38 CHAPTERS IN RURAL PROGRESS 



for a full development of church work in every 

 community in the land. 



Furthermore, there is supreme necessity for 

 adding dignity to the country parish. Too often 

 at present the rural parish is regarded either as a 

 convenient laboratory for the clerical novice, 

 or as an asylum for the decrepit or inefficient. 

 The country parish must be a parish for our 

 ablest and strongest. The ministry of the most 

 Christlike must be to the hill-towns of Galilee as 

 well as to Jerusalem. 



There is still another truth that the country 

 church cannot afford to ignore. The rural 

 church question is peculiarly interwoven with 

 the industrial and social problems of the farm. 

 A declining agriculture cannot foster a growing 

 church. An active church can render especially 

 strong service to a farm community, in its in- 

 fluence upon the religious life, the home life, the 

 educational life, the social life, and even upon 

 the industrial life. Nowhere else are these 

 various phases of society's activities so fully 

 members one of another as in the country. The 

 country church should co-operate with other 

 rural social agencies. This means that the 

 country pastor should assume a certain leader- 

 ship in movements for rural progress. He is 



