Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 17.djvu/65

Rh ing point, I think you and the Board would approve of my course, were you in Oregon to see and judge for me. I am building a temporary log cabin this summer, which, together with raising my provisions, confines me at home. Yet I intend by the help of God to spend four or five weeks in the Willamette Valley the coming fall. When once we get into our house, I could probably support my family with two hundred dollars a year, with the industry of the family and what I should receive from the people, and be able to devote myself entirely to the ministry of the Word, should there be any way opened whereby you can with certainty make remittances, principally in articles of clothing and furniture such as will be indispensable to our comfort. We trust the time is near when the present difficulties under which we labor will be obviated by the establishing of a regular mail route across the mountains and by a frequent communication by shipping from this place to New York and other Atlantic ports. I trust before this the terms of a permanent peace are negotiated between our nation and Mexico. O when will the adorable Prince of Peace forever terminate the horrors of war! I trust that tolerance to the gospel will be gained to all the country which our nation may acquire, but there is efficacy in our gospel to gain this victory at incomparably less expense, both of money and sufferings.

It is greatly to be regretted that we are situated so far from your relief that we are obliged to leave our appropriate calling to procure our daily bread, and I have often asked the question why our hands must be bound, when there is so much to do for the cause of our Redeemer in Oregon. It is not because the people refuse to hear the gospel from our lips; and God is my witness that it is not because I delight in secular pursuits, at least while on every hand we see so much need of the undivided, unremitted labors of a devoted gospel ministry. But while we lie in this situation, other denominations of Christians are beginning to lay a foundation for future influence, and among them the Roman Catholics are the most numerous and the best sustained by far.