ommon enterprises.

In contrast to these conditions the instance of Du Page Church at
Plainfield, Illinois, of which Rev. Matthew B. McNutt was recently the
minister, exhibits the power of a country church to make itself the
center of a whole community. This church, which in a year became famous
throughout the land, has earned its repute by ten years of devoted
service of its minister and the growing affection and union of its
people. The church serves so well the social needs of the community that
a social hall once popular has been closed and three granges in
succession have attempted to organize in the community and have failed.
Yet Du Page Church is passionately devotional and intensely missionary.
Its social life is but a legitimate expression of its community sense.
The minister and his people have had the power to see and to inspire a
common life among the people in the countryside.

This chapter has been intended as a definition of the country community.
Its radius is the team haul, because the horse has been the means of
transportation in the country. The community is the round of life in
which the individual in the country passes his days: it is his larger
home. The definition of this greater household of the country must be
flexible, but however it be defined, it is the characteristic unit of
social organization among country people. The map of the United States
outside the great cities is made up of little societies bordering
sharply upon one another, differing from one another socially and
religiously. These little societies are the proper fields in which the
life of the church and the school is lived. Of these small societies the
church and the school are the expressions. In church and school the
country community has its highest life.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 24: The author expresses his indebtedness for this definition
to Dr. Willet M. Hays of the Department of Agriculture at Washington.]

[Footnote 25: Quaker Hill, by Warren H. Wilson.]

[Footnote 26: Professor C. J. Galpin of University of Wisconsin has done
precise work of great value, in defining the country community, as it
centers in the village. See his pamphlet, "A Method of Making a Social
Survey of the Rural Community," a bulletin of the Agricultural
Experiment Station of the University of Wisconsin.]

[Footnote 27: "The American Rural School," by Harold W. Foght.]

[Footnote 28: "The Country Town," by Wilbert L. Anderson, D.D.]