Higgins, a Man's Christian

“Not much light here,” says he, “so I won’t read to-night; but I’ll say the First Psalm. Are you all ready?”

Everybody is ready.

“All right. ‘Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly,’ boys, ‘nor standeth in the way of sinners.’”

The door opens and a man awkwardly enters.

“Got any room back there for Bill, boys?” the preacher calls.

There seems to be room.

“I want to see you after service, Bill. You’ll find a seat back there with the boys. ‘For the Lord knoweth the way of the righteous; but the way of the ungodly,’ gentlemen, ‘shall perish.’”

There is a prayer, restrained, in the way of the preacher’s church–a petition terrible with earnestness. One wonders how a feeling God could turn a deaf ear to the beseeching eloquence of it! And the boys sing–lustily, too–led by the stentorian preacher. An amazing incongruity: these seared, blasphemous barbarians bawling, What a Friend I Have in Jesus!

Enjoy it?

“Pilot,” said one of them, in open meeting, once, with no irreverence whatsoever, “that’s a damned fine toon! Why the hell don’t they have toons like that in the shows? Let’s sing her again!”

“Sure!” said the preacher, not at all shocked; “let’s sing her again!”

There is a sermon–composed on the forest roads from camp to camp: for on those long, white, cold, blustering roads Higgins either whistles his blithe way (like a boy) or fashions his preaching. It is a searching, eloquent sermon: none other so exactly suited to environment and congregation–none other so simple and appealing and comprehensible. There isn’t a word of cant in it; there isn’t a suggestion of the familiar evangelistic rant. Higgins has no time for cant (he says)–nor any faith in ranting. The sermon is all orthodox and significant and reasonable; it has tender wisdom, and it is sometimes terrible with naked truth. The phrasing? It is as homely and brutal as the language of the woods. It has no affectation of slang. The preacher’s message is addressed with wondrous cunning to men in their own tongue: wherefore it could not be repeated before a polite congregation. Were the preacher to ejaculate an oath (which he never would do)–were he to exclaim, “By God! boys, this is the only way of salvation!”–the solemnity of the occasion would not be disturbed by a single ripple.

“And what did the young man do?” he asked, concerning the Prodigal; “why, he packed his turkey and went off to blow his stake–just like you!” Afterward, when the poor Prodigal was penniless: “What about him then, boys? You know. I don’t need to tell you. You learned all about it at Deer River. It was the husks and the hogs for him–just like it is for you! It’s up the river for you–and it’s back to the woods for you–when they’ve cleaned you out at Deer River!” Once he said, in a great passion of pity: “Boys, you’re out here, floundering to your waists, picking diamonds from the snow of these forests, to glitter, not in pure places, but on the necks of the saloon-keepers’ wives in Deer River!” There is applause when the Pilot strikes home. “That’s damned true!” they shout. And there is many a tear shed (as I saw) by the young men in the shadows when, having spoken long and graciously of home, he asks: “When did you write to your mother last? You, back there–and you! Ah, boys, don’t forget her!”

There was pause while the preacher leaned earnestly over the blanketed barrel.

“Write home to-night,” he besought them. “She’s–waiting–for–that–letter!”

They listened.

XI

VTHE SHOE ON THE OTHER FOOT

The Pilot is a fearless preacher–fearless of blame and violence–and he is the most downright and pugnacious of moral critics. He speaks in mighty wrath against the sins of the camps and the evil-doers of the towns–naming the thieves and gamblers by name and violently characterizing their ways: until it seems he must in the end be done to death in revenge. “Boys,” said he, in a bunk-house denunciation, “that tin-horn gambler Jim Leach is back in Deer River from the West with a crooked game–just laying for you. I watched his game, boys, and I know what I’m talking about; and you know I know!” Proceeding: “You know that saloon-keeper Tom Jenkins? Of course you do! Well, boys, the wife of Tom Jenkins nodded toward the camps the other day, and, ‘Pshaw!’ says she; ‘what do I care about expense? My husband has a thousand men working for him in the woods!’ She meant you, boys! A thousand of you–think of it!–working for the wife of a brute like Tom Jenkins.” Again: “Boys, I’m just out from Deer River. I met ol’ Bill Morgan yesterday. ‘Hello, Bill!’ says I; ‘how's business?’ ‘Slow, Pilot,’ says he; ‘but I ain’t worryin’ none–it’ll pick up when the boys come in with their stake in the spring.’ There you have it! That’s what you’ll be up against, boys, God help you! when you go in with your stake–a gang of filthy thieves like Jim Leach and Tom Jenkins and Bill Morgan!” It takes courage to attack, in this frank way, the parasites of a lawless community, in which murder may be accomplished in secret, and perjury is as cheap as a glass of whiskey.

It takes courage, too, to denounce the influential parishioner.

“You grown-up men, here,” Higgins complained to his congregation, “ought to give the young fellows a chance to live decent lives. Shame to you that you don’t! You’ve lived in filth and blasphemy and whiskey so long that maybe you don’t know any better; but I want to tell you–every one of you–that these boys don’t want that sort of thing. They remember their mothers and their sisters, and they want what’s clean! Now, you leave ’em alone. Give ’em a show to be decent. And I’m talking to you, Scotch Andrew”–with an angry thump of the pulpit and a swift belligerent advance–“and to you, Gin Thompson, sneaking back there in your bunk!”

“Oh, hell!” said Gin Thompson.

The Pilot was instantly confronting the lazy-lying man. “Gin,” said he, “you’ll take that back!”

Gin laughed.

“Understand me?” the wrathful preacher shouted.

Gin Thompson understood. Very wisely–however unwillingly–he apologized. “That’s all right, Pilot,” said he; “you know I didn’t mean nothin’.”

“Anyhow,” the preacher muttered, returning to his pulpit and his sermon, “I’d rather preach than fight.”

Not by any means all Higgins’s sermons are of this nature; most are conventional enough, perhaps–but always vigorous and serviceable–and present the ancient Christian philosophy in an appealing and deeply reverent way. I recall, however, another downright and courageous display of dealing with the facts without gloves. It was especially fearless because the Pilot must have the permission of the proprietors before he may preach in the camps. It is related that a drunken logger–the proprietor of the camp–staggered into Higgins’s service and sat down on the barrel which served for the pulpit. The preacher was discoursing on the duties of the employed to the employer. It tickled the drunken logger.

“Hit ’em again, Pilot!” he applauded. “It’ll do ’em good.”

Higgins pointed out the wrong worked the owners by the lumber-jacks’ common custom of “jumping camp.”

“Give ’em hell!” shouted the logger. “It’ll do ’em good.”

Higgins proceeded calmly to discuss the several evils of which the lumber-jacks may be accused in relation to their employers.

“You’re all right, Pilot,” the logger agreed, clapping the preacher on the back. “Hit the – rascals again! It’ll do ’em good.”

“And now, boys,” Higgins continued, gently, “we come to the other side of the subject. You owe a lot to your employers, and I’ve told you frankly what your minister thinks about it. But what can be expected of you, anyhow? Who sets you a good example of fair dealing and decent living? Your employers? Look about you and see! What kind of an example do your employers set? Is it any wonder,” he went on, in a breathless silence, “that you go wrong? Is it any wonder that you fail to consider those who fail to consider you? Is it any wonder that you are just exactly what you are, when the men to whom you ought to be able to look for better things are themselves filthy and drunken loafers?”

The logger was thunderstruck.

“And how d’ye like that, Mister Woods?” the preacher shouted, turning on the man, and shaking his fist in his face. “How d’ye like that? Does it do you any good?”

The logger wouldn’t tell.

“Let us pray!” said the indignant preacher.

Next morning the Pilot was summoned to the office. “You think it was rough on you, do you, Mr. Woods?” said he. “But I didn’t tell the boys a thing that they didn’t know already. And what’s more,” he continued, “I didn’t tell them a thing that your own son doesn’t know. You know just as well as I do what road he’s travelling; and you know just as well as I do what you are doing to help that boy along.”

Higgins continued to preach in those camps.

One inevitably wonders what would happen if some minister of the cities denounced from his pulpit in these frank and indignantly righteous terms the flagrant sinners and hypocrites of his congregation. What polite catastrophe would befall him?–suppose he were convinced of the wisdom and necessity of the denunciation and had no family dependent upon him. The outburst leaves Higgins established in the hearts of his hearers; and it leaves him utterly exhausted. He mingles with the boys afterward; he encourages and scolds them, he hears confession, he prays in some quiet place in the snow with those whose hearts he has touched, he confers with men who have been seeking to overcome themselves, he writes letters for the illiterate, he visits the sick, he renews old acquaintanceship, he makes new friends, he yarns of the “cut” and the “big timber” and the “homesteading” of other places, and he distributes the “readin’ matter,” consisting of old magazines and tracts which he has carried into camp.

At last he quits the bunk-house, worn out and discouraged and downcast.

“I failed to-night,” he said, once, at the superintendent’s fire. “It was awfully kind of the boys to listen to me so patiently. Did you notice how attentive they were? I tell you, the boys are good to me! Maybe I was a little rough on them to-night. But somehow all this unnecessary and terrible wickedness enrages me. And nobody else much seems to care about it. And I’m their minister. And I yearn to have the souls of these boys awakened. I’ve just got to stand up and tell them the truth about themselves and give them the same old Message that I heard when I was a boy. I don’t know, but it’s kind of queer about ministers of the gospel,” he went on. “We’ve got two Creations now, and three Genesises. But take a minister. It wouldn’t matter to me if a brother minister fell from grace. I’d pick him out of the mud and never think of it again. It wouldn’t cost me much to forgive him. I know that we’re all human and liable to sin. But when an ordained minister gets up in his pulpit and dodges his duty–when he gets up and dodges the truth–why, bah! I’ve got no time for him!”

XV

CAUSE AND EFFECT

This sort of preaching–this genuine and practical ministry consistently and unremittingly carried on for love of the men, and without prospect of gain–wins respect and loyal affection. The dogged and courageous method will be sufficiently illustrated in the tale of the Big Scotchman of White Pine–to Higgins almost a forgotten incident of fourteen years’ service. The Big Scotchman was discovered drunk and shivering with apprehension–he was in the first stage of delirium tremens– in a low saloon of White Pine, some remote and God-forsaken settlement off the railroad, into which the Pilot had chanced on his rounds. The man was a homesteader, living alone in a log-cabin on his grant of land, some miles from the village.

“Well,” thought the Pilot, quite familiar with the situation, “first of all I’ve got to get him home.”

There was only one way of accomplishing this, and the Pilot employed it; he carried the Big Scotchman.

“Well,” thought the Pilot, “what next?”

The next thing was to wrestle with the Big Scotchman, upon whom the “whiskey sickness” had by that time fallen–to wrestle with him in the lonely little cabin in the woods, and to get him down, and to hold him down. There was no congregation to listen to the eloquent sermon which the Pilot was engaged in preaching; there was no choir, there was no report in the newspapers. But the sermon went on just the same. The Pilot got the Big Scotchman down, and kept him down, and at last got him into his bunk. For two days and nights he sat there ministering–hearing, all the time, the ravings of a horrible delirium. There was an interval of relief then, and during this the Pilot gathered up every shred of the Big Scotchman’s clothing and safely hid it. There was not a garment left in the cabin to cover his nakedness.