ership of
as fine a quality as any urban centre can supply. It is well known
that the strong men of the cities in business and the professions have
come in large proportion from the country. If such qualities developed
in the comparative isolation and discomfort of the past, it is a moral
obligation of rural communities of the future to do even more to
produce the brawn and brain of city leaders in days to come.

READING REFERENCES

WILSON: _The Evolution of the Country Community_, pages 171-188.

ANDERSON: _The Country Town_, pages 95-106.

DEALEY: _Sociology_, pages 146-165.

HART: _Educational Resources of Village and Rural Communities_,
pages 166-175.

HOBHOUSE: _Morals in Evolution_, I, pages 364-375.

SPENCER: _Data of Ethics_, chapter 8.

_Report of Committee on Morals and Rural Conditions of the General
Association of Congregational Churches of Massachusetts_,
1908.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE RURAL CHURCH

162. =The Value of the Rural Church.=--Of all the local institutions
of the rural community, none is so discouraging and at the same time
so potential for usefulness as the country church. It has had a noble
past; it is passing through a dubious present; it should emerge into a
great future. The church is the conserver of the highest ideals. Like
every long-established institution, it is conservative in methods as
well as in principles. It regards itself as the censor of conduct and
the mentor of conscience, and it fills the role of critic as often as
it holds out an encouraging hand to the weary and hard pressed in the
struggle for existence and moral victory. It is the guide-post to
another world, which it esteems more highly than this. Sometimes it
puts more emphasis on creed than on conduct, on Sunday scrupulousness
than on Monday scruple. But in spite of its failings and its frequent
local decline, the church is the hope of rural America. It is
notorious that the absence of a church means a distinctly lower type
of community life, both morally and socially. Vice and crime flourish
there. Property values tumble when the church dies and the minister
moves away. Many residents rarely if ever enter the precincts of the
meeting-house or contribute to the expense of its maintenance, yet
they share in the benefits that it gives and would not willingly see
it disappear when they realize the consequences. In the westward march
of settlement the missionary kept pace