vation of New England, whether we consider the wealth and luxury of the city, or the problems of the rural community, or the inflowing multitudes of the foreign born, is in bringing the Gospel of God's great grace to the life of the individual. The plan is as old as Paul's solution of the problem at Corinth. The difficulty is in making personal and definite its application. There are not enough people in New England who clearly believe that the Gospel is the power of God unto salvation to the Italian working on the railroad, or the Hungarian in the shops, or the German on the farm. If we believe in missions at all we are ready to pray, and give a little money for the conversion of naked savages in Africa, or on the Fiji Islands, while too many of us have no faith at all in foreign missions at home.

Our first obligation is to believe that the Gospel is the solution of

our difficulties.

Immigration laws.

should keep out certain well-defined classes of aliens, but the solution of our troubles is not in the line of stricter immigration laws. God has a purpose in bringing the peoples. of every nation that the sun shines upon into this favored New England. land. We must fall in with the plans of the Infinite. We must open our eyes and our hearts and our hands to the work God is giving us to do. Material things are not the only avenues to great achieve. ments. In spiritual matters not the less this twentieth century can work wonders. Not only is the news of all the world brought hourly to our attention, but the very nations themselves are thronging our streets, crowding and jostling us at every turn. These nations must be born in a day. The magnificent resources of these hundreds of churches in New England, of these thousands of church members and

of these millions of money must bring about magnificent results.

We speak of "desirable" and "undesirable" immigrants. There is need of caution here. The southern Italians in two years have contributed to our wealth 233 sculptors and 440 musicians. The Yankee is surely not over-stocked with the artistic. The brightest scholars in our public schools are the Russian Jews and the Italians. Such Poles as Kosciusko and Pulaski or Chopin, Paderewski, Modjeska and Mme. Sklodonski Curie, are "desirable. Kossuth was a Magyar and Nicola Tesla a Croatian, and John Huss a Slovak and Marconi is an Italian. Immigration means a bugle call of opportunity.

THE WORK NEEDS GENEROUS GIFTS

Money is needed for this work. Generous gifts are an absolute necessity for the successful prosecu. tion of the enterprise. Nothing worth doing in this world can succeed without money. Our libraries, our hospitals, our parks, our colleges have secured large endowments and are able to minister to the increasing demands of our times because of these resources. Such large bequests and gifts are the proof of what the Gospel has wrought in the world. The time is not distant when, more in accordance with the demand, money will flow freely in the distinctively religious channels represented by the church and missionary operations. From a merely business point of view there is no more hopeful investment of funds than the giving of money for the uplifting and assimilating of these thousands of aliens who are flocking into New England. Like the sturdy men who of many an alien nationality wrought out our national unity and integrity, because we had wrought them into our body politic-ready even to lay down their lives for the flag they had adopted

cross and in the giving of material wealth, there will be thousands and tens of thousands who will devote their gains in this New World to the building up of that Kingdom which is the reason and the power of their well being.

THE WORK NEEDS PERSONAL CONSE

CRATION

There is a larger demand. Money is only the expression of the will and purpose. It is the mere instrument through which the work is done. The demand is personal. The appeal is individual. The Italian, the Lithuanian, the Russian is our brother. Christ died for him as truly as for the man whose ancestry goes back to the "Mayflower.' Heaven holds out the same hope to each. Our New England Puritan self-righteousness must never put us in the place of the Pharisee lest the poor alien find the door of heaven before us. Wealth and culture and ease bring great temptations. The Church is not a club. Christianity is not selfdelectation. The Church is in the world, not to be ministered unto, but to minister and to give its life for the redemption of the lost. followers of Christ, we are in our several communities to seek and to save, to stand in Christ's stead and beseech men to be reconciled to God.

As

This kind goeth not forth by mere formality, nor by eminent ancestry, nor by simple contribution of our money. It is accomplished in exactly the way that Christ Himself accomplishes the salvation of the world. He gave Himself.

This is the hardest lesson to learn, the slowest truth to gain a lodgment in our hearts. In our New England communities social lines, as well as differences of language, separate the Puritan from the Italian and the Pilgrim from the Slav. The problem is partially

churches where these people hear the Gospel in the tongue in which they were born. Not with the intent of perpetuating these race distinctions, for we would have them loyal and patriotic American citizens, but with the thought that, as long as immigration continues, this is the most direct and practical way of reaching them with the Gospel which is the best thing in civilization.

THE WORK NEEDS THE PERSONAL TOUCH

In one of our Connecticut churches a company of Scotch people were gathered of a Sunday morning. They were not in need of money or food, but they were far from home and very lonely. The Scotch heather was the further side of the wide Atlantic. As they waited the senior deacon looked in and, seeing these strangers at the further end of the church, walked up to them with outstretched hand and welcomed them with hearty words and warm grasp to the church and the community. "Ah," said the old Scotchman, "that was more than thirty years ago, but it was like a cup of cold water in the name of a disciple and the memory of it is very sweet."

President Roosevelt said most truly: "If during this century the men of high and fine moral sense show themselves weaklings; if they possess only that cloistered virtue

which shrinks shuddering from contact with the raw facts of actual life; if they dare not go down into the hurly-burly where the men of might contend for mastery; if they stand aside from the pressure of the conflict, then, as surely as the sun rises and sets, all our great material progress, all the multiplication of the physical agencies which tend for our comfort and enjoyment, will go for naught and our civilization will become a brutal sham and mockery."

For the solution of this problem of the foreigner in New England we must have the knowledge of the facts, large gifts of money, personal consecration, and that practical grit and grace which faces "the raw facts of actual life" and with God's wisdom and power wins the victory.

And to His Name be the glory. Amen.

NOTE

Of the following tables, I to VI, give the alien immigration into the New England States named, from the different nationalities designated and for the years 1900-04. Table VII gives the total population of each of the states, the number of foreign parentage and the percentage, from the census figures of 1870, 1890 and 1900. Table VIII groups these figures for the three states of southern New England.