The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1919, Page 15

Transcription machine transcription, uncorrected

⤓ Download .txt · copy text

Respectfully yours, Mrs. P. H. Weaver.”

— —
ES

The Lutheran Pioneer.

15

their part. The program began at 5 o’clock. Christ-
mas-carols were sung, and the Christmas-recitations
showed that the little ones had been carefully
trained. The ‘reading’ from memory of the story
of the Savior’s nativity, Luke 2, by the tiny tots
from four to seven years of age showed that the
children were being trained in a very religious
atmosphere. HEvery one present voted the exercises

the best that had ever been heard in this part of

Atlanta. ... We hope that Rev. and Mrs. Alston
will be at home in ‘Pittsburg’ for years to come.
Bele:

News from the Maori Mission of Our
Church in New Zealand.

Rey. Appelt, who is so kindly writing a series
of articles for the PionnEr on the Maoris of New
Zealand, sends us the following items concerning
our own mission among this interesting people: —

' The weather was very bad last fall in New Zea-
land, which had its effect on the attendance at divine
services, conducted by Missionary Te Punga. The
missionary is conducting a Sunday-school, which is

-~regularly attended by 10 children, one of whom is

being prepared for Confirmation.

The missionary has received notice that the house
in which he has been living is to be sold, and that
he will have to move out one week after the sale

has been effected. As it is impossible to rent a house

~

for the missionary in Wellington, the missionary
authorities will be obliged to build. This will re-
quire at least $2,500; but, sad to say, the treasury
is in a much depleted state at present, and it will
require strenuous efforts to gather the necessary
funds.

Rey. Appelt writes that the mission is in constant
need of our prayers. He says: “Whenever there is
need to call upon the Lord in the day of our mis-
sion’s trouble, there is no time to let our friends in
far-off America know of it; before they can get
the news, the trouble is ended one way or the other.
Therefore we implore you, for the love of the Savior,
to remember our Maori Mission and its missionary
every day in your prayers. Then your intercessions
will always be timely.”

The influenza epidemic is most serious in New
Zealand. Rev. Te Punga writes concerning it that
the people in Wellington are dying like flies, and
that the Maoris are being afflicted with it very
severely. Rev. Te Punga, his wife, and child were
also victims of the plague. F.J.L.

What Christianity Did for Melanesian
Savages.

Sixty years ago the Melanesian Mission found
the islanders of that great archipelago typical hea-
then savages. I will say nothing of many ugly
aspects of savage life, which we are apt to overlook,
while we dwell rather on what we conceive to be
its romantic and picturesque sides. I will speak
only of two dominant influences, which darkened
their whole existence, each in turn giving fresh
strength to the other—nhatred and fear. Hvyery
island, every clan, every village, lived in perpetual
war with its neighbor. Within the compass of one
small island there would be two or three tribes
speaking different tongues, and holding no inter-
course except the intercourse of rapine and murder.
And what stood to them in the place of religion
was abject fear —fear of malignant spirits, fear
of witcheraft. The reef where they fished was
haunted by other ghostly fishers whose quarry was
men’s lives; the forest was full of demons waiting to
catch the unwary traveler; the night was possessed
with the horror of great darkness. And ever about
their path and about their bed was the fear of magic
that could kill them in torments, and does still kill
the heathen islanders. Under the shadow of their
hideous legends and fancies strong men suffered the
miseries of a neryous child with a cruel and super-
stitious nurse. From these two plagues Christianity
has delivered them; it has taught them that all
men are brethren, and saved them from the curse
of unreasoning hatred; it has lifted the cloud of
fear from their lives—the fear of darkness, the
fear of magic, and the panic cruelty that often
goes with that fear. And it would be perversely
false to say that this has come to them by mere
contact with European civilization, when we remem-
ber what the coming of the white man without
religion has meant to the native races of the Pacific.
Surely it is little wonder that the ery for Christian
teachers goes up from all the islands.— From Peile’s
Reproach of the Gospel, Bampton Lectures for 1907.

Providential Meeting in South Africa.

A short time ago we read the following re-
markable story : —

Barnabas Shaw, a missionary, being forbidden
to preach the Gospel in Cape Town, South Africa,
bought a yoke of oxen and a cart, loaded his wife