Library of the 
 
 University of North Carolina 
 
 Endowed by the Dialectic and Philan¬ 
 thropic Societies 
 
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 Or f , C 
 Q I O 
 
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 11 . 
 
 
 
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 Farm Life Conditions 
 m the South 
 
 
 Chapter VIII 
 
 The Church as a Country Life 
 
 Defense 
 
 E. C. BRANSON, PRESIDENT 
 STATE NORMAL SCHOOL 
 ATHENS, GA. 
 
 
 
 V: 
 
 J 
 
THE CREED OF 
 THE STATE NORMAL SCHOOL 
 ATHENS, GA. 
 
 First. We believe that education is a reciprocal union with so¬ 
 ciety. 
 
 Second. We believe that social conditions determine all efficient 
 school functioning. 
 
 Third. We believe that the output of the Georgia State Normal 
 School should be teachers who are aflame with rational ideals and 1 
 purposes; but who are also steeped in reality, to their very throat- 
 latches. 
 
 Fourth. We believe that the teachers of this faculty should be 
 intimately acquainted with the indoor concerns of their depart¬ 
 ments, intimately acquainted with the best that the great world is 
 thinking and doing in their departments; but also that they should 
 be accurately schooled in outdoor, economic and social conditioner 
 causes, and consequences in Georgia, in direct, first=hand ways. 
 
 Fifth. We believe that the school is one of the mightiest agen¬ 
 cies of social uplift; and that no teacher can help to make this 
 school such an agency unless he is directly and vitally related to 
 the human=life problems of the community and the state. 
 
 Sixth. We believe that a teacher has a right to be a citizen and 
 a patriot; that to be less than either or both is to be a mere teacher; 
 and that a mere teacher is something less than a full statured man 
 or woman==a tertium quid, a third sex, it may be, a neuter! 
 
 Seventh. We believe that this school has betrayed the high call= 
 ing whereunto the State has called it if its graduates do not set 
 their hands to their tasks as teacher=citizen = patriots, as lovers 
 of their kind and their country, with keen realization of home 
 conditions and needs, with mighty and mellow sympathy and con- 
 cern, with growing love for community and county, state and coun¬ 
 try, and with high resolve to glorify common tasks, common du¬ 
 ties, and common relationships in faithful, self=forgetful devotion. 
 
 Eighth. We believe that in the measure in which we and they 
 shall satisfy these ideals will we all love the school more, our home 
 counties more, our state more, and serve them better, both now 
 and in all the years to come. 
 
 December 5th, 1911. 
 
38&o 
 
 THE CHURCH AS A COUNTRY=LlFE DEFENSE: 
 A Study in Home Missions. 
 
 (An address delivered before the Georgia Students 
 Missionary League, Nov. 10, 1911.) 
 
 E. C. Branson, President 
 State Normal School, Athens, Ga. 
 
 1. Prefatory. When I think of the student body of the 
 world, the prophet Joel’s vision comes into my mind, and I see 
 “Multitudes, multitudes in the Valley of Decision.” Surely 
 the Day of the Lord is near to the students of this Missionary 
 League, in the Valley of Decision, very near! Because these 
 are they that choose for themselves nothing, but for others 
 evervthing! 
 
 My prayer is that the spirit may be poured out upon us; that 
 our young men may see visions of the Kingdom of God, en¬ 
 larged visions of it, as they never saw it before; and that our 
 sons and daughters may be prophecies and promises of its coin¬ 
 ing Then indeed shall our old men dream dreams of The New 
 
 O * 
 
 Jerusalem come down out of Heaven to dwell upon earth among 
 men; and altogether we shall set ourselves at last to the social 
 tasks of Christianity. 
 
 I have long had at hand on my desk the diary of a devout 
 layman. It contains nothing but the words of the Master him¬ 
 self. As I read and re-read the words of Him who spake as 
 never man spake, I wonder more and more if the church has 
 fully conceived her mission in the world. He spoke often and 
 much about the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Heaven. 
 He spoke seldom and little about the church. 
 
 When the church, in its ideals and activities, has moved for¬ 
 ward into the fuller meaning of the Kingdom, as it was in the 
 mind of Jesus; when nothing that touches humanity is alien to 
 Christian concern; when we cease to consider the work-a-day 
 affairs of men as common and unclean; when life and Up are in 
 sweet accord in Christian civilization; when the followers of 
 Christ really love mercy, do justly and walk humbly with God, 
 then His Kingdom will cover the earth as the waters cover the 
 sea Then will the church cease to serve strangers in a land 
 which is not yet her own ; then she may claim the heathen for 
 
 
 3 
 
an inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for a pos¬ 
 session. 
 
 What is barely suggested here, in preliminary way, you will 
 find in the large and at length in Batten’s Social Task of Chris¬ 
 tianity, in Rauschenbusch’s Christianity and the Social Crisis, in 
 the books of Josiah Strong, Patten, Peabody and many others 
 who are glimpsing the Kingdom in new and inspiring ways. 
 
 2. The Importance of the Country Church. More and 
 more our modern industrial city civilization preempts interest 
 and attention. But we cannot safely blink the fundamental im¬ 
 portance of our rural civilization Undoubtedly the city is the 
 final challenge to Christianity; but the country church is the re¬ 
 cruiting station for the warfare, It has always been so. “The 
 cities cannot be relied upon to furnish the Christian leaders of 
 the future. The work of the church in the country districts 
 must be carried on with efficiency and power in order to insure 
 the raisins up of sufficient Christian forces to cultivate the city 
 fields.” 
 
 John R. Mott, from whom I have quoted, sees clearly that 
 the life and well-being of the church in the city is dependent 
 upon the life and well-being of the church in the countryside. 
 Five-sixths of the ministers and six-sevenths of the college 
 professors of America were born and reared in the country, says 
 Ashenhurst 
 
 Three-fourths of the men in authority in our city churches 
 were bred and ‘buttered’ in the rural regions; and the same ra¬ 
 tio is nearlv true of the successful, influential men of affairs, 
 the merchants and manufacturers, the bankers and lawyers. I 
 may add that twenty-six of the twenty-seven presidents of the 
 United States were country born. 
 
 The cities are dependent upon the countryside for population, 
 for the renewal of population, for business, for business genius, 
 for civic and social conscience, and for spiritual guidance. If 
 the cities were not re-enforced from the fields, said Emerson, 
 they would have rotted, exploded, and disappeared long ago. 
 Fat cities and a lean countr} 7 side will mean in the end the decay 
 of the country school and the country church, the two great 
 country-life defenses; and the decay of rural civilization will 
 imperil our national well-being. 
 
 What, therefore, is the status of the country church, what 
 forces, are insidiously threatening its efficiency, even its very 
 existence, here and there? 
 
 3. The Status of the Country Church began to arouse in¬ 
 terest thirty } 7 ears ago. In 1890, five counties of New York 
 state were exhaustively studied, two in the central part of the 
 state, and one in each of the three lobes. Many Protestant 
 
 4 
 
churches were seen falling into decay, or abandoned long since 
 to bats and brickbats. In one village the investigators found 
 two disused Protestant churches, one active Catholic church, 
 and fourteen saloons, all within the distance of a quarter of a 
 mile. In another town they found a Presbyterian church used 
 as a barn, a Baptist church abandoned, two Methodist churches 
 almost extinct, and a Baptist Seminary used as a Catholic 
 church; while on the Erie Canal for eight miles were found 
 scattered hamlets containing altogether a considerable population 
 with no religious services of any kind from one year’s end to 
 another. And the report states that these five counties are 
 fairly representative of the rural districts of New York state. 
 
 Similar studies have since been made of country-life condi¬ 
 tions in all the New England states, in Ohio and Pennsylvania, 
 and recently in the state of Illinois. Bev. M. B. McNutt re¬ 
 ported last July to the Rural Life Conference in Lansing, Mich., 
 that there were ten thousand dead rural churches in Illinois; ten 
 thousand more about to die; and five hundred already abandoned. 
 
 But what is the status of the country church in the South, 
 and in Georgia? 
 
 One of the great religious denominations of the South, con¬ 
 sisting of thirty-five hundred churches, has one thousand thirty- 
 two churches without pastors, mainly country churches. Last 
 year sixteen hundred of the churches had no additions by con¬ 
 fession of faith. In four Southern states, the churches of this 
 denomination suffered a net loss of nearly 1500 members. This 
 church is losing its grip upon the country-life problem. As 
 might be expected, therefore, there were fewer graduates from 
 her seminaries last year, and fewer candidates for the ministry 
 among the graduates of her church colleges. 
 
 Only just the other day I happened to stumble into the report 
 of a group of forty-one churches in middle Georgia. Twenty 
 of these churches are without Sunday Schools. Nineteen of 
 them gave nothing to missions last year. One of the churches, 
 a city church, gave 78 per cent of the whole amount contrib¬ 
 uted to missions by this group. Seven churches are without pas¬ 
 tors. Six churches pay for preaching less than $90 a year, one 
 of them only $70.00. Twenty of these churches report no new 
 
 members by profession of faith. 
 
 I then began to study conditions closer home. Choosing at 
 random I found a group of thirty-three churches in North Geor¬ 
 gia, ten of which had no Sunday Schools; eleven no pastors, 
 and five of them pastors temporarily supplied. Nine of these 
 churches with two hundred seventy-six members gave nothing 
 to missions; eleven of them gave nothing to foreign missions; 
 twelve nothing to home missions; seventeen nothing to negio 
 
evangelization; and twenty of the thirty-three Sunday Schools 
 nothing to Sunday School extension. Thirteen of the churches 
 report no new members by profession of faith. One church of 
 this group, a city church, gave 66 per cent of the total amount 
 raised for foreign missions. 
 
 Diligent inquiry among ministers of all sects and sorts brings 
 the uniform response that these two groups of churches are 
 fairly representative of the country church everywhere. 
 
 These ominous facts pertinently raise the question of whether 
 the country church is growing in efficiency or dwindling in effort 
 and influence. 
 
 Is the country church more and more, or less and less, a 
 problem as the years go on; and what causes imperil its useful¬ 
 ness and existence? 
 
 4. The flenaces to the Country Church are, first of all, 
 economic. The race is moving steadily and surely into a new 
 era. It is an era of industrial city civilization, anti the move¬ 
 ment is a world-wide movement. It is the result of applied sci¬ 
 ence, the invention of labor saving machinery, and the develop¬ 
 ment of facilities for transportation and distribution. 
 
 There is a steady drift of country population city-ward. Thus 
 five states of the Union (New Hampshire, Connecticut, Ohio, 
 Iowa, and Missouri) show an actual loss of country population, 
 in the last decade. In six other states the cities grew from ten 
 to forty-one times faster than the country population. Through¬ 
 out the entire United States the growth of city population was 
 nearly four times greater than the growth of country population 
 
 In Georgia the growth of city population was three and a half 
 times greater than the growth of country population. Twenty- 
 five counties of the state lost population during the last decade. 
 Two of these lost nearly one-third of their entire population. In 
 forty-one counties of the state the gain was less than the natu¬ 
 ral increase by birth. One of these counties gained just twelve 
 and another just thirty-four people in the ten years. Thus there 
 are sixty-six counties in the state that have either lost popula¬ 
 tion or have marked time during the last ten years. These coun¬ 
 ties may well look to their country-life defenses, especially to 
 improved public highways, better schools, and more liberally 
 supported churches. 
 
 Now, the loss of population by a community or county me¬ 
 naces every business and social interest in it. Stores and dwell¬ 
 ings become vacant, rents decline, trade drops off, land values 
 decrease, tenants become restless and vagrant, schools and 
 churches dwindle, life and enterprise drop into stagnation and 
 decay. Witness the two hundred and eighty-two pastorless 
 country churches in Maine, many of them used as cheese facto- 
 
 0 
 
ries, road houses, and dance halls. Witness the million, two 
 hundred thousand acres of abandoned farm land in New York 
 state. Witness the deca} r of manhood in Adams county, Ohio. 
 Witness, in Iowa, the twenty-five hundred country schools in 
 which the average attendance has dwindled to ten pupils or fewer. 
 
 In Georgia, we have three counties containing fewer than ten 
 people to the square mile, one of these less than five; and yet 
 one county of this group has a smaller population to-day than it 
 had ten years ago. In many counties of Georgia, it takes more 
 than thirty square miles to furnish enough white children to 
 maintain a country school. One of our students taught last year 
 in a county eleven miles away from the nearest church. 
 
 In one county there are so few people living on and cultivating 
 their own farms that they have abandoned in despair all thought 
 of improved public highways, and in self-defense have at last 
 come together to build a good public highway as a private en¬ 
 terprise. 
 
 In another group of nine counties, the tenant whites have 
 moved into the nearby cotton mill center and the land-owners 
 have left the country to secure better church and school advan¬ 
 tages. The country civilization of these counties has been aban¬ 
 doned for the most part to negro tenant-farmers and to negro 
 civilization, such as it is. It goes without saying that in such 
 counties as these country schools and councry churches have 
 dropped into decay, and when you look straight at human-life 
 conditions here you are appalled and staggered at the social prob¬ 
 lems that present themselves. 
 
 Increasing sparsity of population means increasing loneliness 
 and drudgery and monotony in the farm regions; decreasing abil¬ 
 ity to maintain schools and churches, and increasing illiteracy and 
 immorality. For instance, in one of these sparsely settled coun¬ 
 ties a man swaps his daughter for his neighbor’s wife and gives 
 potatoes to-boot in the trade; all without consideration of civil 
 or ecclesiastical forms. And this is not a mountain county, 
 either. 
 
 The other day a minister told me that he had recently visited 
 one of his old country churches; a church which aforetime was 
 strong in members and spiritual influence, but which now has 
 been abandoned by the nearby land-owners, who have moved away 
 into the towns. The remaining large farmer, the leading o flicial 
 in the church, was found leading a life of gross immorality in his 
 home, while the church has dwindled into insignificance or some¬ 
 thing worse. 
 
 5. Decreasing’ Farm Ownership and Increasing Tenancy. 
 
 And this leads me to say that another economic cause is threat¬ 
 ening the usefulness of the country church, even its very exists 
 
 O 
 
 7 
 
ence. It is the steadily decreasing ratio of farms occupied and 
 tilled by the men that own them. The increase of landless farm¬ 
 ers in Georgia is alarming. In 1900, three of every five farms 
 in our state were cultivated by tenants; in 1910 the ratio was two 
 in every three; in forty-five counties, seven in every ten; in four¬ 
 teen counties, eight in every ten; and in one county, nine in 
 every ten. 
 
 Imagine, if you can, the social outlook for farm civilization in 
 sixty of our counties where seven or more farmers in every ten 
 are landless and homeless. And the problem is further compli 
 cated by the fact that this population is transient, for the most 
 part. They are brief sojourners in the community. In the best 
 communities, the entire tenant population changes almost wholly 
 every three years. Upon an average, in the entire South, three 
 of every four renters every year move to new places in other 
 neighborhoods or counties. 
 
 In the very nature of things they lack abiding interest in bet¬ 
 ter methods, better business, and better living on the farm; in 
 progressive community enterprises; in good roads, good schools, 
 and good churches. Industrious, thrifty, prosperous, stable com¬ 
 munity life is rooted and grounded in the home-owning, home- 
 loving, home-defending instinct. It augurs ill for Georgia that 
 the farms cultivated by owners fell from 55 to 34 in the hun¬ 
 dred, during the last thirty years! 
 
 But the dwindling ratio of farm- and home-ownership is not 
 peculiar to Georgia. It is true of almost every state in the 
 Union. In 1900, almost exactly one-half of all the people of 
 the United States were landless and homeless, and the number of 
 those that have no stake in the land grows alarmingly greater 
 from decade to decade. 
 
 When our civilization is bottomed, like England’s, upon land 
 ownership by the few and land orphanage for the many, then we 
 shall be confronted by problems that stagger education and re¬ 
 ligion, the church and the state alike. 
 
 Almost everything is possible in a community or county or 
 country whose population consists of a large number of small 
 land-owners, instead of a small number of large land-owners. 
 
 Isaiah saw clearly the social ills that follow “the joining of 
 house to house and the laying of field to field ’. But never in 
 my life have I heard a sermon from that text, by any minister in 
 any pulpit whatsoever. Everywhere we need the social instinct 
 and interest and insight of this prophet of old; and never more 
 than now in seventy-three counties of this state. 
 
 Is this a gloomy summary of conditions and causes? If so, 
 then I may say that it is my profound belief that we shall never 
 be adequately 7 motived, never under a great headway of patriotic 
 
and spiritual fervor, until we have comprehended our problem 
 and see clearly the obstacles upon the one hand and the ideals 
 and opportunities upon the other. 
 
 It was Nehemiah’s way. You may recall that he insisted upon 
 knowing his-task in detail before he set his hand to it. In the 
 darkness of the night he left the city by the valley gate and 
 went about the broken-down defenses of Jerusalem; in many 
 places, I dare say. upon his very hands and knees. It will not 
 do, as we give ourselves to the task of creating an effective, sat¬ 
 isfying rural civilization, to be less wise or less brave than Nehe- 
 miah. In no otherwise shall we escape being inept, inapt, and 
 futile in our efforts. 
 
 6. The Country Church Needs a New Ideal, in order to 
 grow in efficiency as a country life defense. It must still be a 
 center for community worship: it must become the center of so¬ 
 cial service. 
 
 For instance, it must generously mother the nearby public 
 school, and fervently concern itself in behalf of better buildings, 
 better fixtures, furnitures, and equipments, longer terms, better 
 teachers, and better teaching, rewarded by better salaries. 
 
 Sometime ago 1 spoke tc a great audience in the old Mt. Zion 
 camp-meeting tabernacle in middle Georgia. For seventy-five 
 years the nearby da 3 T -school has been under the drippings of the 
 sanctuary there. But I found that school “a ragged beggar by 
 the wa}'side sunning”; and I said to my audience, Not yet is 
 Mt. Zion the glory of all the earth! 
 
 I believe with all my heart that public education in Georgia 
 will be a vain and unavailing task until the church comes up to 
 the help of the State, against ignorance and illiteracy, narrow¬ 
 ness and superstition. Otherwise we must always bewail the 
 fact that the people perish for lack of knowledge. 
 
 The teachers in the public school must be busy in the neigh¬ 
 boring Sunday School and church; but the pastor and his official 
 board need to cherish and nourish, support and sustain the 
 neighboring day-school. Denominational differences and jeal- 
 ouses must disappear, in a sweet conspiracy for the well-being 
 of the children of the community. 
 
 And this better day is breaking here and there. At a country 
 Methodist church in Paulding county I found the public school 
 located near the church, as is usually the case all over the state. 
 A Presbyterian teacher taught the children in the day-school 
 during the week and the same children in the church on Sunday. 
 One day of the quarterly conference was given entirely to a dis¬ 
 cussion of country-life conditions, good roads, school libraries, 
 public sanitation and better public, schools, and not to sermons 
 or conueclional schools at all! 
 
The pastor and presiding elder are men of understanding and 
 vision; both young, virile and vigorous, and both of them 
 crowned with the charms and gifts and graces of rare spiritual¬ 
 ity. May God multiply their kind abundantly in the earth! 
 
 The country church and the country school ought together to 
 be the center of community life and activities—vocational, rec¬ 
 reational and spiritual. Together they ought to organize and 
 develop the garden club, the corn club, the mother’s club, the 
 reading circle and the neighborhood library; but also they must 
 develop and direct the recreational life of the country regions. 
 The all-day singing so common all over the state is the manifes¬ 
 tation of a wholesome social instinct. This instinct does not 
 need to be opposed or suppressed; it does need to be captured 
 and skilfully directed to better ends 
 
 We have long heard the cry for re-directed country schools. 
 The need is even more urgent for re-directed country churches. 
 The DuPage country church in Illinois is just such a church. It 
 is easy to see that it is a mighty country-life defense. You will 
 find a full account of it in the World's Work, September and 
 December, 1910. 
 
 7. A Home for the Country Pastor. But the country 
 church will fall short short of its possible efficiency unless there 
 be alongside it, or in the immediate neighborhood, a home for 
 the pastor. How else can he have part and lot in the fortunes 
 of his people, and become keenly, sympathetically aware of com¬ 
 munity conditions and needs? How otherwise can he shepherd 
 his flock daily and minister to their comfort and necessities in 
 sickness and in health? Or nurse his Sunday School, or have an 
 active, ever-present interest in the children in the-day-school? 
 
 How can an absentee preacher, who lives apart and away from 
 his charge, in the county-site town, or in another county, hope 
 to make his church the center of the occupational, recreational 
 and spiritual life of the community? He can be a preacher, but 
 can he be a minister or a pastor? He can plant, but can he 
 water? He can point to heaven, but can he lead the way? 
 
 There are thousands of prosperous country communities in 
 Georgia abundantly able to furnish comfortable homes for the 
 minister, and thus make efficient the mightiest of all agencies in 
 checking the forces of country-life decay. But, after diligent in¬ 
 quiry these last thirteen months, I have been able to find in 
 Georgia only two country churches with resident ministers, 
 snugly settled in the country, in church homes. The possible 
 efficiencies of the country church will never be fully realized oth¬ 
 erwise. 
 
 On the other hand I find hundreds of country churches paying 
 less than $100 a year to the preacher for sermons once or twice 
 
 10 
 
a month; many of them less than $75, some less than $50. In 
 one of the most prosperous country communities of the state I 
 found the preacher getting only $60 a year. He is obliged to 
 be both blacksmith and farmer in order to keep his soul and 
 body together. His people grip their purses in tight fists while 
 they pray the Lord ‘to give him souls for his hire.’ They prom¬ 
 ise to keep him poor, if the good Lord will only keep him humble. 
 
 The people of this and many another country community in 
 Georgia could easily contribute twenty times the amount they 
 are now giving to church support. And they would do it, if 
 only they could be aroused to realize the potencies and possibili¬ 
 ties of the church that is growing into the fuller meaning of the 
 Kingdom. 
 
 8. A node! Country Pastor. And this leads me to say, 
 in conclusion, that always in the pinches and crises of human 
 affairs, God raises up a leader. Such a man was John Frederick 
 Oberlin, who a century ago rescued the minds and bodies as well 
 as the souls of his wretched little country parish, by a life in¬ 
 formed with the mind of the Master. His preparation for his 
 task, his spirit, his many-sided interests and activities, his sym¬ 
 pathetic adjustability and adaptability, his simplicity, his swift 
 directness of aim, his unflagging, unfailing courage, patience 
 and hopefulness, his intense practicality and rare spirituality 
 almost perfectly indicate just what the modern mission worker 
 or country minister must know and be and do in a rural commu¬ 
 nity, or any other, if he would win it for the Kingdom. 
 
 His charge was the Ban-de-la-ftoche, a poverty-stricken little 
 valley in the Vosges mountains. His call to it was a challenge 
 charged with such hardship and suffering as Garibaldi offered to 
 his volunteers; but he accepted it, and for nearly sixty years he 
 lived and labored among his chosen people, for sweet love’s 
 sake. He found his little mountain cove as wretched as an Irish 
 pigsty; he left it swept and garnished, renovated and reclaimed 
 to the last inch. 
 
 His ideal of service kept him long at the task of preparation. 
 At eighteen he took his Bachelor’s degree at the University of 
 Strasburg. Five years later he won his doctorate degree in phi¬ 
 losophy; but still he lingered for richer scholarship. Then for 
 three years he studied medicine and surgery while tutoring in 
 the family of a noted physician. Meanwhile, he studied botany 
 in the fields with the children. 
 
 His first service in his parish was not a sermon but the build¬ 
 ing of a school house. A hundred years ago Oberlin’s school 
 children were learning botany and agriculture, civics, manual 
 arts and music, indeed, most of the things we struggle so hard 
 to get into the country schools to-day. After awhile his wife 
 
went down into the lowland to learn various cottage industries. 
 Upon her return she moved about from home to home and taught 
 them to his people. 
 
 He preached, to be sure, but also he served like a common 
 hand in building the new public road and bridge the}' so much 
 needed for contact with the outer world. He organized agri¬ 
 cultural clubs. He kept them alive and active throughout his 
 entire life. He wrote all over Europe to procure the flax, the 
 wheat, the clover, the potatoes, and the fruit trees that would 
 live and produce profitably in that inhospitable climate. He 
 taught them irrigation, drainage, sanitation—or anything else 
 they urgently needed to know. He was preacher, minister, pas¬ 
 tor, farmer, physician, cobler, carpenter and printer; but also 
 prophet, priest, and king in his little dominion. 
 
 His religion was the gospel of social as well as spiritual regen¬ 
 eration; and we need just such a gospel to day everywhere: just 
 such understanding and vision in our preachers and missionaries. 
 
 Mr. Koosevelt reminds us that our country civilization is vi 
 tally related to national well-being; but also he warns us that 
 country-life decay is our gravest national problem. The coun¬ 
 try church, if it rightly conceive its mission, is our mightiest 
 country-life defense. Therefore the work of the church, in our 
 rural fields, cannot safely be left to the aged, the infirm, the un¬ 
 trained, the unattractive, the uninspiring, the dull or coni mon¬ 
 place worker, whom the city churches reject and who must be 
 placed elsewhere, ft is not too much to say that such a policy 
 is stupid and suicidal. 
 
 9. The defending, the preserving, and the enriching of our 
 farm civilization calls for men of God who study social condi¬ 
 tions with the insight and foresight of Isaiah of old. But it 
 also calls for teachers who read and think and serve their fel¬ 
 lows far beyond the walls of their schoolrooms; tor physicians 
 who campaign public health and hygiene as faithfully and as 
 earnestly as they battle with death in their private practice; and 
 for business men, editors, and statesmen who are brave enougli 
 and wise enough to “turn a,keen untroubled eye home upon the 
 instant need of things.” 
 
 “The mission call is a call to make the world a brighter world 
 for children to he born into, safer for boys and girls to grow up 
 in, happier for men to travel through, and more joyous for de¬ 
 parting saints to look back upon.The Kingdom of 
 
 God may well mean much more than this; but it is certain that 
 it can never mean less.” 
 
 1*2 
 
28957