St. Johnsbury Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1867-1919, 1916-05-10

Selling opportunity when the chance
came. 1t may comfort the pastor a
little to feel that all the training and
inspiration the young man had came
from the little country church, but it
is rather cold comfort for the min
lister who needs him so badly.
1.-The minister watches the young
woman who served as organist and
choir leader marry and move away
to a larger center. Her ability along
musical lines may not have been
great, and her technique may have
been small, but she could conceal the
alterations of the superannuated bass
and reduce to a minimum the discord
of the volunteer and unframed choir.
But in the larger church to which she
may go there is plenty of better tai
emit than hers, and she drops out of
service and finally out of the church
altogether. For in the old church she
felt herself some one and of some use,
but with the loss of this habit of
being of use goes the impulse to wor-
ship at ALL It is hard beyond words
for the pastor and clerk to see, year
after year, letter after letter sent to
the cities, and the best and brightest
young blood subtracted from the life
of the small church where it is need
ed SO greatly, sometimes only to be
poured out in waste and sometimes to
be added to the already strong life of
some large church.
The tendency to stagnation takes
! the life out of many country pastors.
Many a brave man has at last wilted
under a ceaseless repetition of We
have never done that and We have
always done it this way, and I guess
we had better not change varied
perhaps with the cowardly adage,
Let well enough alone.'" In the
country the prayer meeting and the
evening service have ceased to min
lister to the needs of the people," but
1.-The people positively refuse to sur
render, even thought they will not
support or work for Them Mr.
Moody finds parts of the country
where the Difference to the past is
nearly Chinese in it's approach to
idolatry." He writes:
II had occasion lately to travel
nearly all day with a missionary from
Africa, who by the doctors orders is
spending the winter in this country
In order not to be idle, he has taken
a charge for the winter in a New
England rural community. 1t was a
long-coveted opportunity, and ] asked
him if he found the work easier in
this country than in Africa. His an
swer did not surprise me, but 1 wish
that it could have the wide publicity
it deserves. For to him there was no
comparison, and it was easier to
work, he said, in Africa among saw
ages than in this country among re-
puted Christians. The black night of
ignorance was more easily dispelled, |
to his way of thinking, than the
blacker night of indifference and cal |
lousness. 1 believe him. Happily |
there are brighter sides, and there |
are communities as wide-awake and !
as progressive in the country as in
the urban centers. There can now
and again be found even in New Eng |
land, whose chapter some think is |
written and closed, little towns sup
porting churches that are strong and |
useful and doing in their way as good |
work as any widely known city
church. Some of these are in farm
ing communities, and there the
young men have been kept on the |
farms, not by force, but because the |
farm promised them something and |
there was a future for them. In |
churches in places of this kind you |
Will find as many young men as old |
if not actually more"
Due tribute is paid to the agency |
Of the telephone. parcel post, and au-
tomobile in changing country condi-
tons for the church and its people |
Intensive farming, too, for those |
trained for it, has kept men of good |
brains on the farm and available for
the church. But from the facts the |
church has been urged to undertake
''the dissemination of a scientific |
knowledge of agriculture" But such |
project Mr.. Moody attributes only
to rather reckless newspaper man"
or a rather visionary and impractf- |
cal theologian." 1.-THE minister" de-
clares Mr.. Moody, 'fs in the com
munity for the upraising of Christian |
character, and not for the raising of |
improved or registered calves The
deepest problems of the country |
church, Mr.. Moody AYERS, are not
economic, but spiritual
1.-THE weaker the place, the strong
er the man needed. Kipling has put
in the mouth of one of his keenest
characters, Mrs. Hauksbee, the state
ment that any woman can manage a
wise man, but that it takes a very
wise woman to manage a fool. The
same thing is true of churches. The
average man can manage the average
church, but it takes a spiritual genius
and saint of more than common
with it's lack of workers and the loss
which comes when the momentum of
numbers is lacking