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like parts of New England should be veritably honey-combed by Swedish parishes of our own, though we should have begun -or rather continued― years ago. And we need literature in the Swedish language for the work. To begin the stock of this, the New England Provincial Committee on the Various Races has published a tract for general distribution among Swedes specially written by our best authority on the Church of Sweden, Bishop G. Mott Williams of Marquette.

Last autumn a Danish farmer entered for the first time one of our churches. Standing in the porch he thus addressed the rector, tears of joy starting to his eyes, "It is my own Church!" As a result his family and families of neighboring Danes were confirmed on the next visitation of the Bishop, and ever since drive in ten miles to the services. Such incidents

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- and we can find plenty if only we will try would speedily convert our rural missionaries and archdeacons, who now so glibly say, "I have all I can do to reach our own native Americans." These so-called foreigners in our rural districts will give far quicker and more thorough results than our so-called Americans; for with the former we do not have to break the long accumulated crust of American indifference. These need for what they have only lately lacked, the ministrations of a real religion.

IV. In the Italian work we have made some good beginnings in New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Indiana, Massachusetts and some other Dioceses - nevertheless all these are but a drop in the bucket. Our few scattered Italian priests have formed an association of good promise. More than half the Italians that come to America had already separated from the Church of their fathers for political and other reasons, and many more lapse here in spite of the earnest and wellplanned efforts of the Roman Church to hold them. Yet the Italian race is naturally religious and they respond readily to our efforts, if properly directed, and will understand and love our Eucharist, if celebrated in a dignified building and with adequate ceremonial. They long for a truly Catholic Church of authority and sacraments, without the abuses which drove

them from the Church of Rome; and they also need the foundation of plain evangelical teaching. They shy at the word Protestant, for they were brought up to believe that it signifies no faith, no sacraments, almost no God. Only Italians can understand Italians. Italian priests of real spirituality, thoroughly trained in what our American Church stands for, alone can solve the problem. Such would come, if the work were only taken up in a thorough and coherent and Catholic way, and if adequate Italian literature on the Church and her services were available. Practically all we have is a miserably translated Prayer Book (a new official translation is being made) and two or three brave though meagre attempts at little newspapers edited by isolated Italian priests. We have no Italian Hymnal, no devotional books, above all no books or tracts in Italian about the Church. The Bohemians, Slovaks, Hungarians, Spanish, Portuguese and French Canadians and others are among the vast hordes of unchurched and are in crying need of our care.

Last year a group of Bohemians offered to one of our clergy a congregation of 700 Bohemians, if he would come and minister to them, but he was obliged to refuse. The choir in his own parish church is entirely of Bohemian boys with wonderful big voices, and he is deeply beloved by the whole colony. This confidence was obtained only through patient study and sympathy. These people, because of Austrian oppression, hate the Church of Rome, but they long for a sacramental and authoritative religion. For example the Bohemians earnestly welcome into the rooms of their sick and dying one who comes with the authority from God. Of the half a million in America, 70,000 of this brilliant and attractive race are in New York. A much larger colony is in Chicago. Of the 70,000 in New York only 3,000 are classed as Roman Catholics; 1,500 are ministered to by Protestant denominations; the remainder are utterly unchurched. Indeed their many free-thinkers are carrying on a regular atheistic propaganda with atheistic Sunday Schools, in which a Catechism is taught with such questions as: "Q. Is there a God? A. There is no God."

There is other work for us at hand. We have lost thousands of English as well as Scotch and Irish, who were baptized and

brought up in the Anglican Communion, and whom we could have found and kept if we only had had Port Chaplains. The Canadian Church has most efficiently made this loss impossible by its system of Port Chaplains, who meet and carefully follow up all such immigrants. The Welsh too are our problem. Then there is the less obvious and more difficult possibility of work among the many unchurched of those races who are purely Protestant in their bringing up, like the Finns, the Norwegians, the Germans, the Swiss, and the Hungarians Calvinists. There are also the Jews, the Chinese, the Japanese, and the Mohammedans in America. Whatever may be our opportunities with all these, the four classes that I have mentioned at length are our own particular wards and brethren, and to them we must stretch out a hand. The call of God is clear. Our Church must act, and act definitely, quickly, largely and together.

Before discussing the larger ways of solving the problem, some of which I have already hinted at, let me make a few general suggestions. All churchmen can and should show a cordial interest, a brotherly sympathy, a real friendship of equal to equal for such they are with these strangers within our gates. Proper assimilation into the right sort of Americans can come only through association with those who already are the right kind. Our best laymen and laywomen should make it their definite business to find out the many promising children of the immigrant in our schools and help them to a full education and very likely to a distinguished career. We can organize committees from our vestries who shall urge and help the immigrants to naturalization, and who also shall see to it in each community that landlords, courts, and manufacturers give these people fair and Christian treatment. We can lend our parish houses for their choral societies. And one important thing we can do is to hunt out their lonely sick, especially the children, in the hospitals and give them flowers and little attentions, as well as churchly ministrations. This will sometimes open a door into the hearts of a whole. colony of that particular race. It is the children who are our

greatest and most accessible opportunities. But above and behind all these things let us fix our purpose definitely. The great object of the Church is pastoral care and the ministration of the Sacraments" Feed my Sheep." Let not mere social service, important as it is, blind us to the root object. Obviously the usual work of a parish, which strives to reach out and touch all it can within its bounds, can do and in many instances has done much in this immigrant work. I know a large and wealthy parish near New York, where children of fourteen races are taught in its Sunday School, whose chapels are frequently used for services in various tongues, which is doing very real work. Very likely there are many such instances and they could be copied far and wide.

Nevertheless in the majority of parishes only a tiny part of the work possible is accomplished because the point of contact cannot be established. It never can be established, nor can the work begin to spread until the whole Church, is whole-heartedly behind it, or at least whole Provinces, and definite specialized methods and means in men and material and cooperative organization are furnished and put into action.

For several years the Committee on the Various Races of the Province of New England (a Bishop, two priests and a layman) appointed, empowered and financed by the Provincial Synod, has been working on this problem. By correspondence, personal interviews, Diocesan surveys and visits to Diocesan Conventions, they have thoroughly come into touch with most of the work being done within and much outside of the Province. They have made it a point to discover and use those who are most expert on the subject of each race. They have published thus far the extensive Report of 1912, "The People of the Eastern Orthodox Churches, etc.," the Reports of 1915 and 1917, the officially sanctioned Swedish tract and Armenian letter mentioned above, and an Italian Simplified Prayer Book-all of which are distributed free within the Province and are being used in other Provinces. They have given advice and material help in many instances. They are carrying on a campaign of education among a carefully selected number of the most

prominent laymen of the Province. Also many other details suggested in the following paragraphs are being accomplished or planned. In fact this present article is a complete epitome of the ideals of this committee and of the solution of the problem which it is attempting to carry through.

Permit me then to state this solution under the three heads:men, material, and cooperative organization. It means vision and work and money; but it is feasible.

I. For definite extension of the work we need first and foremost, "native" priests, those who can minister to their own people in their own tongue and what is more important those who can understand and so influence their own people. The time will come, but it is a very long way off, when English alone can be used. We need native parish missionaries, native Diocesan missionaries,- for some diffused races native interDiocesan or Provincial missionaries. These can be found if only we will make the effort widespread and thorough-going. Students of various nationalities should be started on their training for Holy Orders. There is also need of special courses in our Seminaries to fit all clergy to understand and grapple with the problem. In every parish where there is a large colony of some accessible race in the vicinity and a native priest cannot be had, this work should be definitely assigned to an "Amercan" assistant with the responsibility of understanding it thoroughly and doing it. Trained and paid women workers are also needed, especially in Italian work. Also we must have Port Chaplains.

II. The materials needed are buildings, furnishings and books. If you are starting a mission in a community containing 10,000 Italians - there are many such and some much larger where we ought to start at once-do not expect them to flock enthusiastically to a bare hired hall, nor even to an ingeniously accoutered room in the parish house. They naturally resent the insult to God and themselves. Such a supposition is not, I am sorry to say, hypothetical. Adequate church buildings of beautiful interiors are needed, and with all the accustomed furnishings.

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