ably they served
their generation well, as well as conditions allowed. But most churches
have outgrown this low ideal of success. They plan a more continuous work.
They desire more than merely emotional results. They appeal to
intelligence and to the will and make the culture of Christian character
the great objective. Such work is vastly important; but a still higher and
broader standard must be raised to-day for country church success.

A few weeks ago there came from an ambitious and active country minister
(who evidently wanted a city church) a tabulated, type-written statement
of his work for the year. According to widely accepted standards it was
evidence of his efficiency and the success of his church. It gave the
number of sermons he had preached, the calls he had made, the prayer
meetings he had led, the Sunday school sessions attended, the number of
conversions and additions to his church membership, the number of families
added to his parish roll, the number of people he had baptized, married
and buried; the average attendance at all services, the size of his Sunday
school, the amount of money raised for church expenses and for
benevolences, the sums expended for repairing the property,--for all of
which we were asked to praise the Lord. To be sure, it was a rather
praiseworthy record, and, on the strength of it, this particular country
minister was called to a city church! He will not be any happier there,
his salary will not go any farther there, and he will probably have less
influence; but he has attained the dignity of a _city_ minister, the goal
of many a man's ambition. Alas that so many of us seem to forget that the
Garden of Eden was strictly rural; and that it was only when mankind was
driven out of it that they went off and founded cities!

This case is a typical one. We are still too apt to reckon the success of
a church in statistics reported in the denominational Yearbook. The book
of Numbers is a poor Gospel. Let us not disparage the importance of adding
forty people to the church membership, or doubling the size of the Sunday
school, or tripling the benevolences, or increasing the congregations.
These things are all splendid, every one of them, and indicate a live
church and an active, consecrated minister; but they are not ultimate
tests of a church's efficiency.

_The Test of Its Efficiency_

We must admit that the real business of a Christian Church is not to swell
its membership roll