The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1917, Page 18

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18 The Lutheran Pioneer.

Athens, materialistic Corinth, and haughty Rome.
No truth so exactly suits the needs and supplies
the wants of all the children of Adam, of every
color, climate, and language, as the truth of Christ
Crucified. It suits the high and the low, the prince
and the pauper, the learned scholar and the illiterate
peasant. It supplies the wants of the Asiatic and
the African, of the American and the Malay. It
is fitted to release from the devil’s usurped power,
making them the free servants of Jesus, the mul-
titudes of India and the millions of China.

And shall we not bring to these countries and
continents the tidings of the uplifted Savior, that
He may draw them unto Himself? Behold how
their millions are now heedlessly, but surely march-
ing toward the hopeless grave, no star gleaming
overhead, no seraph beckoning .out of the gloom
beyond; going down to the pit, and no one to
rescue them. Have we no compassion for them,
no desire to tell them of Him who. would draw
them unto Himself with His everlasting arms of
love? O look at the heathen world with its misery!
Look at the dark places of the earth full of squalor
and degradation! ‘Look at the countries languish-
ing under the curse of Mohammed’s false religion!

‘Look at Abraham’s exiled children, nowhere -find-

ing rest for body or soul! Look at the notorious
impostures of Rome! Look at our own cities,
Christian in name, and see how thousands are
engulfed in the mire of sin! Look about you
everywhere, and learn how the spiritual wretched-
ness of natural man is crying and pleading for the
preaching of the uplifted and crucified Savior.
And can wé stand unmoved and see these mil-
lions of souls, immortal like our own, crushed by
the dominion of Satan and doomed to perdition,
and not bid them look upon Him who can save
them? Will we leave these millions perish just
for the lack of bringing them the tidings of the
Crucified One? Will we refuse to do this much
to save these numberless souls from death, and
gladden the heart that almost nineteen hundred

- years ago quivered for us and for these perishing ©
_ millions upon the point of a Roman spear? Nay,
nay; we will no longer be indifferent to the woes

of these poor, dying souls and to our Savior’s hun-

- ger for their salvation; we will bestir our Chris-

tian energies, and carry the Gospel far’and near

__ to the children of men; we will plant the cross of
_ Jesus in the midst of the fallen millions, and will
see them drawn unto Him, their Savior and their .

Lord! F. J. L.

American Lutheran Missions in the
United States.

Faith is an active principle. The individual
believer must work in the service of his Savior,
and so also the Church cannot be idle. Wherever,
therefore, we go, we find the Church of Christ at
work, abroad and at-home. Abroad it seeks to
bring to Christ the blind heathen, and at home it
strives to gather those who have not yet accepted
Christ into His fold. The frontier line is extended
farther and farther into the wilderness, and calls
for evangelists. Into our favored country has been
pouring for years a constant stream of immigrants
of different languages and customs, who stand in
need of spiritual care. Scattered throughout an
extensive region of the fair Southland are millions
of Negroes, whose condition and prospects consti-
tute a grave question. In our cities great masses
of people are crowded in the slums, — poor, igno-
rant, and. sinful. And all these conditions and
circumstances present problems that press for solu-
tion, problems which the Church is in duty bound
to help solve.

LUTHERAN MISSIONS AMONG THE INDIANS.

Our forefathers were brought face to face with
the American Indians as soon as they landed upon
the shores of the New World. What did they do
for their spiritual uplift? Our school histories
tell us of John Eliot, “the Apostle to the Indians,”
who began his work among the Indians near Rox-
bury, Mass., in 1646; and they also, in some in-
stances, speak of Thomas Mayhew, who some years
later worked among the Indians of Massachusetts.
But they ignore the fact that John Campanius,
a Lutheran missionary, began work among the
Indians of Delaware as early as 1643, and that
this same Lutheran missionary put Luther’s Small
Catechism into the-hands of ‘his dusky hearers
years before Eliot put the Bible into the hands
of the Indians of Massachusetts. _ ‘The first book
translated into any Indian tongue was Luther’s
Catechism. The Palatines, Lutherans that came
over in 1710 and later, turned their sympathetic
attention to the Indians living near their settle-
ments along the Mohawk, and also bestowed Spir-
itual care upon their Indian neighbors in Penn-
sylvania. To bring the Gospel to the Chippewa
Indians of Michigan, whole colonies of Lutherans
were settled near Saginaw about the middle of the

last century, and, despite the difficulties encountered,

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