I had been exploring nearly every part of the Upper Peninsula where there was any chance of an opening for Christian work; had visited thirteen churches, and held meetings with most of them; had a few conversions and two baptisms. I found the villages and towns on the Chicago and North-Western Railway nearly all supplied. There was one place with 1,500 people, and another with 2,000. The former had a Baptist church with about twenty members, and a Methodist Episcopal with about fifteen. The Baptists were building. The rest were more or less Lutheran, Catholic, and Nothingarian.

Surely there is need of mission work here, but—There are large new-fashioned mills here, with forty years\' cutting ahead of them at the rate of fifty million[152] feet of lumber per year. I had excellent audiences here and at Thompson, six miles away, where there was no church. Between these two places is Perryville, with 200 people and no church. Both are lumbering-towns.

Another town of importance is Iron Mountain, which then had 2,000 people; two Methodist churches, one Swedish, the other English-speaking. The place was alive with men and full of sin. Where are the right men to send to such places? If one sits in his study and consults statistics, they are plenty; but when you come down to actual facts, they are not to be found. "The Christian League of Connecticut" has much truth in it, but not all the truth. Without doubt their unwise distribution has much to do with "the lack of ministers;" but it is still a lamentable fact that the laborers are few. Not with us alone. The oft-repeated saying that "the Methodist church has a place for every man, and a man for every church," is to be taken with a grain of salt. I meet men every[153] week who tell me they have five, seven, nine, and even eleven charges. We have a thousand just such places.

Now, if churches will put up with the fifth, seventh, ninth, or eleventh part of a man, they can have "a church for every minister, and a minister for every church." This unchristian way of pushing and scrambling in our little villages goes a long way to explain the dearth of men on the frontier; and the seizing on "strategic points" in a new country often presents a sad spectacle.

I was much perplexed about one place. Our minister was the first on the ground; the people voted for a union church and for him; yet two other churches organized. When I visited the place I found our brother with a parsonage half built. There was nothing but the bare studding inside—no plaster, winter coming on, and his little ones coughing with colds caught by the exposure. Then, to crown all, the house was found to be on the wrong lot, which brought[154] the building to a stand-still; after that two other denominations rushed up a building—one only a shell, but dedicated. There was only a handful of hearers, and our minister preached more than two-thirds of the sermons there. We had the best people with us; and yet it was plain to me there was one church more than there ought to be. Had we not been first there, and things as they were, I should say, "Arise, let us go hence!"

I am constantly asked, "When are you going to send us a man?" and we have places where there is only one minister for two villages. Ah, if the pastors hanging around our city centres only knew how the people flock to hear the Word in these new places, surely they would say, "Here am I, Lord; send me."

In one place I went to, there were two women who walked eight miles to hear the sermon. One of them was the only praying person for miles around, and for some years back the only one to conduct a funeral service, to pray, or to preach. At[155] this place there was an old lady who came nine miles every Sunday on foot, and sometimes carried her grandchild. Think of that, you city girls in French-heeled boots! In another place of two hundred people, where there was no church, a little babe died. The mother was a Swede, only a little while out. Would you believe it, there was not a man at the funeral! Women nailed the little coffin-lid down, and women prayed, read the Scriptures, and lowered the little babe into a grave half filled with water.

In another new settlement I visited, they were so far from railway or stage that they buried a man in a coffin made of two flour-barrels, and performed the funeral rites as best they could. But these people have great hearts—bigger than their houses. When a brother minister was trying to find a place for me to stay, a man said, "Let him come with me."—"Have you room?"—"Lots of it." So I went. In a little clearing I found the most primitive log house I ever saw;[156] but the "lots of room"—that was out-of-doors. The man and his wife told me that when they came there it was raining; so they stripped some bark from a tree, and, leaning it against a fallen log, they crept underneath; and for three days it rained. The fourth being Sunday and a fine day, the settlers mocked them for not building. On Monday and Tuesday it rained again; "but we were real comfortable; weren\'t we, Mary?" said the man.

Then he and Mary built the house together. There was only one room and one bed; but they took off the top of the bedding, and put one tick on the floor. "That\'s for me," I thought. Not a bit of it. I was to have the place of honor. So, hanging some sheets on strings stretched across the room, they soon partitioned off the bed for me. Then, after reading and prayers, the man said, "Now, any time you are ready for bed, Elder, you can take that bed." But how to get there? First I went out and gave them a chance; but they did not[1............