minister, therefore, has fallen low. We must have a greatly modified
system or a better system before the ministry can be better paid.

Under the circuit system as now applied in Ohio the churches too often
provide for but little else than preaching. Even the Sunday school, one of
the most hopeful and valuable kinds of church work, is hampered by it, for
this work needs the leadership of a trained ministry, which the present
circuit system tends to prevent. The minister with a circuit can rarely
attend the services of his Sunday schools, and the task of promoting the
Sunday school work during the week in the several communities of his
charge is usually too arduous for him.

In times past it has been held commendable for a denomination to establish
one of its churches in every community, regardless of the number of
churches already there. By making use of the present circuit system, it
has been possible to establish and after a fashion to maintain a church
almost anywhere. Hence the present unfortunate multiplication of churches.

When rural communities are overchurched, as under the working of this
plan in Ohio most of them are, competition between them necessarily
results not in the survival of the fit, but in the continued existence of
an excessive number of bloodless, moribund churches, whose energies are
almost entirely exhausted in the mere effort to keep alive.

When the circuit system is adopted by more than one competing denomination
in a field as it is in Ohio it helps to perpetuate interchurch
competition. When one adopts it all others must, or retire from the field.
It cannot be held that the resulting competition helps to make more
Christians, or that it tends to develop character or community life. On
the contrary, it reduces both the power of the church as a whole and the
influence of the individual churches for personal righteousness and
community welfare. Then, as the churches under the competitive system grow
weaker, they must be yoked in larger circuits. So far has the practice
gone that in one circuit in Ohio there are actually ten churches.

A variation of this system is found in certain Holy Roller churches where
an undefined number of churches together depend for their leadership on a
group of itinerant revivalists. Frequent or occasional seasons of revival
services often constitute the sole activity of these churches, yet because
of the weakness of the latter they are succeeding or have succeed