RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Home Missions
tongues, planting Protestant churches for the foreign-born and gathering into them intelligent members by tens of thousands. It is beginning to be recognized that one powerful solvent of the evils of immigration has been found. Great migrations are not the dread they were forty years ago. Disturbing fears have been quieted, and, with all the natural apprehension that remains and must remain, our native American people are viewing with less and less alarm what but a few years ago almost crazed them with apprehension. This era of hopefulness is due, in no small measure, to the undoubted success of American home missions in enlightening and Christianizing adopted citizens. See Emigrants and Immigrants, Mission Work Among, II.; and Slavic Missions in the United States.
To attempt any adequate summary of the fruits of home missions at the end of 100 years would require a survey of the history of 12. Sum- fifty States and Territories, so vitally mary. have the home missionary and his work entered into the early development of most of the commonwealths. A few salient facts must suffice. In the first place, the growth of organizations is significant. Beginning in 1798 with a single society, the first of its kind in history, having in its treasury a capital of $600, the home missionary movement, then started, has given birth, during the last 100 years, to thirty-five distinct societies, all Protestant, all Evangelical, all national, collecting and disbursing during the last calendar year more than $6,000,000 for the Christian instruction of communities which, without such help, might have lived and died in religious destitution. Together these organizations have disbursed $150,000,000 for the planting of churches alone. Their chief agent has been the Church, with its ordained preachers and its divinely appointed ordinances, and for the Church these millions have been given. This total, however, takes no account of those cooperating agencies which have been called into being to serve this missionary work of the churches. Add, therefore, Sundayschool planting, Bible and tract printing, church building, and Christian colleges, all of which have sprung up in the path of home missions and are among its legitimate fruits, and the grand total of home missionary expenditure, root and branch, in organized form, is found by careful computation to be not less than $360,000,000. Not a dollar of this immense fund has been paid, in any commercial sense, for value received. All of it has been given, a free-will offering of Christian people, to mark their intense conviction of the peril of a nation without the Gospel and their supreme faith in its leavening power. But beyond the growth of mere organizations and the multiplication of missionary capital, what have these agencies and these millions accomplished, and what visible fruits remain to justify the cost of the effort? It is a fact not generally known, and when known, not sufficiently appreciated, that the great ecclesiastical bodies of the United States— Baptist, Congregational, Disciple, Episcopal, Methodist, Presbyterian, Reformed —trace the origin of most of their church organiza-
tions directly to home missions. It is admitted that about nine-tenths of all the Evangelical churches in this country were either planted or, in periods of distress, were helped and maintained, by the aid of home missionary grants. It becomes, therefore, a fair question to ask, what and where, but for home missions, would be these great ecclesiastical bodies, which are acknowledged to be the conservers of American Christianity? But what does all this mean in the religious development of the country? The figures at this point palpitate with life. In the year 1800, when home missions began, the United States had one Evangelical communicant in 14.50 of the population. In 1850 that ratio had grown to one in 6.57; in 1870, to one in 5.78; in 1880, to one in 5; in 1890, to one in 4.53; and in 1900, to one in 4.25; which is to say, that in less than 100 years Evangelical church-membership increased thirty-eight fold, while the population grew only eleven and eight-tenths fold. Church-membership increased three and one-half times faster than the population, and this in spite of the foreign flood. It is no vain boast, but an obvious truth, that by far the larger part of this magnificent growth is due to the direct agency of American home missions, since in its own carefully planted gardens most of this splendid growth has taken place.
J. B. Clark. The reader should compare the articles on City Missions; Jews, Missions to the; and, for home mission work in Germany, Innere Mission.
Bibliography: The literature is extensive; only a selection of the later works is attempted here. A useful view can be obtained, from the denominational standpoint, of early mission work in America from the American Church History Series, 13 vols, (especially vol. xiii., L. W. Bacon, Hist, of American Christianity), New York, 1893-97. Useful and from another point of view is the American Commonwealth Series, Boston, 1901 sqq. (still in progress). Consult further: L. Bacon, Genesis of the New England Churches, New York, 1874; W. Salter, Life of Jos. W. Pickett, Iowa City, 1881; W. F. Bainbridge, Along the Line at the Front; . . Baptist Home and Foreign Missions, Philadelphia, 1882; The Church Revived; . Parochial Missions in England, Canada, and the United States, New York, 1886; S. Loomis, Modern Cities, ib. 1887; A. Haygood, Pleas for Progress, ib. 1889; G. F. Magoun, Life and Times of Asa Turner, Boston, 1889; R. Storrs, The Puritan Spirit, Boston, 1890; H. Caswell, Life among the Iroquois Indians, ib. 1892; J. Strong, Our Country, New York, 1891; idem, The New Era, ib. 1893; D. Dorchester, The Problem of Religious Progress, ib. 1895; W. Puddefoot, The Minute Man on the Frontier ib. 1895; A. Dunning, Congregationalists in America, Boston, 1897; S. L. Gulick, Growth of the Kingdom of God, New York, 1897; R. Hill, Cuba and Porto Rico, ib. 1898; B. T. Washington, Up from Slavery, ib. 1901; W. Mowry, Marcus Whitman and the Early Days of Oregon, ib 1901; E. H. Abbott, Religious Life in America, ib. 1902; E. Adams, The Iowa Band, Boston, 1902; L. W. Beits, The Leaven in a Great City, New York, 1902; S. Doyle, Presbyterian Home Missions, Philadelphia, 1902; J Rii's, The Battle with the Slums, New York, 1902; R. Thompson, The Hand of God in American History, ib. 1902- J. Tillinghast, The Negro in Africa and America, ib 1902; G. Warneck, History of Protestant Missions, ib. 1902; H. Whipple, Lights and Shades of a Long Episcopate'ib 1902; J. Clark, Leavening the Nation, ib. 1903; W Du Bois, Souls of Black Folk, Chicago, 1903; R. Hitchcock The Louisiana Purchase, Boston, 1903; B. Brandenburg' Imported Americans, New York, 1904; J. Horton, The Burden of the City, ib. 1904; H. B. Grose, Incoming Millions ib 1905; P. F. Hall, Immigration and its Effects upon the United States, ib. 1906; H. Holt Life Stories of Undistinguished Americans, ib. 1906; A. L. Phillips, Call
Homiletics