The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1885, Page 3

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The Lutheran Pioneer.

Seeing I am Jesus’ lamb,

Ever glad at heart Lam

O’er my Shepherd kind and good,
Who provides me daily food,

And His lamb by name doth call,
For He knows and loves them all.

Guided by His gentle staff
Where the sunny pastures laugh,
I go in and out and feed,
Lacking nothing that I need.
When I thirst, my feet he brings
To the fresh and living springs.

Shall I not rejoice for this?

He is mine, and I am His:

And when these bright days are past,
Safely in His arms at last

He will bear me home to heaven;
Ah, what joy hath Jesus given!

——> + <a> oo

The Shepherd.

How often is our Lord Jesus set before us in
the Scriptures under the title of the shepherd!
As the good shepherd (John 10, 14.), He came
down from heaven to seek and to save that
which was lost; as the smitten shepherd (Zech.
18, 7.), He endured the wrath and bore the
judgment due to sinners; and as the great
Shepherd (Heb. 13, 20.), He is now the Risen
One watching over and caring for His flock,
leading and guiding them upon their way, and
supplying their every need out of His unsearch-
able riches. Happy, is he who, on entering the
new year, can say with a believing heart:
“The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want,”
Psalm 23. =a Stee :

———> oa o> oe -

Each Day, Its Verse.

In an old German village in the heart of
Bavaria, in a queer old house, that looked as if
it had never been built. but sprouted and grown,
and had never been pruned, one day long ago
sat by her sunny, deep window, an old lady,
who herself looked as if she had only grown,
like a prune or a fig, into something sweet and
good, and would keep forever.

She was knitting now, and had been knitting
always, and it seemed she might continue to
knit, as well, if not a little better, till the end
of time. I dare say she had covered many
miles of hands and feet in her life time, and
made them warm. How much of her had gone
into needle and yarn, who can tell?

But other things are knitting and are knitted
day by day. Heads and hearts and souls are
knitting all the time.

So as the needles flashed in the light, old
Mathilde said, ‘‘No day without its verse.”

Before her sat a young girl as fair of face as
apple-bloom; white and pink and red blended
from her cheek to brow, and yellow strands of
hair lay down to her waist. A great Bible lay
in her lap, from which she was about to read.
Now she paused and listened, and lifted her
clear, blue, untaught eyes. | —-_-:—

“They are Master Luther’s words,’’ said Ma-|
thilde, ‘‘and good words they are, my dear,
true as the sun.”

of truth, Who in troubled times brings to the
remembrance the precious words a poor old
head cannot always hold when other things
crowd in. :

“So, so, so! little by little, stitch by stitch,
day by day, and verse by verse, does every-
thing go on, and truth is the same forever, as
the trembling leaves and the bursting flowers,
and the waters, with the breeze across it.’’

The little girl turned her blue eyes out of
the little casement and wondered what good
Mathilde could mean, and wondered too, why
she liked to be beside the old lady and read
the good Book to her. And she wondered, too,
if she would know all about it from first to last.
And then she thought ‘‘May be, I shall, if I
go stitch by stitch in patience and in love.”’

—h. H.

A Strange Playmate.

Away in a pioneer home a father was start-

“Stitch by stitch, ing off on his horse one morning, when his
g ig

Minute by minute,

little girl of three pleaded to go with him for
a little ride. She had often been with him be-
fore, and the little hands were lifted up so
eagerly, he could not well refuse. So little
Lucy was lifted to the saddle before him, and
taken on a few rods from the cabin door, and
then dropped down to the ground again and
bidden to ‘‘run home to her mother.’”

The father looked back more than once, and
saw that the little one was standing still in the
road, and that finally she sat down in the sand
to play. Still thinking all was well with home
so near, he went on his way. What was his
dismay to find on his return that Lucy was not
there. The mother supposed she had ‘‘gone
with father,’’ and so worked on without anxiety.

Hope died in their hearts when they went to
the spot where she was last seen. There in the
sand were the prints of a great bear’s feet. How
could they hope ever to see their darling child
again? But they musf know her fate. So
bands of men were hastily gathered to follow
the trail, and search in every possible haunt
of bears in that region. Oh, how a mother’s
heart must have prayed for her little one, and
how long the hours seemed! Night wore away
and no tidings yet.

But in the morning two hunters who had
joined in the search heard a child’s voice in a
very dense swampy thicket. They called to
her to come to them, but she replied the bear
would not lether. Then the men crept through
the bushes, and the bear splashed in the water
and ran away. It was a great cinnamon-bear
and had not harmed her, except as thorns and
bushes had scratched her. Sometimes she said
he would set her down to rest, and then would
put his nose up to her face. She did not like
his, affection and would slap him. Then he
would hang his head and rub against her, pur-
ring like a cat. When asked if she was not
cold in the night, she said no, for the old bear
put his arms around her, and kept her warm,
but she did not like his long hair. *

There were not many happier homes in the
land that day than little Lucy’s. How won-
derfully God had changed the bear’s fierceness
into gentleness, and made use ofits natural love
for its own young, to make it loving to this
little one! We can see very well how God
took care of Lucy, but we do not know in how
many unseen dangers he protects us exery, day.

: five.

Verse by verse,
That is the way all good work comes,
No day without its verse.”

The woman paused. The young girl went
on reading the wonderful old words of inspira-
tion that have thrilled millions of hearts down
through all the centuries to this day.

She read, ‘‘Let not your heart be troubled:
ye believe in God, believe alsoin Me. Jn my.
Father's house are many mansions: if it were
not so, I would have told you. Whither I go
ye know and the way ye know.”

At every added sentence the old lady swayed
back and forth, and muttered, ‘‘Yes, yes, yes.
That is enough, my child, to-day—enough and
enough, and more than enough. To-day we
will have, ‘Let not your heart be troubled,’
and our hearts will not be troubled. They will
be quiet as the warm sunlight falling in the
window, untroubled as the birds flitting hither
and thither through the vines. We Children
of the Christ may not be afraid, or dismayed
or discouraged when He saith, ‘Let not thy
heart be troubled.’ ‘Aye, ’tis‘a precious verse,
for He stands on the other side, beyond our
seeing, and sees the things we may uot see,
and knows the things we may not know; and
so He whispers all the day, ‘Let not your heart
be troubled,’ for He knows the worst that can
come to any one is not fatal; no, not if this old
body is tied to the stake and the flames con-
sume it,’ and she dropped her knitting and
uplifted her two hard old hands—‘‘not fatal so
long as this is secure,’”’ and she laid her hand
on her heart, and her aged face was lit with a
strange radiance. ‘‘For, as Master Luther
learned, ‘The just shall live by faith,’ why,
therefore, be troubled? why? And when he
had learned that lesson, he goes on and on,
with every day its verse, its blessed verse, until
all are in our hands, too. ‘To-morrow, child,
we will think about the many mansions, and
after that about the Comforter, even the Spirit