you will, this much is certain, an intelligent interpretation of the discoverable facts of the universe and of the facts of history makes it certain that the purpose of that power is an evolutionary purpose, and that it has been running on through the centuries, and that the "one sublime" far off event, toward which that purpose is ever tending is the leading forth of the perfect in the life of the individual and in the life of the community. As I interpret the divine purpose, as it has reference to the life of this nation, I am compelled to admit that it is a missionary purpose, and in using that word missionary I am not thinking of any religious propaganda either Protestant or Catholic or Jewish. I am not thinking of religion at all except in the widest sense as involving those principles and pursuits which make for the welfare and the upbuilding of humanity at large. God has had in the history of His people two processes of working this evolutionary purpose. First, there has been the far reaching influence of our ideals as they have been proclaimed by our preachers and our litterateurs and our poets, and have taken hold upon the immigration and the heart and the brain of the people of other lands and inspired in them the desire to know something of the life of this land and to become a part of it if they might. And the other process has been the bringing of these people to us that they might come directly under the influence of our ideals and our pulpits and have brought to bear upon them directly and definitely those influences that have been developing the life of this nation from the very beginning. We need to beware how we stand against the purpose of Him who is over all and through all and in us all, and His purpose to make this nation the missionary nation of the earth will work itself out in spite of the plans of agitators or politicians. The typical American has always been a composite. He will be more and more a composite as the years go by, and his badge of distinction will not be descent from some obscure Revolutionary soldier or a place in some provincial Four Hundred; it will be in the number of the rich tides that mingle in his veins, making him cosmopolitan in his lineage and in his sympathy with everything that uplifts uni versal humanity, but American in his ideals and spirit. Strong, but not arrogant, rich but not proud, learned but not supercilious, stretching his hand to every man who wants to climb to the high places in the fear of God and in the love of righteousness, and with him, working out the great problems which the Almighty has given to the people of this nation. And it seems to me that this whole question of Chinese exclusion, as the whole, broader question of immirgation of every sort, comes at last to this proposition. We are to recognize the evolutionary processes of the power that makes for righteousness. The purpose that is declared to us to be an evolutionary purpose, and to be moving ever toward the leading forth of the perfect in the life of humanity. What we need is to put Ellis Island in China as well as in Southern Europe. What we need is some wise system of distribution that shall place these people where the greatest needs Then we need to keep away from them corrupt politicians on the one side, agitators and demagogues on the other, and give them to the influence of our public schools, of our free press, of Mr. Carnegie's libraries and of all those leavening, uplifting influences which have made us what we are. And those who are assimilable will be assimilated; those who come here simply to earn their livelihood will have the chance that ought to be theirs; and through the institutions and the ideals and the history and the pulpits of this nation the evolutionary purpose of Almighty God will be pushed on to its final fulfillment, and we shall have the place and the power in the working out of that purpose which was designed to be ours. |