The hordes of barbarians which overwhelmed Rome have left a mark on Europe that can never be forgotten. The size and vigor of the movement made a profound impression which history cannot outgrow, and yet Genseric, one of the greatest of their leaders, never had more than 80,000 warriors in his palmiest days.
There have been great successive waves of immigration into China and India from the plains and the mountains of the north and east, but so far as we have knowledge of the numbers they dwindle into comparative insignificance when measured by this greatest of all invasions.
The numbers involved in the Norman Conquest of England would hardly make a ripple on the sea of races and populations crowding to American sh.o.r.es.
The Crusades stand out as epoch-making and unparalleled up to that time in the number of nations disturbed. They covered a period of more than a century and a half and involved several millions of people, but more men, women, and children from other lands have come to the United States and Canada in the last six years than swept across the face of Europe in a century and a half in the Crusades.
To a.s.similate and Christianize these mult.i.tudes is one of the supreme tests of the reality of our faith and the vitality of our national life.
The glory of immigration is fourfold:
1. _G.o.d has written much history in terms of migratory peoples._ It is the impatient, unsatisfied, vigorous peoples that have made the history of the world. If the meaning of the past is correctly interpreted, then the blending of these races together on a Christian basis into one united people is America"s superlative opportunity to make history.
2. _Immigration is compelling America to study the languages, the history, the achievements, the religions, and the characteristics of these mult.i.tudes of people._ Such study is imperative in order that America may adequately bear to the incoming millions the deepest message of her religion and her Western inst.i.tutions. This fact in itself furnishes an intellectual and moral task of transcendent importance. On this continent the modern gift of tongues must be given if America fails not her Christ.
3. _Immigration is leading millions to study the English tongue._ This is of great importance if the mult.i.tudes of future Americans are to understand and appropriate the principles of democracy and Protestantism enshrined in English literature. The German and Scandinavian and other tongues will contribute to America the best they possess, while at the same time they are themselves greatly enriched.
4. _The mingling races are challenging America to demonstrate the truth of those principles of freedom and democracy of which such proud boast has been made in days gone by._ The principles of democracy can scarcely be thoroughly and finally tested among people who are of the same race and have a common speech and who have a more or less common purpose. Democracy can be adequately tested only amid the complexities of race and clan, of diverse speech and history. These principles of democracy have never been literally applied in any large way yet, but one of G.o.d"s greatest challenges to the manhood of the United States and Canada to-day is that literal application of the principles of democracy shall be made to the whole population gathered within their vast domains. Here is a call for statesmanship and spiritual pa.s.sion worthy of the finest life America has produced.
[Ill.u.s.tration: SIZE OF PARISHES AT HOME AND ABROAD
Figures Give the Number of People to Each Protestant Minister]
II. MEXICO AND CENTRAL AMERICA
These lands lying to the south are America"s nearest foreign missionary field.
In each case in which the number of missionaries is mentioned in this volume, unless otherwise stated, it may be understood to include all missionaries, both men and women, except wives of missionaries. This is thought to be fair, not because missionaries" wives are not as devoted as their husbands or other workers, but because it is not to be expected that a woman with household cares should be responsible for the same amount of direct Christian work that is expected of other workers on the field. In other words, the family or the single worker is considered the unit.
The people in Mexico are nominally Roman Catholic, the census returns showing thirteen and a half millions of that faith. Conditions are difficult for Protestant missions. The population of Mexico is more than fifteen millions. Among these millions there are 249 representatives of Protestant Christianity. In 1895 more than ten millions in Mexico could neither read nor write, and while conditions have improved somewhat since then, it is safe to say that seven out of every ten of the population are illiterate. In Central America, including Panama, there are 96 missionaries.
These simple facts will ill.u.s.trate the truth that there are still parts of the North American continent inadequately cultivated by the Protestant churches.
III. SOUTH AMERICA
The South American lands are nominally Roman Catholic. They know considerable of the phraseology of Christianity, but its vital truth has not been largely realized. Here are seven million square miles of opportunity which call loudly for the Christian application of the Monroe doctrine. While the majority of the people are of European blood (if we do not count the unknown numbers of millions of Indians), every principle of justice indicates North America"s obligation to hasten the redemption of South America. These lands followed the example of the United States in adopting the republic as their ideal of government. They have not hitherto enjoyed our religious freedom along with our republican form of government. Free government cannot be fully and permanently enjoyed by any people without actual religious liberty. Freedom of conscience produces the intelligence and virtue essential to a democracy. The South American lands have lacked such freedom. This in itself const.i.tutes a real challenge to the faith of North American Christians.
A brief glimpse of two or three of the lands will indicate the character of the problem a little more clearly.
Brazil, the greatest of the South American lands, about 2,700 miles in extent from east to west and fully the same from north to south, with an area nearly as great as the entire continent of Europe, has, according to the _Statesman"s Year Book_, a population of more than twenty-three millions or nearly one half of the population of the continent. Its great forests and mineral wealth are but little used.
According to the _World Atlas of Christian Missions_, there is but one Protestant mission station near the mouth of the Amazon River and not a single missionary in all the vast territory through which that river and most of its tributaries flow. Algot Lange, who has spent many months exploring the Amazon Basin, says there are 373 tribes speaking a variety of languages in the Amazon territory. These are practically all unreached by the gospel. The mission stations are scattered along the coast with very few in the interior. The majority of the missionaries are within three or four hundred miles of Rio Janeiro.
Eighty-five per cent. of the population is reported illiterate.
Bolivia, which is fourteen times as large as the State of New York, has only sixteen workers, counting wives, so that each worker in Bolivia has a parish larger than the entire State of Pennsylvania. The same proportion would give five workers to the Province of Quebec.
Since these words were written however a party of three new missionaries sailed from New York to enter this field.
The Argentine Republic is the most advanced and prosperous country of South America. It has, according to figures given by Mr. Robert E.
Speer at the Rochester Student Volunteer Convention, a per capita export three and a half times as great as the United States, one hundred and twenty times as great as the Chinese Empire and the total exports were nearly equal to those of the entire continent of Africa.
The Argentine Republic has but one worker to every 8,737 square miles.
The illiteracy of this, the most enlightened land of South America, is 50 per cent. of the population. Thus it is seen that the brightest spot in South America has appalling need of Protestant Christianity.
Looking at the problem in the large, there is in South America a population of approximately 49,000,000. In the whole continent there are only 881 Protestant missionaries. If we omit the wives of missionaries from the calculations this gives to each worker a population of 83,050 and a field of 12,450 square miles, or more than nine times the size of Rhode Island.
New York State has 42,558 primary and high school teachers. If we omit the teachers in the two lands farthest north in South America; namely, Venezuela and Colombia, New York has as many teachers as all of the South American continent.
The illiteracy of the United States, even including all those who cannot read or write among immigrants and Negroes, is only 10.7 per cent., while the lowest per cent. of illiteracy in any country in South America is 50 and the highest nearly 90.
It would perhaps be a fair estimate to say that at least three out of four people in the South American lands live where they will probably not hear the message of Christ from Protestant missionaries in any adequate way in this generation unless the Church greatly multiplies its missionary agencies in South America.
IV. AFRICA
There are three Africas, each with its difficult problems.
_Christian Africa_ is at the southern end of the continent where live nearly five and one-half million people. This is more nearly evangelized than any other portion of the continent. Some notable Christian leaders have been developed in South Africa, of whom the Rev. Andrew Murray is one of the most widely known. In Abyssinia is the old Coptic Church which is without much real Christian life.
_Pagan Africa_ comprises the greatest solid ma.s.s of paganism on the earth.
_Mohammedan Africa_ numbers at least forty millions of population spread over the vast regions from the Equator to the Mediterranean Sea. With the exception of Abyssinia, Liberia and Sierra Leone, practically the whole of North Africa is under the sway of the false prophet and even in the lands mentioned the pressure of Mohammedan invasion is rapidly growing more severe.
The intellectual task on this educational frontier of the world is indicated by the fact that there are 843 languages and dialects on the continent. The Edinburgh Conference estimated that in Pagan and Mohammedan Africa combined there are a hundred millions of people without a written language or even an alphabet of their own.
On the whole continent of Africa there are 3,244 missionaries, each with a parish of 3,614 square miles and 46,239 people. There is only a handful of missionaries to guard 3,000 miles of Mediterranean coast from Egypt to Gibraltar. From Khartum to Uganda, along the rich Nile valley, a distance of 1,000 miles, there are about a dozen missionaries.
As far as the proportion of missionaries to population is concerned, Africa is much better supplied than Asia, yet in Africa there are five great blocks of territory which are unoccupied and other areas with missionaries only around the fringes or reaching only a small fraction of the people. These areas are irregular in shape and the lines bounding them have been drawn so as to exclude all mission stations.
Some of the people in them no doubt are hearing the gospel, but there are no resident missionaries in any of them, according to the maps of the _World Atlas of Christian Missions_.
The smallest of these five unoccupied areas is in Portuguese and German East Africa. It is four times the size of the State of New York.
A second near the west coast, south of the equator, has three times the extent of New England.
The third near the west coast, south of the equator, would make eight States as large as Iowa. In Iowa there are at least 4,000 ordained ministers, to say nothing of other Christian workers, but in this block of territory, eight times as large as Iowa, there is not a single ordained missionary.
Another region, some distance north of the one just mentioned, without missionaries, is 1,500 miles long and 500 miles wide.
Last of all, if we omit the mission stations on the Nile and a few scattered workers around the fringes, there is in the upper half of the continent a block of territory nearly as large as the United States but with a scattered population estimated at fifteen millions, without resident missionaries. Starting from the Nile River, 1,000 miles from its mouth, a traveler could go directly westward through the heart of the continent nearly three thousand miles before reaching the next mission station on the west coast. If he started at the mouth of the Sobat River, about 2,000 miles from Cairo, the nearest mission station to the west is 1,500 miles away, in Northern Nigeria. In all those weary miles there is not a single church spire pointing toward the stars or a home where a missionary family lives.
Taking the continent as a whole, there are at least fifty millions of people who are not only entirely outside the reach but even of the plans of any missionary society now at work on the continent.
V. ASIA
In Asia live more than one half of the human race. Accepting the figures of the _Statesman"s Year Book_, the population of the world is 1,698,552,204. The population of Asia is given as 958,781,233. Of every hundred people in the earth fifty-six live in Asia. Of these fifty-six, forty-three out of every hundred live in China and India.
Asia as a whole has 9,013 workers, according to the _World Atlas of Christian Missions_, each having an average parish of 1,781 square miles, containing an average of 106,377 people. Let us survey the continent, "beginning from Jerusalem."
=1. The Near East.=--The Asiatic Levant, or Near East includes _Turkey_, _Persia_, and _Arabia_. This territory has an area of 2,381,310 square miles and a population of a little more than thirty-four millions. This region where Christ was born and wrought his mighty works is to-day in desperate need of his message and life.
(1) Turkey has an area of 693,610 square miles, and is therefore more than eighty-six times the size of Ma.s.sachusetts. This great area has only 2,836 miles of railroad, while Pennsylvania with one fifteenth its area has 15,415 miles. Turkey includes Asia Minor, Armenia, Kurdistan, Mesopotamia, Syria, and a portion of Arabia. Turkey has a population of 17,683,550, fourteen millions of whom are Mohammedans and the rest divided among Christian churches; a majority of these are in Asia Minor and Armenia. There are only 354 missionaries, including wives, in all Turkey. The Mohammedan population is practically untouched, since a majority of the missionaries for political and other reasons have devoted comparatively little of their time to them.
(2) Persia is nearly as large as Turkey but has not more than one half of the population. The country extends about 700 miles north and south and 900 miles east and west. Millions of the people are difficult of access because Persia has only six miles of railroad, and political conditions have been unfavorable to missionary effort. This railroad was opened in 1888, and since that time no other railroads have been built. Not only are there no railroads but only a few good carriage roads. Twelve of these cities have a population ranging from thirty thousand in Kashan to two hundred and eighty thousand in Teheran, the capital. Four of the large cities have not been occupied by missionaries. There are eighty-four missionaries for the more than nine and a half millions of population.