The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1920, Page 47

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The Lutheran Pioneer. |

47

course in some parts of China that funerals are
seldom held. The little bodies are simply tossed
into the scavengers’ carts as they pass through the
streets. — When the Korean baby has sore eyes,
they often are pierced with a knitting needle, let-
ting out the infant’s sight with the “evil spirit.” —
Before the days of the medical missionary, no
father in Siam counted his children until they had
survived the smallpox. — A little pack is tied to
the back of every Indian child in some parts of
South America. As he grows older, the pack is
increased in weight to train him for his only pos-
sible career, that of a beast of burden. — The widow
in India may be blamed by her husband’s family
for his death. _ Only recently has she been permitted
by law to marry again. — China has child brides of
eight or nine years of age. Some of them are mar-
ried to men of fifty, some to babes in arms, to
whom they are obliged to act as nurse-maids.—The
average age of marriage of girls in Africa is from
ten to fifteen years, and they are mothers at an
age when American girls are entering high school.

Never Saw A Muyisver. — A “fifteen-year-old
boy living not far from a town in a central Oregon
county, recently told a man with whom he engaged
in conversation that he had never seen a minister.
Such instances are said to be not seldom in some
of our Western States. FJ. 1.

Cuance or Appress: Rev. C. F. Drewes, 3723
Vista Place, Pine Lawn Branch, St. Louis, Mo.

Great Changes.

Great changes have been wrought in the heathen
world... A hundred years ago the missionary found
it very difficult to gain access to the people. But
to-day walls that seemed impregnable have crum-
bled; and doors that were barred for centuries now
open of their own accord. At the beginning of the
last century there was not a single Protestant Chris-
tian in China or Japan, and very few in India. Mor-
rison began his work in China in 1807. At the end
of thirty-five years of hard work there were only
six converts, and even after fifty years of arduous
labor there were less than fifty members. To-day
China has two hundred fifty thousand Protestant
Christians. It is only thirty-three years ago that
the first baptism took place i in Korea, and now there

_ are over three hundred thousand Christians in that
country. Forty years ago there were warnings

!
posted up in Japan against Christianity, and those
that embraced the Christian religion were threat-
ened with death, now there are thousands of Chris-
tians in that country.

The facilities for spreading the Gospel-message
have also wonderfully increased. Up to a short
time ago the foreign missionary had to do most of
his traveling on foot, and he felt quite lucky when
he was able to use a horse or a sail-boat. But to-day -
the locomotive and the steamboat are put into the
service of the Gospel, carrying the missionaries to
their fields of labor and affording them means of
rapid transit on their fields. Ziegenbalg and Pluet-
schau, the very first Protestant foreign missionaries,
were seven months on fhe way to India, and it took
Morrison almost as long to get to China. Now
a month will take a missionary from Europe to
India by water, and in normal times the: journey
is made overland from London to Peking in twelve
and one-half days. -

The modern steamboat can traverse the Pacific ~
to-day in less time than it took the Greeks to sail
the length of the Mediterranean. ‘The slow and
lumbering vessels of Paul’s day have been super-
seded by great palatial steamers, and the slow and
indolent ass and uncomfortable camel have been
replaced by luxurious trains, that thread their way
into all parts of almost every country. F. J. L.

A Sample of Heathenism.

A missionary reports the following experience:
“Not long ago, one morning, hearing a great com-
motion, shouting, weeping, and cursing, I went to
the compound wall, where I saw a man seated, or
rather being propped up. on the veranda floor of
a large nearby house. A large group of Hindus
was about him. ‘The man was very ill, suffering
from pneumonia brought on by an attack of in-
fluenza. Ie was delirious, so could not give reason-
able answers to the questions asked him. Instead
of treating him as a patient, they had pulled him
outside the house and were beating and abusing
him, as though he were a thief.

“They said that the reason for his sickness was
that he had an evil spirit in him, and that he would
die unless the demon would be remoyed. A witch-
doctor was superintending the operations, seeing to
it that nothing interfered with the process of ex-
tracting the evil spirit. They seated an old woman
in front of the sick man, and tried by all kinds of