218 RURAL LIFE IN CANADA 



such a splendid record in preparing men for the min- 

 istry, should order its work. Nor do I suggest that you 

 should divide yourselves into two classes, burning the 

 bridges between, for city and country service. But 

 with those of you who look forward to the country 

 ministry, your chosen work should bear the same rela- 

 tion to your preparation that foreign mission work does 

 to the foreign mission volunteer. These men seek the 

 full advantage of the common training provided for all 

 who enter the ministry; their fellows participate with 

 them in acquiring a general familiarity with the prob- 

 lems of the mission field; but in addition the mission 

 volunteers avail themselves of every means of special 

 knowledge and fitness. They study comparative reli- 

 gion with the zest not of curiosity but of need ; ethnic 

 psychology has to them not an academic but a practical 

 interest. Moreover they form their mission-bands, 

 their study-classes; they hold conventions, they invite 

 addresses by specialists. All that concerns missions 

 they seek to make their own. They put enthusiasm 

 into their preparation. 



For the best work in the country ministry to-day you 

 need to become as skilled as the schools can make you in 

 the principles of sociology, in knowledge of the indus- 

 trial order, in the agencies of social service, as well as 

 in the problems of the rural community. And these 

 should have for you the absorbing interest that mission- 

 ary principles and practice have for the foreign mission 

 volunteer. Even census tables might captivate you as 

 maps did William Carey. 



Your work will call for knowledge of the sciences 

 that deal with rural well-being, especially agricultural 

 economics and rural sociology. It is not enough that 



