Fingerposts of Children's Reading. Walter Taylor Field.

McClurg & Co. Gives extensive lists.

Books for Boys and Girls. Brooklyn Public Library, New York.

A carefully selected list of 1700 t.i.tles, 200 of them being especially marked for their value.

CHAPTER VII

_THE RURAL CHURCH AND THE YOUNG PEOPLE_

There was never a greater demand for efficient leadership in the rural communities than there is to-day. The country has continued for many years past to become richer in farm products and equipment, but it has steadily grown poorer in social and spiritual values. In fact we have unconsciously acquired a distorted idea of values. Hogs are too high in proportion to boys. Beef cattle are absorbing too much interest in proportion to the time and money expended in perfecting the character of girls. It has long been the proud boast of the Middle Western states that they could feed the entire country. And we have continued so long in this way as now to regard big crops and the great abundance of farm animals and other such material possessions as ends in themselves. So it is high time that we ask ourselves what this material wealth is all for.

Looked at from at least one high vantage point, it may be properly regarded as so much enc.u.mbrance unless we shall be able to convert it into a means to some worthy and spiritual purpose.

DECADENCE OF RURAL LIFE

The open country in the Middle Western states has for some time been the breeding place for sterling manhood and ideal womanhood, and the recruiting ground wherefrom have been drawn many men and women to undertake the management of the larger enterprises of the country. The enforced self denial and discipline of work; the continued practice of quiet reflection; the comparative freedom from the evil and degrading influences peculiar to much of the child life in the cities; and many other character-building experiences could be set down on the favorable side of rural child-rearing in the past. But this situation is rapidly changing. The ten-year period just closing has witnessed a decadence of country life, the rural population actually showing a decrease. Large numbers of the best families have moved to the cities and towns, and their places on the farm have been taken by irresponsible laborers and transient renters.

Yes, the wealth of the rural community is still there, lying more or less dormant, and all the other means of a splendid civilization are there. But in the usual instance there is no one to a.s.sume the leadership in bringing about the reconstruction of the rural life. Now that he has acc.u.mulated such an abundance of material things, the typical farmer needs to be shown how to deal more fairly and helpfully with the various members of his family. Some farmers' wives are gradually being dragged to death with the over-burden of work, which might be obviated if the farmer and his wife were both shown specifically a better way of getting things done. Many boys and girls growing up in the country are being cheated out of their natural heritage of good health, spontaneous play, and the joy of social intercourse, all because of the fact that farm products are too much regarded as an end rather than a means to the higher development of the members of the rural family. So a good soil and excellent crops are essentials for a substantial rural society, but they are not a certain evidence of such thing. It is possible to go into some of the country communities where these material things are acc.u.mulated in great abundance and yet find the people there living a little, mean, and narrow form of life, and that chiefly because they do not quite understand how to use the splendid means at hand in the accomplishment of some high and worthy purposes.

WORK FOR THE MINISTRY

And so we hereby issue a call and a challenge for workers to enter the great fallow field just named and make it blossom with new social and spiritual life. And it is the conviction of some that the ministers of the town and village churches can undertake this work much better than any other cla.s.s of persons, for they are already in many respects trained leaders. Let these ministers be provided if possible with an a.s.sistant, a layman it may be, for both their town and country work.

Then let each of them have a rural appointment to which they may go from one to four times each month; and, inspired by a vision of all the possibilities ahead of them and endued with divine power and guidance, enter earnestly into the great work of rehabilitating the country community. It is evident that the minister who will leave his town congregation with perhaps only one Sunday sermon and go to a country church and preach to the adults, and teach and lead the young, while his a.s.sistant takes charge of the second Sunday service at home--it is evident that such a minister will not only wear longer in the locality in which he is stationed, but that he will find in the rural work just mentioned such a flood of zeal and inspiration as will more than make up for and repay the effort. Many of the town ministers are preaching to audiences that are more or less irresponsive to what they have to say.

Under present conditions they are compelled to preach to the same audiences too much. Their sermons grow stale. But under the arrangement here recommended, such conditions would not obtain. They would come back from the rural appointment so laden with new ideas and ideals as to appear to the home congregation in a most advantageous light.

THE COUNTRY MINISTER

There is at present not a little promise that there may be developed throughout the country a new type of country-dwelling ministers. It is certainly a logical position for the effective religious worker to a.s.sume; namely, that of actually dwelling among those whom he is attempting to serve. He acquires an intimate knowledge of their problems, their point of view, including the status of their individual beliefs and prejudices.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE VIII.

FIG. 8.--The fifty-year-old country church at Plainfield.

FIG. 9.--The new country church at Plainfield, Illinois, erected through the inspiration and leadership of Reverend Matthew B. Mc.n.u.tt.]

As an example of what the country minister can achieve one needs to read an account of the splendid work of the Rev. Mathew B. Mc.n.u.tt of Plainfield, Illinois. Mr. Mc.n.u.tt was called to this charge in 1900 when a fresh graduate from a Presbyterian seminary. At the time of his call there was in the locality a small dead or nominal church membership and an occasional weak, ineffective service held in the little old church of fifty years' standing. This devoted and far-seeing man got down among the people with whom he settled, made a careful survey of the economic, the social, and the religious life of the place, and began his wonderful work of reconstructing all this. The ultimate purpose was the improvement of the spiritual well-being. He organized singing schools, granges, literary and debating societies, sewing societies, and clubs of various other sorts, all as a means of awakening the life of the community and bringing the people together in a spirit of mutual sympathy and helpfulness. After less than a decade of hard work a marvelous transformation of the rural life thereabout was achieved.

Among other notable changes was a new church to supplant the old one.

The new building was erected at a cash cost of ten thousand dollars; has an audience room seating five hundred or more, several Sunday school cla.s.s rooms, a choir room, a cloak room, a pastor's study and a mothers'

room, all on the main floor. In the bas.e.m.e.nt below there is a good kitchen, a dining room with equipment, also a furnace, a store room, and the like. The church membership has grown to one hundred sixty-three with many non-members attending, while the Sunday school enrollment increased to three hundred.

Now there are always a few minds who wish to measure all earthly things in terms of a money value. To such it may be shown that the land values in the vicinity of this new country church have gone up to a marked degree and that the economic conditions are all of a most satisfactory nature.

As further evidence of what a rural community working together may achieve for the spiritual welfare, there may be cited the instance of the little side station by the name of Ogden in Riley County, Kansas.

Here the people got together and voted to build a country church, and that without determining as to the denominational affiliation. A committee of leaders was appointed to raise funds and to draw plans for the building. In a short time, arrangements were perfected for constructing the building at a cost of four thousand dollars. It was later voted to place this new church temporarily under the direction of the Congregational church in Manhattan, fifteen miles away.

In one or two instances the religious leaders in a country community have succeeded admirably in establishing a "commission" form of church administration. The method pursued has been that of having a committee of three, each a member of a different church, to call by turn from the towns near by the ministers of the various denominations. Further details of the plans provide for the committee to raise funds so that the minister may be paid a definite amount for the service conducted.

One of the first essential steps in the establishment of a rural church is a careful survey or study of the situation. While it may be accounted a sin against G.o.d and humanity to add another church where there are already more than the people can support, often it will be found that very large, well populated country districts are wholly without access to any religious service whatever. Verily, the field is white unto the harvest and the laborers as yet are few.

A MISTAKE IN TRAINING

Too long we have been training young people in the school and in the home to struggle for the best of everything--a sort of rivalry that results in envy, jealousy, and strife, and a falling apart where there should be cooperation and sympathy and a spirit of mutual helpfulness.

The craze for clothes, the glare of the electric lights, and the lure of the cheap theater have struck the country people and are drawing away much of the best young blood there. It seems that we have over-done this thing of pointing to the top and urging our young people to scramble for that, until as a result no one is looking for a place to serve, while all are looking for a place to shine. Now, there may be "plenty of room at the top" for selfish scrambling, but in some respects the top is woefully over-crowded. On the other hand, there is a vast amount of good room at the bottom, acres of it, and we might well commend it to every one who may be imbued with the idea of doing some effective work in the world. All over the broad, open country, in thousands of rural districts, the situation at the bottom is literally crying out for constructive workers who will come in there with their good courage, their scientific training, and in the name of the Most High get down among the people and the common things in the midst of which the people live and lay a substantial foundation for a new and beautiful structure--an edifice erected out of the plain materials to be found in any ordinary rural community, and that by means of transforming such things and making them contributive to the high and lofty spirit-purposes for which they are really designed.

RURAL CHILD-REARING

We are not half awake as yet to the meaning and possibilities of the rural community as a place for rearing children. The city environment ripens youths too fast and too early and works all the spontaneity and aggressiveness out of the boys and girls before their mature judgments are ready to function. As a result of this city hot-bed, we have as a type the blase sort of young man, and a young woman who is overly smart in respect to the "proper things to do." Either of them has little power of initiative and less power of persistence. One of the greatest virtues of the somewhat isolated rural home is that it matures human character more slowly and keeps the boys and girls fresh and "green" and spontaneous while there is being gradually worked into their characters the habit of industry and the power of doing constructive work.

If one should desire to obtain a sterling specimen of manhood, he would not take up with the "smart" city youth who at the age of sixteen has had all the experiences known to men. The latter is too ripe. He knows it all. From his own point of view, his knowledge of the world is nearly completed. No, one would prefer to go to the most remote country district and, if need be, la.s.so some green, gawky, sixteen-year-old who is afraid of the cars and the big girls and who has never had a suit of clothes that fits him. This scared, unbroken youth would go through a tremendous amount of rough-and-tumble, trial-and-error experiences during the course of his college training; and he would live intensively and rush into many unknown places and commit many blunders, between whiles catching countless inspiring visions of how he might be or become a man of great strength and ruggedness of character. Such a man might be relied upon to shoulder the heavy burdens of the world. Such a man could be called out to join in the forefront of battle when the moral and religious rights of the people were at issue. Such a man when fully matured could be sent into some kind of missionary field and be expected to labor there for a long time alone, courageous and persistent, finally winning a very small following; then a larger number of adherents; and then the entire population at his heels, applauding and backing him up in his every worthy effort.

The author has long had a vision of a man trained and developed through the seasoning experiences just sketched and who, under the inspiration and the guidance of the Most High, will go into these rural communities which are latent with material life, and there begin his labors in behalf of the higher things into which all the elements of this typical rural situation may be transformed. Just as fast as men hear this divine call and heed it and take up this work, so fast will our country life be reconstructed and the best that is in our society become gloriously transformed and everlastingly saved as a heritage of the oncoming generations. And it is evident that the rural minister, working through the rural church, is the person to whom this divine call may most naturally come.

THE CHURCHES TOO NARROW

Not a few of the country churches are too narrow in their limitations, tending to chill out those who do not happen to be adherents of the creed, and to foster dissensions and hatred among neighbors. And they are not touching in a vital way the lives of country boys and girls.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE IX.

FIG. 10.--This attractive and modern church building was erected by the Christian people living in the vicinity of the country village of Ogden, Kansas. Four different denominations partic.i.p.ated at its dedication. Its ruling body is undenominational.]

It will be agreed that the gospel of the Master of men may be made so broad and inviting as to attract all who have a spark of religion in their natures, and that means practically every one in the community.

But there is no good reason why the rural church should stand alone as such. It should and can be made a social as well as a religious center for the whole community. So, let there be constructed a modern building with big windows, and several apartments for Sunday school cla.s.ses, and for meetings of social groups, such as the grange, the farmers'

inst.i.tute, the sewing society, and the literary and debating clubs. Then there should be apparatus for the preparation of meals, with a room in which a long table might be spread as occasion demands. Outside of this building there should be a children's playground with some simple apparatus for play.

Not less frequently than one afternoon of the month--and twice would be better--the people of the community should drop everything and come together for a good social time and a general exchange of ideas. On an occasion of this kind the town minister could be present or someone from the outside who would bring with him at least one helpful and practical idea about building up country life. Let this building be regarded as the property of every man, woman, and child in the community and strive to bring it to pa.s.s that the legitimate and worthy interest of all shall be actually served there.

CONSTRUCTIVE WORK OF THE CHURCH

This country church here thought of need be no less a religious affair, but it must become distinctively a socializing agency. It must not merely save souls, but it must save and conserve and develop for this present life the bodily, the moral, and the intellectual powers of the young. One cannot adequately develop those splendid latent powers in young people solely by means of teaching them the Sunday school lesson or preaching to them, no matter how true the gospel may be. The evidence is ample to show that boys and girls who attend church and Sunday school are nevertheless falling into many vicious habits of conduct, and are growing up without many of the forms of discipline and training essential for stable Christian character and social and moral efficiency. In fact as a means of temporal salvation the old-fashioned church and Sunday school are proving more and more a failure.

Now, as soon as the church realizes the meaning of the foregoing situation and acts accordingly, just so soon will this splendid old inst.i.tution be enabled to do efficient work in vitalizing the practical affairs of the community in which it is located. To ill.u.s.trate this point: The great curse of boyhood to-day is the tobacco habit, and this vitiating practice is slowly working its way among the country youth.

The youth who acquires the smoking habit before becoming physically matured thereby depletes his physical health to a marked degree, reduces his mental efficiency ten to fifty per cent, and almost completely destroys his power of initiative. Such a youth is never found contending for any moral issue or any high and worthy cause of the people. His constructive instinct is made more quiescent, while his disposition to condone evil is greatly and permanently increased. Boys who attend church and Sunday school are also, like others, falling victims to the s.e.x evils of various forms.

AN INNOVATION IN THE RURAL CHURCH

Perhaps there is no better ill.u.s.tration of how the economic affairs of the neighborhood may be vitally linked with the church service than the work carried on under the direction of Superintendent George W. Brown, of Paris, Illinois. During one year Mr. Brown conducted on seven different occasions an over-Sunday program, somewhat as follows:--

On Sat.u.r.day either at the country school house or in the bas.e.m.e.nt of the country church there was arranged an exhibition of corn, while during the day cla.s.s exercises in the study of corn were in progress. On the day following, Sunday, there were two sermons, the theme of each being closely allied to the economic problems studied the day previously. The ministers are reported to have cooperated enthusiastically in this work, each one attempting in his sermon to show how better economic life may be made contributive to a better religious life.