200 ' Missouri Agricultural Report. 



years gone by. For instance, I have heard some father on the 

 farm talk Hke this, "Our John don't care for books or college; 

 he is going to be our farmer," just as if it did not take brains 

 to farm. I have heard country mothers go on and sputter that 

 after they had educated their daughters and given them an 

 opportunity to learn music "They up and married a farmer," 

 as they said, as if a farmer's wife had not as good a right to have 

 a good education as a minister's wife or a banker's or a business 

 man's, or any other man's wife. But there has been a great 

 change of sentiment with respect to country life and with 

 reference to farming as a business, and this is a very hopeful 

 sign, I am sure that we have seen more about the farmer in the 

 newspapers and magazines, the great dailies, too, and the great 

 magazines in the last five years than we saw in the last twenty- 

 five before, and it has not by any means been in the funny column 

 or in the cartoon. 



Now as to country church administration. I want to 

 speak first of the church platform or the program of the country 

 church. You know when political parties are preparing to 

 combat they set forth a statement of the principles which they 

 stand for in the form of a platform. What is the platform or 

 program of the country church? I am inclined to think that the 

 platform of the country church needs to be enlarged a good deal 

 from what it has been in the past. We used to think of religion 

 altogether as a sort of Sunday institution. We did not think 

 of it so much in terms of everyday life. But there has been a 

 great change in the last few years in regard to the conception or 

 field of religion. Religion is coming to be a movement that per- 

 tains to daily life. It is a great mistake to divorce religion from 

 politics or from the business of life. 



The function of the church is to preach the Gospel of Jesus 

 Christ in the world and call men to repentance and prevail upon 

 them to accept the Gospel of Christ, and also the principles that 

 Christ has brought to the world, the principles of life. We must 

 not confuse the function of the church with its sphere; the sphere 

 of the church must extend to every department that concerns the 

 welfare of human beings, the department of home and the school 

 and of the community. It must take its message, the message 

 and the laws which apply to service and to right living, and apply 

 them to every relief of man. And it is high time today in the 

 country that we correlate with the different churches. There 

 is too much working separately. It is a problem big enough. 



