The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1898, Page 43

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The Lutheran Pioneer.

43

Story of Friesland. ‘‘Surely,’’ they must have thought, ‘‘the
great god Thor will blow from his red beard
the lightning and strike this man; or perhaps
the god will throw his hammer, the ‘Crusher,’
at this Englishman who dares insult the ‘God
of Thunder.’’’

But no flash of lightning laid Winfred in
the dust. Steadily the chopping went on, and
the chips flew from the huge trunk, and the
sound of the blows went up through the air,
and yet the Frisians waited like the Israelites
on top of Mount Carmel, and Thor made no
sign, and ‘‘there was neither voice, nor any to
answer, nor any that regarded.”’

“Crack!’’ went the mighty oak. It bent,
it leaned over farther, farther yet, and then,
as the last strokes of Winfreds axe echoed
through the air, Grash came great Thor’s oak
to the ground, and with it fell Thor’s dominion
over the people. For although we are not told
that the half-heathen that saw Thor’s prostrate
oak ‘‘fell on .their faces,’’ as the children of
Israel did at the end)of the trial on Mount
Carmel, yet surely in thesheart of every one
of them there must haye been a voice that
said: ‘The Lord, He is the God; the Lord,
He is the God.’’

And so Winfred worked on among the
heathen of Northern Europe, till he was an
old man. Many Christian people heard of
his labors, and, leaving England, came across
the sea to heIp Winfred teach the heathen.

Still, since the country was poor .and un-
cultivated, a great deal of the time Winfred
was obliged to labor to support himself, in
addition to his work of preaching.

At last, one day, the missionary, now
seventy-five years old, had pitched his tent
beside a river called the Bordne, that sepa-
rated East: and West Friesland. He had
promised to wait beside the river till a num-
ber of persons who had just been converted
from heathenism should come to see him.

But, while he waited, suddenly from the
woods there rushed upon Winfred’s camp,
not the Christians he expected, but a horde
of angry heathen, who were enemies of the
old missionary and his workers. The heathen
were armed with lances and shields, and Win-
fred’s servants tried to make ready to fight.

But Winfred saw in the attacking band
only those for whom he had left his English
home to carry the Gospel across the sea and
he could not find it in his heart to command
his followers to kill any of these unrepentant
heathen. -

‘‘Children,”’ said Winfred to those about
him, “forbear to fight. The Scripture for-
bids us to render evil for evil. Hope in God,
and He will save your souls.””

And then, as the savage heathen rushed
upon him, Winfred held up the Gospels above
his head with his expiring strength, and fell
dead upon the soil of Friesland, the country
for the salvation of whose inhabitants he
had labored and prayed for so long.

M. E. B.

More than a thousand years ago, the “Golden
Hoop’’ held back the waters of the surging
North Sea from the low-lying marshes of
Friesland. The ‘‘Golden Hoop’’ was the
name that the Frisians had given to the long
jine of dikes that they had with such toil
placed between themselves and the tides that
were ever longing to steal, bit by bit, all the
soil of the Frisian mainland.

A sturdy, independent race these Frisians
of the olden time seem to have been. They
were bold sailors who did not fear to traverse
the dangerous North Sea in their little vessels,
and whose descendants, even at the present
day, are counted among the best seamen of
Europe.

But the Frisians were idolaters. And this
fact greatly troubled some people who had
only a short time before this heard about
Christianity themselves, and turned from the
worship of false gods. Just across the sea
from Friesland, lay the island known to us
now-a-days as England. The Anglo-Saxons
‘on this island had heard and believed the
Gospel of Christ, and to them, as to one of
old, had come the command, ‘‘Go home to
thy friends and tell them how great things
the Lord hath done for thee, and hath had
‘compassion on thee.’’ For the Frisians lived
on the same side of the sea from which the
Anglo-Saxons had originally come, and they
spoke a language so like the Anglo-Saxon
that no interpreter was needed when two of
these separate nations spoke together.

So it came to pass that one day there came
‘to Friesland an English missionary, named
Winfred. The different districts into which
Friesland was divided, did not know what a
blessing had come to them that day; but
many of them soon heard the Gospel and
turned, as the Anglo-Saxons had done, from
darkness to light. But, after a time, Winfred
and the missionaries who worked with him
became aware that Christianity had an enemy
in the land. ‘This enemy was not a person,
at was a tree, an oak that had always been
held sacred to the heathen god Thor, the god
of lightning and thunder. Strange as it may
seem to us, even the persons who had become
Christians and renounced the worship of Thor
were afraid of that oak tree.

But Winfred resolved that he would teach
the Christians and the heathen too, that they
need not fear Thor.

“If Thor is a god,’’ said Winfred, ‘‘he will
defend his own tree.’’

So, one day, Winfred assembled all the
other missionaries, and together they went to
the great oak tree.

Winfred took an axe, and raised it. Thwack!
Went the blade into the trunk of Thor’s great
‘*sacred oak.’?

The Frisians must have looked with awe up
at the sky and down again at Winfred.

“Preach Christ.”

Mr. Birch, an English preacher, tells of a
dying infidel whom he visited by request.
The man had long been ill and in great need.
Mr. Birch, with Christian liberality, had sup-
plied his wants, and now the dying man told
him he had sent for him, not to speak about
religion, for he didn’t believe in it, but to
thank him for his great kindness to him and
his. Mr. Birch then said: ‘*Will you answer
me one question?’’ ‘‘Yes,’’ said the dying
man, ‘‘provided it is not about religion.’’
Lifting his heart in prayer to God, Mr. Birch
said: ‘*You know I have to preach to-night;
many will be gathered to hear—mostly poor
people, who will soon have, like you, to
face death; I ask you, what shall I preach
about?’’ Silence for a while; then, with
tear-dimmed eye and trembling voice, the
unexpected answer was given: ‘‘Mr. Birch,
preach Christ to them; preach Christ.’’ And
then, utterly broken down, the dying sinner
sought mercy from God for his own soul.

————q@qo@- oo ee

Answer to Prayer.

Twenty-five years ago, we are told, in the
beautiful valley of Virginia, a little dark-eyed
baby in a long white dress was taken to church
to be baptized. The preacher who baptized
him was a dear old man who had spent most
of his life as a missionary to Africa; when he
took this baby in his arms, after his baptism,
he raised his eyes to God in silent prayer;
and when he put the little fellow back in his
mother’s arms he said, ‘‘I have asked God to
make your boy a foreign missionary; will you
be willing to give him up for that?’”” And she
answered, ‘‘I hope God will make me willing
when the time comes.”’ :

Only a few months ago a young man reached
the heathen city of Su-Chien in China, and
wrote back to his mother, ‘‘Pray for me, that
I may quickly learn to preach Jesus in this
hard language.”’

It was the same one who had been baptized
by the missionary. It was the same mother
who had said she would be willing when the
time came. It was the same prayer that had
waited twenty-five years for an answer... It
was the same God who hears and answers our
prayers. — Ea.

—s aoe om _

Tue Harr-way Man.—Abraham is the half-
way man. His name is found in Genesis 12;
and from this many think he must have lived
soon after Adam. But this is a plain mistake,
as any one may see after a little thought.
From Adam to Abraham is almost two thou-
sand years, and from Abraham to Christ is
two thousand. Abraham, then, lived just
half-way between the first Adam and the
second.