FARMERS' INSTITUTES. 73 



ment but to enable technical advancement to minister to the life of the 

 people." Thus, too, the churches lose their souls in building themselves 

 up out of the community instead of building the community up out of 

 themselves, in seeming to save a man's soul at the expense of neglecting 

 the man's self, and in resting content under the paradox of having a com- 

 munity of Christians which is not a Christian community. 



CHURCH IN HISTORY. 



When institutions thus lose or lessen their grip on themselves, it is 

 well to follow them up stream to their fountain head and see them in the 

 full possession of the purpose which called them into being and gave them 

 their right to be and their room to work among men. Our New England 

 forefathers had a community use for their churches in planting the colo- 

 nies. At the center of every town they built alongside of the town 

 hall and the school ''the center church." It was intended to be, and was, 

 the spiritual and social bond to draw and hold men to their civic centers 

 and to send them forth thence to practise the high and holy art of living 

 and working together. Most of their descendants not only, but many 

 from every land who, in the brotherhood of the race, have helped build up 

 this great international nation, followed their example and fairly took 

 possession of this land of promise by planting the church of their fathers 

 and clustering their farms and shops, their schools and court houses 

 about them. 



The churches were thus centered while the population was homogeneous 

 and before the industrial organization became so complex and divisive. 

 But when machinery and the railways created the factory towns and 

 the great cities, and with marvelous rapidity shifted one-third of the 

 population within city limits, then civilization experienced its most 

 radical and revolutionary transformation. American country life suf- 

 fered changes and losses from which it is only now beginning to recuperate 

 compensatory gains. Country towns lost many of the most enterprising 

 and valuable elements of their population. Not a few of them lost their 

 territorial and social centers of gravity, as may be seen in Kollin Lynde 

 Hartt's three graphic articles on "The Regeneration of Rural New 

 England." (The Outlook for March 3, 10. 17, 1900.) See also "The 

 Problems of Evangelization of Vermont." (Supplements to the minutes 

 of the ninety-first annual meeting of the general convention of the Con- 

 gregational churches and ministers of Vermont, 1886.) 



Often the institution to suffer first and most and to recuperate last 

 under these changes, is the county church. Weakened within by the 

 emigration of its families or young people, cut off from the incoming 

 population by the diversity of languages and antecedents, and hopelessly 

 handicapped in the struggle to possess its field by the multiplicity of 

 sects, with their feeble, non-co-operative churches, desperately contending 

 with each other for a foothold, the church in many country places stands 

 one side of the current of human life like a stranded ship with the big 

 tide ebbing away. Country life has lost its hold upon people not only 

 because of its lesser economic opportunity, but quite as much because of 

 its lack of social interest and equipment, and the consequent heart- 

 hunger of both young and old. 

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