deprived of the privilege of attending some one of the great meetings of his church; or if he goes, it is with the uneasy consciousness that he ought not to have used the money for that, and must find some way to make it up outside of his salary. Under such conditions, to be made the banker of his church and compelled to advance money without interest is sometimes exasperating.

One minister I knew in whose call it was stipulated that the salary should be paid quarterly; after two or three failures on the part of the parish to come up to the gage, he promptly collected it by legal process. But that ended his pastorate in the place, and also blacklisted him, so that it was with difficulty that he obtained another field. The treasurer of my church came to me once, near the end of the fiscal year, and said, 'Six hundred dollars is all I can raise on the salary this year; you will have to balance the account on that.' This was a notice to take what they could raise, or find another place. My situation at the time was such that another place would have been almost a misfortune, at any rate would have broken off my plans for years to come; yet to live on six hundred dollars a year when I had already spent eight hundred, was a serious problem. I could not agree to the proposition and made a counter offer, agreeing to count on the salary all perquisites during the year, such as marriage fees, literary work, and whatever else happened to fall to me, amounting to about seventy-five dollars, if he would get down to work and raise the balance. By going to the people with this offer, giving no names, however, he managed to raise the amount. This happened in a church holding interestbearing funds to the amount of some twelve thousand dollars.

But not only are the running ex

penses of these churches handled carelessly and with indifference; a similar looseness is apparent in the management of their trust funds. The church just alluded to received at one time a legacy of five thousand dollars, and chose a committee to invest it. This committee with characteristic shiftlessness invested it in a stock company, which, after paying a few dividends, went to pieces, or into receivers' hands, and paid only a small part of the money back. The committee took what was left and put it in a savings bank, planning to keep it there until the interest had accumulated sufficiently to make good the original principal. In order to do this the running expenses of the church had to be cut down, and the minister's salary lowered to five hundred dollars a year. Instead of facing the facts squarely, and telling the people all about it, or making good,

.

as morally, perhaps, they were bound to do, having carelessly invested trust funds, they turned about and took it out of the minister; or, if not exactly that, by compelling the church to employ inferior men, they took it out of the life of the community. This condition went on for some years, until, at last, the company rallied and began to pay off its debts. Notice of these payments, after I went to the church, often came to me. The regularity of their coming led me to pass them to the parish committee instead of to the old committee which had the affair in charge, and the result was that we learned of a now fairly large fund at interest, of which, in the annual meetings, no accountings were made. In the mean time, while interest on this fund was being hoarded, I was forced to give my perquisites to the account of the salary, or find another field.

A similar case, not long afterward, developed in a neighboring church. They had not lost trust funds by care

less investment, but the interest on a large fund given them some years before was being systematically withheld by one man. This man was a sort of boss in the church. While this money was being hoarded, they were paying their minister the small sum of six hundred dollars a year. It was held back, as the man himself testified before a council, in order that the church, when the old men were dead, might have a larger fund with which to finance its work. The minister of this church, though on a small salary, did not ask them to use this money for running expenses, but for repairs on an old, leaky parsonage. Winter was at hand and the house, out of repair, was cold and unfit for a family of small children. He insisted that they could not better use the money than to put the parsonage in repair. But the man who seemed to run things in the parish demurred, and held back so strongly that a council was called to advise in the matter. The council unanimously advised the putting of the interest on this fund into the running expenses of the church.

In another field where I labored, the agent of a rickety concern, in the form of a stock company, persistently urged the trustees to invest a certain sum of money, which might soon become idle, with his company, agreeing to pay six per cent on preferred stock, at ninety dollars, and to give them a bonus of ten shares in the common stock of the company. This seemed too generous, and I opposed it, fearing the credit of the company might be low. In answer to letters written to persons from whom they were habitually buying we learned, however, that such was not true, that they paid their bills, but were slow. I still opposed it and was joined by one of the trustees and the senior deacon, and we three, by strenuously fighting the thing, managed to defeat it. In less

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than three months the company was in the hands of a receiver, paying about seven per cent on its bonds, and nothing on its common stock. Between a loss of thirteen hundred dollars and this church there were only three who stood out.

It was difficult in that field to raise the money for running expenses, although they were only a little more than nine hundred dollars. Yet this church, with some six or seven thousand dollars at interest, owned a square mile of land in different parts of the town, which was yielding an average pittance of from thirty-five to forty dollars a year. Originally, in part, this land consisted of a farm with buildings thereon. But these buildings were allowed to decay, to be used by tramps, until at last the house was burned, and the barn fell into the cellar. The land in places was excellent tillage, and there were several fresh-water meadows. Under systematic oversight, with a little concerted effort on the part of the men, once a year, this land could easily have been made to yield a regular income of at least one hundred and fifty dollars. It was located in different parts of the town, and much of it was woodland; and it was, apparently, concealed from the church, excepting a few of its old men. Only one man in the town knew where all of it was located and he was ninety years old. One other man knew where most of it was, but he seemed extremely reluctant to tell. Other old men there were, each of whom knew where some particular piece was, but they were not willing to make any effort to show the young men the bounds. I tried for two years to have them take the young men around over this land and point out to them the lines and corners there are no deeds of this land to be found-and to have plaques made and put on record, but to no purpose.

This church was not only losing its land, it was wasting it. It might have made it a source of income. Yet the land was being lost without protest while the running expenses of the church were continually in arrears. The minister's salary, paid in the old way, at the end of the quarter, was forever behind. And all this because of the slipshod, apathetic mismanagement of the finances of the parish. A friend said to me, 'I would not feel quite so exasperated, if, once in a while, my treasurer would count the money correctly.' His treasurer was in the habit of passing the collection, as it was taken, directly to him, and it commonly contained much small coin. I have been paid a quarter's salary largely in silver and copper. Weekly offerings in the rural church come mostly in nickels; five cents a week is the usual pledge, sometimes it is ten cents, now and then twenty-five, rarely fifty, and a dollar from three or four only. If these smaller sums were widows' mites, one would mention them only to commend the giver; but mostly they are the contributions of young men and women whose salaries are at least twelve dollars a week, and some of the salaries are as high as twenty dollars. Still, even these small gifts, if every one gave, would meet the needs of the church very well.

In my present parish, I find more of the careless and slipshod in the management of the finances of the church than in any I have hitherto served, yet these people, unlike most country people, are not averse to taking suggestions from the minister. He is usually made a member of the society, and sometimes put on the finance committee, and always on the estimating committee. This gives me an opportunity to make long plans and fix on a budget for the future. This opportunity I make haste to improve. We make

up a budget, appoint a committee to solicit the money it calls for, elect a treasurer to take care of it, and adjourn the meeting which, to most of the men chosen, means the end of the whole thing. Two years we have been doing this, but have not yet come up to the gage we set, and have in no way carried out our plans. It is a simple thing to make a budget. It is easy to plan the work, appoint the committees, elect the officers, and go through all the rest of the routine; but it is a different proposition to see the plans carried out in detail. Sometimes we get a committee who will help in the soliciting, but they meet with such strange discouragements that not seldom they give it up and ever after refuse to try it.

Rural people give as they live, mostly by the sense of feeling. 'How much this year?' is invariably answered with, 'I don't know. I suppose I'll have to give something.' 'How much?' 'I can't tell now. It will depend on how I feel when the money is called for.' Two thirds of the active members of the church will answer that way, even when they know exactly what they intend to give. The farmer hates to be definite. He hates to specify amounts. He hates to give you a direct answer in any way. I asked one to let me have his horse for a drive of a few miles one Sunday afternoon to call on a stricken family, and he hesitated so long that we both forgot what we wanted, and I walked to the place. About a week afterward the man's wife asked me if I went there, and added that her husband felt very badly to think he did not make me understand that I could have the team. So while we have a plan and a budget in this church, they are virtually dead letters. 'I'll give more when the time comes,' he says, 'if I do not pledge any amount now.' Fearing he may lose a dollar the collector says no more.

Plans are necessities anywhere, but in the rural church it is energy and training, rather than plans, that are most in demand. These people have had very little training in benevolence. Life here, in its limited way, is given over to getting and saving. The children are early inspired to earn money, and taught to save it, never to give it. Such teaching is good so far as it goes, but it is not sufficiently comprehensive. The vision is too limited. The energy of life is spent on too low an ideal. The needs of the community are not enough thought of. Of course the people hear in church, when they go, that the call to service, through the giving of one's wealth and one's self, is the highest call of human life, but they hear it nowhere else. And that which they hear in church is generally taken as a matter of course, and rarely thought of afterward. The minister may be as pointed and practical in his sermons as he chooses, and it is all taken in good part, in fact, I sometimes think it is relished; but with equal good nature and relish it is instantly forgotten. The deepest call of the rural church is for training in simple services. The people need to bend their energies to the doing of things and the giving of moneyin proportion to incomes of coursefor the larger interests of the community and the world. Until this lesson is learned and put into practice, the rural church will never have its normal and rightful influence in the town.

The financial problem in the rural church is a vital problem. If this church were solidly financed according to the peculiar laws that relate to the other enterprises of the countryside, even though it paid a small salary, it would be a power in the place. For men feel about the church as they do about a common business enterprise, it must it must be firmly financed, or they want nothing to do with it. More than one half

of the people who habitually stay away from church in these communities do so because the church is so hard pushed financially. The church must have in order to have more. It is the genuinely prosperous church, however small, that vitally touches the lives of men and women. How, therefore, to overcome the financial defects of the rural church, and at the same time to put it on a sound financial basis, is the problem that is trying out the nerve of the minister to-day. For, to manage, at the end of the year, by heck and by haw, to make ends meet, is far from solving the financial obligations of the church. The only right way is to put the church on a basis strong enough and reliable enough to meet all demands upon it, and then to know that it can meet all demands upon it at the right time, year in and year out, be the crops and the times what they may. It must do its business on a strictly cash basis.

Such a basis in these rural churches seems at first impossible. The finances of the church are fully as well managed as the finances of the town. Back of, and more inclusive than, the finances of the church is the old shiftless way of financing the town. The New England municipal government may be democratic, but it is not efficient. Into both community and church something more of efficiency in money matters must be wrought if either is to meet the demands of its day and its own peculiar needs.

How to introduce efficiency into the finance of the rural church is a basic and a vital problem. It will involve the matter of training. This calls for long plans. The needed reform can be brought about only by patient persistence. Efficiency in a rural church is quite a different thing from efficiency in a city church. And that, evidently, because the rural community is different

from the city community. One thing is necessary to this efficiency on the part of the country church, namely, to accept the fact that, first of all, it is a rural church. From that point of view all matters must be directed. From that point of view, then, let the training in benevolence begin.

My own plan, partly developed, but successful in that part, is this: Give everyone, boys and girls, men and women, an opportunity as individuals to contribute to the running expenses of the church. This is a phase of training responded to with surprising enthusiasm. This giving should be systematic, so much a week. Then each society connected with the church, Sunday School, Young People, Men's Club, Ladies Home-Interest Society, Young Women's Auxiliary, Boys' Club, everything in the form of a society, should be given an opportunity to contribute toward the running expenses of the church and to do it systematically. At the annual meeting a budget should be made up of all the expenses of the church, including the running of the Sunday School, the apportionment to the missionary work, the needs of the choir, as well as the salary of the janitor and the minister, and, learning from the past, also a certain sum for

contingencies, such as the expenses of delegates to the conventions, an occasional lecturer from abroad, and whatever else may be needed. Then it must be forced home that no plan will work itself out. Behind it must stand an efficient committee.

It is high time the rural church got into form and took its place among the forces for moral and spiritual betterment in these days. But it will never take that place until it replaces its old, rusty machinery, and slipshod, careless workmen, with trained hands, minds, and hearts to finance its plant. The dawn of a nobler day is at our door. It calls for vision of great possibilities ahead, of the close connection which the rural church sustains toward the large problems of the age and the world. The possibilities in the country church are great. It has a splendid history. It holds a strategic position in our national life. And I believe it contains the elemental potencies and dynamics of a complete solution of the present perplexing and discouraging problems which confront the farming communities. But to fill this place, to do this work, the country church will be compelled to reconstruct thoroughly on a more unique and solid basis its present financial habits and plans.