Report of Missouri Farmers' Week. 279 



and if we can only bring into such rural conferences as this the 

 farmers and cause them to realize their divine position, (and their 

 condition is divine), we will have accomplished much good, be- 

 cause the farmer is doing the work that God meant man to do. 

 He is the only man when you stop to think of it, who works with 

 God in the realm of nature and whom God has blessed through all 

 ages. Take the Bible. It is distinctly a farmers' book. The old 

 Patriarchs were all farmers and herdsmen. Talk about rotation of 

 crops and soil conservation, it is there in the Old Testament. "The 

 Earth is the Lord's" is its teaching. And when "in the fullness 

 of time" Christ came, His birth was first announced on the plains 

 of Bethlehem, out there in the open country, where the shepherds 

 watched their flocks by night, where it was so clear that they could 

 catch the vision of the angels, and the night so still that they could 

 hear the heavenly harmonies; and so it was to farmers that God 

 first revealed His greatest gift that He has ever given to this world. 

 So I will esteem it a privilege if I can give you any message that 

 will make you realize the greatness of the church which ministers 

 to God's people in the fields. 



Perhaps I ought to say just a word or two relative to myself. 

 Your leader has told me that a great many people have asked, "Who 

 is this man Adams, and where did he come from?" May I give you 

 a little of my family history ? My people were farmers and I lived 

 on the farm until called into the sacred office of the gospel ministry. 

 When first I became a minister sometimes there were invitations to 

 go to the city churches, yet I loved the open country — it was born 

 in me — and so I chose to pass my life with the sometimes despised, 

 often times abandoned, and very often most discouraged country 

 community and country church. I brought to them visions, and 

 perhaps because of that, I have been called into the Department of 

 Church and Country Life of our Home Board of Missions, to the 

 task of going about the country and helping the country churches 

 to a new vision of what God meant they should be, and about the 

 important place they should occupy in the world. Now, again, I 

 think I am fitted for this position because of an interdenominational 

 training. Although I am a member of the Presbyterian church, 

 my people have been connected with a number of other churches, 

 not because they belonged to that crowd of "gadites" and "leavites" 

 that we find in the churches today, just as much as they had them 

 back yonder in the Bible times, but because at different times they 

 moved from farm to farm and it was their belief that it was their 

 duty to cast their lot with the church nearest home. They did this 



