Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 17.djvu/458



450 REVEREND EZRA FISHER

mill, with two run of stones, six or eight drinking shops and billiard tables, one wine and spirit manufactory, a variety of mechanic shops and from 8 to 15 merchant vessels are always seen lying at anchor in the river or at the wharves. The Meth- odists, Presbyterians and Romans have each built them neat places for public worship. 259 The Episcopalians have service two Sabbaths each month. The Methodist Church have a high school in progress and a neat edifice of wood, two stories, 60 by 40 feet. A few months ago we had ten Baptist members in this place; now we can find but six. But about half of them can be regarded as permanent. This is the place where nearly all the immigrants by water land and from which they will go to their various points of destination. You will see then the importance of early planting a church in this place.

What I have said of Portland in respect to support is true of Oregon City. Yet it will not do to abandon that post. Our school must be sustained and much of that must be done at the sacrifice of your missionaries. To human appearance the abandonment of this enterprise would be ruinous. To tax one man with the labor of the school and the care of the church and then require him to be put in competition with ministers of other denominations who are sustained in their own appropriate work seems much like double working a man and at the same time taking from him the use of his tools. In this condition a brother may greatly desire to show himself "approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth," but it is certain he cannot study much to do these things. After Brother Chandler's year closes, we shall be compelled to make some change in his labors so that he may either devote the most of his energies to the school or to the church. Br.

259 In 1852 there seems to have been only the following church buildings in Portland: Methodist, built in 1850; Catholic, 1851; Congregational, 1851. There was in addition a parish of the Episcopal Church, organized in 1851. A Presby- terian Church was not organized until 1854. The author evidently confuses the Presbyterians with the Congregitionalists. Hist, of Portland, ed. by H. W. Scott, PP- 344-356.