The country community needs a pastor. It is better for the minister who preaches to the country to live in the country. There are some parts which cannot support a pastor, but the minister to country churches should know the daily round of country life. Religion can never be embodied in a sermon; and when religion comes to be limited to a formal act it is tinged with suspicion in the eyes of most men. Sermons and funerals and weddings become to country people the windows by which religion flies out of the community. Especially among farmers, religion is a matter of every-day life. What religion the farmer has grows out of his yearly struggle with the soil and with the elements. His belief in God is a belief in Providence. His God is the creator of the sun and the seasons, the wind and the rain. The man who does not with him share these experiences cannot long interpret them for him in terms of scripture or of church. The policy of the newer territories of the church must be to translate the "Group System" into pastorates. The long range group service should be transformed into short and compact group ministry; the pastor should live in the country community and the length of his journey should never be longer than his horse can drive. A group of churches which are not more than ten miles apart constitute a country parish. Some few active ministers are able to make thirty to forty miles on horseback on a Sunday, among a scattered people. This is well, but as soon as the railroad becomes an essential factor in the monthly visit of ministers to the country, religion passes out of that community. The service of the country preacher, in other words, is essentially confined to the country community, and the bounds of the country community are determined by the length of the team haul or horseback ride to which that population is accustomed. Within these bounds religious life and expression are possible. Immersed in his own community, the life of the minister and of his family attain immediate religious value. The whole influence of the minister's home, the service of his wife to the people, which is often greater than his own, and the development of his children's life, these are all of religious use to his people. A recent speaker upon this matter said, "I doubt if even the Lord Jesus Christ could have saved this world if he had come down to it only once in two weeks on Saturday and gone back on Monday morning."