of the Du Page
Presbyterian Church in Illinois.[22] The minister, Mr. McNutt, in a
religious spirit so well supplied the recreative life needed in the
community, that the community has been made whole. Just as Jesus made
sick or maimed men whole, as a religious act, so the community builder
who supplies to working farmers something besides labor on the land, is
making the community whole.

The perfecting of the common school system in McNabb, by Mr. John Swaney
and other Friends, and in Rock Creek by Mr. R. E. Bone and other
Presbyterians, was a religious act for their communities in Illinois.
The farmers who have money can move to the town, but to complete the
country community is to satisfy the economic wants of the poor. The
wants of the poor are always of religious value.

Moreover, the satisfaction of all wants in the community itself is a
moral gain. If individuals live this life in the bounds to which their
group and family associations are confined, the steadying influence of
society is at its greatest. Jacob Riis[23] noted among immigrants the
working of a lower sense of obligation due to absence from accustomed
home associations. Communities are compacted of the strongest moral
bonds. If churches would make men righteous they cannot do better than
to complete the community, especially in the country, as a place to live
in: making it a place for education as well as profit: of play as well
as work, of worship as well as of material comfort.

Unfortunately churches in the country are too often recruiting stations
for the cities and colleges. The ministers are respectable pullers-in
for the city show. Nothing rejoices them so much as to help their young
men and women find a position in the city; unless it be to have a bright
lad or girl go off to college. When a country minister was reminded that
all these departures weakened the country community, and that very few
of them benefitted the lad or girl who goes to the city, he replied "you
cannot blame them; there is nothing here to keep them."

"The rural exodus" has had its Moses in the rural college student, its
Aaron in the country minister, and its Miriam in the country school
teacher. These three have led a generation out of the country to perish
in the wilderness. For only a pitiful few of those who leave the country
come to prominence in the city. The most gain but a poor living there,
and very many go to ruin. The church should be the savior of the
co