FARMERS' INSTITUTES. . 75 



if it was, it lias a higher function which is all its own. If, therefore, the 

 churches may not be the executive of social action and of organized effort 

 for civic betterment, they may give initiative to every such endeavor by 

 fulfilling their function of inspiring, educating and unifying the people. 

 The social ideals of the gospel have borne their best fruits in society 

 when the churches have supplied the town and city, the state and nation 

 with families and citizens inspired by religious ideals of social relation- 

 ship and prompted to take the initiative toward their realization. This 

 function of the church is more formatory than reformator3\ There can 

 be no reform without the idea of the ideal form. Reformation, therefore, 

 must ever be subsidiary to the creative function of forming the ideal. In 

 the language of Horace Mann, "Where anything is growing, one formatory 

 is worth a dozen reformatories." In the growing organization of rural 

 cummunities let the church, therefore, fulfil its own function of forming 

 the social relationships according to the pattern of the common life 

 entrusted to her by God. To the church the people look for the initiative 

 toward realizing the divine ideal of the life of the one and the many. 



HAVENS OP REFUGE. 



To attempt the fulfilment of their great function, the country churches 

 may find inspiration and encouragement in the initiative which the social 

 settlements have given toward the social organization of the densely 

 crowded and disorganized city centers. Around the household life of 

 those who have gone to make their home in these neighborhood houses, 

 and to identify themselves with the whole life of these cosmopolitan dis- 

 tricts, many communities are naturally, happily, and unitedly organizing 

 their common interests and efforts, pleasures, sacrifices and hopes. 

 Inspired by a higher ideal thus imparted, and started out by a new 

 impulse thus given, self-governing, self-sustaining, organization for social, 

 educational, recreative and political betterment, are clustering about 

 these city neighborhood centers. In one of the country suburbs of Chicago 

 the little church has organized, and sheltered under its roof, a "town 

 meeting" of all the inhabitants, and has succeeded in uniting on broadly 

 religious lines all the diverse elements of the population in a people's 

 Sunday evening club. As the one center at which the most people con- 

 tinuously gather, the country church has a great responsibility and 

 opportunity in meeting the tacit demand of its community for the highest 

 ideal of the common life, and for the strongest initiative toward its 

 realization. It need be none the less spiritual and churchly for thus 

 fulfilling its social and civic prerogatives. Its good people should make 

 the community better, and the better community would surely help make 

 people good. Every successful effort which the country church makes 

 toward bettering the industrial, social, recreative and educational inter- 

 ests of the community will be directly tributary to its spiritual purpose. 

 The saving of souls is nothing less than the salvation of selves. For soul 

 is not anything a man has, it is all he is or may become. The church 

 cannot save any part of a man, nor can any man be saved entirely apart 

 fi'om his surroundings. To save the whole man the church must apply 

 its whole gospel to the whole human life. 



The final function of the church, most essential to all social and civic 

 organization, is to generate that public spirit and self-sacrifice which 



