The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1909, Page 85

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The Lutheran Pioneer.

85

Greenlanders; content with their blubber, they
eared for no paradise without it.” But the faith-
ful missionary, very often encouraged by his noble
wife, toiled on and continued to sow the good seed
of the Gospel, from which other missionaries were
permitted afterwards to reap a rich harvest of souls
for Christ.

Sometimes dreadful diseases, including small-
pox, raged among the natives. The missionary and
his wife would then give their time and strength
to nursing the sick. Their own little home was
crowded with the sufferers, and the care of the
children of the sick and the dead also came upon
them. Under these repeated strains the health of
the missionary’s wife broke, and in 1735 she was
taken from the land of snow to the beauties of her
heavenly home. The missionary’s health also began
to give way. So he left his son Paul to continue
the mission work in Greenland, whilst he took the
remains of his “dear Elizabeth,” and bore them
over the sea, and laid them to rest in the Lutheran
church at Copenhagen. In this city he passed the
remaining years of his life as the head of the col-
lege for training missionaries for his beloved Green-
landers. He passed to his heavenly rest in 1758,
at the age of 73.

In the history of missions no name shines
brighter than the name of that faithful Lutheran
missionary — Hans Egede, the Apostle of Green-
land.

‘That Is My Book.”

Many years ago, when Bibles were almost un-
known in Mexico, 2 man in Chihuahua in some
way obtained one. He read some of it, liked it,
and asked the village priest about it. Curiously
enough, the priest told him it was a good book and
well worth reading, so the man gave it to his little
gon to read. The boy, who had few books, read it
with delight, and in time came to know much of it
by heart. As he had never seen another Bible, he
believed his was the only one in the world. After
the death of his father, when he was about twelve
years old, he carried his beloved book to school one
day to show it to his teacher. To his surprise and
consternation, the master, throwing up his hands,
cried; “Ave Maria! Boy, where did you get that
wicked book? It is one of those accursed Protestant
books. Give it to me at once!”

--The boy begged for it-in-vain. -The teacher said
he would give the dreadful book to the priest. The

boy cried nearly all night for his lost book, and
went the next morning to the priest to beg for its
return. The priest told the boy the book had been
burned, and that to read such books meant excom-
munication from the Church.

This was enough for the boy. He cared noth-
ing for a church which would consider his precious
book a bad one, and thereafter he led a most reck-
less life.

Some years after he drifted to El Paso, and one
night accompanied a friend to some kind of a
gathering, he did not know, or care, what it
might be. He entered the place listlessly enough,
but there, on a platform, was a man reading from
a book. He listened a moment. It was his book!

Breaking away from his companion, who tried
to detain him, he rushed up to the pulpit and cried:
“Senor, have the kindness to give me back my book.
That is my book you are reading; they took it
away from me years ago, but it is mine. Please
give it back to me!”

The preacher, astonished, asked him to explain.
“Tt is mine, and I can prove it,” he cried, and be-
gan repeating parts he had committed to memory
years before, obviously believing that his was the
only book of its kind.

The result was that they gave him another copy
of his book, and it changed his whole life. He is
now an honored physician, member of an evan-
gelical church in the city of Chihuahua, and he
still believes there is no other book in the world
so good as his book. — Bible Society Record.

Why He Wanted a Christian Wife.

Some years before the Civil War a well-known
judge in one of the Southern states, speaking of -
his younger days, said that in those days he had
become skeptical, and that Mr. H——, whom he
revered almost as a father, but who was a con-
firmed free-thinker, though he had a Christian
wife, soon found him out and tried to fill his mind
with his own infidel notions. “But he charged me,”
said the judge, “not to let his wife know that he
was a free-thinker or that I was skeptical.” I asked
him why. To which he replied that if he were to
marry a hundred times he would marry only a
pious Christian woman. Again I asked why.

“Because,” he said, “if she is a Christian, it
makes her a better wife, a better mother, a better
mistress, and a better neighbor. If she is poor, it