THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
assured hope of independence and self-support. The churches of the East have never tired in this work. The fear, the hope, the purpose of early New England have been loyally inherited by her sons and daughters, the fear of barbarism, the hope of prevention, and the wide-spread conviction that America's day of judgment is in the West, a judgment to be determined only by the planting of churches and Christian schools.
The missionary history of the Northwest Territory and the Louisiana Purchase was repeated when, about midway in the century, the
10. Work Oregon treaty made sure possession of
in Later the Far Northwest and the discovery Accessions, of gold opened the Californias to the world. Home missionaries, ordained in the East, promptly started for the Pacific Coast, reaching their destination by way of Cape Horn and the Sandwich Islands. The strategic position of the coast missions, as related to foreign missions in China and Japan, was keenly appreciated by the churches of the East and their missionary boards; money was contributed more freely than ever, and many of their ablest preachers went forth cheerfully to lay the foundations of Christian society on the sunset shores of the republic. The Mexican Cession, one of the fruits of the Mexican war, including Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah, opened still another belt of peculiar missionary need, which, in spite of ancient superstitions and modern delusions, has proved a rich and rewarding field of missionary effort. Perhaps the most significant feature of these early missionary movements thus far considered was their close connection with the historic development of the nation. Yet " connection " is hardly the word to describe their real influence. More truly they were an integral and saving part of that development.
Two events belonging to the latter half of the
nineteenth century were destined to have a marked
influence on home missionary history.
ii. Work The close of the Civil War introduced, for at the South, a missionary problem ab-
Negroes solutely new, which immediately atand tracted, and continues to absorb, the
Immigrants, attention of the Northern churches to an extraordinary degree. Four million blacks, hitherto inaccessible to missionary effort, were suddenly emancipated. At once the National Government opened its bureaus of relief, and missionary boards of the North hurried forward preachers and teachers. To the missionary himself there was in this call a certain element of peril which, so far from checking, only stimulated his zeal. At first the Northern preacher and teacher were not well received by the white of the South; social ostracism was their frequent lot, and even violence to their persons and destruction of their property were not uncommon in the early days. An ugly spirit of caste included the teacher of the negro with the negro himself, and young women, delicately reared in the best homes of the North, suffered, not merely from social neglect, but occasionally from open indignity. These early conditions have greatly softened and are passing away. Appreciation, and even gratitude, have taken their place as the results of these mis-
sionary efforts have become more apparent. Such fruits appear, not only in organized churches for the negro race, but in a long array of universities colleges, academies, normal institutes, and industrial schools, opened exclusively for the benefit of the blacks, all of them specifically Christian, and all of them originally planted and supported by the freewill offerings of the North. Howard, Hampton, Fisk, Atlanta and Tougaloo, Talladega and Straight, Shaw and Richmond, Nashville and Bishop, Wayland and Leland, and a host beside, are names that are becoming as familiar to the educational world as Harvard, Yale, or Princeton. They were all made possible by negro emancipation, and they are all the creation of home missions. See Missions Among the Heathen, B, III., 1, § 3. Another fact, as marked in its influence upon the home missionary spirit of the churches, has been foreign immigration, beginning to attract attention as early as 1840, and growing, decade by decade, in its insistent demand for treatment, until to-day it vies with the missionary call of the West and South for prompt, wise, and far-sighted consideration on the part of the churches and their missionary boards. The figures used to measure the volume of this problem are too familiar to need rehearsal here. Sufficient to say that up to 1840 the total of foreign immigration had not exceeded 500,000 in the previous history of the country, while during the year 1906 alone more than twice that number were landed in the United States. Here is a gigantic problem, sufficient to tax not only the wisdom of rulers and lawmakers, but appealing in a special way to the missionary spirit of the churches and to the thoughtful interest of every lover of his country. It is only true to say that the exigency of this problem revolutionized the home missionary appeal. To the peril of domestic heathenism, which stirred the zeal of Connecticut and Massachusetts in 1798, has now been added the larger fear of imported barbarism; and thus for several recent years foreign missions in America have come to be of burning interest to American home missions. All branches of the Church, without exception, have taken part in this work through their organized agencies. No nationality has been overlooked; Germans, Scandinavians, Bohemians, Poles and Russians, Hollanders and Hebrews, Spanish, French and Italians, Armenians, Syrians, Japanese and Chinese — every sort and condition of foreigner, however apparently hopeless, has been made the subject of home missionary effort and culture. The results have astonished the most sanguine; they have rebuked the most despairing, and have all but silenced the prophets of evil, ever ready to foretell the direst consequences from the infusion of so much foreign blood into the moral, social, and political life of the nation. Many times over it has been demonstrated that every grade of alien is susceptible to religious development, is entirely capable of being both civilized and Christianized, and is in fact being rapidly assimilated into a hopeful type of American life. Twenty-five years ago there was hardly a foreign-speaking missionary in the employ of any home missionary society. To-day they are numbered by the thousands, who preach and teach in twenty different