Unfortunately churches in the country are too often recruiting stations for the cities and colleges. The ministers are respectable pullers-in for the city show. Nothing rejoices them so much as to help their young men and women find a position in the city; unless it be to have a bright lad or girl go off to college. When a country minister was reminded that all these departures weakened the country community, and that very few of them benefitted the lad or girl who goes to the city, he replied "you cannot blame them; there is nothing here to keep them."
"The rural exodus" has had its Moses in the rural college student, its Aaron in the country minister, and its Miriam in the country school teacher. These three have led a generation out of the country to perish in the wilderness. For only a pitiful few of those who leave the country come to prominence in the city. The most gain but a poor living there, and very many go to ruin. The church should be the savior of the community, as her Master is of the soul.
It seems to me that this is done in a church in Ottumwa, Iowa, of which Dr. W. H. Hormell is minister. It is in a stock-yards district, and the daily occupation of many of the members is unclean, of some revolting. But the church is a dynamo of spiritual forces. It supplies the experiences most opposite to those of the slaughter-house. A half-dozen chapels in surrounding neighborhoods, most of them in the country, are outposts of the church, for each of which a superintendent is responsible: and thus a man who is an underling at the slaughter-house is a leader in the quest of eternal life. The whole company of workers with the pastor, constitute a spiritual cabinet of the district. It is not surprising that this church fascinates men. The minister cannot be persuaded away, and a like devotion pervades his group of workers. The intensity of the industrial labor is matched by the intensity of Bible study, prayer and evangelism. The degradation and repulsion of the leading industry of the place are equalled by the unworldly nobility and optimism of the leading church. This church does not attempt to mend the community—which might be found impossible—but only to serve the community by supplying the satisfaction for spiritual wants.
According to the law of diminishing returns, the first satisfactions of any want have infinite value. What does this mean but that they have religious value? The first drink of water to a famished man calls forth a fervent "Thank, God." The first book printed is a Bible. The first landing on American soil was a solemn religious occasion—and still is for the immigrant. So the first gains of money are of religious value to the poor. The first hundred dollars to a mechanic's family is invested in a dozen benefits. The first thousand dollars which a working farmer saves go into a home, a piano or books, or an education for a child. It is all moral and spiritual good. Later thousands have diminishing moral and spiritual values. Most of the churches and homes in America were paid for out of the tithes of men and women who owned at the time a margin of less than a thousand dollars.
This is the reason for the religious character of economic life. The most of people spend their lives with less than a thousand dollars. They are poor, and money does them good, not harm. They need to know how to use it. But the getting of their living is a process prolific in religious feeling, because economic matters have to them the infinite value of first satisfactions of all the simplest wants of life.
The salvation of the community will be accomplished in satisfying the higher wants of those whose lower wants are satisfied. For those who "have made money" supply schools; for those who work supply recreation; for the sick hospitals; for the invalid build sanitariums; and for all men supply social life, the greatest need of human life on earth. For those who are thus united to the community, and to one another in the intricate network of associations, the opportunity of worship together, and of sharing common spiritual interests becomes the highest economic want
FOOTNOTES:
[21] "I come that they may have life, and may have it abundantly."—Jesus, in John 10:10.
[22] "Modern Methods in the Country Church," by Matthew Brown McNutt.
[23] "The Making of an American," by Jacob Riis.