Michigan State Farmers' Institutes Volume 8 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1902 Excerpt: ...their mission, which, as well defined here yesterday, is not only "to minister to industrial advance ment but to enable technical advancement to minister to the life of the people." Thus, too, the churches lose their souls in building themselves up out of the community instead of building the community up out of themselves, in seeming to save a man's soul at the expense of neglecting the man's self, and in resting content under the paradox of having a community of Christians which is not a Christian community. CHURCH IN HISTORY. When institutions thus lose or lessen their grip on themselves, it is well to follow them up stream to their fountain head and see them in the full possession of the purpose which called them into being and gave them their right to be and their room to work among men. Our New England forefathers had a community use for their churches in planting the colonies. At the center of every town they built alongside of the town hall and the school "the center church." It was intended to be, and was, the spiritual and social bond to draw and hold men to their civic centers and to send them forth thence to practise the high and holy art of living and working together. Most of their descendants not only, but many from every land who, in the brotherhood of the race, have helped build up this great international nation, followed their example and fairly took possession of this land of promise by planting the church of their fathers and clustering their farms and shops, their schools and court houses about them. The churches were thus centered while the population was homogeneous and before the industrial organization became so complex and divisive. But when machinery and the railways created the factory towns and the great cit...