Sociology studied in the city is confusing. The aggregates are too great, the causes too extensive and entangled; the order of phenomena is a Gordian knot of maze and intricacy. It is a question whether any of our leading cities is a natural rather than an abnormal aggregate. The country community, on the contrary, is limpid and clear: you can see to the bottom of it. This brings forth the remark, which should not be withheld in any consideration of the country church, that behind the country churches stand the theological seminaries; professional schools, founded and established for the training of ministers; originally country ministers. At the present time these schools, with almost no exception, are rendering an entirely inadequate service. More than inadequate: it is misplaced and it has the effect of misdirection. For three years the student for the ministry is detained away from the study which he should pursue and for a good part of that time he is diligently trained in studies that he ought never to follow. The country community, therefore, is a field, in the case of most ministers, for original investigationuntrained, amateur, and unsystematic investigation-in which he has no help from those appointed to be his helpers and his leaders. For the reconstruction of the theological seminary the sociological analysis of the country community is of the greatest value. It should be a special topic to which for a long time to come almost unlimited hours should be devoted in the seminaries, because rural sociology is of initial concern to him who would understand the American population and minister to the need of the whole American people.

My thesis then is a plea for economic and social training of rural leaders; especially for country ministers. If this work is not done by the seminaries it should be undertaken by the universities. The president of this society has a weekly class, attended by more theological students, so far as I am informed, than meet in any seminary of theology. There is no permanent reason why the state universities may not provide courses for the training of ministers which will render unnecessary much of the seminary curriculum.

Speaking for a great religious agency, I earnestly hope that this training will be provided in order that the abounding and perennial religious life of country people may have educated leadership. And if the scribes and Pharisees of the chosen people will not furnish it, I say with an early preacher of Christianity, "Lo, we turn unto the Gentiles !"

THE CHURCH AND THE CITY COMMUNITY

WALTER LAIDLAW

Executive Secretary of the Federation of Churches, New York City

If the church has no program for the city community, church extinction—not church extension-is the duty of the day. The city communities are so extending themselves over the map of this nation that every county of the continental United States having a city of 25,000, with the exception of two, has increased its population in the last ten years, and city communities of 25,000 and over have absorbed, since 1900, 55.01 per cent of the growth of the nation. Of every 10,000 persons in the continental United States 2,594 lived in cities of 25,000 and over in 1900; in 1910 the figures had risen to 3,099 of every 10,000. In 1900, 7,406 of every 10,000 lived outside the cities of this group, and in 1910 only 6,901. The cities, through their universities, through their press, and, above all, through the concentration within them of the industrial problems incident to the shifting of the stress of economic equities from fields to factories-the cities, through these and other factors, are the gauge and guide of civilization. If the church is not essential to banish their barbarities and to produce an urban brotherhood-humane, urbane, and yet as dynamic as the "Mauretania's" turbines-the church should strike its flag, and yield to capture by charity organization, civic federation, labor federation, or some other "denomination" which will furnish the nation with a better ration. The capital invested in the churches will no more save them from extinction, if they are not socially serviceable to the coming generations, than the capital invested in ships with double-expansion engines availed to save them from towage to the Erie Basin as hulks unsuited to carry the heavier yet swifter-moving cargoes of the international commerce of our time. The church, to adapt Wordsworth's description of immanent Deity, must become

A Motion and a Spirit that impels

All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.

The church, which has been bringing immortality to light, must, like its Founder, bring life, as well, to light. It must transform itself from "an ark of refuge" into a battleship and merchantman of progress.

The church, which is daring in our day to translate its celestial message into the tongue of every tribe upon the planet, is evidently seized with a sense of its catholicity. It is endeavoring to make

the bonds of brotherhood outspread

Beyond the confines of old ethnic dread.

It is summoning Pekin to believe what neither Rome, London, nor New York has yet obeyed. Has it any warrant to tell Tokio that "a God has mingled with the game" of pushing the earth to "reach its heavenly best," if hell, to use an oft-quoted description, is a city "much like London"? The capital of the country where the church originated was exceeded in population by fifty of the cities of the United States; its houses were low and flat-roofed; many, if not most, of its families lived in one room; it took care of its garbage in an outdoor Gehenna so slow in its cremation that, though the fire was not quenched, the worm did not die. Has the church, which originated amid such city conditions, an essential message and a transforming mission for the cities of our time?

To state the question in this way is perhaps to invite the answer "No" from the fair critic of this paper. Nevertheless my own answer is "Yes."

Christianity originated in an urban community; gained, within a generation, adherents in city after city, and, both from tenement and palace, even in the empire's capital; and gave to the world a vision it will not willingly let die, the vision of a city of wholeness (a holy city) let down from heaven to displace the cities of disease, despair, and swollen death-rate of today.

The vision of the Revelation of St. John the Divine to the seven churches in seven cities of Asia is not indeed couched in

scientific, sociological language, but the whole book, which has been "the favorite stamping-ground of fanatical interpreters of Scripture," is coming to be regarded as "the consolation of martyrdom," a prophecy of that perfected association of men on earth which morbid mediaeval hymnology postpones postmortem and removes beyond the revolution of the earth and beyond the evolution of its society. Those were days when Christians who succeeded in keeping their heads on their shoulders had difficulty in keeping hope in their hearts, and the book, cryptic in its reference to the persecutions of the Roman power, is plain in its prediction of the coming of a city controlled by a religious concept of life, a New Jerusalem, a city of pity, purity, and perfection. It is a city, to translate some of its descriptions into modern terms, with low morbidity, where pain has passed away; a city whose death-rate is lowered to a minimum; a city without crimes of violence and fraud; a city of ravishing beauty within and without; a city of wealth and gladness; a city of gleaming cleanliness, with a crystal and unfailing water supply, and marvelous park and great residential space, but a city withal most highly characterized by its spiritual distinction-its blue-blood citizens whose foreheads proclaim them sons of God, and whose primary occupation is to fulfil the purposes of him who held in his compassion the whole of the human race.

That was the vision splendid by which Christianity in the days of its persecution was on its way attended, yet it is plain that some of its descriptions are symbolisms unless we are willing to think that the race of the future will live in skyscrapers far excelling the height of the towers of commerce of today. Without symbolism one can understand a description of a city whose "length and breadth" are equal, but one whose "length and breadth and height are equal" can only be regarded as in symbolic contrast to the pent-up meagerness of the insulae, or tenement houses, of Rome, and the narrow and tortuous streets of Jerusalem.

The first century hung a city plan on the wall of every