ed to study social movements, report upon
them, and to lead in discussing them. They should be trained in the use
of statistics, in graphic display of conditions, and in the use of
public reports. In the senior year they should be employed definitely in
practical work for populations, under instructors. After graduation the
young minister should, more generally than now, be employed as an
assistant to an older minister, in a large organization.

The influence of such social training would itself reform seminary
instruction. Thrust into a present-day curriculum, social science is a
foreign and alien intruder; but its value would soon be demonstrated and
other courses would be made over in new harmony with it. If some courses
be dropped, even if whole chairs be abandoned, it is better than that
the whole theological seminary be abandoned by students--which is the
apparent fate hanging over certain seminaries! What has here been said
is true of the schools of theology in all denominations, and applies
alike to both the conservative and the liberal.

In conclusion, the writer believes that the church's future is with the
self-respecting poor. Jesus and nearly every leader of a great religious
movement was of the poor and labored with the poor. The sources of
religion are those named in the Beatitudes: poverty, meekness, sorrow,
hunger, ostracism; and those are all social experiences. The service of
the church should be to these; and in serving the marginal people, whose
life is composed of the Beatitudes, the church will serve all men.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 29: "The Distribution of Wealth," by John Bates Clark.]

[Footnote 30: Luke, 6:20 ff; 15:1 ff.]

IX

NEWCOMERS IN THE COMMUNITY

One general cause is bringing new people into the average country
community. The exploitation of land expresses the transition from the
period of the land farmer to that of the scientific farmer or
husbandman. The signs of this exploitation are the retirement of farmers
from the land, the incoming of new owners in some numbers and of tenant
farmers in a large degree, into the country community. The influence of
the absentee landlord begins to be felt in communities in which the
landowner was until 1890 the only type. In most of the older states
immigration from foreign lands has not greatly affected the country
community. In Wisconsin, Minnesota and other states of the Northwest
substantial sections of the community are invade