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THE KING’S BUSINESS
graciously, the dear Lord used His Word to clear away all the doubts and cobwebs from heart and mind, and sent the dear fellow back with a great hunger to know more and more of the breadth and length and depth and height of that love which passeth knowledge. It did my heart good when last week he brought his dear little wife to visit us, and to receive a letter T /”ERN and Fresno counties may be said to have oil fields covering approxi mately 13S square miles. ,Beginning at Maricopa, where the most famous gushers startled thexworld a few years ago,' up to and including the great Dutch Shell Cor poration’s property, eleven miles the other side of Coalinga, there is an almost con tinual line of'oil derricks, pumping stations and boiler houses, excepting a short piece of territory between the Devil’s Den and Coalinga. On very many leases there are countless numbers of wives and children,'who devote most of their time, outside of their house hold duties, to seeking pleasure in dances, moving picture shows and the like, and as nearly every oil man has a Ford car, they flock to Taft and other points on a Satur day night to seek diversion and the things that interest the natural man. For these thousands of men, women and children there are the following spiritual agencies, and no more: A Congregational church at Maricopa, a Methodist church at Taft, a Presbyterian church at Taft, supplied by a minister who resides at Fellows and does a mission work there, a real faithful fel low. After we leave Taft ,there are no more churches until we reach *Coalinga, about 115 miles distant. To meet this appalling need, I have traveled long distances in an effort to reach some point nearly every night in the week
from him later, in which he said, among other things: “I can truthfully say that I believe your visits here have been valuable to all of the boys, and doubly so to myself. The boys’ arguments have altogether a different aspect than they used to have, and from my conversation with them I can see that they have been thinking.” Praise God from Whom all blessings flow! where the Gospel could be preached, and haye arranged a programme of trying to make the points where there are the most men, on the Lord’s Day, leaving the smaller places for the week days. During the time I have been in this work, seven Sunday Schools have been organized and twelve preaching stations opened up, and as the distance from one point to the other is perhaps 75 miles, one can get an idea of the travelling that must be done to reach the men. At Reward, twenty-four miles west of Taft, a good work has been done by an Institute boy, Albert Siegel. He left to go to San Anselmo Seminary, and every Sunday I can sparS I go over there so as to keep the work up until they get another pastor. The men on the pipe lines particularly seem glad to have -me come. They tell me how monotonous it is to have- to work twelve hours every day in the month, never able to get away and never hear a Gospel message, so that my conscience impels me to take in these stations even though there are only seven men and their wives at each station. About the most touching thing here is the vast number of persons who have either a name to live and are dead, of else have backslidden. I met four ladies at Olig, away from God. One of them cried as she spoke of the time when she was
------------O ------------ WORK IN THE OIL FIELDS By Frank J. Shelley
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