The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1908, Page 95

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The Lutheran Pioneer. 95

NOTES.

A Kinp Request.— This number closes an-
other volume of Tue LurHeran Proneer, and as
a new volume begins with the new year, this is a
suitable time to send in the names of new sub-
scribers. We therefore kindly, request our friends
to speak a kind word for our paper and help us to
increase its circulation. This would also be a help
to our mission ‘work, since all the profits go into
the mission treasury.— We also kindly request
every reader to sce to it that his paper is prepaid,
as the present rules of the United States Post Office
Department make it most important that all sub-
scribers should pay in advance.

Buryp Leavers or THE Burnp. — A reader in
one of our Southern cities writes: That the colored
preachers of the sects are mostly blind leaders of
the blind is seen also from their ignorance and in-
difference as to doctrine. When a Roman Catholic
priest recently began mission work in our city
among the colored race, some of these sectarian
colored preachers encouraged their people to attend
his services. One of them, the pastor of one of
the largest colored churches here, even went to the
priest, offering him the use of his pulpit and
church, making the offer in the following manner:
“You come out yondah and hold your meetin’s;
for dem niggahs jest won’t come to heah me; and
if you kin git dem to come to heah you, I’ll give
you my church with the janitor and lights thrown
in; “cause Gawd knows dem niggahs ought to heah
somebody, dat’s certain.” ‘The more I see and hear
of the doings of the sectarian colored preachers,
the more I am convinced of the importance of our
Lutheran colleges in which preachers and teachers
of the pure Gospel are trained for mission work
among the colored race. :

Hr Lovep His Worx. — A missionary who had
spent a long life in the foreign field, as he neared
the end of his work, sat down and wrote this: “If
I had to choose for my dearest friend on earth a
position where there is afforded a full field for the
exercise of a man’s powers and influence, and where

_ the truest happiness may be secured, I should say

to him, ‘If you love Jesus Christ (and can accom-
plish it), become a missionary.’”

Disarpomrep. —It is said that when the ‘first
_ Piece of soap was brought to the heathen on one of

the islands of the South Seas, its proud possessor
supposed it to be a large kind of seed and planted
it with great care. After the planting, a good heavy
rain soon fell to water it. The man that planted
the soap waited patiently for the soap-tree to ap-
pear, but at last he, like many a young gardener,
dug up the seed to sec how it was getting on. One
can imagine how disappointed he was.

Famine 1n Inpra.—Some districts in India
seem to be suffering again from, a severe famine.
Missionaries in those districts send touching ac-.
counts of the sufferings of the poor people. One of
them writes: “We are face to face with a gloomy
chapter in the history of India. The harvest is a
total loss in many places. Already now, in the
middle of the harvest, the prices are higher than
they were during the great famine of seven years
ago. ‘There will be much suffering and many
deaths.” Another missionary says: “First the rain
fell in torrents for many weeks, so that the rice
was drowned upon the flooded fields in many places.
Then the weather suddenly became clear, and from
a cloudless sky the burning Indian sun shone upon
the little seed which was left in the fields. Soon
the earth was baked and hardened, the plants were
burned, and the greater part of the expected har-
vest was destroyed. Since the extent of this failure
of the harvest is great, famine must follow.” An-
other missionary sorrowfully complains that with
the famine sickness is -increasing everywhere, and
that bands of robbers are beginning to steal and
plunder in the famine districts. Missionary Jeschke
writes: “The price of rice is so high that our native
Christians have had little to eat-during the rainy
season. Often I found the people sitting before
their door at mealtime, while the children were cry-
ing within the house. My anxious question, why
the children were crying, brought the answer, ‘We
have nothing to eat, and our children cry because
they are hungry.’ I have found people who had not
touched rice for weeks. They had been living on
leaves, roots, bulbs, young bamboo-shoots, and dif-
ferent kinds of fungi which they boil and, often
reluctantly, eat.” i

Ir you would be sayed, you must be so sure of
God’s Word, that if all men would say otherwise,
yea, every angel would say, No, you could stand up
alone and say: “I still know that this Word is
true.” — Lnther. :