The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1906, Page 13

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‘The Lutheran Pioneer.

13

to this Bible, there are a great many who do not
believe in it; and some day they will come here and
they will tell you these things. Is your faith in
Christ and this Bible dependent on your belief that
a great nation, mightier and wiser than you, be-
lieves in Christ and the Bible? Or does it rest on
other grounds? What will you say when men come
and question your faith in Christ and His Word?”

There was a young man sitting down on the
floor, who had been blind from his early childhood,
with the marks of the disease that had made him
blind all over his face. He raised his head and
said:

“YT will tell you what I would say. I would
answer him in the words of the nineteenth and twen-
tieth verses of the fourth chapter of Acts: ‘Whether
it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you
more than unto God, judge ye. For we cannot
but speak the things which we have seen and
heard.’ ”

I said, “Do you know all your Bible as well as
that?” Tle could not read, and they have no raised-
letter Bibles in Corea.

“Well,” said the blind man, “I know my Bible
pretty well.”

I asked, “Can you tell me what is in the fifteenth
chapter of the Gospel of Luke?”

“Certainly,” he said; “that’s the chapter that
has the parable of the lost sheep, the coin, and the
prodigal son.”

“Do you know in what chapter of Matthew is
the feeding of the five thousand ?”

“Certainly,” he answered; “it’s in the four-
teenth.”

I thought it was the twelfth, but I turned to
the fourteenth, and found that the blind man had
located it correctly.

He had learned all he knew about Christ’s life
from his friends, who sat on the floor of the little
room in which he lived, and read to him, translating
out of an old Chinese Bible the whole life of Christ.

I asked him what he liked best of all.

“Oh,” he replied, “I like the ninth chapter of
the Gospel of John that tells the story of the blind
man to whom Christ restored sight.”

I don’t know when I was so rebuked as to my
own knowledge of the Bible as by that poor, blind
Corean, who had been less than three years a dis-
ciple of Christ.

Gop always answers our needs, but not always
our requests. We may sometimes ask amiss, but
God never gives amiss.

Example of Thankfulness.

Look! The room is clean, even airy. A bright
little fire burns in the grate, and in a four-post bed
you see sitting up a woman of sixty-four years of
age, with her handg folded and contracted, and her
whole body crippled and curled together as the
disease cramped it, and rheumatism has fixed it,
for twenty-eight years. For sixteen of these years
she has not moved from her bed or looked out of
the window, or even lifted her hand to her own face;
and also is in constant pain, while she cannot move
a limb.

But listen! She is so thankful that God has left
her that one great blessing — the use of one thumb.
Her left hand is clinched and stiff, and utterly use-
less; but she has a two-pronged fork fastened to a
stick, with which she can take off her great, old-
fashioned spectacles and put them on again. By
the same means she can feed herself; and she can
sip her tea through a tube, helping herself with this

~one thumb.

Another thing she can do with her fork: she
can turn over the leaves of a large Bible, when placed
within her reach. :

A visitor addressed her, with the remark that
she was all alone.

“Yes,” she replied, in a peculiarly sweet and
cheerful voice, “I am alone, and yet not alone.”

“Tow is that?”

“The Lord is constantly with me.”

“Flow long have you lain here?”

“for sixteen years and four months, and for
two years and four months I have not been lifted -
out of my bed to have it made; yet I have much to
praise and bless the Lord for.”

“What is the source of your happiness?”

“The thought that my sins are forgiven, and
dwelling in the great love of Jesus, my Savior. Iam
content to be here so long as it shall please Him ~
that I should stay, and to go whenever He shall

‘call me.” — Sel.

A Martyr’s Joy.

Robert Glober, a martyr, had great darkness for
some days preceding his suffering, but when he came
in sight of the stake where he was to suffer death for
his faith, his soul was so filled with divine comfort,
that he joyfully clapped his hands and cried out,
“He is come! He is come!”