Foreigners in Our Large Cities, or the Need of the Hour
By D. H. KRESS, M. D.
A PROCESSION of over one million people from all lands is pouring into the United States each year. Over twenty thousand immigrants arrive at the New York harbor alone each week of the year. Should we hear of a city of 86,000 people of foreign tongues springing into existence each month, it would be considered phenomenal, and yet this is what is actually taking place before our eyes. The United States is being peopled by foreigners. The cities of America are no longer American. They are made up largely of strange tongues. New York has nearly a million Italians, and over a million Jews. On Manhattan Island every fourth person is a Jew. There are more Germans in New York City than in any city in Germany except Berlin. There are twice as many Irishmen as in Dublin, Ireland. There are more Italians than in Naples or Venice. In thirty-three of our largest cities of America the foreign population is greater than the native. Men and women have in the past responded to the call to go to foreign fields. Many more would have gone had there been funds in the treasury to send them. God has opened the way for these to engage in foreign mission work in our homeland. There is room for thousands of workers among the foreigners in our large cities. Separated from their native environment and friends, their religious ties weakened if not entirely broken up, these people are in the very best possible condition to respond to acts of kindness and to other influences of the gospel of Christ. We may not be able to do much by talking religion. The gospel of neighborliness must be practiced in order for the gospel of faith to make converts. The best way to win the foreigners on our shores is by manifesting a real, unpretentious interest in their welfare. The heathen at our door will respond to the same efforts which prove successful in winning them in their homeland; in fact, the foreigner on our shores is more easily reached than the foreigner abroad. No such opportunity has ever before come to any people, to reach so many nationalities with so little expense and sacrifice. We can see why in the providence of God the third angel’s message had its origin in the United States. There was a parallel at Christ’s first advent. When the time came for the gospel to go to all lands, representatives from all lands were gathered together in Jerusalem. When the Spirit of God came upon the Christian church, and these representatives heard the wonderful truths proclaimed in their own tongue, they were amazed. By the converts thus made the truth was carried to all parts of the earth. And means were freely given by others of their number to send out and sustain these missionaries. In a very short time Paul could testify that the commission had been met—the gospel had been preached in all the world. A similar work will be done in our day. This work will begin in this great cosmopolitan center,—the United States,—and from here it will reach the ends of the earth; and when this gospel of the kingdom shall have been preached in all the world as a witness unto all nations, then shall the end come. Christ in his efforts for the people gave tangible evidence of his interest in them. He ministered to their physical needs and healed their diseases. This gave him favor with the people, and enabled him to reach the masses. The first American Baptist missionary to China, after seventeen years’ labor, found it necessary, owing to the death of his wife, to return to America. The experience he gained abroad helped him in laboring for the Chinese in America. Sixteen were baptized as the result of his labors. Some of these returned to their own land as missionaries. Among his converts was Wong Wui, a man of piety and power, who became pastor of the first church in Canton, and was termed “the Luther of the Chinese Christians.” Another missionary, who had to return to America owing to the ill health of his wife, began his work among the Chinese of Portland, Oregon. The church he raised up sustained missionaries in their own country and made large individual gifts to the general work for the spread of the gospel. In fact, China is leavened with Chinese missionaries who were converted on American soil by home missionary effort. In Germany, at the council held at Friedensau, about forty nationalities were represented. Many of the leaders among these nationalities are men who received the truth in America, and then returned to their home fields as missionaries. It will be seen that by reaching the foreigners in America we greatly simplify the problem of reaching the world. Those who come to America have heard of our liberty and prosperity. In the minds of all who come a favorable impression exists of this country. These people usually come from the rural districts and are unloaded in the city. On account of scarcity of funds they are compelled to secure work at once. This forces them into the worst part of our large cities. The crowded tenements in the slums, with their drunkenness, immorality, and crime, become their homes. They are caught in a trap from which there is no escape. In New York City there are 360,000 dark, windowless rooms occupied by this class. Entire families are often crowded together in one or two rooms. These people are disappointed, for all they can see of America is their immediate surroundings. Unless help is brought to them, hopeless degeneracy, physical and moral, will be the ultimate result. Their great need should appeal to us. Our neighbor has fallen among thieves and has been left wounded by the wayside. Shall we pass him by on the other side and ease our consciences by making donations to foreign fields? By doing so we omit the weightier matters of the law—judgment, mercy, and truth. “These ought ye to have done,” said the Saviour, “and not to leave the other undone.” As the foreigners have moved into these crowded districts, Protestant churches have moved out. The people have been left, therefore, without church privileges, or religious influences and instruction. Yet these people respond to the gospel. In one district composed of Italian Roman Catholics, a tent effort was conducted by two consecrated Protestant ministers. From three hundred to six hundred were nightly in attendance. In less than one year two hundred were ready to join the Protestant church. Later a church building was erected by these worshipers at a cost of sixty thousand dollars. Can we not see that God has taken these people from their overcrowded countries and has brought them to our very doors that we may have an opportunity to help them and save them, and through them carry the third angel’s message quickly to all the world? “If you cannot cross the ocean,
And the heathen lands explore,
You can find the heathen nearer,
You can help them at your door.”