in the midst of every-day toil as noble as have been wrought anywhere.

I think we shall recognize more than this. The kingdom cannot come unless the church shall consent to take up the task assigned it in the declaration we have referred to. The kingdom cannot be wrought out away from these things. They are essential parts of it. If they are left out, that which exists will not be the true kingdom.

Neither can the kingdom prosper unless it shall have in it the army of those who toil. Life is not understood except the view of these enter into it. These are bound closer together by ties of human brotherhood than are men of other walks in life. There is something about their very toil which clears their vision. They are our safest constituency. Our country's future rests secure largely because they will have, under our form of government, such large part in settling great public questions.

These men who belong to the industrial army stand not afar off. They have in large part kept away from the church because they felt the church lacked in interest in them and their problems. They are in sympathy with the fundamental things on which the church rests. They believe in the Christ and count him as having had great sympathy with those who toil. Organized labor is already massed in societies which have their origin in fraternal principles. Grouped thus they are more easy of access. They have admitted representatives of ministerial associations into their own membership and have sent their own representatives to fraternize with the ministers. They are constantly publishing in their weekly and monthly periodicals sermons and other religious articles. They have approved of Labor Sunday as a permanent institution, and are listening to their leaders when they plead for total abstinence and that their meeting-places shall be apart from the saloons.

Much has been said of social difficulties which lie in the way. These will grow steadily less and less. We find companionship with those who hold with us the same ideals and strive for the same ends. If our highest aim is for material gain, then those who have will find small companionship with those who have not. If, however, our purpose is centered in the bringing in of the kingdom, then we shall find companionship with all those who have part in that.

Time forbids consideration of the means by which the churches of America may bring about the fulfillment of their industrial obligations. To determine how that shall be accomplished will require our most strenuous endeavor. To its accomplishment the Congregational churches of America stand committed.

IMMIGRATION IN RELATION TO THE CHURCH. PRESIDENT OZORA S. DAVIS, CHICAGO, ILL.

CHANGED CONDITIONS IN IMMIGRATION.

The Protestant Church in America finds itself, within the past few years, face to face with a religious condition which demands new and enlarged forms of service to meet it. Immigration always has been an essential factor in our development; our nation has been built up from immigrating people as well as by natural increase. The problem is not new, the church is not without experience in attempting to solve it; but present conditions are different from those that have obtained in the past, and new methods must be shaped to meet these radical changes.

The shift is geographical, racial, and religious. Geographically, it has changed from northwestern to southeastern Europe. Racially, it has changed from the Teutonic to the Slavic people. Religiously, it has changed from a Roman Catholic and Protestant to a more pronounced and less developed Greek and Roman Catholic type. Therefore the points of contact between the Protestant churches and the immigrants are less, their establishment more difficult, and the problem of the religious care of the immigrant more perplexing, than before.

THE CHURCH DEFINING THE PROBLEM.

The church itself must, therefore, redefine its problem and remake its methods.

First, the Protestant Church must clear up a confusion which exists concerning its duty in the religious care of immigrants. It must settle, first of all, certain questions regarding the right relation between evangelization and proselyting. We are challenged fairly by the fact that thousands of these immigrants belong to the national church which bears the Christian name. To disturb them with preaching which shall have for its primary object the undoing of their faith as taught by the churches into which they were born and baptized is no part of the mission of

the Protestant Church to them. On the other hand, to preach wherever possible our interpretation of the gospel is a legitimate part of our work, in loyalty to the command of our Lord.

This, however, does not settle the matter. There are coming to us thousands of men and women who have broken or are breaking with the priesthood and the churches of their childhood. They are indifferent, skeptical, infidel, and atheist. With these the Protestant churches of America have immediate and personal business. To engage with this problem will involve all the resources and all the devotion of our free churches in America.

Another question which must be settled is the practical grip that our Protestant churches have on the doctrine of brotherhood as Jesus taught it. All contempt, all scorn, all patronage, toward the immigrant on the part of the American who possesses the name because he has been here longer is unchristian; and yet such a temper does exist to a considerable extent among us. The elevation of our own ideals is perhaps the first task before us as we engage with this problem. The wisdom and success of our efforts adequately to care for the religious needs of immigrants will be determined by the ideal of brotherhood which governs the Protestant churches in the future.

THE RESPONSIVE TEMPER OF IMMIGRANTS TO CHRISTIAN

BROTHERHOOD.

We must also be clear concerning the way in which these men and women are ready to respond to all true efforts for their religious welfare. There is no greater mistake made by writers and speakers than to refer to immigrants as the "dregs of Europe" or the "offscourings of civilization." This is a wicked caricature of those who are coming to our shores. That there are bad men and women among them, that they are often ignorant and superstitious, is all too true; but those who know best the real quality of these people know that there is ambition, hope, physical strength, spiritual possibility, among them to such a degree that the terms just used do not represent them truly. When we get beneath difference in language, dress, customs, and religion, we find these people to be like ourselves in all the great yearnings and hopes, loves and fears, that make us men. They too seek after God. They too answer every

effort made for their good in love, with as unfailing response as could be obtained by similar efforts for those who are native born and English speaking. At first, when we see them huddled and confused at our ports of entry and in the great waitingrooms of transcontinental railway junctions, they seem to us a strange and forbidding company, who are a menace to our civilization. It is only when we come to know them as neighbors and friends that we learn at last that the word immigrant is but a superficial and wholly indefinite word, and that the only terms that really can be used are the words fellow-worker, neighbor, brother, and friend. They respond as all men respond to the service done for them in a spirit of love, and they answer with their own precious gifts of friendship and devotion.

THE CULTIVATION OF MUTUAL ACQUAINTANCE.

The greatest barrier to successful religious work is ignorance. The immigrants do not know America. Americans do not know the immigrants who have been coming to us most recently from new lands. Therefore the first step in the religious care of these people is to promote our mutual acquaintance. We naturally think immediately that we must teach them much about America. I venture to reverse the responsibility and to say that the first duty of the American is to become acquainted with them. We do not know these people, and our efforts for their religious care are seriously hampered because the sources of information are not enough and those sources which we have already are not thoroughly mastered by us. The entire work of interpreting these people to us and us to them is the first step in the great religious process. Myra Kelly does us essential religious service when she lets us look into the hearts and homes from which her little citizens come. Professor Steiner does us invaluable service by his books which reveal the heart of these people at home and abroad. Professor Balch's new volume, "Our Slavic Neighbors," is of great worth for the light which it throws upon the Slavic people. This work must go on. It is as important for us to know them as it is for them to know us, and no man can hope to do work among them simply by going to them and telling them that they must learn American history and political constitutions.

On the other hand, every effort must be made to reach them