ing. A chromo is better than no picture at all in the home of the poor. Nor am I at all sure that, as a rule, it is not better that the great majority of readers should read the novels they do read rather than not read at all; for not to read at all would certainly signify, with many of them, a life of a lower intellectual, æsthetic, and ethical character.

YALE UNIVERSITY, NEW HAVEN, CONN.

George T. Ladd.

OUT OF TOWN MISSIONS FOR CITY CHURCHES.

THERE is a reverse side to the picture of enterprise and manliness and self-denial presented in the career of the poor country lad who has come up to the city and by dint of those qualities has made himself a name and a fortune. This reverse side is, that from the life of the small village where he lived just that amount of those virtues has been withdrawn. As there is no corresponding gain made by the small towns, the average of intelligence, of enterprise, of culture is less by every life that is attracted away. Every farmer knows what is the result of cutting the grass from the fields, without giving back in fertilizers and dressing the nutritive elements which are taken away. It is only a very short time before such a field is entirely run out. Now this is exactly what has gone on in the field of the spirit in many of the back towns. For a generation or more the process of draining away the best elements of human life has gone on. The back town in a general way represents the survival of the unfittest. Those who remain even while fitted to go, do so because of age, infirmity, for parents' or relations' sake; but this proportion is small, and grows constantly smaller as obligations cease. The life of the smaller country villages, except where they are suburbs or under the near influence of city life, is not only relatively but actually on the decline. Its best spirit is robbed from it; the life that is left is distinctly less able, and what generally follows along with that less willing, to maintain the higher plane of living which existed in former times. There is needed no clearer evidence of this than is given in what is called "society." The social sense, the delight of being together in society, is undergoing a marked falling off in the back towns. Those who remain are often fewer than in the days of their fathers, often have less to do with, but,

more than all, they have less of the spirit and will to undergo the burden of social duties. Social pleasure is apt to take another form, that of entertainment and excitement. It is not the pleasure of human companionship, but it is the thirst for excitement, for something to break the dreary monotony of hard drudgery. Calling upon one's neighbors, meeting together for an evening's social intercourse, harvest gatherings, house warmings, all this is little known in the retired villages, and gives place to picnics and dances. The dance is nearly the only form of social life, and is often accompanied by intemperance.

For any one accustomed to all that is involved in the social intercourse of men in the centres of population, a ride on a winter's evening through a retired country village is full of revelation. Nothing can bring home to one so forcibly the isolation, and the limitations of back-country life. In the bleak but clear and cold night, the country seems to fall back into another age. It seems to lose continuity with the rest of civilized humanity. While it was day, and while men could work in the light, there pass signs of recognition and acknowledgments of relationship between house and house and between farm and farm. But with the fall of black night, all the lines of brotherhood and society seem to shrink up, and as each little home lights its lamps and draws within its doors, huddling itself together, society seems literally to crumble to pieces, and to fall back again into a mere collection of individual units. It comes over one with an appalling sense of the utter dreariness and seclusion as never before. As the scattered lights appear, it seems as though all bonds were broken and all ties severed. And really this is not far from being the case. There will be very little of the common life of mankind to-night in this hamlet through which we are driving. Even in the little cluster of homes that make up the village, the only ones who will be absent are here and there a young man, but by no means all the young men. For an hour around the stove in the village store a motley gathering of men will be seated or standing, but after a day of logging or sawing in the mill there is little disposition to prolong the hours, while by eight o'clock much the larger number will have sought their beds, and close a long day of labor with a labored rest. Nothing so reveals what the country life is as a winter's night, for then civilization falls back into its constituent elements, and the bonds of humanity cease to appear.

Two thoughts come immediately into the mind on such a view of things, and two thoughts which bear a singular relation to each

other. First, what a unique importance the village church has as a focus for all the manifestations of social life; and secondly, how rarely are the resources both pecuniary and spiritual sufficient to let the church become any real power in the community. No sooner do we get hold of the idea of what tremendous importance the village church is, than we are forced directly to think of how poor it is generally and unable to perform its function. It may be said that in the country, the social side is a religious obligation, and that it is a religious duty to provide for it and to foster it. It is no reproach to the church in the country that it is largely a social affair, for one of its chief duties is to draw people together and engage them in the friendly relations of social life. It is hardly too much to say that there is a direct relation between the purity and extent of the social life and the vigor of the church in the country. During the week there are many things which make social duties or pleasures very hard to provide for, there is much to interfere even with the inclination for it; but on Sunday, by the very force of circumstances, by the very fact of being called to church, it is promoted and advanced. There are many people in the village who will have hardly anything approaching the name of social life from Sunday to Sunday. A nod to a passer, a few words over the fence, or at the village store, will make up the social life of not a few, till it comes Sunday meeting, and then better things are possible. But not with this extreme class only, but with all, the church is the rallying point for social living. There is Man, as well as men; there is an approach to humanity, a living bond of mankind. The scattered elements of a village hamlet are welded together, are brought into a union of feeling and purpose, are made to confess relations and obligations to one another, and the effects of their life in this one particular cannot fail to be of the greatest influence during the week. As there is no theatre, and in the way of entertainment little beside the occasional visitation of a " show," as there is very rarely any public meeting, the weekly prayer meeting and the Sunday services are almost the only object lessons in the matter of corporate life that is afforded them. At those times, the idea of one body and many members is brought home to them, "the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace," and it seems easy to understand how "all these worketh that one and the selfsame spirit, dividing to every man severally as he will." The urgency of the need of the church in the country towns cannot be overestimated. A distinct decline is visible in the towns where the

church is allowed to lapse, a lowered conception of life and duty. The church is in these small places almost the only means of conveying any lessons of life in common, of the joys and privileges of associated living. In these small places nothing more unfortunate can happen than for this lamp of life to go out. It is in a literal as well as a spiritual sense "the light which lighteth every man, coming into the world."

No sooner, however, does one think of the dire necessity of it, to show forth the very foundations of human living as well as of eternal salvation, than one despairs of the resources at hand. The country has been drained of the very minds most fitted to see the importance of the church and of the men most willing to sacrifice to maintain it. It is folly to say that because the need of a church is so great materially as well as spiritually that therefore the natural self-interest of the people will keep it up. The natural self-interest of people will do nothing of the sort. In fact, men generally need to be little short of angels to act from self-interest. They act from prejudice, and from spite, and from ignorance, and from fear, but really to act in accordance with an enlightened self-interest requires a self-control and self-suppression which the instinct of self-interest does not afford. The men able to realize how the church is needed in the country town are few and are growing fewer. The men willing to give generously of their small means to maintain it are equally small. One of a parish committee called on a substantial farmer, and laid the case of their church before him. After hearing what they had to say, the farmer responded approvingly, saying he "guessed he'd oughter do his part," and gave fifty cents for his year's contribution. The fact is, the people of the country villages who are able and willing to support their church are few. There are always some who are able though not willing, but many more who are neither able nor willing. They cannot be made to feel the need to them of sacrificing for it. They would as lief see it continue, would be sorry to have the church-bell cease to toll, but they will not make it their own charge to anything but a trifling amount. Consequently a few zealous women able to understand how much is derived from their meetings and services contrive in some way to keep the thing alive. There are pay sociables, bean suppers, entertainments, and fairs. The church lives on in a hand-tomouth fashion. The miserably paid minister becomes unable to cope with the "law of diminishing returns," and is forced to go; then "preaching " is kept up, and so it goes on from bad to worse.

In some cases the time comes when the doors are not closed from Sunday to Sunday, for they are never opened.

I am speaking mostly of the very small interior village towns, hamlets, and post-office settlements. There are many grave church problems to be settled in the larger towns, but that is a different consideration. I am speaking of small church settlements, small towns of a few hundred inhabitants, in all of which the social and the religious life are one. As soon as we pass to towns of a larger growth, the problem remains much the same, save that it is complicated by a multiplication of churches. A town of fifteen hundred or two thousand inhabitants will usually have two or more churches, for in the time of their foundation it seemed more important to bear witness to a truth of church government, or baptism, or liturgy, than to bear witness to the truth that we are all members together of the body of Christ. Once established, these rival churches are a source of great difficulty. They sometimes stimulate a people's sectarian pride, but never lay any foundations of real prosperity.

In proposing Out of Town Missions for city churches, the main point is the imperative need of a church in the smallest country hamlet and the impracticability of maintaining it with the local resources both material and spiritual. The number of small country parishes needing outside assistance is already a large one and will grow larger; while when once the scope of the country church is realized, it will be seen that many parishes are selfsupporting only by reducing their work to a point almost below efficiency. The little parish which struggles along with an income from all sources and for all purposes of eight hundred dollars or less is in no condition to cope with the situation. It does good, it bears witness to a truth, and remains a light in the darkness, a voice crying in the wilderness, but hardly more. It is quite unable to be a real church in the midst of its community. Counting in these, there is a very large number of country parishes whose own resources are entirely inadequate to maintain them in an efficient condition. The various religious bodies are constantly furnishing grants of assistance; one and another society for the promotion of preaching or for home missionary work donates a sum or supplies a worker. In this way many a church-door is kept open, and the feeble lamp kept supplied with oil. But there is reason for saying that this sort of help does not bear fruit proportionate to the expense. Help given from a central board or a society for the propagation of the gospel hardly awakens any other sense than