138 COMMISSION ON COUNTRY LIFE 



in the last analysis the country life problem is 

 a moral problem, or that in the best development 

 of the individual the great motives and results 

 are religious and spiritual, but because from the 

 pure sociological point of view the church is 

 fundamentally a necessary institution in country 

 life. In a peculiar way the church is intimately 

 related to the agricultural industry. The work 

 and the life of the farm are closely bound to- 

 gether, and the institutions of the country react 

 on that life and on one another more intimately 

 than they do in the city. This gives the rural 

 church a position of peculiar difficulty and one 

 of unequalled opportunity. The time has arrived 

 when the church must take a larger leadership, 

 both as an institution and through its pastors, 

 in the social reorganization of rural life. 



The great spiritual needs of the country com- 

 munity just at present are higher personal and 

 community ideals. Rural people need to have 

 an aspiration for the highest possible develop- 

 ment of the community. There must be an 

 ambition on the part of the people themselves 

 constantly to progress in all of those things that 

 make the community life wholesome, satisfying, 



