ect for which we are working--to serve the people and
to uplift the community life--and to that object we must adapt our methods
and adjust our machinery.

If we do the work that needs to be done in the coming days we shall need a
true and unwavering purpose, a clear eye to discern the situation, a calm
and correct judgment to fit the method to the work, and above all, the
constant leading of the Holy Spirit. The Larger Parish is not a method, or
organization, or machine, that one can secure and put in operation and
then the work is done. It is a vision--an ideal--that must be a living
reality in the soul, and then must be wrought out in actual life in the
best way possible.

VII

SOME RESULTANT CONCLUSIONS

This story began with "Some Convictions." It ends with "Some Conclusions."
There has been an attempt to tell how a vision became a reality. The
vision originated in convictions. The conclusions have come from the
realization of the vision.

There are a few things that may be stated with confidence as the result of
the three years' work in translating the vision into the fact of the
Larger Parish. The mention of some of them will round out the story.

1. The village church, if it would do its proper work, must belong to the
people and be in close touch with them. It must minister in some way to
all the people and be a force in the life of all the people. Churches
like individuals are known to have certain characteristics, to possess
certain temperaments. Some are aristocratic and exclusive. They gather to
themselves a number of select families who have common tastes and are
congenial with one another. They have good times together, and within that
narrow circle there is a delightful social life. Those few people are well
trained, and well instructed in the facts and principles of religion as
they are understood by them. But they do not seem to get hold of the idea
that the church is for all the people; that as Jesus conceived it it is
essentially democratic. They have no sense of obligation for the community
at large, and make no effort to affect it as a whole and to lift it up to
a higher level.

The village church that would do its work must be democratic and must have
a community consciousness. It must belong to the people--be in close
touch with those of each and every class.

2. The village church, if it would do its proper work, must recognize its
obligation to minister in some way to the relig