The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1883, Page 6

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6 The Lutheran Pioneer.

Know-Nothings.

What is an agnostic? A young reader of
our paper wishes an answer to this question.
Well, we lately read something about agnostics
and we will tell him what we know about them.
The word agnostic is taken from the Greek
language and means—well, what do you think
it means? It means Know-Noruinc. A man
who calls himself an agnostic wishes thereby to
profess his ignorance in religious matters. He
reads scientific books, and because science s0-
called cannot find out God, he thinks no one
can know anything about God. If you, there-
fore, ask an agnostic, Is there a God? he, with
a wise shake of his empty little head, will say,
“JT don’t know.’’ He will not say whether
there is or is not a God. He simply says, ‘‘I
don’t know.’’ And the haughty smile with
which he makes this startling announcement
shows that he is proud of being a know-nothing.
He is like the young swell who went around
always wearing his one round eye-glass, and
when asked about anything would say, ‘‘That’s

something that no fel-law can find out.’’ He is
like the beggar who goes from house to house
and takes pleasure in showing his ugly sores.
Yes, his know-nothingism is but an ugly sure,
a proof of his own depravity and of his slavery
to Satan; for ‘‘if our Gospel be hid, it is hid
to them that are lost: in whom the god of this
world hath blinded the minds of them which
believe not, lest the light of the glorious Gospel
of Christ, who is the image of God, should
shine unto them,’ (2 Cor. 4, 3. 4). In the
Bible we also find such words as these: ‘‘O
Lord,- how great are thy works! and thy
thoughts are very deep. A brutish man knoweth
‘not; neither doth a fool understand this,’ (Psalm
92,6). Again we read: ‘‘As they did not like
to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them
over to a reprobate mind,’”’ (Rom. 1, 19—28).
Ah, this old Book tells us the secret of know-
nothingism. ‘They did not like to retain God
in their knowledge.’? The thought of God
. makes them uneasy, and while afraid to deny
that there is a God, they dare not condemn
their own conduct by affirming His existence.
Poor, unhappy men, floating on the dark-sea
of time to the darker shores of eternity! They
know nothing of the happiness and bliss of the
true Christian.

The humblest believer in Jesus positively
knows that what God says is “‘the truth, the
whole truth, and nothing but the truth.’ He
is not a know-nothing. No! Upon the testi-
mony of his true and faithful God he can say
with a firm confidence, ‘‘We know that the Son.
of God is come, and hath given us an under-
standing, that we may know him that is true:

and we are in him that is true, even in his Son
Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal
life,” (1 John 5, 20); ‘‘We know that all things
_ work together for good to them that love God,
to them who are the called according to his
" purpose,” (Rom. 8, 28); ‘‘I know that my Re-
deemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the

latter day upon the earth,’’ (Job 19, 25); ‘‘We
know, that if our earthly house of this taber-
nacle were dissolved, we have a building of
God, an house not made with hands, eternal in
the heavens,’’ (2 Cor. 5, 1); ‘‘I know whom I
have believed, and am persuaded that he is
able to keep that which I have committed unto
him against that day,’’ (2 Tim. 1, 12); ‘““We
know that when he shal] appear we shall be
like him; for we shall sce him as he is,’
(1 John 3, 2). x

Oh, let us not be agnostics! Let us not be
know-nothings! But let us be knowers! And
may God fill us ‘‘ with the knowledge of his will
in all wisdom and spiritual understanding.”
(Col. 1, 9.)

- a oe ee
A Missionary Among Cannibals.

The group of islands in Polynesia called The
New Hebrides, about thirty in number, were in-
habited less than forty years ago by naked and
savage cannibals. In 1848, Rev. John Geddie,
who had been a minister in Nova Scotia, but
whose heart had long been on fire with desire
to preach the Gospel to the heathen, went to
Aneiteum, the most southerly of the islands,
to commence a mission. The life of Dr. Ged-
die, entitled, Missionary Life among the Canni-
bals, prepared by George Patterson, has just
been issued, and is full of interest.

The natives of Aneiteum in their heathen
state, as Dr. Geddie found them in 1848, were
naked, commonly painting the face either black
or red. They were selfish, treacherous, and
lying. They were great thieves, and would
teach their children to steal. They were cor-
rupt in every way. The most fearful cruelty
would cause no remark among them. Revenge
for any wrong was considered a duty. Can-
nibalism was common, and on one island it was
said there were no children because the chief
had eaten them all up. Women were slaves
and did all the hard work. Of course, there
were no homes, and children grew up without
paying any honor to parents.

When Dr. Geddie arrived at Aneiteum,
every woman on the island wore around her
neck a stout cord, by which, with a moderate
pull, she could be strangled to death; for
whenever a man died, one or more of his wives
was strangled. The notion seemed to be that
his spirit would need some company. Time
after time, in the early years of his labors, did
Dr. Geddie try to stop this horrid practice. In
some cases he succeeded, and at other times he
was obliged to stand and look on while the sons
of a man who had just breathed his Jast would
strangle their own mother. One of the stran-
gest things about this strangling was that the
wives themselves generally insisted upon being
put to death. One case is recorded, happening
after some of the people had hecome Christians,
of a woman who savagely bit 2 man who was
trying to save her from strangulation, demand-
ing that they put her to death.

It was in November, 1848, that Mr. and

Mrs. Geddie landed on Aneiteum, and the
people were not at all glad to see them. The
evil conduct of many traders who had come to
the island had led the natives to dread for-
eigners. They had yet to learn how different
was the errand on which the missionaries came.
Mr. Geddie used to say that the first person on
the island who ever asked him to conduct a
service was a little boy who one day said, as he
put his hand to his forehead, and covered his
eyes, ‘‘Come, let us do so.’’ So the lad gath-
ered other boys, and the service was held. This
boy afterwards became a teacher.

Left alone with his wife upon an island
fifteen hundred miles from the nearest mission-
ary station, Mr. Geddie’s position for two or
three years was not only a very trying one, but
full of peril. The natives often threatened to
kill him. But little by little he won their con-
fidence. The second year some of them began
to pray, and sometimes forty or fifty would be
present at the service. At the end of the
fourth year he had not only learned the Jan-
guage himself but reduced it to writing, and
hundreds of the natives had been taught to
read, and hundreds more were in school.
Nearly half the population of the island, num-
bering about four thousand souls, attended
Christian services.

The years that followed were marked by
great growth. The people ceased to fight each
other. Instead of being thieves, everything
was safe, without lock or key. Large stone
churches were built and were filled with de-
vout and happy worshippers.

‘The missionary work was carried on not alone
on Aneiteum. The other islands of the group
were visited, and within twelve years from the
time Mr. Geddie landed, twenty native teachers
had been sent from Aneiteum to Tana, Erro-
manga, Efte, and other of the New Hebrides
islands. The missionary vessel, the Dayspring,
was sent out to aid in the work in the group,
with a native crew on board. What 2 contrast
they form to the»people as they were befure the
Gospel reached them !

In the pretty church at Anelcauhat is a tablet
erected by the grateful natives to their mission-
ary, John Geddie. On the tablet it is written,
in their language, ‘‘When he landed in 1848
there were no Christians here, and when he
‘left in 1872 there were no heathen.”

When Dr. Geddie died Aneiteum was the
only Christian island in the New Hebrides
group. Now, however, one-third of the islands
have been occupied. On Aniwa the whole
population attend church and school. No svoner
does an island become Christian than it sends
out some of its people to plant stations among
the heathen. Three yeurs ago the church of
Erromanga, the island where John Williams

was murdered, had sent out-twenty-five of its _

members as Christian teachers. Sv the Gospel
wins its way. even among cannibals.
———~s + oo
Cane for what you say, or what you say will
make you care.

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