Later in the session, in his remarks before the gathering, Mr. Higgins said: "I need not tell you that the decision of this body is disappointing, for I have long desired the boon of ordination. During the last seven years I have appeared before you many times, and asked to be set aside to the ministry. I know my insufficiencies; no man can know them better. I do not blame you for with-holding "the-laying-on-of-hands," but I was ordained of God long years ago to preach the unsearchable riches of Christ, and although unsanctioned by man, I shall still preach the message with which he has provided me. I have asked ordination for the last time. I am satisfied with the call of God. It is sufficient for me. I ask no more." While he spoke, the spirit of God told of the inner life of the candidate and the brethren saw the consecrated heart.
At a special meeting held shortly afterwards, the Presbytery reconsidered its action, and Frank E. Higgins was ordained. While the Presbytery had hesitated, it has never regretted its final action. It has never ceased to rejoice in the labors of the determined, undiscouraged man who amidst manifold labors and difficulties, worked, waited and prayed seven years, like Jacob of old.
His oft-repeated prayer for ordination having been answered, he looked to the camps as the field of his future endeavor. "Lord, open the door," he had asked, and the door was opened. At the time of his ordination the Bemidji congregation was building the new church. Mr. Higgins helped in the manual labor. One day while he was shingling the tower a boy brought him a letter requesting him to come to Winona Lake, Indiana, and consult with the Evangelistic Committee relative to the conditions in the logging camps. As a result of the conference Frank Higgins was commissioned to take charge of this work in Minnesota. The appointment was made in August, 1902, and with it came the real opportunity for which he had waited since the night in the hospital. He was going "to tell the boys of Jesus Christ."
Shortly after his return to Bemidji the Rev. Frank Higgins took a strange ministerial, or rather, unministerial vacation. The woodsmen of winter are farm hands, railroad constructionists and wanderers in summer, and Mr. Higgins decided that he would acquaint himself with the summer life of the men. His visits to the camps during the past seven years had already given him a knowledge of their winter conditions. Donning the clothes of a laboring man, he mounted a freight train and started on a long western trip of quiet investigation. In western North Dakota he labored for several days as a harvest hand, meeting many of the men he had preached to in the Minnesota camps. From this place he shipped with a gang of laborers and worked as a scraperman on a new railway in Montana. Shortly afterwards he was with the pick and shovel gang at The Dalles in Oregon, only to leave and work as a deck hand on a boat going down the Columbia river. Portland, Oregon, ended his western trip.
In all parts of his hobo trip he found the winter woodsmen, some laboring, some leisurely passing the warm and sunny days in idleness. Mr. Higgins visited the larger churches wherever he stopped and as a workingman entered their doors to see the reception they would tender to a man who apparently belonged to the wanderers. The trip broadened his experience and gave an insight into the life of the nomads among whom he was shortly to take up permanent work. He saw the life as one who had lived and experienced a portion of it. He felt the pangs of hunger, encountered the slights and rejections, the hardships and lovelessness to which their lives were subjected, and out of the knowledge came a broader sympathy, a more ready ability to help.
When he returned to Bemidji the new church was ready for dedication and after a few weeks he left the pastorate to give himself wholly to the twenty thousand men of Minnesota's camps. The field was ready and he now became in reality, "The Lumberjack Sky Pilot."
FILLING THE WATER-TANK—THE STREET SPRINKLER OF THE FOREST