The city is really the center of authority and governmental power. It offers the best and at the same time the worst; has the best in intellect, which it attracts and claims for its own, and it has the best in amusement and entertainments. We have heard people say: “The country is a good place in which to rest and work, but the city is the place to have your fun.” The city has the best and the worst of morals, and the best and the worst health conditions. Side by side with the city mansion are the tumble-down hovels and the cramped, narrow tenements that are a disgrace to our land. The robust, strong man pushes his weaker fellow to the wall. The worst forms of disease and the most acute physical suffering are found in the city. In the city there are many intellectual giants and many half-sane intellectual weaklings. The man dwelling in the country has a greater independence than these. He can at least have three meals a day, and knows how to take care of himself. Hundreds of thousands of people in our cities have just brains enough and just education enough to do one thing; if hard times throws one of these out of his job, he is left utterly helpless--a derelict on the sea of humanity. The culprit is safer in the city than in the thickest forest. Men without character and women without principle huddle together in its sordid districts. The tides of the city wash up queer specimens to the light of day, and reveal to the passer-by the saddest and most gruesome sights, and the worst types of humanity. The best in the city is matched by the worst. Philanthropy cures, or tries to cure, what rogues have created. Just as the incentive to goodness in the city is highest, so the temptations to the opposite course of life are of the strongest. The artificial life creates new and unusual wants, and together with the excitement caused by city conditions, makes temptations hard to resist. The city is the rich man’s paradise and the poor man’s hell. The lure of the city is strong upon us all. There are a thousand voices calling us there; and this is impoverishing our rural districts and making the question of food a more serious one every year. In the country one can plod along and with the present prices be independent, but this does not satisfy. The men of to-day think in thousands where their fathers thought in terms of hundreds. Hundreds of dollars are made on the farm and millions in the city. The city calls every young man and young woman. Everybody who is at all familiar with the small towns knows that one of the hardest facts which must be faced is that just as soon as the young people finish school they leave for the city. Church work is made hard by the continual drain on the best life in the community.