But under the arrangement here recommended, such conditions would not obtain. They would come back from the rural appointment so laden with new ideas and ideals as to appear to the home congregation in a most advantageous light. THE COUNTRY MINISTER There is at present not a little promise that there may be developed throughout the country a new type of country-dwelling ministers. It is certainly a logical position for the effective religious worker to assume; namely, that of actually dwelling among those whom he is attempting to serve. He acquires an intimate knowledge of their problems, their point of view, including the status of their individual beliefs and prejudices. [Illustration: PLATE VIII. FIG. 8.--The fifty-year-old country church at Plainfield. FIG. 9.--The new country church at Plainfield, Illinois, erected through the inspiration and leadership of Reverend Matthew B. McNutt.] As an example of what the country minister can achieve one needs to read an account of the splendid work of the Rev. Mathew B. McNutt of Plainfield, Illinois. Mr. McNutt was called to this charge in 1900 when a fresh graduate from a Presbyterian seminary. At the time of his call there was in the locality a small dead or nominal church membership and an occasional weak, ineffective service held in the little old church of fifty years' standing. This devoted and far-seeing man got down among the people with whom he settled, made a careful survey of the economic, the social, and the religious life of the place, and began his wonderful work of reconstructing all this. The ultimate purpose was the improvement of the spiritual well-being. He organized singing schools, granges, literary and debating societies, sewing societies, and clubs of various other sorts, all as a means of awakening the life of the community and bringing the people together in a spirit of mutual sympathy and helpfulness. After less than a decade of hard work a marvelous transformation of the rural life thereabout was achieved. Among other notable changes was a new church to supplant the old one. The new building was erected at a cash cost of ten thousand dollars; has an audience room seating five hundred or more, several Sunday school class rooms, a choir room, a cloak room, a pastor's study and a mothers' room, all on the main floor. In the basement below there is a good kitchen, a dining room with equipment, also a furnace, a store room, and the like. The church membership has grown to one hundred sixty-three with many non-members attending, while the Sunday school enrollment increased to three hundred. Now there are always a few minds who wish to measure all earthly things in terms of a money value. To such it may be shown that the land values in the vicinity of this new country church have gone up to a marked degree and that the economic conditions are all of a most satisfactory nature.