The Making Of A Country Parish Part 1

The Making of a Country Parish.

by Harlow S.(Harlow Spencer) Mills.

FOREWORD

For many years lovers of the republic have been warning our people as to the perils of modern city life. In 1800 one person out of thirteen lived in the city; to-day nearly every other citizen lives in a large town, or a great city. The city is the home of wealth, commerce, and finance; the home of music, art, and eloquence. Once each year all the great leaders come for a stay, long or short, to the metropolis. The birds leave the desert to seek the oasis, with its palm trees and springs of water. Young men, for two generations, have been deserting the farm and the village, to make their home in the great city. Many unexpected perils have sprung up from this ma.s.sing of population. Among these dangers are the tenements, saloon, gambling houses, dens of vice, the tendency to anarchy, incident to the contrast between the palaces on the avenues and the rookeries on the Bowery. Insane people, defective children, men and women wrecked through drink and drugs, are some of the incidental results of congested populations. Innumerable addresses have been given upon the perils of the city life, and innumerable pamphlets and books have been published filled with warnings and black with alarm. The inevitable result is that the attention of the people has been focalized upon the manufacturing towns and the large cities.

Now comes the Rev. Harlow S. Mills, with his study of the rural population. With the wisdom made possible by twenty years of first-hand knowledge he sets forth the influence of the country upon the large town and city. He tells us that the country has furnished the leaders for the people. It is in the country that the boy has his opportunity of brooding and reading and reflecting, while in solitude he develops his own gift and grows great. The Church has learned to depend upon the country for its theological students, as well as for its best students of law and medicine. But of late the country church has suffered grievously through the pull of the city upon its best young men and women. The inevitable result has been that as the city church has waxed the country church has waned in wealth, numbers, and influence. Many things have occurred during the past twenty years that are calculated to stir the note of fear, lest the life and inst.i.tutions of the republic, rooted in the country, should slowly starve. One of the problems of the hour has been the rejuvenation of the country Sunday-school and the country church.

Leaders of the past generation have struggled often in vain with this problem. Twenty years ago, the Rev. Harlow S. Mills, a friend of my boyhood, took a country church in northwestern Michigan, and started in to develop the same community spirit among the people who lived in widely separated school districts that the student finds developed in the wards of a great city. The story of these twenty years is full of fascination to all lovers of their fellow men and of the Christian Church. Mr. Mills has made some important discoveries and established certain mother principles that should be of invaluable service to the one half of our people living in small towns and rural districts. I believe this author and lover of his fellows has grown the good seed that ultimately will sow the continent with bread.

NEWELL DWIGHT HILLIS.

INTRODUCTION

The rapid growth of our cities and towns during the last quarter of a century has brought us face to face with a serious problem. The religious and social conditions that have arisen give occasion for grave apprehensions, and have been subjects of careful thought. The City Problem has been widely discussed. Much thought and effort have been expended in its solution, and, while progress has been made and the outlook is hopeful, the end is not yet. Within recent years another problem has arisen which is scarcely less serious than that which the city presents, and that is the Country Problem. There are two reasons why this has not attracted special attention until quite lately. First, the city problem has been so serious and so acute that it has occupied the public mind to the exclusion of conditions in the country. And, in the second place, those conditions have increased in seriousness so rapidly in recent years and their demand for attention and careful consideration has become so insistent and imperious that it can no longer be disregarded. No thoughtful person can now blink the fact that there is a country problem, that it is equal in seriousness to the city problem, and that the two are so intimately related that neither of them can be solved by itself alone.

They stand or fall together.

I have no theory to present, nor any philosophy to exploit. I have no patent way of solving either the city or the country problem. I have only a story to tell of some things that have been done that may point the way toward a solution of the country problem. It is the simple account of an experiment in the work of religious and social welfare that promises to be successful. The parish that is spoken of may be regarded as an experiment station, and this story is only the account of the working out of certain methods. It will be enough if the story shall prove to be some small contribution to the solution of the important and difficult country problem.

One of the greatest difficulties I had in writing this story was with myself. Some of the experiences were so purely personal that I hesitated to speak of them and I shrank from the so frequent use of the personal p.r.o.nouns. In the first draft of the story I resorted to all manner of circ.u.mlocution to avoid their use, but I found it difficult to adopt any consistent form and the result was to weaken the impression. So, acting on the advice of able and judicious critics, I concluded to tell the story in the simplest and most direct way.

H. S. MILLS.

BENZONIA, MICHIGAN,

_August 15, 1914_.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MAP SHOWING THE LARGER PARISH

(WEST HALF OF BENZIE COUNTY, MICHIGAN)]

KEY TO MAP

1. Benzonia Village, Benzonia Township. Church Organization, Church Building. Morning Service every Sunday. Sunday School, Christian Endeavor Society, Woman's Missionary Society, Weekly Prayer Meeting, Ladies' Aid Society.

2. Beulah Village, Benzonia Township. Chapel. Evening Service every Sunday, Sunday School, Ladies' Aid Society.

3. Eden, Benzonia Township. Church Organization, Schoolhouse (Chapel, 1914). Evening Service every Sunday, Sunday School, Christian Endeavor Society, Weekly Prayer Meeting, Neighborhood Club, Ladies' Social Circle.

4. Champion Hill, Homestead Township. Church Organization, Chapel. Morning Service every Sunday, Christian Endeavor Society.

5. Platt Lake, Benzonia Township. Chapel. Afternoon Service on alternate Sundays. Ladies' Aid Society.

6. North Crystal, Benzonia Township. Private Home (Chapel, 1914).

Afternoon Service on alternate Sundays, Sunday School, Ladies' Aid Society.

7. Grace, Gilmore Township. Church Organization, Chapel. Morning Service every Sunday, Sunday School, Neighborhood Club, Ladies' Aid Society.

8. Demerley, Joyfield Township. Schoolhouse. Afternoon Service on alternate Sundays, Sunday School.

9. South Chapel, Benzonia Township. Chapel. Evening Service on alternate Sundays, Sunday School.

10. East Joyfield, Joyfield Township. Chapel. Evening Service on alternate Sundays, Sunday School.

11. Liberty Union, Benzonia Township. Schoolhouse. Afternoon Service on alternate Sundays, Neighborhood Club.

12. South Elberta, Gilmore Township. Schoolhouse. Sunday School.

DESCRIPTION OF THE MAP

In order that the term, "The Larger Parish," the name by which the work of this story has come to be familiarly known, may be understood, some description of its geography and topography as represented on the accompanying map, may be necessary.

The Larger Benzonia Parish is situated in Benzie County, Michigan, eight miles from Lake Michigan and at the east end of Crystal Lake, one of the most beautiful small lakes in the state. Benzonia-Beulah, the twin villages which are at the center of the Larger Parish, are on the Ann Arbor Railroad, which extends diagonally through the state from Toledo, Ohio, to Frankfort on Lake Michigan. The Larger Parish includes Benzonia Township and portions of Lake, Homestead, Joyfield, Gilmore, and Crystal Lake Townships. It divides itself into three sub-parishes: the North Parish, with two churches, Champion Hill and Eden, and two out-stations, North Crystal and Platt Lake; the South Parish, with one church, Grace, and five out-stations, South Chapel, Demerley, East Joyfield, Liberty Union, and South Elberta; while between these is the Central Parish, with Benzonia on the hilltop and Beulah in the valley, half a mile distant.

The map represents the western half of Benzie County, and the various churches, chapels, and other out-stations are designated.

I

THE HISTORICAL SETTING OF THE STORY

The story of New England with the Pilgrims left out could be neither understood nor appreciated. We must know something about those st.u.r.dy, conscientious men and women who became exiles and crossed the stormy Atlantic that they might have "freedom to worship G.o.d." We must understand something about the barren and the wintry coast that received them, something of their struggles and sufferings, their aims and aspirations, if we would know the history of that civilization that they founded, or get a true conception of the experiment in democracy that they so successfully wrought out.

The story that is about to be told had its Pilgrims. To leave them out would be to spoil the story. It cannot be understood without knowing something of their heroic spirit, their sincere devotion, and the manner in which they permanently impressed their ideas and their personality upon the community which they founded and the inst.i.tutions which they planted.

Some account of its historical setting will be necessary in order to make this story of country evangelization complete.

The half century between 1825 and 1875 witnessed the most remarkable educational movement that our country has ever seen. It was the era of college planting. During that period a line of Christian colleges was projected from New York to California, many of which have been developed and stand to-day as monuments to the zeal and foresight of that remarkable generation of nation builders. The value of their work, and its influence for good upon the people and the inst.i.tutions of the most populous, the wealthiest, and the most influential section of our country cannot be estimated.

In 1858 a company of people from northern Ohio, who had lighted their torch of religious and educational enthusiasm at the flame of Oberlin, came into the vast wilderness of northern Michigan with the purpose of planting there Christian inst.i.tutions. They were high-minded, st.u.r.dy people, with strong religious convictions. The Pilgrims did not bring to the New England coast a truer motive or a purer purpose. They were willing to put into the enterprise their lives and their fortunes. They stamped the new community that they founded with the impress of their ideals, and that stamp has persisted.

These modern Pilgrims repeated with some modification the experiences of their New England prototypes. After a long and stormy voyage on the Great Lakes they landed in the late autumn on an inhospitable coast, built them some rough shanties that their descendants would not consider worthy to shelter their cattle, and there they pa.s.sed a severe winter. They explored the northwestern Michigan woods, and finally, with a strange indifference to the importance of a railway to the development of a town, they lighted upon a level plateau on the top of a high hill, two hundred feet above the placid waters of beautiful Lake Crystal, and eight miles from Lake Michigan, and there they pitched their tents. Like Abraham, their first work after entering the Promised Land was to build an altar to Jehovah, and like him and their New England ancestors, they built it on the highest elevation that they could find. One of the first things they did was to select a site for a church and for a school, and, standing under the tall maples and beeches, with hymn and prayer, to dedicate that high hilltop to the cause of Christian education.

The church that they planted, the first in all the Grand Traverse region, celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of its organization in 1910. It has now a membership of about three hundred, and is the center of the religious and social life, not only of the immediate community but also of the territory known as "The Larger Parish," twelve miles long and ten miles wide. It has been the mother of churches, and now stands encircled by a number of younger organizations that are growing strong and st.u.r.dy under its cherishing influence.