y school; and
the country is very tired of it. Ordinary mortals are simply bored by it
and will no longer come to hear it.

People are still hungry for the real gospel. The great affirmations of
religion: The priceless value of human life, the reality of God our loving
Father, the immortality of the soul, the law of the harvest, the gospel of
a Saviour, et cetera, still challenge the attention and win the hearts of
men. Let us emphasize the great Christian fundamentals on which most
Christian people heartily agree. Let us add to these high teachings of
universal Christianity the simple social teachings of Jesus, his every day
practical teachings for human life in mutual relations, and we shall have
a winning message for the sensible minds and hearts of country people.

8. _A Loyal Country Ministry, Adequately Trained and Supported_

This is one of the ultimate factors in our problem, perhaps the most
difficult of all. Leadership is always of utmost importance in social
problems. A splendid leader often brings real success out of serious
difficulties. There are hundreds of such splendid leaders in country
parsonages to-day, and they deserve all the high appreciation and cordial
recognition they have won. But when we consider our 70,000 rural
ministers as a body, we find three things to be true: They are miserably
paid. They are usually untrained. Their pastorates are too short to be
really successful. The churches are of course more to blame for this
condition than the ministers.

We must have a permanently loyal country ministry for life. Making the
country ministry simply the stepping stone to the city church has been a
most unfortunate custom even up to the present day. The country ministry
must be recognized as a specialized ministry, fully as honorable as the
city ministry, demanding just as fine and strong a man,--possibly even
more of a man, for many a minister has succeeded in the city after failing
in the country. The country minister must somehow get a vision of his
great task as a community builder, like Johann Friedrich Oberlin, that
greatest of country pastors. He must find an all-absorbing life-mission
claiming all his powers and demanding his consecration as thoroughly and
enthusiastically as the call to the foreign mission field. Then let him
_go into it for life_, determined to do his part, a whole man's part, in
redeeming country life and making it, what it normally is, the best life
in all the wor