The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1908, Page 31

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The

Lutheran Pioneer.

31

Nor Weary 1x WEeEtL-Dornc. — An unknown
and unnamed giver has for the eleventh time
brought to the treasurer of our Mission Board his
annual contribution of $500.00 for our mission: work
among the colored people. ‘The need of our mission
treasury cries for many more liberal givers, who do
not grow weary in well-doing.

A Moruen’s Girr. — The newspapers, says The
Lutheran Witness, recently told a touching story in
connection with the dedication of a large bell in one
of our German Lutheran churches in a Western
city. The donor of the bell was an aged woman,
now past 70 years of age, who had saved her scanty
earnings for a dozen years until she had $300.00
with which to purchase the bell. She cultivated
a patch of strawberries and worked many a day in
the scorching sun to gather the fruit. She also
picked gooseberries, and the money that she realized
from the sale of these berries went toward the bell
fund. Finally she saw the fruition of her hopes.
The $300.00 bell was hung in the church. Not until
then did her relatives learn of the plan she had car-
ried out. When asked why she had been so stead-
ast in her purpose, she replied: “When I was sav-
ing all these years, the one thought was uppermost
in my mind that when I am gone from this earth
and that bell rings forth Sunday morning my chil-
dren will say, ‘That is mother calling us to church,
and we must go.’” The spirit that prompted ‘such
sacrifice moved this mother, no doubt, to shrink
from no cost to train up her children in the way
they should go.

A Tanxk-Orrertnc. —'The Santal Christians,
belonging to the Scandinavian Mission, sent as a
thank-offering a large sum of money to the agent
of the British and Foreign Bible Society at Cal-
cutta for the manifold blessings received through
the Sacred Scriptures printed in their own tongue
by said society. The Santals, as a rule, are a poor
-people; their liberality might make better-situated
people feel ashamed.

Sap.—A New York paper recently brought
the following telegraphic report: The Rev. Alex-
ander McLoughlin, a missionary, was devoured by
cannibals on St. George Island, of the Solomon
group, and his bones are now in the possession of
the Government of New Zealand, having been con-

~ yeyed to Auckland by a gunboat sent to punish the

cannibals. MeLoughlin was not heard from in
several months after he started for the Solomon
group (against the advice of his fellow missionaries)
to attempt, unaided, to convert the natives to Chris-
tianity. News of his fate finally reached Pago
Pago, being conveyed there by a small trading
vessel. Word was sent to Auckland, N. Z., and
Premier Ward sent the gunboat Hinemoa to punish
the cannibals. ‘This gunboat shelled a village on
St. George Island, where the chief offending’ tribe
lived. To stop the bombardment the natives sent
the missionary’s bones out to the warship, together
with fifty tons of pearls worth $1000.00 a ton as in-
demnity.

Tue PLacuE In Inp1a.— The plague in some
parts of India is appalling. One of the mission
journals of India says that in less than half a year
the number of deaths is only a few thousand short
of a million, and that in a single week they reached
a total of 67,000. The journal remarks: “Twenty-
four thousand English soldiers died in the Crimea,
22,000 in South Africa. Add them together and
contrast the total with the 67,000 deaths which the
plague caused in India during the single week for
which we have the last official record.”

Tuer Lazorers Are Few. — It is said that if
two missionaries were set aside’ to every .fifty thou-
sand heathen, the present working force of all the
churches would touch but 325,000,000, leaving
675,000,000 of heathen still unreached by any form
of Christianity. And yet there are those who say
there are too many missionaries. The harvest is
great, but the laborers are few.

A Cuurcu or Ice. — The Rev. E. I. Peck, who
has been a missionary for thirty years among the
Eskimos far away up North, writes of some queer
church buildings used by the people among whom
he labored. One church he built entirely out of
large blocks of ice. The altar and the pews, or.
seats, were also made of ice. This church of ice,
he says, served its purpose very well and afforded
the missionary and his hearers sufficient protection
against the severe, bitter cold of the Arctic regions.

AnoTHER Quaint CHurRcH.— Another quaint
church was built by Missionary Peck out of seal-
skin and whalebone, the skeleton of a large whale
being covered with the skin. It was soon after at-

, tacked by dogs, who devoured the skin and literally
ate up the church. :