104 Missouri Agricultural Report. 



"nyther;" that was my hope, and my ear was always open to hear 

 the call that would come from the city, and that is the way with 

 nine-tenths of preachers. We are trying to impress and educate 

 the ministers that the young man coming out of the seminary should 

 go to the country — that his place is in the country. 



Now, I want to talk to you about this rural church problem. 

 I want to say, first of all, friends, that this is a problem peculiar to 

 America; there is no such problem in the old world. There may 

 have been centuries ago. But there the most beautiful churches 

 you will find are churches out in the country; and the men who 

 have occupied high and prominent positions in their various denomi- 

 nations are the pastors of these country churches. The men who 

 have interpreted the mission of God to man have been men who 

 have been pastors in the country. Think of John Frederick Oberlin, 

 who it is said lost himself yonder in the highlands of France. He 

 led men, nay, whole communities, out of darkness into light. He 

 buried himself for sixty years and transformed the community. 

 And there was Charles Kingsley, that wonderful character, who 

 lived so close to nature. He could not help but live out in God's 

 open country; he was always a country minister. I can hardly 

 repeat here the great names of all men back yonder in the world, 

 but they were not the men who came from the city, but were 

 pastors who lived among the people and built up strong country 

 churches. If I should tell you tonight that the majority of great 

 Americans were men brought up in the country you will realize 

 that this rural church topic is no small problem. One of our 

 pastors recently took a book, published in New York, entitled 

 "Who's Who in America," in which are enrolled the names of 

 living Americans who are doing things, men and women who have 

 already accomplished enough in any line of achievement to be 

 thought worthy of having their names enrolled in that book. This 

 pastor went through that book to find out how many of them were 

 brought up in the country, and he found that 85 per cent of men 

 who now are famous in America — men and women both — were men 

 and women who were reared and brought up on the farm. 



If the future is to be as the past, I claim tonight that our 

 problem is a problem of leadership. It is no small problem, be- 

 cause it has to do with 85 per cent of the leaders of America, and 

 if we are to keep them Christians, to keep them with high ideals, 

 with noble purposes, it must be as we minister to them out yonder 

 in the open country, before temptations of the city's wealth ares 



