GEORGE A. GORDON
The Old South Church, Boston, has had a prominent and patriotic part in American history since early days. It was a Puritan immigrant and layman of this church, Samuel Sewall, who was one of the first to speak out against human slavery in his tract, “The Selling of Joseph”; and it was in this church that the five patriotic addresses, published in 1917 under the title, “The Appeal of the Nation,” were delivered by George Angier Gordon, pastor of the church since 1884. The Rev. Dr. Gordon, who was born in Scotland in 1853 and received his common school education there, came to the United States in 1871. In 1881 he obtained the degree A.B. from Harvard. He has since served his Alma Mater frequently in the capacity of University preacher, and many Harvard men will recall his inspiring talks in the college chapel. In the following selection he manifests the poignant homesickness, the sterling loyalty, and the noble aspiration so common in the writings of the immigrant.
The Old South Church, Boston, has had a prominent and patriotic part in American history since early days. It was a Puritan immigrant and layman of this church, Samuel Sewall, who was one of the first to speak out against human slavery in his tract, “The Selling of Joseph”; and it was in this church that the five patriotic addresses, published in 1917 under the title, “The Appeal of the Nation,” were delivered by George Angier Gordon, pastor of the church since 1884. The Rev. Dr. Gordon, who was born in Scotland in 1853 and received his common school education there, came to the United States in 1871. In 1881 he obtained the degree A.B. from Harvard. He has since served his Alma Mater frequently in the capacity of University preacher, and many Harvard men will recall his inspiring talks in the college chapel. In the following selection he manifests the poignant homesickness, the sterling loyalty, and the noble aspiration so common in the writings of the immigrant.
The Republic of the United States is in fact a nation of immigrants, a nation of aliens. All have made the great migration, all have come hither from other parts of the earth. The only difference among Americans is that some came earlier while others came much later, indeed as it were yesterday, to these shores. The only aboriginal American is the Indian. This historic fact should be forever borne in mind. We came hither first or last, across the ocean, and from the ends of the earth.
There is however a ground of distinction among Americans; they are rightly divided into native citizens and citizens foreign-born. The native citizen has grown into the being of the society that his alien ancestors helped to form. He has in his blood an American inheritance; his instincts have been fed with native food; he is alive to nothing else as he is to the American Republic. We foreign-born Americans acknowledge his distinction, we rejoice in his happiness, we count ourselves fortunate to stand with him in the great communion of free citizens. We ask him, in his turn, to read in the story of our migration the struggle of his ancestors; we remind him of what we left behind, what we brought with us, and at what cost we gained our American citizenship.
In the words that I have chosen as my text[9]we have a foreign-born Roman citizen. Exactly where he was born we do not know; we do know that he was born outside Roman citizenship. He was, therefore, an adopted citizen of the Roman Empire, and to this he refers in the words that I have quoted, “With a great sum obtained I this citizenship.”
There are three implications in these words: the cost of citizenship to this man; the privilege of citizenship to him;his duty as a Roman citizen. These three points will be a convenient guide to us in our discussion of the subject of the morning—“The Foreign-born American Citizen.”
1. First of all, then, there is the cost to this man of citizenship in the Roman Empire. He obtained it with a great sum; to get it made him poor.
There are few among native-born American citizens who understand the sacrifice made by the foreign-born citizens of the heritage of childhood and boyhood in the wonder world of early life. There is the bereavement of the early mystic, unfathomable touch of nature that comes to one only through one’s native land. Never again to see the sun rise and set over the dear old hills, with the hero’s mantle like the bloom of the heather resting upon them, and the shadow of an immemorial race, is truly a great bereavement. Never again to see the green pastures, with the flocks quietly feeding in them, under the shade of the plot of trees here and there mercifully provided by the humanity of previous generations, nor to hear the music of the river that has sung into being and out of being forty generations of human lives; never again to see the fields covered with corn, nor to hear the reaper’s song among the yellow corn; never again to see the light that welcomed you when you were born, that smiled on you when you were baptized, that went with you to school, that watched your play, that constituted the beautiful, the glorious environment of your early days; never again to hear the song of the native birds, the skylark in the morning, the mavis at nightfall, and the wild whistle of the blackbird under the heat of noon from his thorny den,—all this is simply inexpressible bereavement. Nature is inwoven with the soul in its earliest years; its beauty, its wildness, its soul becomes part of the soul of every deep-hearted human being, and never again can nature be seen as she was seen through the wonder of life’s morning.
It is this spell of nature over the young soul that gives its exquisite pathos to Hood’s world-familiar melody:
“I remember, I remember,The house where I was born,The little window where the sunCame peeping in at morn;He never came a wink too soon.Nor brought too long a day,But now I often wish the nightHad borne my breath away!...“I remember, I remember,The fir trees dark and high;I used to think their slender topsWere close against the sky:It was a childish ignorance,But now ’tis little joyTo know I’m farther off from heav’nThan when I was a boy.”
“I remember, I remember,The house where I was born,The little window where the sunCame peeping in at morn;He never came a wink too soon.Nor brought too long a day,But now I often wish the nightHad borne my breath away!...“I remember, I remember,The fir trees dark and high;I used to think their slender topsWere close against the sky:It was a childish ignorance,But now ’tis little joyTo know I’m farther off from heav’nThan when I was a boy.”
“I remember, I remember,The house where I was born,The little window where the sunCame peeping in at morn;He never came a wink too soon.Nor brought too long a day,But now I often wish the nightHad borne my breath away!
“I remember, I remember,
The house where I was born,
The little window where the sun
Came peeping in at morn;
He never came a wink too soon.
Nor brought too long a day,
But now I often wish the night
Had borne my breath away!
...
...
“I remember, I remember,The fir trees dark and high;I used to think their slender topsWere close against the sky:It was a childish ignorance,But now ’tis little joyTo know I’m farther off from heav’nThan when I was a boy.”
“I remember, I remember,
The fir trees dark and high;
I used to think their slender tops
Were close against the sky:
It was a childish ignorance,
But now ’tis little joy
To know I’m farther off from heav’n
Than when I was a boy.”
There it is, the mystic, divine influence of nature through the atmosphere of the country of one’s birth; every immigrant to this country makes that great surrender.
There is, too, the early humanity. You go down town, you who are native-born American citizens, and every day you meet those whom you have known from birth, your earliest playmates and schoolmates, and those who went to college with you, who entered business with you, who fought side by side with you through the Great War, who loved what you loved in early life, revered what you revered, laughed at what you laughed at and felt as you felt over the glory and the tenderness of existence. You do not know what they have left behind them who never see a face that they knew in childhood, who will never meet again, till time is no more, a schoolmate or an early companion, who will never gather again in the old home with father and mother and brothers and sisters; only the most favored have had a fugitive glance, like looking at a telegraph pole from an express train, of those dear, early faces. There is a whole world of bereavement of early, tender, beautiful humanity onthe part of all who come here. And this again you hear in those two verses in “Auld Lang Syne”:—
“We twa hae run about the braes,And pu’d the gowans fine,But we’ve wander’d monie a weary footSin’ auld lang syne.“We twa hae paidl’d in the burnFrom morning sun till dine,But seas between us braid hae roar’dSin’ auld lang syne.”
“We twa hae run about the braes,And pu’d the gowans fine,But we’ve wander’d monie a weary footSin’ auld lang syne.“We twa hae paidl’d in the burnFrom morning sun till dine,But seas between us braid hae roar’dSin’ auld lang syne.”
“We twa hae run about the braes,And pu’d the gowans fine,But we’ve wander’d monie a weary footSin’ auld lang syne.
“We twa hae run about the braes,
And pu’d the gowans fine,
But we’ve wander’d monie a weary foot
Sin’ auld lang syne.
“We twa hae paidl’d in the burnFrom morning sun till dine,But seas between us braid hae roar’dSin’ auld lang syne.”
“We twa hae paidl’d in the burn
From morning sun till dine,
But seas between us braid hae roar’d
Sin’ auld lang syne.”
There is due other surrender: there is the suffering of adjustment in a new country. The first year I spent in Boston, from July, 1871, to considerably more than July, 1872, I conceived my condition to be as near that of the spirits in hell as anything I could well imagine! To be in a city where nobody knew you, where you knew nobody, where so many wanted to take advantage of the “greenhorn,” to laugh at him if he ever grew for a moment a bit sentimental, was not exactly heaven. Many and many a time I went down to the wharf to see the ships with their white sails, written all over with invisible tidings from the far, sunny islands left behind, and if I had not been restrained by shame and pride I should have gone home. That is the experience of Scandinavian, English, Scotch, Irish, Teuton, Slav, Armenian, Syrian, and Latin; the great bereavement of nature and of early humanity is deepened by the sorrow of readjustment in a foreign land. “With a great sum obtained we this citizenship”; few understand it, few indeed. Foreign-born American citizenship is preceded by a vast sacrifice, and you never can understand that sort of citizenship till you take account of this really profound experience.
2. The next thing in the experience of the chief captain was his privilege as a Roman citizen. His station and bearing and power told of that privilege. He was a military tribune in the legion stationed in Jerusalem; he had risen toimportant command and power impossible for him, inaccessible to him if he had not obtained citizenship.
America has been called the land of opportunity. Look at this fact in three directions only, since time will not allow more. The common workman may become, by intelligence, by diligence and by fidelity, the master workman. Cast your eyes over the land to-day and assemble the master workmen, and you will find that the vast majority of them have risen from the position of ordinary workmen to the chief places in their trade and calling. Such a chance for ascension in a broad way for all competent men, in the Old World, is a simple impossibility. The chance does not exist there. Men rise there by talent and by luck, by talent and by favoritism. But here in a broad and magnificent manner they rise by talent and industry, fidelity and force; here as nowhere else, they have a chance to work out what is in them.
Consider this in the things of the intellect. The Old World calls us an uneducated race. It is true that we have not many great scholars; the reason is that we are engaged with immediate pressing problems; we apply intelligence to living issues which in other lands is applied to the Genitive and the Accusative and the Dative cases of the Latin and Greek languages. When we look backward and consider the provision made for the intellect of the nation during the last fifty years, we claim that there is no parallel to it in any country on which the sun shines. More money has gone to found colleges and schools and universities for men and for women, open to all talent from ocean to ocean and from the Canadian border to the Gulf, than was ever dedicated to education in the same length of time in the history of mankind. Not only is there provision for the regulars, but also for the irregulars; all sorts of evening schools flourish in our cities where the first teachers of the community are available for talented and aspiring youth of slender means. Men are practicing medicine and law; they are in the ministry and in other professions, usually called learned, who never saw the inside of a college or a university, who have obtained an education in what is called an irregular way, from and by thevery men who are teaching in these regular academic institutions.
Let me remind you of the abundant hospitality, the wonderful generosity of the American people toward aspiring youth. Talent which would be ignored in Great Britain, promise which would be sneered at in every continental country in Europe, is here discovered and encouraged to develop into power. This is a phenomenon of which we must never lose sight, the chance here in the United States for a man to be intellectually all that it is possible for him to be. The best teachers may often be seen here wielding the educational power of history and the arts to train the youth to whom college is an impossibility, for service requiring educated powers, in his day and generation.
There is to be noted the opportunity in the way of character and moral influence that comes to citizens of the United States. What does that mean? The chance to change and improve the law of the land, the chance for a man to change and improve the government of the United States, the chance to modify, in the line of humanity, the social feeling of the United States. And freedom is here the condition of all; every man who complains that things are not what they should be has a chance by his vote to remedy the abuse and to take another step toward the ideal.
Here again there is something new, measuring it against the whole people. We are dupes and fools when we allow ourselves to be ruled by groups in this country; we are free men, with the power in our hands. If we have moral ideals of our own, and moral character, we can so use them as to lift the character of the land in which we live.
3. Finally, there was the duty of the tribune as a Roman citizen. Paul was about to be bound and tortured, without trial, when he appealed to the chief captain, “Is it lawful for you to scourge a man that is a Roman and uncondemned?” This startled the man. “Tell me, art thou a Roman? Good heavens, this will never do! I am pledged to do my duty! Get off those shackles and set the man free and guard his life!” There was the man’s sense of his duty.
What is the duty of foreign-born American citizens? First to learn the English language and to prefer it to all other tongues on the face of the earth. That tongue comes in the splendor of a June day; it breaks over life like a June sunrise, with an atmosphere, tone, beauty, and power which for Americans must ever be unapproachable. Let no American citizen hug his foreign tongue, go into the closet with it and shut out the light of the great English language which carries all our ideals as Americans! The very vessel of the Lord it is, in which American freedom is carried,—the language of Shakespeare and Milton, the incomparable free man; the language of Bacon and Burke and Washington and Hamilton and Webster and Lincoln. This tongue consecrates the immigrant who would be a citizen; he never can be a citizen of the United States without that, never. This is the tongue that carries in a unique translation the literature of Israel; the Bible is the maker of free peoples.
Next, we foreign-born American citizens must read the story of the Revolution into our blood. What is the significance of the Revolution for the foreign-born American citizen? These men were Englishmen or the sons of Englishmen; they loved the British Isles better than any portion of the earth’s surface, except their own Colonies; they loved them with an inexpressible love. Yet when it came to question of principle they stood out and said, “We must be free; the Colonies, or the United States, first!” You recall Daniel Webster’s splendid eloquence here:—
“On this question of principle, while actual suffering was yet afar off, they raised their flag against a power to which, for purposes of foreign conquest and subjection, Rome in the height of her glory is not to be compared,—a power which has dotted over the surface of the whole globe with her possessions and military posts, whose morning drumbeat, following the sun, and keeping company with the hours, circles the earth with one continuous and unbroken strain of the martial airs of England.”
Against that power to which they were as nothing, against that lovely land of their origin they stood out when it wasa question of their own independence and their own manhood.
That applies to every foreign-born American citizen to-day,—Saxon, Celt, Scandinavian, Teuton, Slav, Latin, Syrian, bond and free. Learn the lesson of the Revolution. This country will have no hands upon it, from any origin, anywhere outside of itself. Learn the lesson of the Civil War; the nation that set to work to keep its integrity as a political whole, to keep its integrity as a human whole, to fight, as it had done a foreign dominion, an evil genius inside its own border. There again is a vast lesson to all of us who are foreign-born. Once again we should store in memory and ponder in clearest conscience and intelligence the great ideas, the great political ideas of America as they are exhibited in Washington, in Hamilton the Nationalist and in Jefferson the State Rights’ patriot; and again in Webster and Calhoun, in Lincoln and the Confederate, and as they issued at last in a true conception of State freedom in a sisterhood of States that constitutes a great nation. These things should be part of the common store of knowledge of the adopted citizen. They are the great forces that have moved this country from its earliest beginning, and that have lifted it into power and renown.
America must be first; cherish your love for the old country, your tenderness,—a man does not need to hate his mother because he loves his wife, but it is his duty to stand by his wife even against his mother. What kind of a country should we have if every citizen, when trouble comes, should prefer in loyalty the land of his birth! What a confused mob of a country we should have! Duty overrides origin, tradition, sentiment. Here and here alone is our supreme and inviolable obligation.
I often think that this great country of ours is ultimately to be the deepest-hearted and the brightest-minded nation of the world. Hither come, with sore hearts, burdened humanity and quickened intelligence, the elect from all nations. You look at them when they land, and you laugh. If you had been in Quebec when I landed, perhaps you would not havewanted me as your minister! The elect from all nations, parts of a splendid orchestra,—violin, flute, cornet, drum, trumpet, and a score of other instruments, all pouring forth their genius to make the great, swelling, soul-stirring symphony of this mighty nation. Thus from Scandinavia, Germany, France, Italy, Russia, Armenia, Greece; from England, Ireland, and Scotland they come,—all are here with great souls to make a new and greater America. Out of this composite land, this Pentecostal nation,—sometimes it seems to me minus the Holy Ghost,—this nation gathered from every people under the heaven, rags and tatters and dirt and all, I believe the Eternal Spirit will evolve and establish the most gifted, the most far-shining and the mightiest people in the world. God grant that our dream may come true!