# The Lutheran Pioneer_St. Louis_1920_S86 # Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration) The Lutheran Pioneer. Aggressive missionary work is necessary if Chris- tianity is not to be driven from the field. Africa needs the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It alone can transform the African’s moral nature, set his feet upon the rock of truth, and regenerate him into a child of God. It has been computed that the population of the entire world —1,600,000,000—could live within the area of South America without being unduly crowded. It has the largest stretch of undeveloped fertile land in the world. TEducation and the truths of the Christian religion are the crying needs of the South American countries. Latin America is al- ga iy ST 1M Nia Christ or Buddha? Jt is morning in India — twenty-five hundred years ago —a bright, beautiful, Oriental morning. The shadows are slipping into the caverns of the mountains, like some dark spirit of the night, ashamed to be seen in the glorious light of the morn- ing sun. ‘The far-stretching plains are covered with flowers and dotted with cities older than history, with temples dedicated to many gods, lifting their tall spires heavenward, as though searching for some ray of light that would dispel the darkness of hea- thenism. Beautiful, beautiful India, surely the gods Village School in India. most as illiterate as India. The entire group of her twenty republics spends for education of all kinds only as much as New York City annually spends on its schools. The city of Brooklyn has as many churches as are to be found in the whole of Argen- tina — Protestant, and Roman Catholic combined. But a small portion of South America’s 85,000,000 inhabitants knows the way of salvation. BEG * * The above survey plainly shows that the Chris- tian Church has a great deal of work to do. What ig being done in missionary activity is making but small inroads into the vast kingdom of Satan. Let our earnest prayer be: “Thy kingdom come.” St. Paul’s Parish Paper, Indianapolis, Ind. have smiled upon thee, and thou hast rightly been called “The Gem of the Orient.” Now the stillness of the morning air is broken by the sound of voices. Coming around the moun- tain-side we behold a company of men clad in the bright costume of the Orient. They are walking slowly and chanting in a low, musical voice, “All praise be given unto the ‘great spirit of life,’ who has kissed India with the brightness of his presence © and sent to-us Buddha, the son of his own heart, to be our prophet and priest.” Buddha walks in their midst, slightly taller than they, dressed in a robe of spotless white, richly embroidered with gold and silver. He alone is silent. His hands are crossed over his bosom, his head bent as though in medita-