The Minute Man of the Frontier Part 11

The free and easy style of a frontiersman is refreshing. You never hear the question as to whether the other half of your seat is engaged; although, if you are a minister in regulation dress, you will often have the seat to yourself. I remember once, when travelling in a part of the country where both lumbermen and miners abounded, a big man sat down by my side. He dropped into the seat like a bag of potatoes. After a moment's look at me, he said, "Live near here?"

"Yes, at ----."

"Umph! In business?"

"Yes; I have the biggest business in the place."

"I want to know. You ain't Wilc.o.x?"

"I know that."

"Well, don't he own that mill?"

"Yes; but I have a bigger business than any mill."

"What are you, then?"

"I am a home missionary."

The laugh the giant greeted this with stopped all the games and conversation in the car for a moment; but I was able to give him a good half-hour's talk, which ended by his saying, "Well, Elder, if I am ever near your place, I am coming to hear ye, sure."

I was often taken for a commercial traveller, and asked what house I was travelling for. I invariably said, "The oldest house in the country," and that we were doing a bigger business than ever. "What line of goods do you carry?" the man would ask, looking at my grip.

"Wine and milk, without money and without price. Can I sell you an order?"

At first the man would hardly believe I was a preacher. I remember talking for an hour on the boat with one young man, and after leaving him I began to read my Bible. He saw me reading, and said, "Oh! come off, now; that's too thin."

"What is the matter?" I said. "Do you mean that the paper is thin? It is; but there's nothing thin about the reading."

He at once whispered to the captain; and after the captain had answered him, he came over and apologized. "Why did you not tell me you were a minister?"

"I had no reason to," I said. "Did I say anything in my talk with you of an unchristian nature?"

"No; but I should never have known you were a minister by your clothes."

"No; and I don't propose that my tailor shall have the ministerial part of my makeup."

Time was when every trade was known by the clothes worn, and the minister is about the only one to keep his sign up. It is just as well on the frontier for him to be known by his life, his deeds, and his words. The young man above had been a wide reader; and for two hours that night under the veranda of our hotel I talked with him, and afterwards had some very interesting letters from him.

The town that same night was filled with wild revelry. It was on the eve of the Fourth of July, and newly sworn-in deputies swarmed; rockets and pistols were fired with fatal carelessness; and yet amidst it all we sat and talked, so intensely interested was the man in regard to his soul.

I close this chapter with a portion of Dr. McLean's sermon on the flowing well (he was the man our minute-man was talking with by telephone mentioned in the first part of this chapter) which will show how well it pays to place the gospel in our new settlement:--

"The first instance of which I myself happen to have had some personal observation, is of a well opened thirty years ago. Fifteen persons met in a little house, still standing, in what was then a community of less than fifteen hundred souls. They came to talk and counsel, for they were men and women in touch with G.o.d. They were considering the matter of a flowing well of the spiritual sort. There was the valley, opportunity; and there was the lack of sufficient religious ministration. The moral aspect of the place could not be better surmised than by the prophets word, 'Tongue faileth for thirst.'

"They consulted and prayed, and said, 'We'll do it!' They joined heart and hand, declaring, 'Cost what it may, we'll sink the well!' And they did. But ah, it was a stern task.

For many a day those fifteen and the few others who joined them ate the bread of self-denial. Delicately reared women dismissed their household help and did the work themselves.

Enterprising, ambitious men turned resolutely away from golden schemes, and made their small invested capital still smaller. A few days later on (it will be thirty years the ninth of next December) eight men and seven women, standing up together in a little borrowed room, solemnly plighted their faith, and joyfully covenanted to established a church of Christ of the Pilgrim order.

"What has been the outcome of that faith and self-denial? It has borne true Abrahamic fruit. There stands to-day, on that foundation, a church of more than eleven hundred members. It has multiplied its original seventeen by more than the hundred fold, having received to its membership one thousand nine hundred and fifty-six souls, of whom one-half have come upon confession. It is a church which is teaching to-day seventeen hundred in its Sunday-schools; possesses an enrolled battalion of two hundred valiant soldiers of Christian Endeavor, which maintains kindergartens and all manner of mission-industrial work; and held the pledge, at a recent census, of thirteen hundred and twenty-two persons to total abstinence. It has a const.i.tuency of one thousand families. It reaches each week, with some form of religious ministration, two thousand five hundred persons, and has five thousand regularly looking to it for their spiritual supplies. To as many more, doubtless, does it annually furnish, in some incidental way, at least a cup of cold water in the Master's name. It is a church which has been privileged of G.o.d in its thirty years to bring forth nine more churches within the field itself originally occupied, and to lend a hand frequently with members, habitually with money in it, to four times nine new churches in fields outside its own. It is a church also, which, with no credit to itself,--for, brethren, only sink the well, pipe it, keep an open flow, and it is G.o.d who, from his bare heights and the rivers opened on them, will supply the water,--it is a church which has enjoyed the great blessedness of contributing its part to every good thing in a growing city which has grown in the thirty years from fifteen hundred to sixty thousand souls. This church, having been enabled to help on almost every good thing in its State, is recognized to-day throughout a widely extended territory as an adjunct and auxiliary of all good things in morals, politics, in charity, and the general humanities,--a power for G.o.d and good in a population which, already dense, is fast becoming one of the ganglion centres of American civilization. It is also laying its serviceable touch upon trans-oceanic continents and intervening islands of the sea. It has furnished ministers for the pulpit, and sent Sunday-school superintendents and Christian workers out over a wide area; it has consecrated already six missionaries to foreign service, and has two others under appointment by the board; and as for wives to missionaries and ministers, brethren, you should just see those predatory tribes swoop down upon its girls!

"It is a true flowing well in the midst of a valley. Ah!

those fifteen who met thirty years ago next October made no mistake. They were within G.o.d's artesian belt. Their divining-rod was not misleading. Their call was genuine; their aim unerring. They struck the vein. The flow of the rivers breaking out from bare heights did not disappoint them. And now behold this wide expanse of spiritual fertility! This church was not, in form, a daughter of the American Home Missionary Society. Its name does not appear upon your family record, and yet, in the true sense, it is your daughter. In its infant days it sucked the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of churches which had sucked yours. Its swaddling bands you made. It was glad to get them even at second hand. The other instance I have to quote is of but recent standing,--of not thirty years, but only three.

"On the 26th of May, three years ago, a pastor in Central California was called five hundred miles into the southern part of the State to a.s.sist in organizing a Pilgrim church.

A good part of the proposing members being from his own flock, their appeal was urgent, and was acceded to. An infant organization of a few persons was brought together, and christened the Pilgrim Church of Pomona. The organization was effected in a public hall, loaned for the occasion; the church's stipulated tenure of the premises expiring at precisely 3 P.M., in order that the room might be put in order for theatrical occupancy at night. The accouchment was therefore naturally a hurried one. The const.i.tuting services had to be abbreviated. Among the things cast out was the sermon, which the visiting pastor from the north had come five hundred miles to preach. Well, sweet are the uses of adversity! Never, apparently, did loss so small gain work so great. On the lack of that initiatory sermon the Pilgrim Church of Pomona has most wonderfully thriven. The church was poor at the outset. It possessed no foot of ground, no house; only a Bible, a dozen hymn-books, and as many zealous members. Over this featherless chick was spread the brooding wing of the American Home Missionary Society. 'It was a plucky bird,' said the wise-hearted pastor, already on the ground. 'Here's a case where the questionable old saw, "Half a loaf better than no bread,"

won't work at all. If this new well is to be driven, it must be driven to the vein. If there is to be but surface digging, let there be none. If the American Home Missionary society will supply us with six hundred dollars for the first six months, we'll make no promises, but we'll do the best we can.' Well, the G. O. S.--Grand Old Society--responded, and gave the six hundred for the desired six months. At the expiration of that period the Pilgrim Church of Pomona, located upon land and in a house of its own, bade its temporary foster-mother a grateful good-by; and, as it did so, put back into her hand two hundred of the six hundred dollars which had been given. What has been the outcome? That n.o.ble church, headed by a n.o.ble Ma.s.sachusetts pastor, has become in the matter of home missions at least--but not in home missions only--the leading church of Southern California. It has to-day an enrolment of two hundred and twenty; has contributed this year three hundred and fifty dollars to your society. Alert in all activities of its own, it is a stimulus to all those of its neighbors.

It had not yet got formally organized--the audacious little strutling!--before it had made a cool proposition to the handful of Pilgrim churches then existing in Southern California for the creation of a college; secured the location in its own town; itself appointed the first board of trust; and named it Pomona College. It never waited to be hatched before it began to crow; and to such purpose that it crowed up a college, which now owns two hundred acres of choice land, has a subscription-list of twenty-five thousand dollars for buildings, besides a present building costing two hundred and five thousand dollars. It has in its senior cla.s.s eleven students, in its preparatory department seventy-one; and in a recent revival interest numbers a goodly group of converts; and, finally, the general a.s.sociation of Southern California, at its meeting within a month, committed its fifty churches fully to the subject of Christian education, to the annual presentation of the advantages and claims of Pomona College, and to an annual collection for its funds. All this, brethren, out of one of your flowing wells in three years."

XXI.

THE SABBATH ON THE FRONTIER.

We hear a good deal of talk about the American Sabbath, so that one would think it was first introduced here; and, indeed, the American Sabbath is our own patent. Not but what Scotland and rural England had one somewhat like it; but the American Sabbath _par excellence_ is not the Jewish Sabbath, or the European Sabbath, but the Sunday of Puritan New England, which is generally meant when we hear of the American Sabbath. But the American Sabbath of the frontier can never become the European Sabbath without getting nearer to the New England type; for in Europe people do go to church in the morning, if they attend the beer-gardens in the afternoon. The Sabbath of the frontier has no church, and the beer-garden is open all day.

Some reader will wonder what kind of a deacon a man would make who worked on Sunday. Well, he might be better; but, remember, that for one deacon who breaks the Sabbath, there are ten thousand who break the tenth commandment, which is just as important. The fact is, you must do the best you can under the circ.u.mstances, and wait for the next generation to go up higher. It is no use finding fault with candles for the poor light and the smell of the tallow. There is only one way: you must light the gas; and it, too, must go when electricity comes. You might as well expect concrete roads, Beethoven's Symphonies, and the Paris opera, as to have all the conditions of New England life to start with under such environments. Man has greater power to accommodate himself to new conditions than the beasts that perish; nevertheless, he is subject to them, at least for a time.

I know some will be thinking of the Pilgrim Fathers, staying in the little Mayflower rather than break the Sabbath; but we must not forget, that, as a rule, the frontiers are not peopled with Pilgrim Fathers. It is true, the wildest settlers are not altogether bad; for you could have seen on their prairie schooners within the last year these words, "In G.o.d we trusted, in Kansas we busted;" which is much more reverent than "Pike's Peak or bust," if not quite so terse.

This is not meant for sarcasm. These words were written in a county that has been settled over two hundred and fifty years, and has not had a murderer in its jail yet, where the people talk as if they were but lately from Cornwall, where the descendants of Mayhew still live,--Mayhew, who was preaching to the Indians before the saintly Eliot.

We must remember, too, that the good men who first settled at Plymouth could do things conscientiously that your frontiersman would be shocked at. Think, too, of good John Hawkins sailing about in the ship Jesus with her hold full of negroes, and pious New Englanders selling slaves in Deerfield less than a hundred and ten years ago; of the whipping-post and the persecuting of witches; and that these good men, who would not break the Sabbath, often in their religious zeal broke human hearts. No living man respects them more than I do. You cannot sing Mrs. Hemans's words,

"The breaking waves dashed high,"

without the tears coming to these eyes; and one sight of Burial Hill buries all hard thoughts I might have about their stern rule. They were fitted for the times they lived in, and we must see to it that we do our part in our time.

In my first field I well remember being startled at a tiny girl singing out, "h.e.l.lo, Elder!" and on looking up there was a batch of youngsters from the Sunday-school playing croquet on Sunday afternoon.

"h.e.l.lo!" said I; and I smiled and walked on. Wicked, was it not? I ought to have lectured them? Oh, yes! and lost them. Were they playing a year after? Not one of them. And, better still, the parents, who were non-churchgoers, had joined the church.

The saloons and stores were open, and doing a big business, the first year; but both saloons and stores were closed, side-doors too, after that. Some of the saloon-keepers' boys, who played base-ball on Sunday, were in the Sunday-school and members of a temperance society.

These saloon-keepers, and men who were not church-members, paid dollar for dollar with the Christians who sent missionary money to support the little church; and not only that, but paid into the benevolences of the church from five to twenty-five dollars. There is no possible way so good of getting men to be better as to get them to help in a good cause. I know men who would not take money that came from the saloon; but I did. I remembered the words, "The silver and the gold are mine," and Paul's saying, "Ask no question for conscience' sake."

We might as well blame the Creator for growing the barley because of its being put to a bad use, as to blame a man for using the money because it came from a bad business. Men ought to use common sense, even in religious things.

When a man hitches up his horse on Sunday morning and drives fifty miles that day and preaches four times, we admire his zeal. There are some who will not blame him if he hires a livery rig, who would condemn him if he rode on the street-cars or railway. I well remember a good man, who was to speak in a church a few miles away, saying to me, "How shall we get there?" I said, "The street-cars go right past the door."

"Oh! I can't ride in a street-car."

"Why? Make you sick?"

It never came into my head that the man meant he could not ride on Sunday in a street-car.

"I will tell you," said he, "what we will do. I will get a livery rig."

I was much amused, and bantered him, and said,--