Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 20.pdf/130

 REVEREND EZRA FISHER

122

become discouraged and morals of the

efforts to cultivate the

minds and

generation should prove less successful than in older and better graduated communities. Although rising-

our school has failed of exerting that direct and salutary influence on the denomination which was anticipated, yet it has done much to elevate the views of the Baptists in Oregon and has shed its blessings, both direct and indirect, upon hundreds of our fellow citizens. I fear, however, that we shall be compelled to make another change of teachers, however much such a change is to be dreaded. Br. Post has already manifested discontent and I fear that it may before long ripen into a removal. I do not know that it is possible to find a thorough, self-sacrificing teacher who will merge all the interests of the school into the interest of the denomination

so as to worthily claim the name of a missionary school teacher. Yet that should be the case with our teachers as well as with

our home missionaries. Br. Boyakin is doing well at Portland, is popular with his I have but little doubt that the church and the world. Masonic fraternity373 sympathize with him and lend him their aid as a brother of the same order. I hope he will not overrate the privileges of that order.

He

quent and abounds

epithets.

him abundantly.

I

and

in figures

expect to

Shall be able to take up

is

energetic and elo-

May God

bless

go south in three or four weeks.

some

collections for the

Home

Mis-

sion Society. Deacon Failing has engaged to take up a collection monthly in the Portland church for the Home Mission cause.

Br.

Boyakin

will

probably report the amount

quarterly.

Yours with Christian esteem,

EZRA FISHER. Received Aug.

11.

373 The first Masonic lodge in Oregon was organized at Oregon City in 1848 under a charter granted by Missouri, Oct. 19, 1846. By 1855 and 1856 lodges had become quite numerous. George H. Himes.