vice on the part of the church, for
their mutual good. The church need not do everything itself as an
institution. Its great work will ever be the work of inspiration. But
where there are serious gaps in the social structure, the church must
somehow fill the gaps. It must do the work or get it done.

It rejoices us to find churches all along the country-side to-day that
have welcomed this great opportunity for broad usefulness, and have gained
a new vitality and an increasing success by facing all the needs of the
community and broadening their vision and program of service accordingly.

6. _United Christian Forces in the Community_

We are confronted now by one of the most serious factors in our problem.
The pitiable sub-division of rural Christendom into petty little
struggling, competing churches makes religion a laughing-stock and a
failure. We are saddened by it. By and by we shall get so ashamed of it
that we will stop it! Many men of leadership and influence are working on
the problem and we can see improvement in many directions.

Wasteful sectarianism is a sin in the city; but it is a crime in the
country. It is a city luxury which may be justified perhaps where there is
a wealth of people; but it is as out of place among the farms as sheet
asphalt pavements or pink satin dancing pumps. Sectarianism is not
religion. It is merely selfishness in religion. A sincere country
Christian will be willing to sacrifice his sectarian preference, as a city
luxury which the country cannot afford.

The great Puritan movement against conformity to an established church
settled forever the great principle that any company of earnest Christians
have a right to form a church _when conditions justify it_. But we have
seen in this country, as nowhere else in the world, the absurd extremes of
this great liberty. Sects have been formed to maintain the wickedness of
buttons and the piety of hooks and eyes; and for many another tenet almost
as petty. Churches of "Come-Outers," "Heavenly Recruits" and "The
Hephzibah Faith" appeal to the fancy of theological epicures. Colonies of
"Zionites" and "The Holy Ghost and Us Society" have been established,
mainly for the exploiting of some shrewd fanatic and his pious fraud.

With 188 sects now in America, we have come to the point when sensible
people have a right to insist that an unnecessary church is a curse to a
community. Its influence is sadly divisive. Its maintenance is a needles