STUDENTS AXD THE RURAL PROBLEM 209 



Commission in Social Service of the Federal Council 

 of the Churches of Christ in America. The social 

 movements in the American Republic thus tabulated 

 by the Sage Foundation have their counterpart in every 

 line of helpfulness in all lands. Their emergence is 

 evidence of an organic world-movement. The Church 

 of Christ can no more resist the impulse to take part, 

 and the leading part, in this world-movement than can 

 the living tree in spring resist the impulse to put forth 

 leaves and bloom and set her fruit. In these facts of 

 the new civilization and the new impulse to service 

 the work respectively of the Providence and of the 

 Spirit of God lie the imperative call to the church, 

 not only to labor in social service, but to take her place 

 in teaching and in formulating the sciences which deal 

 with societary forms and groups and with social pro- 

 cesses. 



Now our subject at this hour is not Sociology and 

 Students for the Ministry, but The Rural Problem and 

 Students for the Ministry. Our excursus was neces- 

 sary, however, inasmuch as the right of way of sociology 

 in these halls gives our problem its standing ground. 



And, returning, we note as our next point that while 

 our students have the groundwork of the modern social 

 spirit on which to build, our working assumption 

 regarding the status of the country ministry is not 

 favorable to generous service for the solution of the 

 rural problem. Our theory of the ministry is correct 

 enough, we must recover its working reality. In 

 theory all are equal in standing; a Moderator is, by 

 definition, but the primus among pares. In effect, we 

 grade men according to their charges. Men should 

 have weight according to personal worth and service 

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