The breadth of vision and the depth of conviction which animate a certain section of America in this respect, are best illustrated by these ringing words from a recent address by President Tucker of Dartmouth College:
“If God were not pouring into New England out of the riches of other countries, New England would be empty. While the latest foreigner may not compare favourably with the native stock, what of the second and third generations of foreigners? They are forging to the front, partly because of their virility and ambition, and partly through the sacrifice of the homes to educate their children. The rising scale of foreign population is on a better level than the falling scale of the native population. If the old New England stock is not willing to sacrifice as it used to, and if the New England boy is not as ambitious as his grandfather, I thank God that he is sending us those who are willing to sacrifice and anxious to rise; and that he is giving this challenge to the old stock: Rise up and show yourselves! If we do not see and feel it, it is to our shame. We are not the elect of God unless we prove our election, and if He can do better for the world through some other stock and religion than through the native stock and Protestant religion, let Him work in His own way.”
I need not say here how large a place the public school and the settlement both have (in spite of the fact that they are often called godless institutions) in making religious impressions upon the immigrant. The glimpse of a higher world, the world of the spirit, has been given to many eyes almost blind to the divine light, by modest men and women who have worn neither cassock nor crosses, and who were ordained to their holy task only as they felt the touch of needy children resting upon their hearts.
I recall a little, sharp-eyed Jewish lad whom lured from his news stand by recklessly buying his whole stock of evening papers. He had lived in Boston five years and was Bostonese, to the dropping of his Rs, and the picking them up again, to put where they did not belong. He was a product of the public school, not yet finished, but in the making; and over him hovered the benediction of some noble teacher, whose glory he reflected. “Teacher? O yes! teacher was even more than parents, almost like God. Teacher knew more than the stupid rabbi, who tried to drill into him the Hebrew alphabet.”