It is also charged that many rural pastors lack both adequate training and ability for their high calling. The real marvel is that so many of these men are of the high type they are. It has to be admitted that there is ground for the charge of incompetency among some of the rural pastors of the United States. These men, it is true, are most inadequately prepared for their work. How are they to afford more training for a calling which will never pay them any returns upon it? That these men can develop into able preachers has been demonstrated by those who have had the opportunity to complete their courses in the summer school for ministers, inaugurated, I believe, by the Presbyterian Board and now conducted by several denominations. But most of them do not have this chance. It is competitive religion that is largely responsible for these two dangerous factors in rural religious life--the non-resident pastor, too occupied to be a true spiritual shepherd; and the incompetent pastor, too incapable to be a leader of his people. But Christianity will not vanish from our country districts. Nowhere is there better soil for the seeds of true religion than in the sturdy soul of rural America. It is not so much _isms_ or _ologies_ that the rural population wants as it is religious facilities for themselves and for their children. Some time ago, when a study of fifteen Western States was made by the Home Mission Council, it mentioned the following fact: “The general feeling manifested by the returns shows little care for denominationalism. What these people want is some one to present Bible facts in an acceptable manner.” _The Call Can Be Met_ This is as true to-day as it was when it was written ten years ago. Sunday-schools for their children; an adequate number of churches, not fewer than will meet their needs or more than they can support; usable churches, open the year round, with able ministers in charge--these are the things the population of our rural districts wants. How are they to get them? By the installation of system into the religious life of the country sections. There are enough churches in the United States to-day, if they were distributed on the basis of a real need rather than on the grounds of competitive religion, to reach the remotest sections of our country. The money now expended on nonproductive churches would purchase real vitality for essential churches all through rural America. CHAPTER II “_Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, When wealth accumulates, and men decay._” GOLDSMITH.