sent the rural parish is regarded either
as a convenient laboratory for the clerical novice, or as an asylum for
the decrepit or inefficient. The country parish must be a parish for our
ablest and strongest. The ministry of the most Christlike must be to the
hill-towns of Galilee as well as to Jerusalem.

There is still another truth that the country church cannot afford to
ignore. The rural church question is peculiarly interwoven with the
industrial and social problems of the farm. A declining agriculture
cannot foster a growing church. An active church can render especially
strong service to a farm community, in its influence upon the religious
life, the home life, the educational life, the social life, and even
upon the industrial life. Nowhere else are these various phases of
society's activities so fully members one of another as in the country.
The country church should co-operate with other rural social agencies.
This means that the country pastor should assume a certain leadership in
movements for rural progress. He is splendidly fitted, by the nature of
his work and by his position in the community, to co-operate with
earnest farmers for the social and economic, as well as the moral and
spiritual, upbuilding of the farm community. But he must know the farm
problem. Here is an opportunity for theological seminaries: let them
make rural sociology a required subject. And, better, here is a
magnificent field of labor for the right kind of young men. The country
pastorate may thus prove to be, as it ought to be, a place of honor and
rare privilege. In any event, the country church, to render its proper
service, not alone must minister to the individual soul, but must throw
itself into the struggle for rural betterment, must help solve the farm
problem.

FEDERATION OF FORCES

The suggestion that the country church should ally itself with other
agencies of rural progress may be carried a step farther. Rural social
forces should be federated. The object of such federation is to
emphasize the real nature of the farm problem, to interest many people
in its solution, and to secure the co-operation of the various rural
social agencies, each of which has its sphere, but also its limitations.
The method of federation is to bring together, for conference and for
active work, farmers--especially representatives of farmers'
organizations, agricultural educators, rural school-teachers and
supervisors, country clergymen, co