“But,” went on the author of Christian idealism,--mind you, in the same breath in which He had paid to His followers the superb compliment, “Ye are the salt of the earth,”--“if the salt have lost its savor--” And the story of Protestant home missions in rural America during the last two or three decades has in it the taste of this “lost savor.” Let me lay bare before you,--with the shame of a churchman very much embarrassed, it must be confessed,--not so much the facts of this unsavory home-mission story, for the facts have been public property for some years, as an interpretation of the facts and an appraisal of the damage done to American churchdom. For the benefit of him who does not understand the situation at all, a word is necessary. Here is the picture, and here are the essential features in the picture, whatever variations there may be in minor details. _Twice Too Many Churches_ A community of rural folk of a definite population is spread out before you. Christian churches, usually from two to ten in number, are alive, if not all going concerns in the community. Whatever differences there may be in the membership rolls--and of course we shall expect many points of difference here--or in the number of services per week or per month, or in the presence or absence of resident pastors, or in the organization of the churches into Sunday-schools, mission societies, clubs, social committees and the like--whatever the variations may be, I say, the number of persons in the community, counting every single soul, is far short of enough to man all of the churches, use any reputable standard of church organization you please to measure by. Furthermore, in the type community in question, some or all of the churches are weak and ineffective, if not virtually down and out. Moreover,--and this is the central feature of the picture,--one church is, or several or all of these churches are, receiving subsidies in the form of money from the home-mission funds of the respective denominational state body or national body or both, the sum of money being just enough to keep the particular church competitively in the running in that community. The essential fact in this situation may be stated thus: In a community where there is known to be a mass of persons (in commercial parlance, “volume of business”) sufficient to build and maintain only from one to five churches, there are actually found to be from two to ten; and the excess of churches over and above the number which the volume of business justifies is the direct result of the injection of home-mission money into the community. _Veiled Hate_