THE following story, showing a love for the Scriptures which is rare in these more favored lands, was told by one who for many years was engaged in spreading the gospel among the Indians of the Canadian Northwest.
One of our Indians, with his son, came away down from the distant hunting grounds to fish on the shores of our Great Lakes. They had splendid fishing and put up the white fish on a staging where the foxes and wolves could not reach them. One night the father said, “My son, we leave tomorrow morning early; put the ‘Book of Heaven’ in your pack; we go back 140 miles to our distant hunting ground to join the mother and the others in the wigwam home.” So the young man put his Bible in his pack, that they might take it home. Later on along came an uncle and said to the young man, “Nephew, lend me the ‘Book of Heaven,’ that I may read a little; I have loaned mine.” So the pack was opened, the Bible was taken out, and the man read for a time, and then placed the Bible back among the blankets and went out.
The next morning the father and son started very early on their homeward journey. They strapped on their snowshoes and walked 70 miles, dug a hole in the snow at night, had prayers, and lay down and slept. Next morning they pushed on and made seventy miles more and reached home. That night the father said to his son, “Give me the ‘Book of Heaven,’ that the mother and the rest may read the Word and have prayers.” As the son opened the pack, he said, “Uncle asked for the book two nights ago, and it was not put back.”
The father was disappointed, but said little. The next morning he rose early, put a few cooked rabbits in his pack, and away he started. He walked that day seventy miles, and reached the camp where he and his son had stopped two nights before. The next day he made the other seventy miles, and reached the lake, and found his Bible in his brother’s wigwam. The next morning he started again, and walking in the two days 140 miles, was back at home once more. That Indian walked on snowshoes two hundred and eighty miles through the wild forest of the Northwest to regain his copy of the Word of God.
Would we do that much to regain our Bibles? Oh, the power of the gospel! It can go down very low and reach men deeply sunken in sin, and can save them fully, and make them devout students and great lors of the blessed Book!
ML-04/08/1962