THE COUNTRY CHURCH PKOGKAMME 171 



" Ki,"\v y. nr e< , '.iiu.inity " must become the church's 

 watchword iu social service in country as in city. If 

 it be profitable for husbandry to have experts testing 

 and suggesting methods, may it not be more needful to 

 have efficiency studies of rural social and religious life ? 

 The churches adopting this agency acknowledge in 

 doing so their past remissness. A recent typical 

 utterance runs : " The Board of Home Missions 

 of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of 

 America has been ministering to country parishes for 

 more than a century. It has sought farmers through 

 forests and across deserts. It has built innumerable 

 little white churches on the country crossroads for him 

 to worship in. It has baptized his children, taught 

 them, married them, and buried them. It has striven 

 to save his soul striven earnestly and valiantly, some- 

 times heroically. But never until within this year has 

 it made a thorough, official and scientific study of the 

 country community it has attempted to serve. It has 

 done everything in its power to pave the farmer's road 

 to the celestial city, but it has paid little attention to 

 examining his road to the nearest village church. It 

 has given great sums to alleviate poverty, but given little 

 thought to the causes that make for poverty the 

 American system of farm tenantry, the robbing of soil 

 of its fertility and stripping the hillside of its trees. 

 It has pictured the beauty of the heavenly mansions 

 and taken no account of the buildings in which men and 

 women must spend their lives here and now. It has 

 been a faithful steward in caring for the Elysian fields, 

 but it has allowed the riches of blue-grass and corn and 

 wheat-field to be squandered with prodigal hand. It 

 has made a glorious and untiring fight to teach the chil- 



