BY THOMAS D. WHITTLES CHICAGO THE WINONA PUBLISHING COMPANY 1908 COPYRIGHT, 1908 The Winona Publishing Company...

The intent of this little volume is not to glorify a man, but to present the parish of the pines. Imagination has little part in its pages, for the incidents are actual happenings and the descriptions are taken from life. The condition of the foresters is really the theme, although the title draws attention to the missionary. Because the Rev. Frank E. Higgins has given himself devotedly to the men of forest and river, I have chosen his experiences as hooks on which to hang the pictures of pinery

BY THE REV. JOHN E. BUSHNELL, D. D. It has long been felt by those familiar with the human side of the forest life that its call should be heard, and that the efforts of devoted hearts to minister to the peculiar needs of the men behind the axe and the saw should be made known. This volume is a timely response to that desire. Through a veritable forest of material the author safely arrives with us at the camp-fire and heart-fire of the lumberjack. Most writers must create their own heroes; ours

While I waited for a train, a woodsman entered the station. He was dressed in a rough Mackinaw jacket; coarse socks held his trousers close to his legs, and on his hands were heavy woolen mittens. Everything proclaimed him to be a man of the camps. "Hello, Jack," I said in greeting, "how were the woods this winter? Anything new in the camps?" Jack jammed the Peerless into his strong-smelling pipe, struck a match and replied: "Snowed so blank hard that half the gang jumped the job, and us fools t

The new field to which Mr. Higgins went was a lumber town. Barnum, Minnesota, had a population of less than four hundred, but the nearby lumber camps added considerably to its business interests. The Presbyterian Church at that place was weak, and when Presbytery sent the young Canadian there to advance the cause of Christ, it also took him under its care as a student for the ministry, and assigned studies suited to his special case. At Barnum, Frank Higgins first came into touch with the logger

In the spring of 1899, Frank E. Higgins began his work in Bemidji. The Home Missions Committee of Duluth Presbytery had invited him to assist the little group of Christians in the new town, where assistance was badly needed, for the place was in the heart of the logging district, and was infamous for its traffic in evil. The hosts of sin were well organized, but righteousness needed the encouragement of a strong man. The Bemidji field was first opened to Christian work by Mr. S. A. Blair, the Sa

A brief description of the camps and of the camp life will add to the interest of the reader who is unacquainted with the logging industry. When a lumber company contemplates logging in a given locality, a cruiser is sent through the forest to estimate the amount of lumber it will cut. After the report of the cruiser has been received, a crew of experienced woodsmen follows, and selects the place for the camp or camps, and lays out the logging roads. This latter is not an easy task, although to

"The woods were God's first temples." I cannot pass through the pineries, beholding the long fingers of cooling green pointing to the eternal blue, without feeling an exaltation of spirit, a desire to praise the Creator. The shrub and towering tree, the aisles of the woods and the sweet soothing comfort of the silence all conduce to prayer and adoration. No temple is more suggestive of worship than that whose dome is of sheltering leaves and whose columns are living, graceful trees. But the camp

In all parts of northern Minnesota are found the logging camps. The distances traversed by the missionaries in reaching these outposts demand determined purpose, strength of body and love for humanity. The lumberjacks that are in a camp this winter are scattered all through the north with the opening of the next logging season, for there is little to tie a man to one employer in preference to another, and those who received the services of the mission workers one year are ever ready to claim the

In the camps the missionary is largely a preacher; in the lumber towns the work he must do is cut to no design or pattern. One might call it pastoral work, and in a free use of the term it is, but I know of no pastor who is doing work of this nature unless it be the men in the city missions. It is work which consists largely of the unexpected—changing a chance circumstance into Christian activity. The villages and towns have followed the railways, bringing in the many alluring vices of civilizat

Muscular Christianity has a rather far-off sound in this matter-of-fact age where indifference is present and many a church is under the blight of apathy. But on the part of the logging camp missionary there is no apathy. His ministry is twofold: it is spiritual and muscular. Let some one who is more interested in the dead past write the story of the rough but earnest Crusaders, who fought in the name of the gentle Christ with flesh-piercing spear and blood-letting sword. That is a tale, foreign

The Evangelistic Committee of the Presbyterian Church has been active in the logging camp work since 1902, when it first sent missionaries to preach in the camps of Minnesota and Wisconsin. The first missionaries it appointed to this work were Rev. Jos. Oliver Buswell and Rev. F. E. Higgins, the former taking the work in Wisconsin and the latter in Minnesota. Both these men had been carrying on private work in the camps near their pastorates. Prior to 1907 the work was largely experimental and o