here is a greater profit for the
individual farmer in raising the same crop as his neighbor, than there
is in an especial crop which competes in the market for itself. That is
to say, in shipping a carload of strawberries the farmer gets a better
price when the car is filled with one kind of berry than he would
receive if the car was made up of a number of separate consignments
under different names and of different varieties. Co-operation has been
better for the individual than competition.

It at once becomes evident that co-operation is an ethical and a
religious discipline. As soon as the farming population is saturated
with the idea, which these farmers fully understand who have prospered
by co-operation, the religious message in these territories will be a
new message of brotherhood. The old gospel of an individual salvation
apart from men and often at the expense of other men will be enlarged
and renewed into a gospel of social salvation. No man will be saved to a
Heaven apart or to a salvation which he attains by competition or by
comparison, but men shall be saved through their fellows and with their
fellows. The country church, of all our churches, will teach in the days
to come the gospel of unity.

The writer's own experience as a country minister was a perfect
illustration of this union of all members of a community. In the
community Quakers, Irish Catholics, Episcopalians, Presbyterians and
Baptists were represented in nearly equal numbers. With people widely
diverse in their economic position, though dependent upon one another,
it became evident to all that the only religious experience of the
community must be an experience of unity. Under the leadership of an old
Quaker who supplied the funds and of two others of gracious spirit and
broad intellect, the whole community was united, on the condition that
all should share in that which any did. One church was organized to
receive all the adherents of Protestant faith and one service of worship
united all, whether within or without the church. Even the Roman
Catholics once or twice a year for twenty years have been brought
together in meetings which express the unity of the countryside.

Other instances there are of co-operation among churches in the country,
but their number is not great. There is a supplementary co-operation in
the division of territory in some states. The church at Hanover, N. J.,
has a territory six miles by four, in which no other ch