The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1903, Page 10

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10

The Lutheran Pioneer.

The First Article. ©

Or PRESERVATION.

God made heaven and earth in six days,
and He rested on the seventh day. This rest
of God was a ceasing from making new crea-
tures, and it does not mean that He is now
idle, that He now lets His creatures take care
of themselves. God is not like a carpenter
who, when he has completed the building of a
house, goes off and no more troubles himself
aboutit. God is still actively engaged in keep-
ing and preserving the work of His hands.
Were this not the case, the whole world would
soon go toruin; the sun would cease to shine,
the rain would no longer fall, plants would
not grow, heat and frost would not alternate,
seed-time and harvest would not succeed each
other. Therefore God must uphold all things
by the power of His Word if all is not to go to
destruction.

And as He supports and keeps the world as
a whole, so He also supports each individual
creature. He provides every creature with all
that it needs to support body and life, the
smallest insect no less than the strongest
beast, the little ant as well as the ponderous
elephant.

Let, therefore, no one say: ‘‘He cares not
for me;’’ for He certainly does. He provides
us with all that we need to support this body
and life. Our clothing and shoes, our food
and drink we receive from Him; He opens
His bounteous hand and satisfies the desire of
every living thing. Our house and home we
owe to Him, and our fields and cattle He gives
us, as well as all other goods which we may
possess.

But do we not have to work for all these
things? Certainly; but for all that it remains
true that it all comes from God. For who has
given you the ability to work? Who has given
you your reason and other senses? Is it not
God? And were He now to deprive you of
these, what would you then come to?

And, even if God did not deprive you of
your power to work, what would become of
you if God did not bless your labor? Peter
_ fished all night, and yet caught nothing until
God gave His blessing. All depends upon
our possessing God’s blessing. Did not that
same God who fed the children of Israel for
forty years in the wilderness and who mul-
tiplied the five loaves and two fishes so that
they were sufficient to satisfy the hunger
of 5000 people —I say, did not that same
God bless our seed, our fields, our labor, and
our enterprises, we should have no more to
show up than had Peter after his night’s
fishing.

' Yes, dear Christian, God preserves and
keeps us; it is God that provides forus. And

He does 80 daily and richly. “ Day after day

must confess that’ God has poured down aj| successful school at Stevensville, Mich., where

very shower of blessings upon him.

It is our God supports our frame,
The God that formed us first:
Salvation to our Father’s name
That reared us from the dust.
While we have breath, or life, or tongues
Our Maker we'll adore:
*Tis He that.moves our heaving lungs,
Or they would move no more.
F. J. L.

Sad News from our Indian Mission
in Wisconsin.

The Indian Mission of the Missouri Synod
received a sad blow by the death of Otto Wil-
liam Volkert, which occurred at Red Springs,
on the Stockbridge Reservation, Monday,
January 19, at 6.50 r.»t. The deceased, who

Otto William Volkert,

late Teacher in our Indian Mission School.

was teacher there in the Lutheran Indian Mis-
sion School, had been ailing for some time and
was obliged to give up his school work on the
9th of January. Becoming rapidly worse, his
brother, the Rev. Theodore Volkert, of Wau-
kegan, IIl., was sent for and reached his bed-
side onthe 14th. Another brother, Ferdinand,
in the firm of Volkert & Co., Bookbinders,
Chicago, Ill., arrived on Sunday. Everything
was done to relieve the sufferer of his severe
pain, but the end came nevertheless and, hay-
ing once more made a confession of his sins
and of his faith in Jesus and partaken of the
Lord’s Supper, he peacefully passed away to
a better world. The cause of his death was
tuberculosis of the intestines.

Mr. O. W. Volkert was born near St. Paul,
Minn., January 27, 1874. After passing
through the home school and a preparatory
course at Valparaiso, Ind., he graduated at

‘Provides for us out of His rich store-|the Lutheran Seminary at New Ulm, Minn.,
use; richly and plentifully He supplies|and began teaching in 1900. Before coming
cance: Even the very poorest among us| to the Stockbridge Reserve he taught a very

118-pupils were on the roll when he left to
serve in the Mission. Since August he has
been teaching the Indian children in the Red
Springs school and enjoyed the love of all
pupils and parents. He was a devoted Chris-
tian and, though ill, a hard worker in school.
Brief services were held at the Mission on
Tuesday, January 20, which were attended
by several of the Lutheran ministers and
teachers, who were in Conference at Shawano.
The remains were brought to Shawano on
Tuesday evening, and his brothers took them
to St. Paul, where they were laid to rest in
the Invergrove Cemetery.
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2 +0e-<meoe em

The Power of the Gospel.

Missionaries had been working long among
the Greenlanders without any result. One
day it occurred to Missionary Beck to tell the
people the story of Jesus’ sufferings in the
garden of Gethsemane. <A thoroughly wild
man by the name of Kajarnack, who had
never before heard God’s Word, called out
suddenly, ‘‘What was that? Say it again; I,
too, want to be saved.’’ The missionary had
never before seen a man so moved and inter-
ested in God’s Word as this wild man, and he
hastened to tell him all the story of Jesus, the
Son of God, who came to die for the sins of
the world. After that many were converted.

The power of the Gospel is also seen in
the following touching story told by the late
Bishop Whipple, who did missionary work
among the Indians:

‘Thirty-seven years ago I knew a great
orator of the lower Sioux, Red Owl. He never
attended church, for he was afraid he would
lose his influence among his people. One day
he came into the schoolroom and stopped be-
fore a picture of the suffering Saviour and
asked, ‘What is that? Why are His hands
bound? Why are those thorns on His head?’
Red Owl was so touched by the story of the
love of the Son of God that he came again and
again to ask about Jesus.

‘Some time later I was one day going to
Wabasha’s village, and saw on the prairie a
new-made grave; over it was a plain wooden
cross. I learned that Red Owl was dead. He
had been taken ill suddenly, and when dying
he said to his young men: ‘That story which
the white man has brought into our country
is true; Ihave it in my heart. When I am
dead I wish you would put a cross over my
grave, that the Indians may see what is in
Red Owl’s heart.’ ’’

The Gospel of Christ ‘is the power of God
unto salvation to every one that believeth ;””
and the story of the sufferings and death of
Christ for sinners is the very heart of the
Gospel. Well may we every year, in the sea-
son of Lent, renew our meditations on the
Passion history.