The Minute Man on the Frontier

by William George Puddefoot

One man is found on our grand round, living with a wife and a large family in a church. The church building had been too cold to worship in, and so they gave it to him for a parsonage. The man had his study in the belfry, and had to tack a carpet up to keep his papers from blowing into the lake. This man's life was in constant jeopardy, and he always carried two large revolvers. He had been the cause of breaking up the stockade dens of the town, and ruffians were hired to kill him. He seemed to wear a charmed life—but then, he was over six feet high, and weighed more than two hundred pounds. Some of the facts that this man could narrate are unreportable.

The lives lost on our frontiers to-day through sin in all its forms are legion, and no man realizes as well as the home missionary what it costs to build a new country; on the other hand, no man has such an opportunity to see the growth of the kingdom.

There died in Beloit, recently, the Rev. Jeremiah Porter, a man who had been a home missionary. His field was at Fort Brady before Chicago had its name. His church was largely composed of soldiers; and when the men were ordered to Fort Dearborn, he went with them, and organized what is now known as the First Presbyterian Church of Chicago. This minute-man lived to see Chicago one million two hundred thousand strong.

We should have lost the whole Pacific slope but for our minute-man, the glorious and heroic Whitman, who not only carried his wagon over the Rockies, but came back through stern winter and past hostile savages, and by hard reasoning with Webster and others secured that vast possession for us. As a nation we owe a debt we can never repay to the soldiers of the cross at the front, who have endured (and endure to-day) hardships of every kind. They are cut off from the society which they love; often they live in dugouts, sometimes in rooms over a saloon; going weeks without fresh meat, sometimes suffering from hunger, and for a long time without a cent in the house. Yet who ever heard them complain? Their great grief is that fields lie near to them white for the harvest, while, with hands already full, they can only pray the Lord of the harvest to send forth more laborers.

Often there is but one man preaching in a county which is larger than Massachusetts. He is cut off from libraries, ministers' meetings, and to a large extent from the sympathies of more fortunate brethren, and is often unable to send his children to college. These men still stand their ground until they die, ofttimes unknown, but leaving foundations for others to build on.

One place visited by a general missionary was so full of reckless men that the station-agent always carried a revolver from his house to the railway station. A vile variety show, carried on by abandoned women, was kept open day and night. Sunday was the noisiest day of all. Yet in this place a church was formed; and many men and women, having found a leader, were ready to take a stand for the right.

I am not writing of the past; for all the conditions that I have spoken of exist in hundreds, yes, thousands, of places all over the land. One need not go to the far West to find them; they exist in every State of the Union, only varying in their types of sin.

Visiting a home missionary in a mining region within two hours' ride of the capital, in a State not four hundred miles from the Atlantic, I found the man in one of the most desolate towns I ever saw. The most prosperous families were earning on an average five dollars a week, store pay. All were in debt. When the missionary announced his intention of going there, he was warned that it was not safe; but that did not alter his plans.

The first service was held in a schoolhouse, the door panels of which were out and not a pane of glass unbroken. A roaring torrent had to be passed on an unsteady plank bridge, over which the women and children crawled on hands and knees. It was dark when they came. The preacher could see the gleam of the men's eyes from their grimy faces as the lanterns flickered in the draughts. He began to preach. Soon white streaks were on the men's cheeks, as tears from eyes unused to weeping rolled down those black faces. At the close a church was organized, a reading-room was added, and many a boy was saved from the saloon by it. Yet, strange to say, although the owners (church members too) had cleared a million out of those mines, the money to build the needed church and parsonage had to be sent from the extreme East.

Hundreds of miles eastward I have found men living, sixty and seventy in number, in a long hut, their food cooked in a great pot, out of which they dipped their meals with a tin dipper. No less than seventy-five thousand Slovaks live in this one State, and their only spiritual counsel comes from a few Bible-readers. Ought we not then, as Christians, to help those already there, and give of our plenty to send the men needed to carry the light to thousands of places that as yet sit in the darkness and the shadow?