84 The Rural Church and the Young People 



helpfully with the various members . of his family. 

 Some farmers' wives are gradually being dragged to 

 death with the over-burden of work, which might be 

 obviated if the farmer and his wife were both shown 

 specifically a better way of getting things done. 

 Many boys and girls growing up in the country are 

 being cheated out of their natural heritage of good 

 health, spontaneous play, and the joy of social inter- 

 course, all because of the fact that farm products are 

 too much regarded as an end rather than a means 

 to the higher development of the members of the 

 rural family. So a good soil and excellent crops are 

 essentials for a substantial rural society, but they are 

 not a certain evidence of such thing. It is possible 

 to go into some of the country communities where 

 these material things are accumulated in great 

 abundance and yet find the people there living a 

 little, mean, and narrow form of life, and that chiefly 

 because they do not quite understand how to use 

 the splendid means at hand in the accomplishment 

 of some high and worthy purposes. 



WORK FOR THE MINISTRY 



And so we hereby issue a call and a challenge for 

 workers to enter the great fallow field just named 

 and make it blossom with new social and spiritual life. 

 And it is the conviction of some that the ministers 

 of the town and village churches can undertake this 

 work much better than any other class of persons, 



