these problems "in the light of the spirit and teaching of Jesus."

In 1921 there was held in England the first "Universal Christian Conference of the Church of Christ on Life and Work”; a second meeting was held in Sweden in 1922; and it is proposed to have a conference in America in the near future. The purpose is "to concentrate the thought of Christendom on the mind of Christ as revealed in the Gospels toward those great social questions, industrial and international, which are so acutely urgent in every country."

An exceedingly strong report, indeed I think one of the most significant volumes of our time, was prepared by the Committee on the War and Religious Outlook and published under the title "The Church and Industrial Reconstruction." There is a thorough analysis of the problem in terms of such topics as "The Christian Ideal for Society," "Unchristian Aspects of the Present Industrial Order,” “The Christian Attitude Toward the System As a Whole," "The Christian Method of Social Betterment," "Present Practicable Steps Toward a More Christian Industrial Order," "The

Question of the Longer Future," "What Individual Christians Can Do to Christianize the Industrial Order," and "What the Church Can Do to Christianize the Industrial Order."

Perhaps no Church has taken stronger ground in this attempt to reshape American work and life on Christian principles than the Methodist Church, North. Through its Federation for Social Service, its social service bulletin, its coöperation with the Federal Council of Churches, and finally in its "address of the Board of Bishops," it has taken an advanced stand. The latter document recently issued says: "It is our solemn judgment that nothing short of the actual application of the principles of Jesus in governmental, economic, religious, educational, and racial life to-day will meet the need. The whole world stands appalled at the colossal failure of other programs. Let us now frankly and honestly practice the principles of Christ." And Bishop Francis J. McConnell added to this report these bold and pregnant words: "We are convinced that there is no healing for the world's woe unless we are willing to face concrete social faults as they are, and to approach the cure

of those faults not in a spirit of condescension but of humility and contrition for our share in them."

Perhaps it was not necessary in this instance to give so much time and space to these quotations, but I think they comprise a formidable array of cumulative evidence of a determined, organized, and sincere effort to provide a Christian program for the world. They are an attempt to meet the criticism of our present society which was voiced by a Christian preacher in the far East who has said that our failure to make society Christian is threefold, "that we have not thought out the application of our faith, and what we have seen we have not dared to follow, and what we have not dared to apply we still profess to have accepted."

So on every hand, as the present puzzling problems of to-day are under discussion, men are saying that religion is the only cure, whether it be the matter of respect for law, the proper relation between employer and employee, the care of the weaker folk in society, political reform, the breaking down of racial prejudice, the development of the international

spirit-the one adequate cure for our social ills, it is coming to be universally regarded, will be found in the motives, the spirit, the attitude, the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth.

Agriculture Omitted from the Programs

It is a curious fact, however, that in all this welter of discussion, among these many books, in the lines of these multitudes of periodical writings, in all the platform speeches, in the programs for reform, there is little or no reference to the problems of the rural people. Is it because there are no problems? Or is it because our rural civilization is more Christian than our urban civilization? Or is it taken for granted that what applies to our urban society also applies to our agricultural society? Or is it because these new prophets do not know the rural question? Surely it cannot be because of lack of rural people. One-third of the workers of the United States are farmers and one-half of our people live under essentially rural conditions. Even great industrial countries, like Germany and Belgium and England, have substantial portions of their population

living on the land. France is half rural, Italy is three-fourths rural, the Balkans are almost completely rural. When we pass to the huge populations of Russia and India and China, we find that four persons out of five live on the land and make their living directly from the land. It is safe to say that two-thirds and probably three-fourths of the world's population are engaged in agricultural or at least rural occupations, are living under non-urban conditions, and have the rural point of view. There are not less than one billion rural folk in the world.

Whatever the reasons may be, the fact that these Christian programs entirely omit the farmer is notable and serious; notable because of the significance of the farming population, serious because of the partial nature of any program that leaves them out of account. The periodicals essentially agricultural or those that are widely read by farmers do not for the most part avow a Christian point of view. Important committees or conferences on industrial relations, on international coöperation, on social reform, usually have small or no repre