As  to  many  things  they  were.  "  Early  introduc-
tion," says  a  distinguished  writer,  "  to  active  labor
in  an  extended  field,  partaking  of  a  missionary  and
itinerant  character,  may,  amidst  much  usefulness,
spoil  a  man  for  life  in  all  that  regards  progress  of
erudition,  and  productiveness  of  the  reasoning
powers."  True,  in  the  old  and  narrow  field  there
may  be  the  more  quiet  study,  more  help  from  books
and  literary  intercourse,  more  time  to  elaborate
and  polish.  There  may  be,  moreover,  among  the
hearers  a  more  rigid  demand  for  this  sort  of  excel-
lence in  sermonizing,  creating  in  the  preacher  an


LOSS    AND    GAIN.  157

ambition  to  produce  it.  But,  possibly,  right  here
in  the  strong  point  of  many  a  preacher  is  his  very
weakness.  His  hearers  demand,  and  his  life  is
worn  out  in  supplying,  what,  while  admired,  fails
to  bless.  But  we  are  to  compare,  not  criticise.
The  Western  man,  on  the  frontier  work,  as  was
that  of  all  Iowa  once,  suffers  right  here  some  loss.
Here  are  felt  some  of  his  greatest  privations,  and
some  of  his  greatest  self-denials  are  practised.  His
trial  is  not  that  he  has  to  wear  a  seedy  coat,  as  good
perhaps  as  his  brother  Christians  about  him  wear ;
nor  that,  in  his  travels  of  a  wet  season,  he  occa-
sionally gets  "sloughed,"  or  has  to  swim  the  stream.
