The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1920, Page 68

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68 , The Lutheran Pioneer.

Lutheran Missions in New Guinea
Threatened.

~ Concerning the Lutheran Mission in New
Guinea the disquieting rumor is afloat that our
Federal Government contemplates deporting from
New Guinea all Lutheran missionaries working
among the natives. What such action would mean
to that mission and to all concerned in its welfare,
will be readily realized by all who are conversant

qualify for active service in that mission, untold
harm would have been done. ‘The only other alter-
native presenting itself to our mind at present
would be that this Lutheran mission would pass
into non-Lutheran hands, and would thus cease to
exist as a Lutheran mission.

Surely no imaginable consideration could pos-
sibly justify an action on the part of our authorities
so utterly foreign to our Australian ideals of re-
ligious liberty and our democratic institutions. It

A Native New Guinea Village.

with the requirements of such undertakings. Not
only would the missionaries be prevented from con-
tinuing their noble work among people whom by
God’s grace they gathered from cannibalism and
darkest heathendom into the fold of the Good Shep-
herd, but the very mission itself would also, per-
haps, be doomed to utter ruin. Even if Lutheran
pastors born under the British flag were available
in sufficient number and would receive permission
to continue the work, their ignorance of the native
language employed in the mission would prove a
well-nigh insurmountable obstacle in the pathway

of successful work, and before these men could

se ms inconceivable that our Government in times
of peace could become so utterly forgetful of these
high ideals and institutions as to ruthlessly destroy
what the Spirit of God through Christian love and
great sacrifice and patient and painstaking efforts
on the part of the mission-workers has brought into
existence. If such a thing could become possible
in New Guinea under Australian rule, it might also
soon become possible in Australia proper. Let us
hope that the rumor reported may prove to have
been but an idle one.

In the mean time, however, it behooves us as
children of God to raise our hearts and hands in fer-