The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1912, Page 44

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The eetherert Pioneer.

‘“‘Ambassadors for Christ.’’

The minister of Jesus, I

On His sweet errands go,

To stand for Him -who rules the sky,
In earthly courts below.

How wondrous, Lord, that I should be
A messenger of Thine,

Exalted to this high degree

And Jesus’ business mine!

That dearest soul-restoring name,
Till life’s late sun is set,

Let me to all the world proclaim
And dying sing it yet, —

Till, knowing all as I am known,

I praise the Savior more,
Triumphant there before His throne

When this brief toil is o’er.
Ernest A. Ball.

Out of the Mouth of Babes.

A rich peasant would always remember the poor
heathen in his prayers, and pray God to help them
and bring them to the knowledge of Jesus that
they might be saved. But when a collection was
taken up for the mission cause, he usually excused
himself by saying that he had no money.

One evening he had again prayed for the poor
heathen. After the evening prayer his little boy
said, “Papa, I wish your money and your wheat
were mine.” ;

“What would you do with it, my boy?” asked
the father.

“T would answer your prayer,” replied the child,
“and give money for the poor heathen that they
also may get to heaven.”

Faithful unto Death.

In the year of the Boxer outbreak in China,
some 30,000 native Christians suffered martyrdom
rather than deny their Lord. Mrs. Chang, a gradu-
ate of the London Missionary Society School, was
driven out into the streets of Pekin with her little
babe and her blind mother. ‘They were separated,
and the old blind mother was lost. A-Boxer seized
Mrs. Chang and her baby, and brought them before
a Boxer judge.
slippery with the blood of Christians already slain.
The mother clasped her babe to her breast and
prayed: “O Lord, give me courage to witness
bravely for Thee until the end!”

The place where she stood was ~

The magistrate asked her, “Are you a Chris-
tian ?”

“Yes,” she replied.

He gave her a stick of incense, saying, “Burn
this, and your life shall be spared.”

“Never!” she replied.

“Kill her!” cried the magistrate.

But she calmly said, “My body you can kill,
and it will be scattered on the ground like these,”
pointing to portions of dead bodies about her, “but
my soul will go to be with Jesus,” and so saying,
she died and was “absent from the body, but present
with the Lord.”

The heathen Chinese were much impressed by
the faithfulness of the Christians during the per-
secution. A missionary reports that before the
Boxer massacres the native Christians of China
were charged by their heathen neighbors with being
“rice Christians” — converts “for what they could
get out of it.” But after thousands of them laid
down their lives for Christ, that baseless charge
was no more heard.

ee

Give Christ the Best.

Many years ago, a wealthy lady went to a meat
market in down-town Jersey City to buy provisions
to be sent to certain poor families, by way of char-
ity. Perhaps she did not know the character of
the man she dealt with, for she took pains to in-
struct him that he was “not to send poor meat.”
The honest Christian man, perhaps feeling the re-
flection, said, “I never give bones to my Savior. We

- must give Christ the best.”

The lady never forgot the words of the Chris-
tian butcher. When professed Christians did as
little as possible for the spread of Christ’s kingdom,
it seemed to her that they were giving “bones” to
their Savior, and she would say, “Give Christ the
best !””

And is our best too much? O friends, let us
remember:

How once our Lord poured out His soul for us,

And out of love for us poor, sinful creatures

Gave up His precious life upon the cross;

The Lord of lords, by whom the worlds were made,

Through bitter grief and tears gave us

The best He had.

“Ir is more difficult to pray for missions than
to give to them; but prayer without giving is in-
sincere.”