STUDENTS A.\D THE RURAL PROBLEM 223 



part of a larger whole the New Agriculture. What, 

 then, is this new Agriculture ? It deals with all those 

 things which affect the daily life of the farmer. It 

 brings the railway to his door; demands refrigerator 

 cars for his perishable products; forms co-operative 

 societies for the purchase of seed, machinery, and 

 manures. It analyzes his soil, tests his milk, builds 

 butter and bacon factories ; grades his crops, establishes 

 land-banks and parcel posts, and erects rural telephones. 

 It teaches him to control disease, and to grow and har- 

 vest every crop. It sends his son to the agricultural 

 college and his daughter to the school of domestic 

 science." In the country ministry, gentlemen, you 

 need acquaintance with the technical side of such a 

 movement, and mastery of its social aspect. 



What is the life for which you are fitting yourselves ? 

 There are certain needs of the city which the social 

 settlement is designed to serve. There are human 

 needs of other kinds belonging to a class of persons very 

 different in character in the country, to which the 

 manse might be made to bear the same relation as the 

 settlement does to our foreigners in the city. What is 

 the conception embodied in the very word " parish " ? 

 Is it not just this idea of a settlement ? The parish is 

 the little world " around the dwelling," the world which 

 the minister and his home are there to serve. 



Permit me to say, in closing, that such a ministry 

 would imply an intimate following of Christ, and must 

 begin as His began. Being in the form of God He 

 thought it not a thing to be clung to that He should 

 be on an equality with God. I need recount no further 

 step of His, if this first one you take counting nothing 

 tbflt js rightfully yours of place or power a thing to be 



