IX
NEIGHBORS TO THE WORLD

Those Who go Back. “Do these immigrants ever go back home?” asks some one. “If I went away from home and made my fortune I would want to go back home to spend it.”

I am glad to hear that question and some of you may be surprised at the answer.

We have all heard of the incoming immigrant army, and small wonder when we know that in some years it numbers over a million human beings. But we have heard little about the returning army. How large is it? How many of our immigrant neighbors prefer to spend their savings at home? How many go home because fortune has not smiled upon them in America, or because their mothers write, “I am getting old and it is very lonesome with my son far across the sea”?

Let us lay on the table nine, bright, new, copper pennies. Now suppose each penny represents one hundred thousand immigrants. Then the nine pennies would represent nine times one hundred thousand, or the nine hundred thousand immigrants that landed in 1911. Since almost three hundred thousand immigrants went back home in 1911 how many of these nine pennies shall we have to remove to show the actual immigrant increase for that year?

For 1908 we would have to use eight pennies to represent those who came, and to remove six of these pennies to represent the numbers that returned home that year.

I am sure this will surprise some of you. You did not know so great a multitude returned to Italy, or Russia, or elsewhere, yet every year anywhere from two hundred thousand to six hundred thousand leave our shores for home. That makes us feel the truth of the song we all know,

Influence of the Returned Immigrant. What effect has this home-coming multitude upon towns and villages all over the world?

When Stefano came to America he could neither read nor write. One day a friend said, “I know a church where Italians are taught to read free of all expense.” Stefano was sending money home to his mother each month, so he was glad to know of a free school. One night the leader of the school said, “We shall have a short session to-night because we are to have a prayer-meeting after school.” Stefano and fifty other young Italians remained for the prayer-meeting. At home Stefano had ceased going to church after he had been confirmed, except sometimes on feast days. He remained to the prayer-meeting, not because he wanted to but because all the others stayed. He listened with great attention to the speaker; he had never heard such an earnest address as the pastor gave that night. It seemed as if some one must have told the preacher all about him. All through the week he thought of the prayer-meeting and after he had attended a few times more he came to the preaching service on Sundays, and then Stefano became converted.

When he returned home he was on fire with the new religion he had found. His heart was full of love for everybody. But he was saddened when he saw how little the people of his village knew about God. One night he determined to tell them how he had found Christ in America, and so he called them together in his mother’s home and told his story. When he had finished what was his surprise and delight to have three other men rise and tell how they had found the same Christ in golden America.

Every one was interested. The villagers said, “Some of these men were bad men when they went away; they are now good men.” You will be glad to know that whole villages in Sicily have become Protestant and Christian by the preaching of just such returned immigrants as Stefano. Last year eighteen Protestant Churches of one denomination were founded in Sicily by returned immigrants converted in America.

This shows us the wonderful opportunity we have of being a good neighbor to one part of the world by being good neighbors to the Italians who live near us.

What has caused so old and conservative a nation as China to change to a republic? The leaders of this revolution are Christian men. If we asked them they would say, “We saw that the cities and towns and schools and churches and men and women and children of Christian lands were different from those of China. We believe the reason they are better is because they know Christ and are following Him.”

We have helped China by being a good neighbor to the Chinese who lived among us.

A few weeks ago a Russian school-teacher attended a preaching service in my church. After the Russian pastor had finished preaching the school-teacher sought him out and said: “I had fifty young men in my class in the Russian village where I taught. I told these scholars all I knew about God but I could not tell them much, I knew so little myself. I determined to know more so I visited the most celebrated monasteries in Russia in order to find out about God, but I didn’t find God in the monasteries. At the great monastery of Kieff after talking for hours with the abbot he said, ‘You are too good a man to come in here. Go back into the world, and somewhere there you will find God.’ I found him this morning as I listened to the sermon. Now I shall go back to Russia and tell the men of my village of the God who now speaks to my heart.”

We shall help the Russian Empire by being a good neighbor to these subjects of the Czar.

America is to-day the greatest mission field on earth. It is not this because of the vast number of foreigners who remain and make it their home; it is such because of the vast human river that flows back to its source. In a barren desert tract in the West, where sage brush and cactus are the only vegetation, the desert blossoms when the rivers of irrigation are let in. So does this returning human flood bring hope and new life to wornout and often hopeless civilizations.

Here lie the responsibility and privilege of America. Through school and settlement and church and a myriad other institutions and influences we must make these Old World brothers and sisters feel that they have found in the New World more tender and loving neighbors than those they left behind; we must show them that accepting our science and education, our ways of farming, and mining and manufacturing, is not enough, although these have had much to do with our greatness. Queen Victoria when asked the source of England’s greatness, pointed to the Bible. It was a true answer. It is being humble followers of Christ that makes us fit leaders of these foreigners, and sends them back fit to be leaders in their turn.

If we are helpful, loving Christian neighbors to these immigrants we shall set in motion waves of Christian faith and hope and love that, like the tides, will sweep around the world and break in benediction on every Old World shore.