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Show The Religious Development of the West By REV. PETER A. SIMPKIN When the epic of the west is written its inditing will require the l'Ote of much more than the splendid material achievement that has been registered in agricultural, mining and industrial development, to say nothing of the heroic element in the cattle days of its earlier stages, for religion and the church have had, from its earliest days, ever growing share in the shaping of western life. ! The religious development is indeed quite worthy of note, as it is alike worthy the historic character of this great, free people. Romance and heroism have played in the quiet, gray garb of re- ligious movement and achievement. The romantic travels and fine achievements of the old French priests in the earlier explorations and settlements of the Mississippi valley are matched in measure by those of their Spanish colleagues in the far southwest, who pushed their way upward to San Francisco bay, leaving along El Camino Real, the fine old missions whose storied ruins hold record abiding of the religious enthusiasm and influence in-fluence of an almost forgotten yesterday. And the old New England spirit that found its quiet enthusiasm breaking into blossom in its meeting houses, has not only been characteristic char-acteristic in all the pioneering of the west, but Protestant has answered Catholic in deeds that shine like that of Whitman, whose service to the Republic has been paralleled only in the great devotions of a few and whose ride will be a wonder story of generations to be. The heart thrills one finds in reading the "Sky Pilot" of Ralph Connor's exquisitely tender but vigorous depiction have been furnished fur-nished in ten thousand centers of this vast west, as priest and parson have carried their ministry to the real need, the quick, savage elemental elemen-tal life of the frontier. At least one state, our own Utah, owes its peopling and conquest to the religious enthusiasm and dream of the scores of thousands who came to find or make their ideal in the far wilderness. As one follows the creeping tide-of life that moved from Spanish sources far to the south, or in the two great and more swiftly-moving streams that the middle-west and Europe poured across the plains and pocketed in canyon and valley, by mine and mill and ranch, till the main streams broke on the rich and beautiful slope of the continent's conti-nent's Pacific edge, a thing of note has been the unfailing expression of a religious spirit. Indeed the saving thing in this western life with its wild freedom its spirit of dice-throwing with the gods, the rich tides of material life, the sense of the illimitable and the unconquerable born of its wide spaces, great winds and sun-filled heaven in these and that characteristic minimum of the conventional, the saving thing has been a religious spirit. Granted, that it was of the west, indigenous to the atmosphere of the time, it was there. One finds in such delightful limning as Emerson Hough has given the world in his "Heart's Desire" papers, a true and valuable estimate of the religious life of that west we speak of. One sees in the canyon a little group laying some miner, hurried by the brawling of nature or man into the great quietness, to his rest at the foot of some lonely pine. Priest or minister might not be had to lend the benediction of holy church to the quiet dust or consecrating consecrat-ing prayer to his resting place, but some miner stands in his rough I M Sarments as nas Senator W. A. Clark many a time in his earlier days g of struggle, to say a broken word of affection for the sleeping pard, and a bit of prayer to the great God the miner's heart felt to be the just and tender Father. But the elemental could not survive the change of the years. The drifting life of the east brought needs peculiar to organized society. And soon no community was so rough but it felt the shame of churchlessness. The value of religion as a business asset was recognized rec-ognized long ago. The coming of the "gospel-shark" was hailed by almost every class of western life with varying degrees of interest or pleasure. ' The response to an appeal for support and establishment was general and generous. Many a humble Bethel, many a more pretentious pre-tentious edifice dedicated to a St. Mary or St. John, a St. Paul or a St. Joseph, has had its top stone brought on with shouts of rejoicing by reason of a good healthy "Kitty" in the local palaces where guests met chance on a financial footing, and coin of the realm changed ownership owner-ship in the measure that men were obsessed by the notion that they could locate familiar pictures or mayhap the final resting place of the spinning ball which lends interest to the roulette wheel. A religious fatalism held men in its bonds but, even so, it was to hold the men a wide outlook, deep feeling and intense obsession. W But as the churches followed the blazed trails and dusty roads, into the wilderness and planted the banner of the cross in settlements H I'.nd budding city, the religious visions of men were clarified and stand- H ardized, for with the atmosphere of organized life and the conventions H that arc inseparable from the modem social order, it was certain that W the old semi-paganism should die into a higher and nobler form of rc- ligious life. LM The past forty years have seen the evolution. It has been by means no less than heroic that, as valley floor and mountain, hill and stream have yielded to the westerner's forceful touch wealth so pro-fuse pro-fuse and diverse as to arrest the world's wonder, the life that seemed so unkempt and hopelessly outre from the old standpoints has been ordered into a moral strength whose beauty, vigor and virility can match that of the settled life of the far cast. The gentle women and cultured men who, coming from eastern homes into the schools and churches of the west, nestling in the valleys, planted wherever men settled, gave for a meagre pittance passionate devotion to the ideals 1 of the Kingdom of God in their best life that a great religious spirit might live here. And despite all the narrowness and, weakness, all foibles or bigotry that may have marked the worth of these ministers of all the churches whether of rigid ccclcsiasticism or of freer mold, it is not to be denied that a debt of monumental proportion is owing to them, for they have flailed or coaxed, driven or won, thundered or sung the turbulent life of the conquering host, obsessed by the ma-tcrial ma-tcrial dreams of the west, into the steady phalanxes that under a forest of banners marched to make through all .social service that better life that we believe to be of God's Kingdom of Tightness in the earth. For by all this service we have been lifted from crassncss to some measure of perfecting in moral life. The limited means by which the work has been wrought is suggested by one of ten thousand flashes of humor found in the placard hanging on the organ in an Arizona church, j "Don't shoot the organist; he's doing his best." Not by Beechcrs and Parkers, Brooks or Abbots have the mcs-Kjy. mcs-Kjy. sages been spoken, not by Eddys or McLellans have its songs or an- thems been played, but by a host of simple, consecrated, cultured men H and women, with a dream of the better life to be on the earth. H Today, from the far-eastern foothills of the Rockies to the Pacific Hi surf, from far Coeur D'Alene to the Southern Sea, the life of the great H west has been synchronized to the age revolutions of the great re- H ligious truths. And while in its religious atmosphere the smaller de- I tails of old beliefs may be ignored as in its social life the conventions H of eastern life that arc ultra-artificial are honored in the breach, it has H reached an approximation to the norm of religious life. For with all H; iis tincture of that Pantheism of the earlier days, with the beat of H red, human blood near the surface of its ethics and religion, with all Hi its peculiar and characteristic mold of thought, it is in its practical ex- H' pvession in most things the equal, in some the superior of that of the Hjf cast. Hi The ascetic note has not emerged, but time may be trusted to H, 1 ring that in the involutions of our experionce. HI There is a free, sane, religious life everywhere, and an abundant H supply of the machinery of religious work is rapidly being realized. H Singularly free from the abnormal and the faddistic is the. whole west Hi save where the broken physical life of the cast has been poured into H our sunny spaces for healing. H Those who turn to the great west to find homes may be assured H that no religious value worth possession will be left behind at the cast H whose full equivalent will not be found at the west in the great re- H ligious atmosphere where charity fills the sky of 'the soul as docs the H sun light the sapphire skies of our mountain west. H H Brief Mining NoteS II That Milford may get and run its own light and power plant K 'within a short time, is not outside the probabilities, as anyone at- H tending the meeting of the board of trustees last Tuesday may have H anticipated. At this session were crystallized into preliminary action H the unanimous desire of all citizens for installation of electric lights in ml 'Milford without the giving away to outside intcrets of valuable mon- 11 opolistic franchises. This action look the form of istructions to Geo. H tB. Greenwood and A. J. Ingols to investigate the .'onding capacity of K "Milford, as well as prepare an estimate of the cost of constructing and operating an electric light system either by owning a power plant or l by buying current from the Telluride people. Beaver Press. Ml' One of the most interesting and encouraging bits of news re- lb ceived in a long time, comes from the American Flag and is to the effect that the water in the shaft at that property, of which there is seventy feet, has gone down a little over two feet since the twelve hundred level of the Ontario was reached about a week ago. In the opinion of the management the water at the Flag would not be materially ma-terially decreased until the thirteen hundred of the Ontario at least was reached, so the present indications arc all the more encouraging. Ever since the cave-in at the tunnel operations at the Flag, where the jfft lower levels were opening up in splendid shape, have been greatly handicapped, and now that the mine gives promise of draining as the water at the Ontario recedes, Manager Curtis feels better about the prospects for the future than for a long time past. The ore deposits of the mine continue to open up in good shape. Park Record. H. E. Blake, acting for a Colorado company, took a lease this week on some placer ground on Wilson Mesa belonging to Cooper Martin & Co:, John Shafer and wife, and Robertson Bros., which calls for the erection on the ground of a dry washing placer plant with a capacity of 100 cubic yards of gravel per day, by June 15th, next. The plant is to be on the ground by June 1st. The lease also calls for a testing plant with a capacity of ten cubic yards of gravel a day to be on the ground and in operation by May 15th. The company agrees to wash 18,000 yards of gravel before December 1st. The owners of the ground arc to receive a royalty of ten per cent, on all gold secured. se-cured. Grand Valley Times. |
