The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1915, Page 68

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68

The Lutheran Pioneer.

to his message, because he was a white man. Some
told him that they would rather go to hell than
to heaven, if they could thus escape the hated
presence of the white man. ‘hough freed, they
were still slaves in more than one sense. Many of
them sold or threw away the clothing that had
been given them, and some spent their first earnings
in buying slaves for themselves, whom they treated
as cruelly as ever they had been treated. Jansen’s
first Sunday service was attended by nine natives,
and these were practically nude.

laborers were sealed in death, he continued to tell
his simple story of Jesus.

In 1819, after three years of faithful labor, he
was compelled to go to England because of his
wife’s serious illness, but when he departed, he left
behind him a model community, a Christian people
living in decent homes, and a house of worship
holding 1,300 persons, and, what is more, over-
flowing with regular attendants at three services
every Sunday. His week-day services were attended
by from 500 to 900 hearers.

Catechumens of Grace Mission, St. Louis, Mo., Confirmed, and Children Baptized, by Rev. G. A. Schmidt, July 11, 1915.

But Jansen was not discouraged. Though they
repelled his kindness, he patiently showed them his
love and sympathy, and daily divided out among
them their allowance of rice provided by the govern-
ment. And finally he succeeded in gaining their
confidence. Gradually his cottage grew too small

_to hold the people that came to hear him, and he
was compelled to proclaim his message in the open.
His school also was crowded with pupils eager to
learn, and in less than twelve months many were
so far advanced that they could read the Bible.
Though always contending with the weakening
attacks of tropical fever, Jansen kept on with his
unselfish work. ‘Though the lips of his fellow-

So wonderful had been the transformation
wrought during the three years of Jansen’s labors
that even the local British government officials, in
their report to the home government, contrasted
the former state of the people, with their “groveling
and malignant superstitions, their greegrees, their
red water, their witchcraft, their devil-houses,” with
their state after Jansen’s labors, of three years, and
were obliged to confess, “The hand of Heaven is
in this!” They called it “a miracle of good which
the immediate interposition of the Almighty alone
could have wrought.” ‘And then they add, “What
greater blessing could man or nation desire or enjoy
than to have been made the instrument of con-