The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1905, Page 54

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54

Our Mission.

In life we each have a mission,
There’s something we all can do
To lighten the cares of others,
And cheer the faint-hearted too.

If we find along life’s journcy

A sufferer burdened with care,

And can cheer or give him comfort,
Oh! then our mission is there. .

If we meet a fellow creature,
One who has fallen low,

To lift him up is our mission,
Before we farther go.

How oft will a kind word spoken,
Though ’tis a little thing,

Give strength to the heart that is troubled,
And remove a bitter sting.

We need not gold or silver
To perform our mission here,
' But a heart that is full of sunshine,

And a willingness to cheer.
izzie Bliss Phillips.

A Sweet Surprise.

It is related that Dr. Judson, while laboring as
a missionary to the heathen, felt a strong desire to
do something also for the salvation of the Jews.
But it seemed as if his desire was not to be grati-
fied. During a long course of years, even to the
closing weeks of his life, in his last sickness, Dr. Jud-
son lamented that all his efforts in behalf of the
Jews had been a failure. He was departing from
the world saddened with that thought. Then, at
last, there came a sweet surprise which filled his
heart with joy.

Mrs. Judson was sitting by his side while he
was in a state of great languor, with a copy of the
Watchman and Reflector in her hand. She read to
her husband one of Dr. Hague’s letters from Con-
stantinople. That letter contained some items of
information which filled the aged missionary with
wonder. At a meeting of missionaries at Constan-
tinople, Mr. Schauffler had stated that a little book
had been published in Germany giving an account
of Dr. Judson’s life and labors; that it had fallen
into the hands of some Jews, and had been the
means of their conversion; that a Jew had trans-
lated it for a community of Jews on the borders of
the Euxine, and that a message had come to Con-
stantinople asking that a teacher might be sent to
show them the way of life.

When Dr. Judson heard this, his eyes filled with

The Lutheran Pioneer.

tears. Clinging fast to his wife’s hand, as if to as-
sure himself of being really in the world, he said:
“Love, this frightens me; I do not know what to
make of it.’’

““To make of what?’’ said Mrs. Judson.

‘“‘Why,’’ said the missionary, ‘‘what you just
have been reading; I never was deeply interested in
any object, I never prayed sincerely and earnestly
for anything, but it came, at some time—no mat-
ter how distant the day— somehow, in some shape,
probably the last I should have desired, it came!
Thank God, it came!”’

Such was the testimony of the dying mission-
ary. ‘‘The desire of the righteous shall be granted,’’
Prov. 10,24. ‘‘The effectual fervent prayer of the
righteous man availeth much,’’ James 5,16. Pray
and wait. The answer will come. In Judson’s case
the news of ‘the answer came before he died, but
his prayer was answered long before. So we may
know of the results of prayers and toils even while
we sojourn here; but if not, what sweet surprises
await us in our Father’s house!

Mission Berries.

A small and poor village in the Westerwald, in
West Germany, between the rivers Rhine, Lahn,
and Sieg, is well known in the committee rooms
and the offices of the Rhenish Missionary Society
for its liberal gifts to the Lord’s cause of Foreign
Missions. The great event in that village is the
yearly ‘‘Children’s Mission Festival.’’ Missionaries
returned from South Africa, the Dutch Indies, or
China are present and tell the children and their
older friends of the work for the salvation of the
heathen in those far-off countries. ‘The children
listen for hours with rapt attention and look very
happy. Their beaming faces seem to say, ‘‘We, too,
are helping in this work for the Lord Jesus.’’ In
which way do these poor children help? In sum-
mer-time, when the blackberries are ripe, they roam
over the hills and dells and gather the berries, leav-
ing all the bushes bare and empty. All the berries
the children pick are sold to parties who pay well
for them, and all the money received is sent to Bar-
men, where the treasurer of the Rhenish Society
lives; it often amounts to twenty dollars. The oldest
woman of the yillage—she has eighty-four years
“fon her back’’— totters along into the forest to pick
berries for the mission, although her fingers are stiff
and crooked from rheumatism.

What do these poor children say to you well-to-
do childrén? — Selected.