The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1919, Page 81

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Che Lutheran Pioneer.

A. MISSIONARY MONTHLY.

PUBLISHED BY THE HvANGELICAL LuTHERAN SynopIcaAL ConFERENCE or NortaH AMERICA.

= : REv. F. J. LANKENAUD, EDITOR,

Published monthly by Concordia Publishing House, St. Louis, Mo.

Subscription price, 25 cts. per annum, payable strictly in advance.

Entered as second-class matter at the Post Office at St. Louis, Mo., under the Act of March 3, 1879.
Acceptance for mailing at special rate of postage provided for in section 1108, Act of October 8, 1917, authorized on July 5, 1918,

Vol. XLI.

ST. LOUIS, MO., NOVEMBER, 1919.

No. 11.

How Dear the Stories Are and Sweet!

How dear the stories are and sweet
That tell how Jesus lived and died!
They cause our hearts with joy to beat
If they are properly applied.

They are like meadows fresh and green
On which our Shepherd leads His fold.
Oh, never may the day be seen

When we forget these stories old!

God’s Spirit, come into our breast,
Teach us these sacred stories well,
And grant us loving zeal and zest
To rescue souls from gloom and hell.
H, OstERHUs.

a

The World’s Greatest Business.

Which is the world’s greatest business? Is it
oil? Or is it steel? No; bigger than the business
in oil or steel is the business of Christianizing
the world.

‘As is the case in every other business, it was
slow work till the present dimensions were reached.
How long was Hans Hgede obliged to work without
seeing any results! Captain Gardiner worked night
and day in Natal for three years without gaining
a single convert. It took fifteen years to gain the
first Zulu, and twenty years before results could be
reported in Mongolia. It is said that Carey worked
seven years in India before he made his first convert,
and that the result of the first fifty years of arduous
work in China brought a reward of only fifty con-
verts. Some one has computed that it took ninety
years to win the first million converts throughout
the whole world, twenty-three years to gain the
second million, but that now a million conyerts are
added every twelve years.

An army of fifty thousand missionaries is em-
ployed, and the sum annually expended to carry
on this great missionary business of the Church
amounts to almost $100,000,000! Just in passing
we will say that this great business is carried on
with a less “overhead” or administration expense
than most other enterprises. The average expense
for administration (in other words, for getting it
to the various mission-fields to do the work for which
it has been contributed) is only about eight per cent.
It is with a feeling of just pride that we may add
that our boards do even better.

Besides preaching the everlasting Gospel, foreign
missions conduct thirty thousand schools, in which
more than one and a half million students and
pupils are being instructed at the present time, and
they give four million medical treatments every
year.

But despite the greatness of the figures on the
right side of the ledger, the figures on the other
side are immeasurably greater. In spite of the
stupendous progress that the missionary enterprise
has made, there are still three heathen to each
nominal Christian. Three out of every four human
beings on the face of the globe are not living in
the sunshine of the blessed Gospel of Christ, and
are also deprived of that education and knowledge
of hygiene, sanitation, and medicine which follows
Christianity wherever it goes.

Christianizing the world is without a doubt the
world’s biggest business; but as long as the people
of America spend as much a year for candy as they
do for foreign missions, and a billion dollars more
for tobacco, we are not giving this business the
support it must have if it is to win the world.

F.J. 1,