. If they cannot
minister to the new intelligence of the farmer and his children, their
institutions will necessarily decay. The farmer who succeeds in the new
social economy of the country will not endure old sermons which were
appropriate in his father's time. The emphasis must not be placed on
tradition, but upon inductive study. The preacher must not feed the
people on special instances, but upon representative cases. The
intelligence of the new type of farmer will not be satisfied with
sensations and with the unusual; but he demands to be trained in
standards of the new day, when science, system, organization and world
economy are making their demands on him and his very soul is concerned
in his response to those demands.

The task of dealing with newcomers in the country community is
educational, financial and recreative. One should add that it is also
evangelistic, but I have in mind the possibility that these newcomers
may be Catholics with whom Protestant evangelism will not be successful.
It is possible also that they will be of another Protestant sect from
that of the reader of this chapter, so that to evangelize them would
mean proselyting. The writer believes very heartily in rural evangelism.
It is an essential process in building the country church. These
chapters are devoted primarily to the building of the country community
and in that process the securing of members for the country church is
preliminary only. Leaving, therefore, the question of rural evangelism
for treatment in another place, let us take up the educational treatment
of the newcomer in the country community.

The proper machinery for this education is the common school and the
Sunday school. As the common school is treated elsewhere, the use of the
Sunday school in organizing the rural population belongs here. Few
churches realize the power and value of Sunday-school training. I am
insisting that the life of country people is religious. The use of the
Sunday school is to train the young of the community in religion. All
country people accept the Bible as a holy book. They all believe in the
education of their children and in much greater numbers than they will
respond for a church service their children will respond to the work of
religious culture on Sunday at the church. The Sunday-school
organization is interdenominational. Its lessons and its methods are a
common heritage of the churches at the present time. The machinery is
perfe