The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1909, Page 84

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.84

The Lutheran Pioneer.

.- Hans Egede, the Apostle of Greenland.

Our pictures take us to a far northern country
called Greenland, the land of ice and snow, where
the Eskimos live, up towards the North Pole.

Hans Egede, the Apostle of Greenland.

Hans Egede is called the “Apostle of Green-
land” because he was the first to bring the Gospel
to the heathen Eskimos in that distant land. He
was the beloved pastor of a Lutheran church in-a
village of Norway, when he one day
read in an old book about a distant

lodge; thy people shall ‘be my people, and thy
God my God.”

In the spring of 1721 the ship that was to take
the missionary and his family cast anchor in the
bay. Sad were those days of leave-taking. Groups
of tearful men and women stood by the parsonage
doors, and the pastor’s wife had to encourage her
husband with the words of the Savior: ‘“Whoso
loveth father or wife or children, friend or brother,
more than me is not worthy of me.”

When Egede stepped upon the plank of the
ship, a sailor said, “May I ask whither you sail?”

“To Greenland,” was the answer.

“Then, in God’s name,” said the sailor, “stay
at home; cannibals live there. Do not give your
wife and children a prey to those wild heathen.”

The pastor looked sad, and his people, who
loved him dearly, shouted, “Stay with us! It is
God’s will!” But the pastor’s wife stepped boldly
forward, and laying her hand on her husband’s
arm, said, “If God be for us, who can be against
us? Do you not hear the prayers and sighs of the
heathen in Greenland? ‘You know that the need
there is great. Dear husband, in the name of God,
we must go!”

They did go. And for many years their faith
was sorely tried by many disappointments and suf-
ferings and privations in their new home amid the
dreary snow-plains and icy mountains of that cold
country; but they bore it all and patiently labored
on for the good of the people whom they had come

land which had been discovered by
Norwegians in the latter part of the
tenth century. It was a land of
snow hemmed in by seas and ice-..
bergs. And there was no Gospel
there! . This came to the village
pastor as a call “from. Greenland’s
icy mountains.” He longed to bring
the Gospel ‘message to those poor
people in that distant land. His
wife at first used every plea to keep
him at home. When, however, she
plainly saw. that it was God’s will
that her husband should go as mis-
sionary. to Greenland, her heroic
faith, proved ; itself stronger than her woman’s fears.
“Dear husband, » she said, “since the Lord calls,
I will no longer hold thee, but I will say, ‘Whither
thou goest I will go; and where thou lodgest I will

Eskimo Family in Greenland.

to bless mh the- Gospel. "They saw. but little fruit
of their hard mission work. The people at first
avoided them;. nor for. seventeen years was there
much of Christian life. “A stolid-race were. those