152 EUEAL LIFE IN CANADA 



open field for the beneficent influence of theology. 

 They overlook also the fact that in the New England of 

 the past century, where preaching became most indi- 

 vidualistic and unpractical, the rural exodus became 

 most exhausting. Dr. Warren H. Wilson says : " The 

 only areas of country life known to me in which people 

 do not go to church at all are in New England and 

 among colonies of New England people. ... I think 

 the preachers of New England who taught individual- 

 ism instead of social efficiency had a hand in this."* 



Those who place the stress upon pulpit teaching in 

 its best form of strong and sane evangelism, but still 

 with neglect of social efficiency, overlook the fact that 

 New England was the cradle of the strongest evangelism 

 of the past generation under Dwight L. Moody. Those 

 who place reliance upon humanitarian efforts overlook 

 the fact that New England has been even more markedly 

 the home of unsuccessful social experiment than of 

 unsuccessful religious individualism ; and also that the 

 only communities in the United States of America 

 where the present rural problem has not arisen — the 

 Dunkards, Mennonites, and other Dutch and German 

 communions, and to a considerable degree the Scotch 

 and Scotch-Irish communities — there has been found 

 not only greater social efficiency, but also clearly defined 

 theological discipline ; while both schools alike overlook 

 the fact that in the few but great examples of downward 

 rural tendencies being checked and replaced by uplift 

 of the finest character — such as, on the local scale, in the 

 Steinthal under Oberlin, and on the national scale in 

 Denmark under Gruntvig — are examples of the welding 



* " Men and Religion Messages," Vol. VI, p. 261. 



