The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1913, Page 66

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66

The Gospel Is for All.

e have not a few Christians to-day who find
it very hard to believe that the Gospel can be of any
good to anybody but their own race and nation-
ality. It is a prejudice just like that which the
Jewish Christians showed towards the Gentiles in
the early Church. ‘True Christianity, however,
makes its followers realize that all men are sinners
for whom Christ died, that Christ meant exactly
what He said when He told His followers to bring
the Gospel to all nations, and that the most de-
graded nations and races have in her the making
of saints and apostles.

A former missionary to Africa relates: “When
1 was going to East Africa in 1861, a great number
said to me, ‘It is no use. The Africans cannot be
converted. ‘They haven't mind enough to under-
stand the Gospel, and they have no moral con-
sciousness.’ I went; and I returned to these men,
and.~assured them that there was no lack of in-
tellectual power in the African. Let him stand
upon his own feet; he stands as high as we do.”

Another missionary tells of one of these de-
spised African converts, ‘'homas, who became a
good preacher, but -gave back his salary that he
might support another preacher. One day a Chris-
tian was poisoned by a heathen on account of his
religion, and died. The murderer was condemned
to death. Thomas could not sleep for thinking of
the miserable wretch, and went several miles in
the black night through a way full of perils to tell
the condemned man about Jesus. ‘This he did with
so much love and power that the murderer was con-
yerted.. Such instances abound, and they should
convince every Christian of the value of missions.

Missions have time and again proved that the
Gospel of Christ is perfectly adapted to all men.
There never was a finer example of a Christian
ruler than Khama, king of the South African
Rangangwatos. The noble army of martyrs enrolls
no more glorious names than those of Chinese
Christians who perished in the Boxer massacres,
or the Armenian Christians murdered by the Kurds
and Turks. Who among the most favored sons and
daughters of the Church have done a work more
noble than that of Neesima the Japanese or Rama-
bai the Hindu?

~ “TI; becometh us to work. ‘The motives to it
are ample and urgent. ‘The wicked work for their
ill ends, and shall we be.less in earnest?”

Tne Lutheran Pioneer.

A Blessing in Disguise.

We all agree that the rain is a blessing to
nature. But does not the rain hide the sun and
make the world dark and gloomy? Does it not
soften the highways and make traveling difficult?
Does it not sometimes flood the valleys and become
the cause of great damage to life and property?
Does it not beat into the traveler's eyes, drench his
clothes, chill him to the bone, and make him gen-
erally uncomfortable? It does all that indeed, and
yet we maintain that the rain is a blessing; why,
there is no question about it at all! i

Let every Christian think of the rain when
troubles are multiplying over his head. Apparently
the sun of God’s love and mercy has lost its power
and has disappeared behind the gloomy pall of
misfortune. The way to life is seemingly bared of
its former attractiveness, its steep ascents and tor-
tuous windings discourage and tire, the wanderer
grows weary, his head is bowed low, a blighting
chill settles down upon his heart, progress is difli-
cult and slow. Also, sometimes the laboring step
seems to have: lost its footing completely, all sense
of security and steadiness has gone; one begins to
drift in the current of a flood that rushes to
despair.

Truly,- troubles are all loss and no gain, — oh,
that the sun might ever shine, and that it never
rained !

Ah! well, yes; that was said a-little hastily;
we don’t mean it quite that way. Let us stop and
think. — Has not trouble always purified the gen-
eral atmosphere of our lives? Yes, it has, and,
what with the germs of worldliness and temptation
circulating about us, poisoning the air we move
in, and impairing our spiritual health, the atmos-
phere within and around us is often very much in
need of purification. And has not trouble often-
times cooled down and sobered a temper grown
dangerously insolent and overbearing with pride
and self-conceit? Indeed, yes; and wasn’t that
just what we needed? And was there ever a time
when the knowledge of our own unworthiness was
clearer, when we realized our own insignificance
more fully, when the question of how to be saved
was more pressing, than the time of. trouble? And
when do the precious promises of God sound
sweeter to our ears, when do we pray with greater
earnestness, when, indeed, is God nearer to us than
when misfortunes have come over us? And is
theré anything that better invigorates and fructifies