Home Missions in Action | Page 4

sixty-two years spent $1,646,000. In thirty-two years the churches thus founded sent $864,000 to carry Christ's message to foreign countries, and $302,000 through other Congregational agencies for uplift in this country. This was given in addition to all the local philanthropies and social service rendered in their own communities by these organizations.
The history of the first Presbyterian Church of Portland, Oregon, is one of the outstanding illustrations of the fruitfulness of Home Mission work. "This church was organized on January first, 1854, with ten members. It was a strictly Home Mission work, dependent upon the Home Board for its existence. When it was reorganized in 1860 it had but seventeen members, and they were unable to pay the salary.
"During the next four years it received aid from the Board of Home Missions to the amount of eleven hundred dollars. Then it undertook self-support. It has been blessed in having a line of far-seeing pastors who have led it on from strength to strength.
"As its members increased in wealth they grew in their interest in the advancement of the Kingdom of God. Every enterprise which helped on that Kingdom was either begun or promoted by the First Church. The first missionary to Alaska went out from it, and her expenses were paid for six months from the treasury of the First Church.
"The steady development of the Oregon Territory engaged the eager interest of this church from the first. It is said that in all that district, including Oregon, Washington and part of Idaho, no Presbyterian church was ever erected which did not receive some aid from the members of the First Church of Portland.
"In a single year of its history it has contributed twenty thousand dollars to Home Missions, and it is because of the large share in the Home Mission work of the Presbytery of Portland taken by the First Church that that Presbytery was able to assume self-support, and so become the first self-supporting Presbytery in the great Northwest.
"This church also fostered the educational interests of the Northwest. Albany College in Oregon owes its existence in large measure to its generosity. Portland Academy was early taken over by its members, and to-day is equal to any secondary school in the country. The San Francisco Theological Seminary came into a full share of aid and care. The Ladd professorship is a lasting proof of the spirit of that church.
"The increasing numbers of Chinese attracted the attention of the church, and the first mission to the Chinese by the Presbyterian Church was established in 1885 on petition of the pastor of the First Church.
"Its foreign mission work has been extensive. Not only has it sent out its own members to the foreign mission field, but it has been from the very beginning a liberal supporter of Foreign Missions. The first Foreign Mission Society of Oregon was organized in this church, and the splendid North Pacific Board of Missions, broad enough minded to see the whole task of the church, was organized here, and is to-day an eager supporter of Home, Foreign and Freedmen's missions.
"Nor has the church been unmindful of its debt to this ever-growing city of Portland." [Footnote: Rev. Charles L. Thompson, D.D.]
Illustrations of similar service might be multiplied many times from the history of other denominations.
With all this glorious, Christ-filled service, Home Missions has ministered to only a small part. Over sixty millions of the nearly one hundred of our population are non-Christian and allied with no religious organizations whatever--Catholic, Hebrew, or Protestant.
Still more than forty thousand Indians in this country are without Christian ministry. Still great districts in our Southern mountains wait the coming of opportunity and uplift. Still large numbers of Mexicans in the Southwest, ignorant and superstitious, are a retarding element in their communities. Still vast immigrant settlements remain untouched by regenerating influences and absorb, as well as contribute, much that is deteriorating.
Still the traitorous hierarchy, Mormonism, makes enormous strides almost unchecked by Christian effort. The Mormon Church officially makes the following report of its mission work in this country and abroad in one year: Tracts distributed, 10,892,122; gospel conversations, 1,744,641; families visited, 3,532,273; books distributed and standard church works, 500,614; meetings held, 92,072.
Still from our cities comes the bitter cry of the submerged and of the women and girls whom unspeakable sin is claiming. "The United States has the largest proportion of women workers to the population in the world (one in five). [Footnote: Henry C. Vedder--The Gospel of Jesus and the Problem of Democracy.] It has done less toward the regulation of this form of labor--less for the protection of its women laborers--than any other country."
The recent investigations in Chicago and other large cities show the close relation between insufficient wages and vice.
One of the greatest obstacles to the relief of these conditions is