Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 23.djvu/231



alted piety, living in closest fellowship and communion with God. To a lukewarm professor who was excusing himself in the neglect of secret prayer, for want of a suitable place to pray while on the road, she remarked "The praying soul never lacks a closet."

It will be readily perceived that our hopes of success during the past year have not been fully met. The exciting "Haste to be rich" has come like the wintry frost over the tender plants of piety and many of them withered and died. Many of our members went to the mines and have returned, some not seriously injured, and others shorn of their strength. It long remained a doubt if we ought not to have sent one or two of our ministers with them to the mines, to watch over them and to preach to the hundreds there, the words of life but with more work at home than we could attend to the moment never came when we judged it prudent to detail men for this hazardous business and subsequent events seem to justify our course.

It seems very likely that the treasures of gold along the Pacific Coast will produce a WORLD WIDE EXCITEMENT which will people the valleys and Sierra's of California and Oregon with an immense population in a short space of time. The adventurers of the world will be here. And it is to be feared there will be many a wreck of religion and morality. To meet this concern of people, to save these souls there needs an active, capable, almost omnipresent ministry. With all the institutions of the church and all the instrumentalities and appliances of the Gospel of Christ, shall the Methodist Episcopal church do her part? Shall her watchman welcome every emigrant and standing on every hill top and in every valley sound the trumpet and warn the traveller of his danger, and guide his feet into the ways of peace? What is done, must be done quickly. Those of us who are on the ground by Divine aid are doing what we can. Elsewhere I have plead in behalf of the Oregon Institute, and of California one of two things is obvious these pleadings are very defective or the action of the Church is very slow, but ere long her giant energies will be aroused, we hope to accomplish something in these ends of the earth.

I am Dear Bro

Yours in Christ