288 Missouri Agricultural Report. 



held in such and such a church at such and such an hour. That is 

 not the right way to put it. You worship God in the church ; that is 

 the only thing you can do in the church. But the place of service is 

 the six days that are outside of that church. But we never can 

 do this until we realize this great vision, until we realize the great 

 importance of the tremendous task that is upon us, that the church 

 is not to be ministered unto, but to minister and give her life. You 

 take that old Bible that we all love, God's book, God's word and 

 soul, and you can just put it all into two words — the whole gospel 

 in two words. As long as a man is away from God the message 

 is "Come," God's love speaking it out. But when we have accepted 

 this wondrous gift of God, then God has another word for us, and 

 that word is "Go," and we have not been going. We have been 

 content to make the churches a kind of mutual admiration society. 

 We have been content to put the emphasis upon the church and not 

 upon Christ, until all over this country we have this kind of religion 

 (I do not like that word but I still use it, for we all know better) — 

 a kind of "churchianity" instead of Christianity, and until we get 

 our vision upon this task and not upon the instrument that is to 

 be used in bringing in God's Kingdom, we will only selfishly exist. 

 The church must realize that the farmers are God's men. If there 

 is a man in the world that has to be honest it is the farmer. You 

 cannot cheat the soil; if you do you lose money. You must be 

 honest. And so I say the farmer is God's hired man, and God is a 

 sympathetic landlord. The farmer is working together with God 

 throughout the seasons of the year. God is giving him the show- 

 ers and God is giving him the strength and God is giving him seed- 

 time and the time of the harvest, and he is working out God's plans, 

 and he is knowing more and more by conferences of this kind, and 

 understanding more and more the laws of God. 



And then, last of all, we must constantly exalt the spiritual 

 ideas, and in this age in which materialism has seemingly intoxi- 

 cated our civilization we need to lift men up and up and up, that 

 they may realize "that a man's life consisteth not in the abundance 

 of the things which he possesseth." 



