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 Hoyt, Arthur Stephen, 1851- 
 
 1924. 
 The call of the country 
 
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 THE CALL OF 
 THE COUNTRY CHURCH 
 
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 BY 
 ARTHUR STEPHEN HOYT 
 
 PROFESSOR IN THE THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 
 AT AUBURN 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 Student Young Men's Christian Association 
 
 124 East Twenty-eighth Street 
 
 1909 
 
Copyright, igog, by 
 
 The International Committee of Young Men's 
 
 Christian Associations 
 
The Claims and Opportunities 
 of the Christian Ministry 
 
 A SERIES OF PAMPHLETS 
 EDITED BY JOHN R. MOTT 
 
 THE CALL OF THE COUNTRY CHURCH 
 
 By ARTHUR STEPHEN HOYT 
 
series of pamphlets on the 
 
 Claims and Opportunities of the 
 Christian Ministry 
 
 The Claims of the Ministry on Strong 
 Men 
 By George Angier Gordon 
 
 The Right Sort of Men for the Ministry 
 By William Eraser McDowell 
 
 The Modern Interpretation of the Call 
 to the Ministry 
 By Edward Increase Bosworth 
 
 The Preparation of the Modern Minister 
 By Walter William Moore 
 
 The Minister and His People 
 By Phillips Brooks 
 
 The Minister and the Community 
 By WooDROW Wilson 
 
 The Call of the Country Church 
 By Arthur Stephen Hoyt 
 
 The Weak Church and the Strong Man 
 By Edward Increase Bosworth 
 
 The Minister as Preacher 
 
 By Charles Edward Jefferson 
 
 Letter from President Roosevelt 
 
 On the Call of the Nation for Able Men to 
 
 Lead the Forces of Christianity 
 
THE CALL OF THE COUNTRY 
 CHURCH 
 
 The country church offers a field of special impor- 
 tance. In the country the family, the very unit of 
 society, is felt to be more sacred, the ties are stronger, 
 and there is chance for more distinct and consistent 
 training. Life lies open to the sun and to the eyes 
 of men, and the very forces of nature teach the de- 
 mocracy of honest toil. Custom and public opinion 
 are not so sharp and arbitrary and men grow inde- 
 pendent in judgment and action. They are thrown 
 upon their own resources and they have the flavor 
 of individuality. Men know each other and have 
 kindly interest in each other and the expression of 
 sympathy is natural and spontaneous. And these 
 qualities of individual worth and social stability 
 have been largely trained by the influences of the 
 country church. Religion has quickened and sanc- 
 tified these natural forces of country life. 
 
 The church, from the beginning, has been pecu- 
 
 5 
 
liarly the centre of the community. The minister 
 has been able to know men individually, to be a 
 friend to each person in his parish, to touch them the 
 most vitally, actually to have the moulding of char- 
 acter, without the manifold distractions and opposing 
 forces of the city. And from country churches have 
 gone forth the leading men and women of the nation. 
 A single country church of Central New York in a 
 single generation sent seven of its sons into the min- 
 istry, and a score of capable and energetic laymen 
 to strengthen the life of as many city churches. 
 
 The country church offers a field of special need. 
 Country life has changed greatly in the memory of 
 living men, in all the older states, and the same 
 forces are now working in the Middle West. There 
 has been an unmistakable loss of unity, both social 
 and religious. Invention applied to agriculture has 
 released three men out of four on the farm, and they 
 have followed the gravitation to the city or to newer 
 lands. The young, the ambitious have often gone, 
 leaving the aged, the less progressive, and the ne'er- 
 do-wells. With the loss of population have been the 
 depreciation of farm values and the increase of ten- 
 ant farms and large farms. Foreigners have partly 
 6 
 
taken the place of the native stock. There has been 
 a loss of social power in these rapid changes of coun- 
 try life. 
 
 These changes have afifected the country church. 
 The average rural congregation is smaller than a 
 generation ago. Through the loss of old families, 
 the church is left with crippled means and finds a 
 growing difficulty in settling a well-trained man. 
 So a stable ministry, with its pervasive and unifying 
 influence, has often yielded to a transient or at most 
 a yearly supply, of necessity, brief and superficial in 
 effect. Sectarian rivalries add to the difficulty of 
 the country problem. Churches that once had a 
 fair field now struggle for life and they are tempted 
 to think of their own life more than their ministry to 
 the Kingdom of God. And many communities are 
 suffering a spiritual lapse because three or four feeble 
 churches are competitors in the same field in the 
 place of a single, comprehensive church, its members 
 self-reverencing and reverencing each. 
 
 And then the country church faces the fact of the 
 unchurched masses, the foreigners who have taken 
 possession of the old farms, and the lapsed Ameri- 
 cans of Christian ancestry. The frontiers are every- 
 
 7 
 
where, not alone in new states, but close about many 
 old centres. A newly installed country pastor of 
 Central New York recently found forty-seven fam- 
 ilies, chiefly American, within three miles of his church, 
 without religious convictions or habits. The case of 
 Middleboro, Massachusetts, is not unlike that of 
 many other townships, fifteen churches representing 
 eight denominations, and two thirds of the popula- 
 tion without aflfiliation with any of the churches. 
 It is a moderate estimate to say that one fourth of 
 our country population is today beyond the direct 
 influence of the Church, a greater aggregate than 
 the pagans of our cities. 
 
 The country church has been extremely conserva- 
 tive both in teachings and methods. It has not 
 adapted itself to the changed social needs, and has 
 suffered other agencies, as the grange and the lodge, 
 to usurp its place of leadership. As means of in- 
 struction have increased, the pulpit has not kept its 
 intellectual position. Its teachings have not frankly 
 met the new light on the problems of nature and life. 
 The church has depended too much upon spasmodic 
 revivals and not on daily ministrations; it has drawn 
 false distinctions in life by hard and fast rules, and 
 
not dwelt upon the great principles of the Gospel. 
 These tendencies have acted with the natural eco- 
 nomic and social changes for a partial decline of the 
 country church. 
 
 The problem of rural life must be of serious im- 
 port to all Christian patriots. Religion is the co- 
 hesive force of society. The frontiers of any country 
 are its weakest places morally, and its most danger- 
 ous characters are there. The isolation of the coun- 
 try tends to develop forceful characters for good or 
 ill. ''Isolation," said Burke, "is the mother of bar- 
 barism." The recovery and development of coun- 
 try life is the problem. American Christianity may 
 have its hardest task in imparting recuperative force 
 to its partially spent communities. 
 
 What sort of a man should answer the call of the 
 country church? He should be a man who loves the 
 out-door world, who loves its freedom and beauty and 
 growth. If he finds recreation with rod or gun all 
 the better; anything that takes him far afield will give 
 him the sense of kinship with nature. It will keep 
 his body strong and his mind sane, and he will find 
 some of his best sermons in the fields, for he will 
 hear the Master speak as He did in the cornfields. 
 9 
 
He should be a man who has deep human interest, 
 who can see true human worth behind rough faces 
 and hard conditions. He must be one who tries to 
 make friends, who knows each member of his par- 
 ish, who concerns himself with all that touches their 
 life. He should know the work of the country and 
 not be afraid to take a hand; a distant, clerical garbed, 
 kid-gloved ministry is peculiarly a misfit in the sim- 
 plicity and freedom of country life. 
 
 As a preacher, he should have the teacher's gift 
 and make the most of the teaching ministry. Coun- 
 try people can appreciate good preaching and in the 
 past have had their share of it. But the preacher is 
 the teacher far more than the orator. And the 
 pastor in the country where there are fewer agencies 
 of education than in the city, owes it to his people 
 to make his pulpit instructive and to make the life of 
 the church, not only a religious force, but a means 
 of intellectual and social culture. 
 
 He should be a man who has the missionary spirit, 
 who shall make his little church feel itself a vital 
 part of the Kingdom, who shall help to the largeness 
 of mind and life that comes from the sense of con- 
 tact with the world. And like the true shepherd, he 
 
 lO 
 
should seek the wandering and scattered sheep, and 
 carry the word to every person of the community. 
 
 And finally he should be a man with the social con- 
 sciousness. It is significant that a country church 
 of Iowa recently asked for a man who had the train- 
 ing of a social settlement. Dr. W. H. Jordan, di- 
 rector of the New York Agricultural Experiment 
 Station at Geneva, says that he would have every 
 country pastor take at least one year in an agricul- 
 tural college. Both are significant of the fact that 
 life is organic and that the whole life is to be under- 
 stood and helped. Social methods are just as nec- 
 essary and helpful to the country church as to the 
 one in the city. The man with a sense of pure 
 neighborliness, patience to understand conditions, 
 love that will serve all the sides of human life and 
 will make the Gospel touch every side and province 
 of man's nature, will find the country church a field 
 of never-ending interest, and one that demands and 
 repays the very best that he can give. 
 
 II 
 

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