New Britain herald., 1916-02-04

cial life: they are telling how we treat our children; they are telling how We spend our Sundays and how we spent our other leisure and the world is being made over after the pattern of what these letters say. DO you realize that every year 6OO,O00 of these people who have been writing these letters, go back to these vll- lages throughout Europe, and there they say in a more personal and dl- rect way the same things they have been trying to say in their letters. Wherever we went in Europe, the working people told us of their rela- tives in America. Again and again and again, the employees of the ho- tels and the cab drivers and the men on the railroad, wherever we met people of the working class, we were told that their brothers and sisters were in America and that they would be too except that they had to stay to take care of the older folk. It is impossible for us to realize how great an influence we are exerting The miracle of Pentacost is being re- peated on vastly larger scale than it ever was performed before. Wheth- CT we will or not, we are speaking by every act and word and gesture. we are speaking a universal language that is being heard through a thou sand megaphones in every part of the world. One who helps a foreigner solve his problem in exerting the greatest possible influence on the fu- ture of America and on the future of the world
 How Can We He7n
 NOW, how are we to help him do this? Our schools are doing vast deal but they must do more. The school house everywhere should be made a community center where all the people of the neighborhood can get together, not only for instruction put for amusement and for discussion or all vital problems connected with the community. There should be in every school house an open forum and there should be in every school house place of amusement and recreation for all the people of that ne1ghborhood The church also has very important function. Most of us do not realize how really hungry for real religion these new Americans
 
 for the church. Some of them have left the church and gone into such movements as socialism because they find socialism making stronger ap- peal to their religious nature than the churches do, because they find more of the spirit of Christ in the labor movement with it's problems than they had found in the church. And yvh Inc church ha 6 more fairly interpreted to them the spirit of the Christ, they have re- sponded to it. In my work on the East Side in New York, I was espe- cially impressed with the attitude of ment teaching and toward Jesus. In the little synagogue on Fourth street directly opposite the church of which I was minister, I met one night a little group of Hebrews, the older ones all of the orthodox sort. l was greeted cordially by them all and was told that they were especially glad to see me because they had been talking together of the relation of the church to the synagogue and of Jesus to the Old Testament religion, and they wanted to ask me some questions.
 
 pie had read our New Testament and were familiar with much in church history. Several of them were much better acquainted with the New Tes- lament and with the church history than the average church member in the churches with which I am famil- far. After we had had a discussion lasting nearly an hour about these ', ir,p a Inc ra1ati0n nf the church of which I was minister to the neighborhood and to the Jewish ele- ment in it. One of the young men said to me- of course our parents who have grown up in Russia and Eastern Austria, where they have met only persecution and unchristlikeness from the church, will not understand your position, but you may be equally sure that all of the younger Jews in this community will not only appre- ciate what you are trying to do in this neighborhood, but will up to their ability cooperate with you.' One of the kindergartens which we con- ducted in that church, was supported bv the contributions of Jewish women. One of the best volunteer workers that we had in our boys work was young Hebrew, a graduate ol Iaie'
 When I was a student in Un1on Seminary, had a Sunday school class of Italian boys in a dt vntown Sun day school After having been away from New York for ten years, l went back to take charge of another church in. New, York, g. self-support- ing downtown church with splendid history behind it, and found that two of the best teachers in our Sunday school were Italian girls who had been brought up in the Sunday school of which I had been member ten wears before. I found that con- siderable number of the best workers in that church were of foreign birth, And visiting the Sunday school to