o supply this
need of country life. It has provided and promoted frequent opportunities
for the people to come together in a social way. The Sunday services
established in so many places have not only served as opportunities of
worship, but also of neighborly intercourse and of the interchange of
friendly greetings. The neighborhood clubs have been a kind of social and
literary clearing-house for the community, affording many a pleasant and
profitable evening and providing something wholesome to think of and to
plan for during the day. The Ladies' Aid Societies have brought the women
together, in projects and accomplishments of common interest, relieving
the weeks of monotonous toil with forms of cooperative fellowship. Much
more needs to be done to impart interest and attraction to life in the
country, and it is something to which the Church, in its desire to
minister to the whole man, may very appropriately give its thought and
effort.

6. Machinery seems to be a necessity in all kinds of work. Nothing can be
done without a method, an organization, a machine--some kind of an
instrument to facilitate the process. But the machine is never properly an
end in itself. Sometimes it is made an end, but no farmer could be
satisfied with a reaper that did not cut the grain, however beautiful and
well-made it might be or however smoothly it might run. Nevertheless some
churches seem to be satisfied with the smooth running of the machinery,
even though the results of it all are very meager.

The primary object of the work of the Larger Parish is to help the people
and to serve them in a religious and social way, not to promote a
denomination, to build up a church, to perfect an organization, or to
construct or to operate machinery of any kind. But in order to help the
people and serve their best interests efficiently, some machinery, some
organization, is necessary. Our thought is to supply it when the necessity
comes, but not before. When it is needed it must be invented or
discovered, or in some way brought into the service. Certain methods have
been introduced. There have been employed some forms of organization, some
machinery has been set in operation. Some things we have tried, that did
not work satisfactorily and they had to be discarded. Some of the methods
that seem to be successful at present may not always continue to work so
well, and they will have to be exchanged for others. We must ever keep in
view the prime obj