter
our ports and demand an indemnity, and yet as a nation we
cannot regulate the conduct of the citizens of different states
toward immigrants of the countries with which we have solemn
treaty obligations. The great World-Powers are amazed at our
weakness in claiming to be a World-Power, while unable to keep
our solemn pledges of protection as against our own people
whose acts of violence we can only apologize for, but not prevent.
Not only may it be necessary to regulate immigration by a better
system of distribution and thus avoid those congested colonies
along both seaboards and in our larger cities, but new powers
may need to be given to Congress that we may keep faith with
foreign nations whose citizens and subjects we stand pledged
to protect, as we require the protection of our citizens in foreign
lands.

XX.

But more than everything else our Christianity is being chal-
lenged and tested as it has not been since the days of the Roman
Empire, where like conditions obtained. No nerveless, vague,

28 The Migrating Nations: America’s Opportunity.

effeminate religious teaching could ever have reached and con-
quered the subject nations which formed so large a part of the
Roman Empire. Then faith was stronger than arms, and the
nations which in time conquered Rome bowed before the con-
quering Christ. Even Gibbon cannot forget the saving leaven
at work as he says :

A pure and humble religion gently insinuated itself into the minds of
men, grew up in silence and obscurity, derived new vigor from opposition,
and finally erected the triumphant banner of the Cross on the ruins of the
Capitol. Nor was the influence of Christianity confined to the period or
to the limits of the Roman Empire. After a revolution of thirteen or four-
teen centuries, that religion is still professed by the nations of Europe, the
most distinguished portion of the humankind in arts and learning as well
as in arms. By the industry and zeal of the Europeans, it has been widely
diffused to the distant shores of Asia and Africa, and by means of their
colonies it has been firmly established from Canada to Chili, in a world
unknown to the ancients.

Gibbon was compelled to witness to the triumphant progress
of a religion whose causes he could but inadequately explain.
Lecky better explained it in his “History of European Morals,”
as he fixes our mind upon the pure and perfect life of its Founder.
We can explain it better still by the presence with his people of
their risen and living Lord, so far as they have the mind that
was in Christ. Jesus needed to rebuke his own apostles, when
they would fain have called down fire from heaven to rid them-
selves of an objectionable people, by saying, “Ye know not what
manner of spirit ye are of.” The Son of Man came not to de-
stroy life, but to save it. The sword has been the weakness of
Christianity, as witness the many Christian wars since the com-
ing of the Prince of Peace. More Christian blood has been shed
by Christians than by all the Mohammedan and pagan swords
since Christ was born. Only a virile Christianity, patient
through its abundance of life, not through its conscious weak-
ness, can solve the problem of the mingling nations, whether in
Europe or in America.

XXI.

What is to be the type of our American Christianity? Shall
we be the Good Samaritan, or the selfish priest or Levite, to this

The Migrating Nations: Americans Opportunity . 29

our fellow-being who appeals to us by his dumb lips which can-
not utter a word of our language? Never in the history of the
race has there been made such an appeal to Christians to quit
themselves like men, and to be strong, as is being made to Chris-
tians in America to-day. It is an appeal for native land no less
than for the nearly twenty millions of strangers who are to-day
within our gates, to say nothing of Mohammedans and Bud-
dhists and Confucianists and other pagans in our island depend-
encies. But most of all, it is an appeal to show a better type
of Christianity than has driven millions of immigrants to seek
asylum on our shores. It is ours to modify the Roman Catholic
faith in this atmosphere of religious freedom so as to affect every
papal land of Europe. It is ours to make the Jew have a dif-
ferent view of Christ after seeing more of those who call and
profess themselves Christians, as some of the more intelligent
have already frankly confessed. The very follower of Moham-
med may here find the Father whom he has long since wor-
shiped only as the Sovereign, and become zealous enough for
the Son who has shown him the Father to seek to tell the story
of a pure Christianity to a people who have only known a cor-
rupt type. America has become the great missionary training
school and missionary field of the world, since the sun now
never sets on her flag floating in both hemispheres. “Far-called
our navies melt away,” but we dare not forget

Beneath whose awful hand we hold
Dominion over palm and pine :

Lord of hosts, be with us yet,

Lest we forget, lest we forget.

XXII.

It is our Protestant religion that is now confronted by the
greatest opportunity of the centuries in making Christian Amer-
ica the Land of the Future. The vitality of the Roman Empire
was so great that “it took Rome a thousand years to die.” It is
only our immortal faith that can make America immortal.
With her Anglo-Saxon power of initiative, in a land numbering
more than half of the Anglo-Saxons of the globe, with her

30 The Migrating Nations: America’s Opportunity.

ability to overcome physical difficulties by land and sea, with her
reverence for law and her power of organization, and with her
pure faith, America combines the best of the Greek and the
Roman and the Hebrew, God’s three chosen nations of history.
What has not little England done, since she assimilated Saxon
and Norman and Dane, in becoming the mistress of the sea, and
in planting her colonies in all the world, and in setting up judg-
ment in the earth by the purity of her judges and the sanctity of
her homes. Yet our America would contain sixty-nine Englands,
and even of our fifty-two states and territories twenty-eight are
each larger than all England. Palestine, Greece, and Italy, the
three chosen lands of human history, could all be gathered into
California alone, and then leave ample room for a fair-sized
kingdom. If Texas were placed on the map of Europe, it would
cover the capitals of England, France, Belgium, Switzerland,
Germany, and Austria. And Texas is much smaller than
Alaska. Our continent has become the pathway of the nations
as we have turned the sea-barriers into bonds, and are uniting
the great oceans to shorten the pathway of the world’s navies,
by our great southern water-front.

XXIII.

Never was there such a call for Christian zeal and liberality.
We have not yet put forth half our strength. Shall not American
Christians, like American explorers and civil and mechanical en-
gineers, love a great undertaking ? If other nations fail, then the
greater reason that we should dig the Panama Canal. The rich-
est nation in the earth, with the least national debt and share
per citizen, with the largest territory and the greatest popula-
tion, we have the greatest opportunity. We are spending more
money in luxurious living than any other people; let us spend
more for Christ. We are in our infancy as regards growth, but
in our manhood as regards opportunity. We have more un-
housed congregations than any other people, and fewer mission-
aries to work among the incoming millions. We need the gift
of tongues to approach all these millions, as well as the tongues
of fire to reach them with the gospel of our Christ and theirs.

The Migrating Nations: America? s Opportunity. 31

Millions await our gathering them into places for religious in-
struction, and millions of children need to be led and taught
now, if we would make them Christians rather than socialists
and anarchists. “Christ valued in man only his humanity, not
his outward distinction of wealth or birth or station. His pos-
sessions were nothing compared with himself or what he could
become.” Thus only can we reach and absorb and assimilate by
our schools and churches and society the migrating nations.
What has made the Anglo-Saxon victorious is his spirit of free-
dom, his domestic character, and his religious mind. Unless
these are found, and found at their best among us, we are not
girded for the future. Hegel well declared that “Christ’s ad-
vent is the goal of all previous history and the starting point of
all history to come.” A nation without Christ belongs to the
past, to the moribund or dead nations, and not to the future.
Thank God for the Norse blood in our veins at such a time as
this. Carlyle says: “The strong old Norse hearts had not time
to tremble. They thought of Thor, who grasped his hammer
until his knuckles grew white.” Let parents and children of all
tongues salute the flag, as do the Hawaiian children. Whether
they be Hawaiians, Japanese, Chinese, or English, they are all
Americans as they sing :

We give our heads and our hearts to God and our Country.

One country, One language, One Flag.

We cannot sing, “God save the King” ; but we can sing, “God
save America”; and we do. God save America, not only for
our sake but for the world’s sake, and that will be for Christ’s
sake.

Kansas City, Mo.

t

V