with the pioneer, and the
church on the frontier became the centre of every good influence. It
is impossible to estimate the value of the rural church in the onrush
of civilization. Religion has been the saving salt of humanity when it
was in danger of spoiling. In the lumber and the mining camp, on the
cattle-ranch and the prairie, the missionary has sweetened life with
his ministry and given a tone to the life of the open and the wild
that in value is past calculation.

163. =The Church in Decline.=--In the days when it seems declining,
the strength of the rural church is worth preserving. There are
hundreds of rural communities where the young people have gone to the
town and population has steadily fallen behind. There are hundreds
more where the people of a community have drawn wealth from the soil,
and with a succession of good crops and high prices have accumulated
enough to keep them comfortable, and then have sold or leased their
property and moved into town. The purchasers or tenants who replaced
them have been less able to contribute to church support or have been
of a different faith or race, and the churches have found it difficult
to survive. Doubtless some of these churches could be spared without
great loss, for in the rush of real or expected settlement, certain
localities became over-churched, but the spectacle of scores of
abandoned churches in the Middle West has as doleful an appearance as
abandoned farms in New England.

164. =Is It Worth Preserving?=--It would be a misfortune for the
church to perish out of the rural districts, for it performs a
religious function that no other institution performs. It cherishes
the beliefs that have strengthened man through the ages and given him
the upward look that betokens faith in his destiny and power in his
life. It calls out the best that is in him to meet the tasks of every
day. It ministers to him in times of greatest need. It teaches him how
to relate himself to an Unseen Power and to the fellowship of human
kind. The meeting-house is a community centre drawing to itself like a
magnet family groups and individuals from miles around, overcoming
their isolation and breaking into the daily monotony of their lives,
and with its worship and its sermon awakening new thoughts and
impulses for the enrichment of life. Nor does its ministry confine
itself to things of the spirit. The weekly Sunday assembly provides
opportunity for social intercourse, if no mor