e minister and the leaders
of the church must lift up their eyes. They need not be discouraged if
for the time being they accomplish little, for the period of
exploitation must come to an end normally with the exhaustion of its
forces, before the better day can come. But this period is one of
enlargement. The units of social life will be spaced farther apart. The
country community will advance as soldiers say, "in open order." This is
true for the family life, in which the father, the mother and the
children have greater freedom from one another; as well as in the
community, in which neighbors become less intimately dependent on one
another. The church must therefore preach the world idea. At this time
of transition the country church should undertake its foreign missionary
service. The great causes of the Kingdom which are world-wide should be
presented to country people when they are lifting up their eyes from
local confines to look at the world and the city and the nation. As the
daily paper comes into the farmer's household the farmer's church should
interpret the history of the time in missionary terms. The literature of
the great missionary agencies should be distributed in the farm
household. Wherever the catalogue of the big store in Chicago or New
York is found on the center table, beside it should be placed a modern
book expressive of missionary evangelism. As the mind of the countryman
develops to comprehend the world in his daily thought under the impetus
of a daily newspaper, his conscience and his religious experience should
be expanded correspondingly.

In a time of exploitation of land the country church should regenerate
its financial system. The system of barter passes away in the day of
speculation in farm land; and the country church which can find means to
endure the period of exploitation must put its financial system on a new
basis. The tenant farmer is crudely striving through problems of
scientific agriculture. He may, indeed, be a soil robber, but by his
waste of economic values he and other men are learning to conserve. The
financial system of the church should be placed at this time on a basis
of weekly contribution, for with the tenant farmer comes system, cash
payments, regular commercial processes. The business administration of
the church must be made to correspond.

The country minister and schoolteacher must therefore become prophets of
the intellect and of the spirit, in the new order