The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1893, Page 15

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The Lutheran Pioneer. 15

The Key of Heaven.

The woman listened attentively to all the
pastor said, and by the grace of God accepted
the finished work of the risen Saviour, and
found in Him that peace which she did not
have as long as she trusted in her own good
works.

‘*You were my mother’s friend,’’ she said ;
“*to please you I will go.’’

And so the little woman heard the preacher
tell the old, old story. He told of the crea-
tion, of man’s rebellion and sin, and of the
Father’s love in sending His Son to this weary
earth. She listened and she learned that the
foreigners’ God was the God of her dictionary,
this loving Father was the all-powerful Creator

about whom she had wondered and puzzled all
alone.

A pastor was one day on his way to some
place to preach. He climbed a hill on his road.
Beneath him lay the villages sleeping in their
beauty, with the cornfields motionless in the
sunshine; but he did not look at them, for his
attention was arrested by a woman standing
at her door, and who, upon seeing him, came
up to him with the greatest anxiety, and said,
“*O, sir, have you any keys about you? I have
broken the key of my drawers, and there are
some things that I must get directly.’’ The
pastor said, ‘‘I have no keys.’’ She was dis-
appointed, expecting that every one would
have keys. ‘‘ But suppose,’’ said the pastor,
**T had some keys, they might not fit your
lock, and therefore you could not get the
articles you want. But do not distress your-
self, wait till some one else comes up. ‘‘But,’’
said he, wishing to make use of the occasion,
‘Shave you ever heard of the key of heayen?’’

‘Ah! yes,’’ she said, ‘‘I have lived long
enough and gone to church long enough to
know that if we work hard, and get our bread
by the sweat of our brow, and act well toward
our neighbors, and do our duty in that station
of life in which it has pleased God to place us,

and say our prayers regularly, we shall be
saved.’’

———--+-<>er oe

A Stepping-Stone Dictionary.

I heard a missionary who had been around
the world and spent some time in Japan tell
how a young Japanese girl found help in the
dictionary to throw light on her heathen dark-
ness and to bring her to the knowledge of the
true God.

This young girl was at school in her native
country, studying at one of their public schools,
which they have modeled upon our American
school system. In these schools many of the
books are translations of our ordinary English
textbooks, and dictionaries are prepared in the
same way.

She eagerly drank in all the missionary had
to say, and she went to him that night hunger-
ing and thirsting for more. ‘The little seed
had been planted, and now sprang up into a
Christian life. She still continues her regular
teaching at the school, and she may be seen
any afternoon with her Bible tucked under her
arm going to the mission station or to some
house to read to a group of women sitting on
the floor around her.—Selected.

_——_— - o-=—m e

The Captive African Boy.

Our young girl in her reader one day found
the Japanese word for ‘‘God’’ used in a sense
which to her was unintelligible.

The scholars were trained to turn to the dic-
tionary for any word they did not understand,
and looking in her small dictionary she found
the definition to be ‘‘God—the Creator of the
universe, the earth, man, and all things.’’

‘*One person create everything?’’ she said
to herself; ‘‘why, he must be more powerful
than any god I know.’’

As she went home that night, passing the
statue of Buddha in his shrine on the street,
she shook her finger at it in derision, saying,
‘“sYou never created anything; you are only
a bit of bronze.’’

Not long after she found the word again, and
not satisfied with her own book, she borrowed
the larger dictionary of a friend, and found
there the same definition, but amplified. This
told her that God was the Creator of sun, moon,
stars, the earth, and all living things upon it.

The subject puzzled her a while, but she was
not in association with Christians, and so
gradually it faded from her mind and she
ceased to wonder about the strange Being, so
very powerful, whom the unknown foreigner
worshiped. When her education in the public
schools was finished, she wished to teach. The
natives are very proud of their learning and
expect to impart it to others. She heard of
an opening for her in a place where an aunt
of hers lived, and she went to make her home
with the old woman, so that she could fill the
position in the school. After some time a
Christian missionary began preaching to the
public in the neighborhood, and her aunt
begged her to go and hear him. But our
young girl said she was perfectly satisfied with
her own gods, and wanted no better, and re-
fused to go. ;

But the old woman continued to beg her to
go, and out of respect to her wishes (for the
Japanese, as the Chinese, show great respect
to older persons) she went-to the meeting.

Fifty years ago there was a boy in Africa
who was taken prisoner in one of the fierce
wars between the tribes and was carried away
from his home to be sold as a slave. Poor
fellow! First he was sold for a horse. Then
his buyer thought him a bad exchange for the
horse, and compelled his master to take him
back. Then he was sold for so much rum,
This was called another bad bargain by the
man who had bought him, and again he was
returned, to be sold for tobacco, with the same
result.

Nobody wanted the poor miserable slave boy,
who was on the point of committing suicide
when he was bought by a Portuguese trader,
and carried away in a slave ship. Ah, how
little that wretched boy, as he lay chained in
the hold of that crowded slave ship, thought
what the future had in store for him, or what
great things God would yet do for him. One
day an English war-ship that was clearing the
high seas of the slavers, bore down upon the
Portuguese vessel, and rescued the captives.
The African boy was placed under Christian
influences, baptized, and educated, and became
Bishop Crowther, England’s black Bishop in
Africa, where he has founded a successful
mission.

It would be a long story to tell all he has
done for his poor people in Africa, how he
has fought the slave trade, preached to canni-
bals, been taken prisoner again and again,
and how the Lord has kept him safe in every
danger. Twenty-five years after he was made
a slave he found his old mother, and she be-
came a Christian, and died under the hospitable
‘roof of her son’s episcopal residence.

Gospel in all Lands.

——_s—_- eae oa -

‘Ah!’ said the pastor, ‘‘*my good woman,
that is the wrong key, that is a broken key,
for you have broken the commandments, you
have not fulfilled all your duties. You have
broken that key.’’

‘*Pray, sir,’’ said she, believing that he
understood the matter, and looking frightened,
<‘what is there wrong in my answer?’’

“Why,’’ said he, ‘‘it is all wrong. You for-
get the work of Jesus Christ. Don’t you see
that if your answer were correct there would
have been no need of the Saviour’s coming
into this world and suffering and dying for
sinners.’’ And explaining the matter to her,
he said, ‘‘It is Christ, and Christ alone that
opens heaven to you, and not your good works.
The Bible says, ‘By grace are ye saved through
faith ; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift
of God; not of works, lest any man should
boast.’ ’’

‘What, minister,’’ said she, ‘‘are our good
works useless then?’’

‘«They are useless,’’ said he, ‘‘if you want

to be saved by them. If you believe in your
Saviour you will surely do many good works
out of love to Jesus, who has forgiven you all
your sins and has made you an heir of heaven;
but if you believe in Him, you will never trust
in your good works; if you trust in them you
have spoiled them, and they are not good works
any longer. Put your trust wholly in the Lord
Jesus Christ. He was delivered for our of-
fences and raised again for our justification.
Since He rose from the dead we know that He
has finished the work of our redemption and
has unlocked heaven’s gate for us. He is the
true key of heaven.’

it alone makes a man truly wise, intelligent,
prudent, cautious, pious, kind, patient, faith-
ful, orderly, chaste.— Luther.

Tue Word of God does every good thing; ~

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