# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1857_S362
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— 362 —

Mission to the Heathen [Heidenmiſſion].

Report of the Mission Commission of the Evangelical Lutheran Synod
of Missouri, Ohio, and Other States, for the Period from July 1854 to
October 1857.

Since the last general synodical convention, held at St. Louis in
1854, we have more than three years of our work among the heathen to
look back on. In this review, we have first great cause to thank the
Lord that he still keeps and acknowledges us, again and again, as his
instruments for service among the heathen, and that he has also given
us strength to preach the Gospel to the heathen through our missions
and to offer them salvation in Christ. Second, it behooves us to
examine ourselves as to whether we have done our part, according to
God's will, to carry out our office among the heathen. Here we can do
nothing but lament to the Lord that a true missionary zeal — to
testify of Christ among the heathen, to pray for them, and to give for
them — is still rare and scant, and that rather the weakness, indeed
the lack, of faith in this present time is reflected also in our work
among the heathen. As for the success our efforts have had so far,
this too corresponds to the degree of faith with which we have carried
on the work up to now. The venerable Synod still remembers with
sorrow how, in the spring of 1854, Satan succeeded in utterly laying
waste an entire flourishing mission field which we had at Shebahyonk.
The Christians there, who had earlier seemed so full of promise,
suddenly and entirely renounced Christ and his Word, and the
congregation there was dissolved; to this day not one of these
willful sinners has turned back. God's judgment, his heavy hand, lies
upon them, and their hearts remain hardened still.

Humanly speaking, we were also anxious for Bethany [Bethanien]; yet
the Lord has so far graciously averted a total falling away from
God's Word there; still, we have experienced more sorrow than joy in
Bethany as well. Our missionary Mießler has, as the venerable brethren
know, from time to time set down in "Der Lutheraner" his great grief
over the slight progress — indeed, often the regression — of the
Bethany Indians in the faith. It is not only the ceaseless and most
subtly devised seductions, whisperings, and slanders of the
Methodists; not only the lax principles of the American farmers and
traders settled around Bethany, by whom our Indians are constantly
pestered; but we must, sadly, confess that it is chiefly the Indians'
own thoughtlessness and the lukewarmness of disposition that has, by
far for the greater part, taken hold of them, so that one can only
with difficulty hold out hope that, apart from the newly baptized
little children, there are some souls among them who have come to a
thorough knowledge of Christ, and accordingly to a sincere faith in
him and to a heartfelt love of God. Not only in retaining the Word of
God, but also in any desire to hear it, things have, sadly, stood very
sorrowfully of late, especially among the men and heads of families.
Exhortations to repent and turn to Christ were indeed received, but
not taken to heart, and, as soon as heard, forgotten again. In the
1854 mission report we were able to boast that a beginning had been
made toward the celebration of Holy Communion;