The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1894, Page 10

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- “used in Persia.

10

The Lutheran Pioneer.

—————— OOO

Henry Martyn.

On the 8th of February, 1812, at Shiraz,
Persia, Henry Martyn wrote in his diary:
“This is my birthday on which I complete my
thirty-first year. Ihe Persian New Testament
has been begun and finished init. Such a pain-
ful year I have never passed, owing to the
privations I have been called to on the one
hand, and the spectacle before me of human
depravity on the other. But I hope I have
not come to this seat of Satan in vain. The
Word of God has found its way into Persia,
and it is not in Satan’s power to oppose its
progress; the Lord hath sent it.’’ Another
birthday found him in the presence of his
Master, but his transla- i
tions of the New Testa-
ment and Psalms are still

A gentleman visiting
in the city of Shiraz was
invited to a party where
he met a man who had
been educated for a Mo-
hammedan priest, but
who appeared deeply in-
terested in the conversa
tion, especially while the
Englishman talked of the
Christian faith. On call-
ing at his house the man
confessed that he was a
Christian, saying, “There

- once came to this city an
Englishman who taught
thereligion of Christ with
a boldness nevér known
in Persia, in spite of
much scorn and ill-treat-
ment. He was a beard-
less youth, and evidently

. enfeebled by disease. He

dwelt among us more
than a year. I was
then a decided enemy to
Christians, and I visited him with the object
of treating him with scorn and exposing his
doctrines to contempt. But every interview
increased my respect for him, and weakened
my confidence in my old faith; until I knew
he was in the right. Shame or fear kept me
from confessing if, and I avoided him. Just
before he left Shiraz I could not refrain from
paying him a farewell visit. He gave me a
“book; it has ever been my constant com-
panion.’” With these words he produced a
copy of the New Testament in Persian; on
one of the blank leaves was written, ‘‘‘There
is joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth.’
Henry Martyn... Ss.
_ The influence of Henry Martyn’s short but
' consecrated life will long be felt. It is said
" that a clergyman in England under whose in-
fluence Martyn had been led into the ministry,

“always kept his picture before him in his study,

and that wherever he moved in the room it

seemed to keep its eyes on him, saying, ‘‘Be
earnest, be earnest; don’t trifle, don’t trifle ;’’
and the clergyman would reply, ‘‘Yes, I will
bein earnest. I will not trifle; for souls are
perishing, and Jesus is to be glorified.”’

._ oe oe

No Play for Girls.

Have you heard of some rescued slave chil-
dren who were released by an English vessel
that captured an Arab slave dhow as it was
carrying these captured young people across
the Red Sea into Arabia? There were sixty
of them who were taken to Aden, which is a
port in Southern Arabia now belonging to

Jesus Crowned with Thorns.

sad. When asked about it they say they are
thinking about their old homes that they shall
never see again, and about their fathers and
mothers who were killed, and about the Arabs
who seized them and carried them away. But
they are learning of a better way than they or
their parents knew about, and some of them
hope to go back to their native land and tell
the good tidings of Jesus Christ and of the
way of life through Him.
——_s +> oo

A Brass Doctor.

In China they have some queer ways of
doctoring sick people, and in Peking, it is
said, they have a brass mule for a doctor!
This mule stands in one
of their temples, and sick
people flock there by the
thousand to be cured.
How can a brass mule
cure anybody? do you
ask. Sure enough, how
can he? and yet those
poor ignorant people be-
lieve it. If you lived
there, instead of in this
country, it is likely that
when you had a tooth-
ache your father would
take you—to a dentist?
O, no! That is what
they do in this country.
In Peking you would
probably be taken to the
temple where the brass
mule stands, and he lifted
up so you could rub his
tooth, then rub your own
and then they think the
pain ought to go away.
If you fell down and hurt
Z your knee, you would go
= and rub the mule’s knee,

and then your own to

Great Britain, and placed under the care of
the Keith-Falconer Mission connected with the
Scotch Free Church. There they have been
kept for about two years. It seems they were
Somalis from the interior of Africa, and that
the Arabs came down on their homes and
killed their fathers and mothers, carrying the
children off to be slayes. But since they were
rescued and placed in this mission home, they
are learning to read and to write, and to know
much about Jesus Christ. They have learned
to pray, and at night, when they retire to their
rooms, it is said you might hear quite a mur-
mur of prayers. The boys play all sorts of
games during the play hours, but it is a strik-
ing fact that the girls have no games, and they
think it quite strange to be allowed and even
to be asked to play. They say that in their
own country girls never play; that they are
made to work from the time that they are mere
babies. These children sometimes look very

make it well. They say
so many have rubbed the mule that they have
rubbed the brass off in many places, so that
new patches had to be put on, and his eyes
have been rubbed out altogether. But a brand-
new mule stands waiting to take the place of
the old one when that finally falls to pieces.

_ It seems a very simple way to cure pains
and aches, but, I fear, the pain is not very
much better after the visit to the mule; and,
I am sure, all boys and girls who read of the
“brass doctor’’ will be glad they live in this
land, even if dentists do sometimes pull teeth
that ache, and doctors often give medicine
that is not pleasant to take.

———s ~<a o> a -

Tue love of Christ is-like the blue sky into
which you may see clearly, .but the vastness
of which you can not measure. It is like the
sea, into whose bosom you can look a little
way, but its depths are unfathomable.

_—

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