The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1912, Page 51

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‘The Lutheran. Pioneer. 51

“My Money’s My Own.”’

This is what Columbus Closefist said when I
urged him to make a subscription to our new church.
He had said that so often in response to similar
applications that I thought I would try to reason
with him a little. So I said:

“By your money, you don’t mean, of course,
merely your cash on hand, but all your property,
your land, your crops, your stock, and so on, don’t
you?”

“Yes, of course; I call them money, because
they have a money value.”

“Very well; Jet us see. You call your land
your own. But how did it become so? Did you
make it?”

“No; but I came here in an early day. I found
it in woods and prairie, with springs of water. It
just suited me, so I ‘homesteaded’ it. I built a
cabin, broke up the prairie, cleared the forests, and
put in crops, and worked on for five years. ‘Then
I ‘proved up’ my claim in the land ‘office, and got
my title, and it’s just as good a title as anybody’s.”

“So you found the land all ready for the plow
with a deep, rich soil. But how did it come there?
Somebody must have made it.”

“Nobody had been there before me but Indians
and hunters. The prairie had not been cleared. It
was just as nature made it. And the springs had
not been opened. ‘They, too, were just as nature
made them.”

“O, then, it seems that somebody did prepare
that farm for you. You call that somebody nature;
but you know very well it was God. God made all
things. He made your farm. It was His before it
was yours. He worked there by what men call the
laws of nature to fix up that piece of land so that
it would be ready for you when you came. You
just took possession of God’s quarter-section, and
because you had worked on it five years after He
had worked on it many hundred times longer than
that, you ignore His title and call the land your
own.”

“Well, anyhow, the land was of no account until
it was broken up and cultivated. The Lord didn’t
grow any wheat or corn on it. I have made all the
- erops that have been raised on it.”

“How did you make those crops?”

“By hard work—head work and hand work
both. I tell you it takes brains as well as muscles
to make a good farm.”

“And where did you get the brains and the

muscles? Did you make yourself, or did God make
you? And if you had been born, as some are,
idiotic in mind and deformed in body, what could
you have done on this piece of land? God gave
you the intellect, the energy, and the splendid bodily
health which have enabled you to change this wil-
derness into one of the finest farms in the country.
So God has been a partner with you all these years.
He has kept your heart beating, and without it the
brain could not have planned or the hand have
toiled. And God has been giving you sunshine and
showers to help you make your crop. What could
you have done all these years without rain? Yet
you could not have made even a dewdrop. You
have, therefore, been dependent on the cooperation
of your heavenly Father for every dollar’s worth
of grain or fruit that you have taken from this
farm. He has given you the use of His capital
all along; and now what is His share of the profits?
He wants a house built over in W——, in order that
people may meet in it to worship Him. He sends
me to call on you to give Him a part of what is
His own. Whether you do or not, there will be
an accounting one of these days. At the end of
life you will find these one hundred and sixty acres,
with all their capabilities, charged against you. You
will find yourself debited with health, intellect, edu-
cation, rain, sunshine, and the manifold blessings
of Providence. What will you be able to offset these
charges with? What have you done for the Lord’s
poor, or for His Church? I tell you, Columbus,
you may cheat yourself with the idea that all you
hold with your miserly hands is your own, but you
can’t cheat the Lord. As He reckoned with His
servants in the parable of the talents, so He will
reckon with us all. We are not owners, but stewards,
and you had better begin now to give an account
of your stewardship.” — Sel.

The Power of Baptism.

In Baptism there is the power of the blood of
Christ which washes away the inward filth of the
heart and purifies it before God. - This is what
makes our baptism so precious and valuable, that
it is joined to and bound up with the blood of
Christ. ‘To be baptized into Christ by the water
means, therefore, to be washed and cleansed with
the blood of Christ. — Luther.

“Y¥; that love the Lord hate evil.”