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plane of social life. The church, with its Ladies' Aid, its young
people's societies, its occasional men's clubs, fails to reach more
than a very limited number of those living in the open country or in
the village. The lack of a definite, well-organized social program
results in all kinds of association often anti-social and lowering of
the moral fiber of the entire group. It is unnecessary to go into the
sordid details of moral conditions existing among both young and old
in many village communities. The pastor with a program of absentee
service consisting of an occasional sermon and holding a Sunday school
finds his efforts continually nullified by more powerful social and
recreational impulses expressing themselves in ways recognized as
morally deteriorating. When a plan for ultimate centralization of
wholesome and legitimate community interest has been made it is the
minister's task to organize a plan for bringing to the community an
abundance of wholesome recreational life. The traditional plan has
been to preach against dancing and card playing. Such preaching has
more often alienated the young people from the church than it has
attracted them to religious life. The modern plan is to overcome evil
with good; that is, to provide such a program of unquestioned
recreation that the evil will die of itself.

That this actually happens has been demonstrated over and over again.
The Rev. Matthew B. McNutt, on arriving at Du Page, Illinois, found a
large building near the church turned into a dancing center. Without
saying a word against dancing he began to organize his young people
for singing. In a short time the dancing mania had ceased and did not
return in the twelve years of his service on that charge. The Rev. L.
P. Fagan found dancing all the rage when he went to a little town in
Colorado. He began to develop a wholesome program of recreational
life, and before long dancing had ceased and had not returned two
years after he had left the charge. At a little town in New York
State, the young men of the town were accustomed to gather at the fire
house and indulge in cards with more than occasional playing for
money. A recreation hall opened in the village broke up the
card-playing and brought the young men into something more wholesome
and which they preferred. A village in Southwestern Ohio had a gang of
"Roughnecks," as they were called, who were accustomed to loaf in the
poolrooms and find their amusement in n