ious and social needs of
the people in the outlying country districts. The village should not be
its parish, but rather its base of operations, from which it goes forth to
all the wide-stretching territory that lies beyond.

3. The church which has this vision, which recognizes this obligation and
seeks to discharge it, will find some way of doing it. The work within the
towns and villages is often great and difficult. Many churches have failed
to reach all the people within the sound of their church-bell, and there
is much work at their very doors that they have not yet accomplished.
Shall they reach out and extend their parish threefold, and multiply their
duties and obligations many times? If they do not do all that ought to be
done in their smaller parish, shall they increase its boundaries and
assume greater obligations? Yes. That is what many churches are
languishing for--a bigger job, something that it is worth while to do;
something that will challenge all their powers and awaken to enthusiasm
their sleeping energies.

4. The only village church that will continue to abide in strength and
vigor in the future years will be the church that is all buttressed about
by a strong and vigorous country work. It must be done as a means of
self-preservation. The village churches are as much in danger of losing
their lives as the country churches are. The church that confines its
efforts within the village boundaries is sure to languish and dwindle and
after a while it will give up the ghost, as it ought to do. As the city is
fed from the towns and villages, so the towns and villages are fed from
the country. If the work goes down in the towns and villages, it will be
felt in the city, and if it loses its hold in the country, it will soon
lose its grip upon the villages and towns. The country needs the work of
the Larger Parish, and it will perish without it. But the village church
needs to do the work even more, and unless it takes it up with vigor it is
doomed.

5. When the churches come to be more interested in the promotion of the
Kingdom than they are in the promotion of their own particular
denomination, they will begin to have that prosperity which only those can
have who are really doing the Lord's work. The chief hindrance to the work
of the churches is often the churches themselves. One of the greatest
needs of the villages and rural regions is fewer churches.

If in each small village there was a single church