The Need to Evangelize America
WHILE directing our attention to the needy heathen lands, it is well for us also to remember the needs which exist in more civilized lands. God has made us debtors to all men. It is well for us to carry a burden of heart for those in the darkness of heathenism. It is well also to remember the heathen round about us. The Lutheran of February 2 gives the following statement of work which needs to be done in the United States:— Many will be surprised to learn that in this great country, where cities and towns are overcrowded with churches, there are, in eleven mountain and Pacific States, 1,000 communities destitute of churches. In one Western State alone, 133 places containing from 150 to 1,000 souls, were without a Protestant church, and 100 of these without a Roman Catholic church. In addition to these, in one State, there are 428 communities of sufficient importance to have post-offices, but without any churches. Counting post-office neighborhoods, the ratio of destitute communities to the total population is over 4,000 in the eleven mountain and Pacific States of the West. It is safe to say that not one of these communities is without an ample supply of saloons and gambling-houses to make night hideous. . . . Then when it is remembered that one third the population of New York City, one fourth that of Philadelphia and Chicago, one fifth that of Pittsburg, Cincinnati, and St. Louis, and one half that of San Francisco and Seattle, is practically heathen, might it not be well for the comfort-loving city congregations of each denomination to organize themselves into missionary societies, and do work in the abandoned districts? O, for a thousand Pauls!