The daily morning journal and courier., 1904-04-18

infusion of foreign blood into the body polite and the body moral of Ameri- ca? A mighty solvent has been found for that problem. Twenty-Five years ago there was scarcely foreign speak ing missionary in the employ of these thirty home missionary societies. Fear and despair settled upon the nation when they though of the problem. To- day, full grown churches, German churches, Scandinavian, Slavic churches, Armenian. Finnish, Spanish, and Italian, are to be found scattered ove- the land, and foreign speaking missionaries by the hundreds are de- claring the gospel that we love at this very hour in twenty different tongues and to as many different nationalities. If anything has been absolutely set tied during the last twenty years 1t is that foreigners of every name and al- most every grade are as susceptible to the gosoel as American citizens. h. deed they often put us to shame by their greater purity and sincerity of their saith. Their children can be drawn into the Sunday school; their young people into Endeavor societies, their men and women into prayer meetings, and their is absolutely no bar to the conversion Of our foreign ele- ments into good Christians and good citizens, except that which is found in the too scanty funds applied by the churches for this hopeful work. For eian immigrs ton is not the menace it war. We are looking forward now to greater and greater migrations, from year to year. with a cheerful hope and Freedom from fear which had not been born in 1884. This is the direct fruit O. home missions.
 "The whole ideal of home mission ary society has changed within few years. Once it was scarcely more than an almsgiving or an aims s-distributing agency and the home missionary was pauper, eminently worthy to receive our second hand clothes, and wretch ed support. But to-day a home mis- sionary society is something more and better It is a Christian investment company, and the home missionary is no pauDer at all, but a soldier fighting our .sattles along the front line and as WOTiuy u d SSnSlVuo oupPO1t oS dliJ soldier who fights the battles of his country Home missionary history is euI os illustrations of this sort.
 Look at Iowa, the Vermont of the west What gives it that honorable distinction? It is so-called because of .he moral strength and stability of it's people And how did that happen? Chiefly through the Iabors of dozen men, who myou sent out to Iowa in the early forties. when it was yet terri tory. This Iowa band Dre-empted the nascent state with churches and schools Eand those who succeeded then as home missionaries only intensified the results of their work. It was a costly invest ment. but did it not pay? The Iowa troops in our civil war were referred to
 in congress as the Flower of the west ern army They came largely out of home missionary communities, from home missionary churches and Sunday schools. It was this that led Dr. Rich ard $. Storrs, master in the interpre- ltation os history, to declare not long before his death. Home missions has saved this country once and will save it again if necessary He was referring to the fact that by a careful estimate, made near the close of the war, it was found that the home missionary church- of the middle west, on both sides Of the Mississippi, had sent into