se in the joy of the day's work. It seems, in
view of the need of recreation, that no other quality is so important in
the country community as a lively leader. Resourceful, energetic and
fertile men in the rural ministry can accomplish vastly more than
conventional, orderly and proper men.

The church in which I began my ministry used to have a play every
Christmas. We built out the pulpit platform with boards, we hung it
around with curtains, giving dressing-room space, and we placed lanterns
in front for foot-lights. The first play we gave made us anxious, for
the neighborhood was an old Quaker settlement; but we found that the
Quakers enjoyed the play immensely and were the best actors. We made it
a genuine expression of the Christmas spirit. We abolished the old
"speaking pieces." Our little stage offered the young people team work,
instead of individual elocution. The rehearsals filled a whole month
with happy and valuable meetings. Everybody co-operated in the labor
necessary to prepare the decorations and to take them down, during
Christmas week, and on the night of the play everybody was on hand,
Catholic, Protestant and heathen.

The holidays of the passing year suggest the recreations of the country
church. These should not necessarily be productive of sweat, but the
country boy and girl do need the recreation of laughter and happy
meeting and social liveliness. Farm work is lonely and monotonous. Such
immorality as there is in the country has direct connection with the
tedium and dullness of long hours out-doors, alone. The recreations of
country life should be meetings for the celebration of great events of
the year. Easter expresses ideas which are age-old among country people:
it is both a pagan festival and a Christian anniversary. If Easter is
developed in a celebration of song or procession, of sermon and of
decoration, with full use of its symbolic value, it is sure to bring the
whole countryside together, in an experience of the New Year rising from
the grave of winter and of the divine Lord risen from the dead.

Most country communities have no such celebration. In very many the
whole year passes without neighbors meeting for a common social
experience. This is why people move to the city, because every city,
great and small, has in the course of the year some events which bring
all the people to the curbstone. Country life has few such times and
therefore it is dull, because the richest experienc