"To-day seventy-six per cent of the population of Massachusetts live in cities; of New York, eighty-five and one-half per cent; New Jersey, sixty-one and two-tenths; Connecticut, fifty-three and two-tenths; Illinois is one-half urban, and forty per cent of California's people live under city conditions." [Footnote: Frederic C. Howe--The City, the Hope of Democracy.] Contrasted with this peculiar burden of the city, there is the country church and the adaptation needed to maintain it in any degree of effectiveness, when its very life blood has been drained for the city. It has made untold contributions of ministers, missionaries, church officers and members to the cities and distant fields, leaving the mother church childless and weak in its advancing years. Changes that leave almost none of its former constituency confront the country church. Old farms and village stores pass into the hands of aliens--in many instances Hebrews--summer boarders claim the attention of the faithful women of the congregation for the most favorable months of the year. Sunday sports engage the interests of the indifferent, and there are many other disintegrating elements. In a land where progress calls to progress, where the results of hasty development create a large share of its problem--a land where the need of Christian effort is paramount, and where such effort is so vital to the world, the decadence of the country church is of far-reaching significance. Home Missions is called to direct its energizing, constructive ability to the solution of this baffling and discouraging feature of its problem to a greater degree than ever before. Home Missions at this time also confronts a new opportunity and obligation--to make its voice heard, its influence felt, for international peace. These winter days of 1914, in which the world has apparently lost its soul in the fury of slaughter, speak very loudly to the heart of Christianity. No force for the upbuilding of the Christ power on earth can ignore the significance and solemnity of this time. Has Christianity failed in these warring lands, or have they who are controlled by Christian standards and ethics in other relations, failed to apprehend that the Christ test--His principles--must be brought to bear upon _all_ of life--upon personal, individual, national and international relations? The fruition of Christianity must at last bring in the day when the conscience of Christian nations will hold true to the Master's teaching. "What ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them," must be wrought into national consciousness and practiced as an international principle. With the fatherhood of God, the _brotherhood_ of man is the very heart of the Gospel message. Home Missions must take account of the moral reactions of such carnage as is now taking place.