sideration. It offers wonderful scope for serving
the deepest needs of humanity as well as their bodily ills; and the
college girls who dream of medical missions need not go so far from home
as India to realize their visions.

_Opportunities for Religious Leadership_

The burdens of the country pastorate, like the burden of the ballot, ought
not to fall upon the women; but the time seems to have come when there are
not enough good intelligent men to maintain either.

It is impossible at present to furnish one-half of the rural churches in
the United States with _trained men_ to be their pastors. Canada imports
hundreds of clergymen annually from England. Thousands of rural pulpits in
the States are vacant. Tens of thousands of rural churches have merely
untrained preachers. Very few have resident pastors. Dr. Wilson of the
Presbyterian Board of Home Missions is authority for the statement that of
the 192 country Presbyterian ministers in Missouri, _only two_ of them are
living with their people in the open country.

We find the chief reason for country church decay the lack of a trained,
resident pastor. Under present conditions it is impossible to meet this
need from the supply of college men entering Christian work. To be sure,
thousands of these unmanned churches are surplus churches. They have no
real field; perhaps never had. And Providence is allowing them to die, for
the glory of God! It is far better when they graciously unite with some
neighboring church,--but the necessary grace is often lacking.

Very many churches with a real field need ministers and can get only
untrained men. Hundreds of such churches write in vain to the seminaries
every year, as the writer can testify. There seem to be plenty of
untrained ministers, in most states; but it is an open question whether
such leadership does more good than harm. Would not a well-trained woman,
with a genuine Christian purpose, gifts of real leadership, and a complete
college and theological training, be likely to do better service in the
pastorate of such a church than an untrained man? It seems strange that we
even consider it a subject for debate!

The number of women ministers seems to be increasing in several
denominations, though not rapidly yet. Sometimes they are untrained, but
when well equipped they render efficient service. Occasionally you find a
woman with the true pastor's spirit gaining surprising success in a
difficult country church aft