Report of Missouri Farmers' Week. 109 



windows. I had post cards sent out besides making the announce- 

 ment at church, and we had the farmers from all around there, 

 from everywhere. Someone said, "I thought it was a religious 

 service." It was just as much a religious service, I claim, as 

 preaching a sermon, for it was showing God's will to people and how 

 God works along these lines, and everything like that is religious. 

 We have made a mistake in thinking religion is a preacher getting 

 up behind a desk and all the rest of us sitting by like bumps on a 

 log. Well, we started in the meeting with a song — I don't know 

 what it was we sang, but it was something good. After the song 

 I offered prayer and then the lecturer on dairying made a splendid 

 talk and illustrated the different things connected with that subject. 

 I closed the meeting with prayer, and asked the people to come out 

 at the next meeting as we were going on with the meetings. The 

 next night they were back again, and we had a good meeting, and 

 we have had two or three meetings of that kind that have shocked 

 the life out of that old vision, the old idea about the preacher and 

 about the church of Jesus Christ. 



And as sure as we have to advocate such things as that we 

 must advocate recreation. Do you know the one thing that drives 

 the boy from the farm? It is the toil of the farm. Do you know 

 that God raised our great inventors to make farming easier? But 

 you are buying improved machinery and working a good deal 

 harder than your fathers did when they worked with the old "arm- 

 strong" implements. You have made yourself work harder so as 

 to buy that eighty acres, and there is no recreation, there is no let 

 up. I will be glad when we can have a half -holiday a week on the 

 farm ; I believe a farmer's boy would work a great deal better five 

 and a half days out of six days that he works if Saturday afternoon 

 he had that part of the day off to do as he wanted to absolutely. He 

 ought to have, on Saturday afternoon and evening, an outlet for 

 that superabundant energy that is in him. Recreation has been 

 demonstrated to be one of the greatest agencies in the development 

 of character. When you play you have to work together. Baseball 

 has a moral tone to it ; you have to lose your personal identity, you 

 have to learn to give and take, and all of these things are the 

 things that help to build up our moral life. 



I wish I could go on and tell you what the church of Jesus 

 Christ might do. One time we had some new families come into 

 our neighborhood, and I tried to get them to come out to church, 

 and they would not come. There were quite a number of young 



