come with all the momentum
that belongs to service that seems to fulfil real needs.

When the Church devotes less attention to preaching, it will certainly
give more consideration to its function as a leader of worship.
Protestantism has never exaggerated this part of the Church's activity;
it usually still undervalues the importance of the esthetic element in
religion. Worship tends to emphasize the common elements; preaching
necessarily brings out the differences between religious people. When
there is less importance given to preaching and more to worship, there
will be a decrease in sectarianism.

Of course there are orators who preach and who enjoy the influence and
popularity that oratory always will have. These men, however, are
outstanding and their success illustrates the continuing power of
oratory, but it gives no argument for the effectiveness of preaching in
general. As a person having an instinctive bias for the spoken word, I
have slowly been driven to the opinion that a great multitude of people
feel differently and are more sincerely and more easily influenced by
other means of bringing truth home to the hearts of men and women.

Less attention to preaching will permit the rural minister to undertake
the other work given in the following parts of the program here
presented.

2. There is a second question that we may expect the rural church some
time to consider--must not the Church make more of modern science as a
means of developing social and individual character? This question is
likely to reveal different ideas as to what religion is. One who thinks
of the spiritual as the flower of complete living, who wishes every
possible wholesome condition provided for character-formation, will
naturally regard science as the friend of religion and the basis for
moral progress. There is no one who does not wish the Church in some
degree to take advantage of the means for its wider service provided by
discovery and invention. Must not the rural church undertake to
distribute to the community life the helpful information science has,
unless it is willing to give to some other institution a great moral
service that at present it can best perform? Until it assumes in a
greater degree and in a more conscious manner the distribution of
science in the small community life, can we expect any amount of
exhortation to make the community life what it should be? The people
need, to meet their problems, concrete informa