I wish gratefully to acknowledge my indebtedness in this essay to the staff of the Institute of Social and Religious Research, New York City, upon whose authoritative statements I have much relied. To the Curtis Publishing Company, Philadelphia, I desire to express appreciation for their kindness in allowing me to reproduce here materials which have appeared in “The Country Gentleman” during the past year. C. J. GALPIN. March, 1925. EMPTY CHURCHES EMPTY CHURCHES CHAPTER I Recently, in a cross-roads country church, a minister of the Gospel, underpaid, somewhat shabby, but eager and inspired, a man with a message to give, stood before his congregation to present that message. The flame of inspiration in his haggard young face flickered and died as he looked down at the scanty congregation assembled before him to hear the Word of God. At a glance he counted his handful of hearers. Six. Through a window on one side of the little church, he could see two other meeting-houses nestling in the curve of the road. Through a window on the other side, he looked out at a third--four country churches of four Christian denominations, almost identical in doctrine, there within two stone’s-throws of one another. In three of these churches, including his own, he knew that the members of the congregation might be counted upon the fingers of each pastor’s two hands. The third church was closed that day; its flock could afford only an occasional shepherd. In all four of those churches put together, not one fair-sized congregation. In all four, not one pastor paid a salary large enough to enable him to live on his income as a minister. In all four, men and women taxed by religion beyond their ability to pay, yet unable to support their church without outside aid. _Jealous Denominations_ The young minister thought with pain of other sections of the country through which he had traveled all day without seeing one church of any denomination. He knew that an appalling percentage of farm communities throughout the United States were entirely without churches, that thousands of children, hundreds of their elders, had never listened to the preaching of the Gospel. Yet here there were four churches at the country cross-roads! That afternoon that young pastor wrote me a letter, wrote it in pain and bitterness, but also in hope, in earnest desire to get the facts before the nation: