It will be remembered that into the new and harder life of the successive frontiers, Home Missions entered, bringing a saving power, as well as one that softened and glorified the renunciations and sacrifices attendant always upon frontier life. Indeed, the most marked characteristics of our national life until recent years have been those born of contact with frontier conditions--courage, discipline, an austere sense of duty, a passion for work, marvelous practicality joined to a fundamental idealism and love of sentiment, an unconquerable hopefulness and an innate kindness and personal helpfulness. Of necessity the conditions and environs of the country have reacted upon the religious ideals and life of our people. We can not enter into the fullest understanding of the present place and influence of Home Missions as a National Force, or a study of its immediate future, without pausing to review the background of the past. For we recognize that growth, organization and development are all functions of _time_. The early fathers had no thought of founding a nation when they sought refuge and a new start on this continent. Jamestown, New York, Plymouth and their outgrowing settlements were intensely individualistic. They were the individual Cavalier, Hollander or Pilgrim, only in larger proportions, bearing all their characteristics. To appreciate the characteristics and spirit of these colonists, we must consider the special significance of the age that gave them birth. They "were the children of a century in which the human spirit had a new birth in energy of imagination, in faith in its powers to dare greatly and achieve greatly." [Footnote: Hamilton Wright Mabie--American Ideals, Character and Life.] They were inspired most strongly by religious aspirations, although combining with these impelling political convictions. In the Puritan colony, "membership in the church for some time remained a qualification for voting." "In nearly every document which conveyed authority to discoverers, explorers, and settlers in the New World, the Christian religion was recognized." [Footnote: Hamilton Wright Mabie--American Ideals, Character and Life.] Their faith was of heroic quality, of rock firmness; their obedience to duty as they saw it, almost absolute. The Bible exerted a tremendous influence. It was not only their religious guide and teacher, but was also their library, daily companion and for some time their only literature. It became wrought into the very fibre of their thought. This dominating religious attitude, while modified in the different types--the Friends, Huguenots, Moravians--gave the impulses which have had so strong a formative influence upon the life of the nation.