The daily morning journal and courier., 1896-06-03

luminous the great function of prophe-
 swing.
 The extent of our Home Missionary field calls for the magnifying of the
 prophetic function of the churches.
 The Roman empire, in it's greatest
 breadth was small in comparison with
 our domain, the magnitude of which
 cannot be realized even by the traveller
 when aided by all the maps and shreWd
 devices of comparison which our clever
 secretaries make. The bigness of it all
 at times overwhelmes us Yet to the
 true phophet it is an inspiration. He
 always wants elbow room. Like St.
 Paul, He longs to preach in ''the region
 beyond" He hungers for the horizon.
 These great states of the interior and
 middle west that in their extravagant
 youth already holds the swarms
 of ancient kingdoms; these new
 CT states that come dropping
 into the union so fast that we
 cannot keep account of them-each one
 an empire in itself; these gigantic
 Utahs, New MeXicos, Arizonas and
 Alaskas, destined, when irrigation
 streams have been turned upon their torrid plains, and their mines, forests
 and rivers have been exploited, to sus- tain populations of inconceivable ex- tent-these great areas which, in the impending years must have everything
 educational moral, religious done for
 them, demand nothing so much, inspire
 no one so much as the prophet.
 They are full of the promise and po-
 tency of every form of evil and good,
 struggling together for the mastery
 Out of them have already come politi- cal, economical, social and religious heresies which threaten the very exist
 ency of society and the state. The re- dundant, ambitious forces that develop there, must be penetrated with the principals of sound patriotism, moral ity religion Who shall do this work
 but the prophet in the truth and life of
 Christ?
 It is not, however, the geographical extent of the country--it is the charac- ter and distribution of it's population which peculiarly call for the gospel prophet of righteousness. Till within
 one or two decades the foreign lmml- grafton to this country-which has al
 ways been the happy hunting ground of European peoples-was for the most past of a quality which rendered it's as- similation easy. It was manly Anglo- Saxon, Keltic, Teutonic, affiliated m race, stock, language and tradition WI that already established here. The great American mill of social amalga-
 nation had pretty tough job even with these elements, but it was accom- plishing the task.
 Later. steamship and railroad, new lands to be sold. disparity in wages, the
 astute ambition of European nations to get rid of their paupers and criminals, have combined to glut the mill With l Bohemian, Pole, Italian, Armenian, Hungarian Russian, not to speak or l social dregs from western Europe, and not a few from the Orient, whose un- comprehended hosts are beginning to threaten us. The lump is becoming too
 bie. too diverse and of too poor qual- ity to be easily leavened. In large DOT tions we are no longer American, but anything you please; whose populations
 here. ignorant compact autonomous,
 consider German, Scandinavian, Follsh'
 as truly the American language as
 English. Yet by accelerated processes
 of naturalization these alien hosts De- come nominal citizens and at the dlc- tation of machine, of priest, Of boss, cast the ballot they cannot understand and make laws for nation.
 Moreover, these un-American swarms
 are not always distributing themselves l upon the land, that common disinfec- tant of human grossness, but in large | measure they are stagnating in the great centers, increasing their iniqui- 1 ties. America is to be the theater ot enormous cities. Everything mechanl- | cal tends swiftly to this result. We deplore in New England the destruc- tion of the country town by the draft | to the cities. But statistics show that l in the great states of the interior and west the country town is suffering still more. The omnipotent congestive ten
 dency of the city sweeps it off its feet
 before it can get fairly on them.
 The Home Missionary must get at | these lower, alien forms of our popula- | ton where they are, in congestion l already as acute and as dangerous as
 in the old world No policy of our so- ciety has been wiser than to find, in
 spire and ordain missionary prophets
 out of Scandinavians, Germans and Bohemians, and support them in large
 cities among their own people.
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