THE haze of Indian summer hangs over the prairies of Montana as they flaunt their golden flowers. There could be no more perfect days than these for a journey with Brother Van through the great state. One might almost call it his parish, so closely has he been associated with the settlement and growth of vast stretches of its territory. He shall be our guide as we visit the widely scattered villages and thriving towns, where he is eagerly welcomed by men, women, and children of all faiths and of none. There are no strangers to Great Heart of the Indians. Brother Van greets every one he meets with the Indians’ guttural “Oi-Oi-Oi,” meaning “How do you do!” When we ask why he always uses the expression, he replies, “Oh, just to show that I’m a friendly Indian.”

We start our trip at Fort Benton, where, in a well kept park, stand the ruins of the old fort, a crumbling relic of days forever past. The stockade is gone and only a blockhouse remains. It is carefully guarded, for inside are precious relics of the past. Let us stand on the very spot where Brother Van celebrated his first Fourth of July in Montana by eating a dinner of jerked buffalo meat. Our eyes sweep the horizon and we try to imagine the scenes of former days when over those flashing waters of the Missouri came bull-boats or birch canoes, bringing precious furs to the Northwest Fur Company’s post.

In the town itself we pass the site of the old mud saloon where, on that far-away Sunday, the tenderfoot missionary preached to a curious throng. What of the church life of to-day? We spend a Sabbath in the historic town and go to the old mother church. It is a small building, simple in style, but we enter it in a spirit of reverence. Repairs are in progress; with his own hands the minister, a college and seminary graduate, has painted the woodwork and papered the walls. He has been aided in the evenings by the earnest men of his congregation.

The days of the Northwest Fur Company seem very remote when the new generation, with a small group from the older one, kneel to receive Holy Communion. The life of the trapper and trader, starved and godless, seems a haunting and an impossible dream. Yet the pastor has his problems. His church must be enlarged and modernized to meet the social demands of the little city. He must find means for providing recreation and wholesome entertainment in connection with the church, so that the people of the community may not have to depend for their amusement on the cheap “movie” theater with its sensuous appeals. He must travel far out on the wide prairie to care for the ranchers who are setting up homes in these lands that under new methods of cultivation are proving to be far more fruitful than it was once considered possible for them to be.

The scout-missionary is still keen about first churches, and we accompany him on a visit to a little town near Fort Benton. We go to the schoolhouse. We are early; so we will play janitor. The bell is to be rung. The songbooks are to be distributed. Brother Van does not preach this time, but his influence is felt all through the service. He stands in the closing moments and urges upon the people a new loyalty to Jesus Christ and a new loyalty to the church as the center of their common life. All who will so pledge are asked to come and take him by the hand, and every man, woman, and child in the little group comes forward. Among them are three soldiers, guards in the uncertain days of war of the big bridge which swings over the Teton River at the outskirts of the town.

One of Brother Van’s churches is in process of building in this town. You may smile at its dimensions. It has one main room and a basement which is to be cut up into smaller social rooms.

“Well, Brother Van, when is it to be finished?” he is asked.

“Don’t know, Sister!”

“Why not finish it right away?”

“I’d love to, but not one cent of debt is to be placed on this or on any other church Ihave anything to do with.”

“But, can these few people build this church?”

“They can and will, with the help of the Board of Home Missions.”

“Ah, if people only knew the need of home missions, we would not have to see these churches which we try to put in the new centers struggle and languish as they do,” he adds.

“Why try to have a church so soon, then?”

“Ah, Sister, that is the point. We must claim these new towns for our Christ. The devil has his agents at work in the saloon and dance halls. Why should we give up to him?”

In that distant time when Brother Van made his first visit to the Indian agency, he traveled in an army post wagon. As we seek the Blackfeet Indians, we travel with him on a railroad train. His vivid stories of the towns through which we pass make us realize how much the frontier owes to missionary influence. Brother Van gets off at every station to look around.

“See that church house,” he exclaims proudly, for he always calls it that. “Isn’t it beautiful?”

It is small and in need of paint. Compared, however, to the saloon building in which he had probably held the first service, it is beautiful.

“Browning! Browning!” calls the conductor. Nothing here but a small station.

“This way, Brother Van,” calls a voice from the starlit darkness, and soon we are on our way to the Indian reservation and the parsonage home of Rev.A.W. Hammer, the cowboy preacher. Acheerful welcome awaits us in the little prairie home. Here in the shadow of the snow-clad mountains is symbolized the Montana dreamed about by the boy from Gettysburg. Ahome has been established. Atrained preacher ministers to the Indians.

On the following morning we find spread out before us a scene of rich beauty as we look across the fields from which the grain has been harvested. All the members of the household gather in front of the cottage where there stands a straight mountain pine, carefully trimmed and braced. From a home-made cabinet the oldest daughter has taken a carefully folded bundle, and now at her bidding it is fastened to the ropes swaying from the pine tree. Asteady pull brings Old Glory up to catch the breeze while the shining mountains seem to smile approval. The son places his hat over his heart, while Brother Van, his head bared, his face transfigured, sings, “Osay can you see by the dawn’s early light” and girlish voices catch up the refrain. No flag raising in the presence of statesmen and of armies could be more impressive. Here one sees the loyal soul of the west laid bare. This is the America that the forces of the Christian church, the Christian home, and the Christian school are building on the vast plains and through the mountain valleys of the younger states.

The drive to the church in a lumber wagon is a novel experience, and we understand why fur overcoats are called “life preservers,” for the air gives a foretaste of the winter’s cold. The congregation of Indians, plainsmen, business men, and college graduates gathers. The Indians interest us the most. These are the adopted brothers of Great Heart. These are the people whom William Van Orsdel loved before he had seen them and whom he had left the old Gettysburg home to serve. He has seen disease, ignorance, and intemperance threatening to wipe out the race, and he has had to give a large part of his energy to teaching a better way of life to the white man who is so largely responsible for the conditions that exist; but he has persevered in finding ways to help his red brothers.

In the United States there are now three hundred and thirty-six thousand Indians; nearly one third of these are unchurched. There are many who have no opportunity to know the living God, yet they were the first Americans. Their loyalty was proved when nine thousand young braves entered the army and navy to fight for a world democracy, and one third of those entered the service through enlistment. These wards of the nation, though driven back from wide prairie to reservations, have been taught trades and agriculture. Twenty million dollars worth of Liberty Bonds were bought by Indians. The war has given the Indian an opportunity to show his fine qualities of manhood, and to demonstrate his fitness for those privileges of citizenship which have been denied him. Hereafter, too, this native American will be a citizen of the world. “They have learned to step to the drum-beat of democracy,” says Hon.Cato Sells, “and they will come out of the conflict an element of real and progressive strength in our National life.” Like many others who have fought abroad, they will ask the churches and schools to put into practise the principles that they defended “over there.”

The teachers to succeed Brother Van, Mr.Hammer, and all of that host of devoted workers who have given their whole lives for the building of a Christian civilization in the west must come from the young people of the church. Young men and young women of the new generation must have a vision clear enough to see the beckoning hands that point the way to great unfinished tasks. The high purpose of the boy from Gettysburg must fill other lives that will take up the new tasks, as hard as the old, perhaps harder, which the changing times have brought to Montana.

Leaving the Indians, we find ourselves on the railroad and bound for the new frontier. The monotony of the prairie is only relieved by homes and schoolhouses but these appear at intervals as we travel. Occasionally we pass small towns clustering around grain elevators, which show the new day of agriculture. We come at last to the end of our journey to the new section and from the small station we drive to a settler’s shack on a claim. Surely tales of frontier life have been exaggerated, for here are warmth, blooming plants, books, and papers. The homesteader is a retired preacher.

“We must get the surveyor while you are here, Brother Van, and mark up that lot for the church,” says our host.

“A church out on this prairie!” we exclaim.

“Yes, do you see yonder that grain elevator and a few buildings? That is a new town starting and we must have a church. Asaloon and a pool-room are there already. The storekeeper has given us a lot for the church,” he explains.

This is a wise merchant who realized that the new town would not be fit for his family unless the church was the central interest. With pick and compass we go; Brother Van steps off the distance, and the faithful pick finds the marker.

“The corner-stone will be right here,” says the master of ceremonies. The spade is stuck into the rich soil while the people cheer; but Brother Van is silent; his latest church is being started. He is anxious that the children of the new town shall have a chance of a Christian education. The government will see to the schoolhouses, but the responsibility of the churches rests on Brother Van and his aids, even on you and me.

We continue our sight-seeing tour of Montana and reach Helena at a time when the city is thronged with visitors to the Fair. Yonder is the Capitol, and in friendly nearness is a smaller building; it is Montana Wesleyan University where college is opening. Brother Van has a tumultuous greeting. The Board of Trustees has just declared for a fifty-thousand-dollar enlargement of the institution. The students and President Sweetland are riotously happy. Visitors make speeches in the chapel. One man does not need the well-chosen introductory speech from the new president. He is not allowed to finish it.

“Who’s all right?” sings out a yell-leader.

“Brother Van! Brother Van!” comes roaring back from the eager crowd.

No mention is made by the pioneer of his part in the enterprise which has made the Christian education of these eager students possible. When he finishes speaking, a demand is made: “A song! A song!” So he sings “Diamonds in the Rough” for them. Then we hasten to a meeting of the Board of Trustees, and arrive in time, for Brother Van is never late for an engagement.

“Now, let’s go to the Fair!” he says. To go to the Montana State Fair with Brother Van is to become almost as much a center of interest as the prize pumpkin or the heaviest sheaf of wheat. The hold the man has on the people of the state begins to dawn on you.

“Hello, Van, old scout.”

“Why, Brother Van, how is the church at ——?”

“Isn’t this Brother Van?” ask children, shyly, as we pass.

Out in the enclosure a flag is to be raised. They send a messenger to Brother Van to say that he is wanted to offer the prayer. After the prayer, Governor Stewart is introduced, and the heart of the Eastern visitor is stirred to hear from him how great a part this new state took in the great world struggle for democracy; how great an outpouring of its wealth there was for the needs of the government and for the relief of suffering; and how large a number of the boys from these thinly peopled plains left their homes to take their places in the ranks of the armies of freedom.

It is a short drive over to the once owl-haunted, coyote-inhabited building, which for a time seemed to be Brother Van’s mistake. Children’s voices call a glad greeting, for now it is the Montana Deaconess School. Out on the campus is an old building which the boys have fitted up, and which they dignify by the name of “gym.” Class work which meets the regular school standards is done in this home, but that is only a part of its work. The development of strong, helpful Christian character is the great task to which the earnest teachers who labor here are devoting themselves.

Now we visit the Capitol, a beautiful building of which the young state is justly proud. We go directly to the Governor’s suite and find a delegation of citizens there waiting to consult him. The attendant smiles on one member of our party and then disappears. We resign ourselves for a long wait, but immediately the messenger returns. “The Governor will see you, Brother Van,” he says. We then have the privilege of listening to a conference between the pioneer missionary and modern Montana’s chief man of affairs.

It is near Helena that Last Chance Gulch is situated and the city still presents the problems of a mining center. In the old days the miners came without families. They lived the hard, rough life of the pioneers. Many were only adventurers. They gambled, and even killed for the lure of gold. Yet it was they who found and developed the mines which have furnished so large a share of Montana’s wealth—and that of the nation.

Not only gold, but silver, copper, lead, coal, and iron are found. Especially rich are the fields of copper, and since 1892, Montana has been the leading state in the production of this metal. Great smelting and refining plants costing millions of dollars have been established around which thriving cities have quickly grown. In the maze of stacks, mills, ore-dumps, tracks, and surrounding streets filled with the cottages of the laborers, the visitor who has been to the new settlements on the plains and to the reservations sees a different Montana—not that of the rancher and the Indians but that of the industrial worker.

We have an enthusiastic guide when we travel through the mining regions with Brother Van. He keeps the spirit of the pioneer. While his work has led him more among the Indians and the plainsmen, he sees the great needs that have arisen with the growth of the industrial centers. He is eager that the Christian forces of America undertake new tasks of helpfulness for the men who toil underground and in the mills, and for their families.

It is in Butte that we find the heart of the great copper region of Montana. From the hill north of the city, ore to the value of a million and a half dollars has been taken. When Brother Van made his first visit there he found but fifty residents. Not only is it now a busy city of forty thousand inhabitants, but the character of the community has entirely changed. The settlers of that period were of American birth and parentage. To-day the great majority of the miners are from distant countries. The pioneers of the days of Brother Van’s young manhood lived the hearty open life of the wind-swept plains; the newcomers from Europe must toil in the dark mine shafts or amid the dust and roar of the mills and smelters.

Coming as these workers do for the most part from southern and eastern Europe, differing greatly in customs and in language from the older population, they must be given special guidance, if they are to find the real America of their dreams. They will attain the kind of citizenship which will make them able to take a really helpful place in the life of the country only as we interpret Christian ideals for them. It was for these ideals of democratic brotherhood that the young men of America went abroad and for which thousands of them gave their lives. Is America now to show to those who have come as strangers to us, and who do such a large share of the hard work of our country, that these ideals of democratic brotherhood are being put into practise for the benefit of all?

Brother Van found a frontier region when he stepped ashore from the river boat at Fort Benton on that July morning in 1872. He threw himself into the life about him, and his years of service have brought friendship and hope and courage to lonely men and women and to aspiring young people all over a great commonwealth. Cowboy, Indian, and miner have welcomed his help, for, as they put it, he “prayed lucky.” There is need to-day—there will always be a need—for the same ministry that Brother Van has been carrying on in his founding of new churches, and in his friendly visiting in lonely homes, and in his preaching anywhere and everywhere the word of cheer and of faith that his whole life taught. And as a part of the same great task to which he has devoted all his years, Brother Van will tell you that there is need for another kind of scouting to-day in the land of the shining mountains.

This vast development of modern industry calls for new and varied kinds of service. The thrill of adventure is there, although it may be different from that which was found in the early days of the frontier, and the joy of conquest remains. The winning of a new America is yet to be achieved in many of those restless, throbbing centers of industrial life where men have not yet learned how to bring the spirit of Christ into their daily toil; where home life is narrow and harsh; where growing boys and girls are shut out from the opportunities for recreation and for training, that a preparation for healthy, capable citizenship demands.

As we leave Brother Van looking out over the wide plains of his beloved Montana and gazing at the great black masses of the mills and mines with the dismal clusters of miners’ cottages around them, we know what he is thinking about. It is of the new scouts who will come to occupy these frontiers of modern industrial and community life for the Master. And we know that only those who are worthy to be called Great Heart will be able to carry on in the new age of world democracy the tasks that have been so well begun in the old days of the opening West.