It has been the object of the work of the Larger Parish to supply this need of country life. It has provided and promoted frequent opportunities for the people to come together in a social way. The Sunday services established in so many places have not only served as opportunities of worship, but also of neighborly intercourse and of the interchange of friendly greetings. The neighborhood clubs have been a kind of social and literary clearing-house for the community, affording many a pleasant and profitable evening and providing something wholesome to think of and to plan for during the day. The Ladies’ Aid Societies have brought the women together, in projects and accomplishments of common interest, relieving the weeks of monotonous toil with forms of coöperative fellowship. Much more needs to be done to impart interest and attraction to life in the country, and it is something to which the Church, in its desire to minister to the whole man, may very appropriately give its thought and effort.
6. Machinery seems to be a necessity in all kinds of work. Nothing can be done without a method, an organization, a machine—some kind of an instrument to facilitate the process. But the machine is never properly an end in itself. Sometimes it is made an end, but no farmer could be satisfied with a reaper that did not cut the grain, however beautiful and well-made it might be or however smoothly it might run. Nevertheless some churches seem to be satisfied with the smooth running of the machinery, even though the results of it all are very meager.
The primary object of the work of the Larger Parish is to help the people and to serve them in a religious and social way, not to promote a denomination, to build up a church, to perfect an organization, or to construct or to operate machinery of any kind. But in order to help the people and serve their best interests efficiently, some machinery, some organization, is necessary. Our thought is to supply it when the necessity comes, but not before. When it is needed it must be invented or discovered, or in some way brought into the service. Certain methods have been introduced. There have been employed some forms of organization, some machinery has been set in operation. Some things we have tried, that did not work satisfactorily and they had to be discarded. Some of the methods that seem to be successful at present may not always continue to work so well, and they will have to be exchanged for others. We must ever keep in view the prime object 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.