The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1910, Page 63

Transcription machine transcription, uncorrected

⤓ Download .txt · copy text

The Lutheran Pioneer. 63

Two Praying Friends.

It was a beautiful Sunday in the spring of 1812.
The preacher’s text was John 3, 16: “God so loved
the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, that
whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but
have everlasting life.” ‘Two young men heard this

sermon, the one the son of a farmer in the parish, _

the other the son of one of the villagers. They met
after the people were dismissed and were on their
way home.

“Did you feel anything particularly in the
church to-day?” said Alexander Patterson to his
acquaintance, Robert Edie, as they found themselves
alone upon the road. “I never,’ he went on, “till
to-day, when I was listening to that sermon, felt
myself a lost sinner to be saved by grace.”

“Tt is very strange,” said his companion, “it
was just the same with me.”

They were near a plantation, into which they
wandered, as they walked on talking. Hidden at
last from all human sight, it was proposed that
they should join in prayer. Screened by the open-
ing foliage, they knelt on the fresh green sod and
‘poured out in turn their prayers to God. Both
dated their conversion from that day.

Patterson went shortly afterwards to live several
miles away, but attended regularly the Sunday ser-
vices at his former home. His friend, Robert Edie,
generally went with him part of the way home.
About one hundred yards from the road along which
they traveled, in the thickly screened seclusion of
a close plantation, and under the shade of a branch-
ing fir tree, the two friends found a quiet retreat,
where, each returning Sunday evening, the eye that
seeth in secret looked down upon these two young
followers of Jesus upon their knees offering up their
prayers to the throne of grace. The practice was
kept up for years, till a private foot-path of their
own had been opened to the tree which had become
their meeting-place for prayer. And when, after
a long absence of about twenty years on the part
of both, they met again at the home of their youth,
they again visited the spot where they had so often
met for prayer, and there offered up their joint
thanksgiving to the merciful God who had kept
them by His grace and had honored each of them
with usefulness in the church. For both had be-
come laborers in the mission field and were a bless-
ing to many souls by their lives of devoted Christian
usefulness.

NOTES.

ContrRIBUTIONS FoR ForEIGN Missions. — It is
stated that nine-tenths of the contributions to for-
eign missions are given by one-tenth of the church
membership, while only one-half of the membership

gives anything at all for that purpose. The average.

amount given by each member is fifty cents per
year — only the seventh part of a cent per day for
the conversion of a thousand millions of heathen!
An average of five cents a week from every member
of the Protestant churches of the United States
would bring into the treasury during a single year
$16,500,000.

Every Creature. — The Gospel of Christ is to
be preached to every creature. Men are needed
because other men are dying without the Gospel.
When a volunteer missionary to Polynesia was told
of dangers to be met, he simply asked whether.
there were men there. ‘Yes,’ was the answer,
“horrible cannibals.” “That settles it,” said he;
“wherever there are men, there missionaries are
bound to go.”

A THANKFUL Convert. —One of the boys in

a missionary school in Africa asked his teacher —

recently if a letter was going to America soon —
“because,” he said, “we ought again to send thanks
to the Christians across the ocean for sending us
the Word of God.” He said it with his whole heart.
Such thankfulness is an added and seldom men-
tioned motive to missions.

BistE Worx.— The New York Bible Society
employs two missionaries, who every day are doing
their utmost to supply with Scriptures the incom-
ing thousands. Other missionaries, too, that are
laboring at Ellis Island, are furnished with Scrip-

tures free by this Society, and they supply immi- —

grants that the Bible Society missionaries may not
teach. The New York Bible Society is also dis-
tributing thousands of volumes of Scripture every
week among the sailors, and also among the poor
and unfortunate of that great city.

A Irrrie Grrv’s Grrr.—Little six-year-old
Grace Conklin of New York died a few weeks ago,

leaving her whole fortune, eighty-six copper cénts,.

to the Sunday school for mission purposes. She
gave all she had. “And a little child shall lead
them.”