We find the chief reason for country church decay the lack of a trained, resident pastor. Under present conditions it is impossible to meet this need from the supply of college men entering Christian work. To be sure, thousands of these unmanned churches are surplus churches. They have no real field; perhaps never had. And Providence is allowing them to die, for the glory of God! It is far better when they graciously unite with some neighboring church,--but the necessary grace is often lacking. Very many churches with a real field need ministers and can get only untrained men. Hundreds of such churches write in vain to the seminaries every year, as the writer can testify. There seem to be plenty of untrained ministers, in most states; but it is an open question whether such leadership does more good than harm. Would not a well-trained woman, with a genuine Christian purpose, gifts of real leadership, and a complete college and theological training, be likely to do better service in the pastorate of such a church than an untrained man? It seems strange that we even consider it a subject for debate! The number of women ministers seems to be increasing in several denominations, though not rapidly yet. Sometimes they are untrained, but when well equipped they render efficient service. Occasionally you find a woman with the true pastor's spirit gaining surprising success in a difficult country church after a series of men have conspicuously failed. It might be well to try this experiment oftener. We are now developing in America the second[42] generation of college women. If eugenics teaches us anything, it gives us the right to expect from these college-bred daughters of college-trained mothers an increased efficiency and a new type of leadership. With every decade, a higher type of American womanhood, the peers of the ablest women of history, is being developed in the land. At last we are obliged to remove all our traditional barriers and to offer them unlimited scope for their life usefulness. Every profession is now open to them, wholly on the basis of merit. Among these opportunities for the right sort of trained woman is the country pastorate. It requires possibly a rare type of womanhood, and probably a small percentage would succeed. But mere prejudice against the woman minister should not deprive the country churches of her sympathetic service if she is a woman of the right sort. Let fitness, training and worth decide, not mere traditions and prejudices. Sometimes a man and his wife, both ordained ministers, can together serve two churches acceptably and successfully. In fact, a case can be cited where in a western state the important work of church supervision is done conjointly by the state superintendent of home missions and his equally capable wife, both being trained, ordained ministers.