“And how d’ye like that, Mister Woods?” the preacher shouted, turning on the man, and shaking his fist in his face. “How d’ye like that? Does it do you any good?”
The logger wouldn’t tell.
“Let us pray!” said the indignant preacher.
Next morning the Pilot was summoned to the office. “You think it was rough on you, do you, Mr. Woods?” said he. “But I didn’t tell the boys a thing that they didn’t know already. And what’s more,” he continued, “I didn’t tell them a thing that your own son doesn’t know. You know just as well as I do what road he’s travelling; and you know just as well as I do what you are doing to help that boy along.”
Higgins continued to preach in those camps.
One inevitably wonders what would happen if some minister of the cities denounced from his pulpit in these frank and indignantly righteous terms the flagrant sinners and hypocrites of his congregation. What polite catastrophe would befall him?–suppose he were convinced of the wisdom and necessity of the denunciation and had no family dependent upon him. The outburst leaves Higgins established in the hearts of his hearers; and it leaves him utterly exhausted. He mingles with the boys afterward; he encourages and scolds them, he hears confession, he prays in some quiet place in the snow with those whose hearts he has touched, he confers with men who have been seeking to overcome themselves, he writes letters for the illiterate, he visits the sick, he renews old acquaintanceship, he makes new friends, he yarns of the “cut” and the “big timber” and the “homesteading” of other places, and he distributes the “readin’ matter,” consisting of old magazines and tracts which he has carried into camp.
At last he quits the bunk-house, worn out and discouraged and downcast.
“I failed to-night,” he said, once, at the superintendent’s fire. “It was awfully kind of the boys to listen to me so patiently. Did you notice how attentive they were? I tell you, the boys are good to me! Maybe I was a little rough on them to-night. But somehow all this unnecessary and terrible wickedness enrages me. And nobody else much seems to care about it. And I’m their minister. And I yearn to have the souls of these boys awakened. I’ve just got to stand up and tell them the truth about themselves and give them the same old Message that I heard when I was a boy. I don’t know, but it’s kind of queer about ministers of the gospel,” he went on. “We’ve got two Creations now, and three Genesises. But take a minister. It wouldn’t matter to me if a brother minister fell from grace. I’d pick him out of the mud and never think of it again. It wouldn’t cost me much to forgive him. I know that we’re all human and liable to sin. But when an ordained minister gets up in his pulpit and dodges his duty–when he gets up and dodges the truth–why, bah! I’ve got no time for him!”