When the sea threatened
Holland her resolute people built the dykes and maintained them;
American Christians have failed to stop the leaks in the church dykes,
and we have had a Sunday submergence in consequence. The effect of it
upon our national development is already evident and is most disastrous
to our highest interests. Sabbath-breaking and progress-making never go
together. Sunday work and pleasure combined form the peril alike of the
American workingman and of Christian civilization.
[Sidenote: General Deterioration]
Along with this inflow of alien ideas in religion goes a lowered
morality and a lower tone generally. Not that the sins of those in high
places are to be charged upon the poor immigrant, for he rarely if ever
belongs to that class. The statement may be true that the great rascals
are of native stock. But that only increases the peril. The masses that
come to us from southern Europe certainly will not raise the moral or
commercial, any more than they will the political or intellectual,
level. If we do not raise them they will tend to lower us; and much of
what they see and hear can have nothing less than a demoralizing effect.
[Sidenote: The Only Safeguard of Liberty]
Where shall we find the zealous and consistent Christians who by
sympathetic contact will represent the true spirit of Christianity, and
make the elevation of the aliens possible? The supreme truth to be
realized is that nothing but Christianity, as incarnated in American
Protestantism, can preserve America's free institutions.
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