ation, unless effective preventive
measures are devised," was Dr. Strong's warning two decades ago. To-day
the challenge of the country not only quotes the peril of rural depletion
and threatened degeneracy, but also appeals to consecrated young manhood
and womanhood with a living faith in the permanency of a reconstructed
rural life.

Our rural communities must be saved from decadence, for the sake of the
nation. Professor Giddings well says: "Genius is rarely born in the city.
The city owes the great discoveries and immortal creations to those who
have lived with nature and with simple folk. The country produces the
original ideas, the raw materials of social life, and the city combines
ideas and forms the social mind." In the threatened decadence of depleted
rural communities, and in the lack of adequate leadership in many places,
to revive a dying church, to equip a modern school, to develop a new rural
civilization, to build a cooperating community with a really satisfying
and efficient life, we have a problem which challenges both our patriotism
and our religious spirit, for the problem is fundamentally a religious
one.

IV. The Urgency of the Problem.

A broad-minded leader of the religious life of college men has recently
expressed his opinion that _the rural problem is more pressing just now
than any other North American problem_. He is a city man and is giving his
attention impartially to the needs of all sections. Two classes of people
will be surprised by his statement. Many of his city neighbors are so
overwhelmed by the serious needs of the city, they near-sightedly cannot
see any particular problem in the country,--except how to take the next
train for New York! And doubtless many country people, contented with
second-rate conditions, are even unaware that they and their environment
are being studied as a problem at all. Some prosperous farmers really
resent the "interference" of people interested in better rural conditions
and say "the country would be all right if let alone." But neither sordid
rural complacency nor urban obliviousness can satisfy thinking people. We
know there is something the matter with country life. We discover that the
vitality and stability of rural life is in very many places threatened. It
is the business of Christian students and leaders to study the conditions
and try to remove or remedy the causes.

[Illustration: An Abandoned Church, Daviess County, Indiana.]

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