Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 17.djvu/82



74 REVEREND EZRA FISHER

we know of no cases of conversion. We have one young mar- ried brother licensed to preach by a church in Iowa. 188 The monthly concert of prayer is observed at my house. My people have paid nothing for missions, Foreign, Home or Domestic. Nothing for the Bible cause. Publication Soc. nothing. Edu- cation Soc. nothing. For my salary fourteen dollars. Con- nected with my station are two Sunday schools, 42 scholars and ten teachers and, in one school, 100 volumes recently donated by a friend, in the other 20 volumes. I have also a Bible class with eight pupils. We have commenced building a hewed log house for a school and meeting house, 18 feet by 24, and will be able to use it as a place of worship within six or eight weeks. This may appear to your Board too trifling and unimportant to be named in a report, but, could you experi- ence all the privations of a new country as I am doing, you would look upon this effort as a valuable acquisition to our spiritual comforts and an important monument to the progress of civilization within the deafening roar of the Pacific's surf. I have regarded it an object so desirable to be accomplished that I have already devoted more than two weeks' time in labori- ous efforts through rain and shine in this work. May God be graciously pleased to make it a nursery of science, a fountain of morals, a birthplace of souls and a spiritual lighthouse to guide the pilgrims to the haven of rest. We have appointed the 13th and the 19th of the present month to meet for the con- stitution of a church in the plains and have invited our sister churches to send us their delegates to sit in council with us on the occasion. We hope a foundation is being laid here for future lasting usefulness. God only knows. Our congrega- tions have been usually good through the entire winter and Sabbath schools well attended and, although we can record no signal display of Divine grace, our apparent changes seem to indicate the Divine favor. I have seldom felt a deeper sense of the responsibility of the ministry and the importance of establishing correct moral and religious principles in a new

138 This was James Bond, who lost his life by an accident in 1849. He had come to Oregon in 1847. Mattoon, Bap. An. of Ore. I: 8.