A Fresh Summons to Save This Land

Perhaps our public men will come to see now, if they never have realized before, the importance of home missionary endeavor, particularly in that section of the great cities where the least desirable elements among our foreign immigrants are found. Perhaps the enterprise of Christianizing this land will assume in the eyes of all people a greater significance and importance, now that we have had the terrible object lesson of what an irreligious man and one opposed to all religions can accomplish. It is often remarked at anniversaries of Home Missionary Societies that Christianity is essential to the perpetuation of the republic. But the events of the last fortnight have invested that familiar assertion with tremendous force. Many hitherto indifferent to home missions now see that in their maintenance lies the hope of the nation. It is time to press the home missionary advance, to call upon the wealth and culture and business energy of the country to stand behind the Church of Christ in its effort to make this a genuinely Christian nation.