30 City Homes on Country Lanes 



souri showed that 92 per cent of the country churches 

 have pastors on one-fourth time; their average pay, 

 $108 a year. Nineteen churches had been abandoned — 

 "simply died out." 



There is a record of one country church held in a 

 hall (not located in Missouri) that adopted the desper- 

 ate expedient of introducing one of "Fatty" Arbuckle's 

 slapstick comedies to draw the crowd. (They came, 

 too.) Half the comedy was presented between the 

 minister's "thirdly" and "fourthly," but to get the 

 other half the crowd had to remain until after the bene- 

 diction. Considered merely from the standpoint of at- 

 tendance, the plan was literally "a howling success." 



City churches, of course, simply because of the con- 

 centration of wealth and population, attract the higher 

 pulpit talent ; have the finest music, both instrumental 

 and vocal ; house their activities in the largest, hand- 

 somest and most comfortable structures, often equipped 

 with the latest facilities for social as well as religious 

 functions. In all these respects their advantage over 

 rural conditions is so palpable, so painful, that it need 

 not be dwelt upon. 



While the city church has not resorted to the roaring 

 farce to attract an audience, it has sometimes employed 

 moving pictures of sacred or purely educational char- 

 acter, and doubtless with pronounced gain on the side 

 of mental, if not of spiritual, progress. 



If the good-si/ed town or urban center can claim no 

 conclusive .superiority in a matter so clearly one of 

 individual personal experience, and if we admit the full 

 force of what Emerson said of his "sylvan dell," 

 "When man iii the bush With C<»<l may meet ' 



