The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1920, Page 84

Transcription machine transcription, uncorrected

⤓ Download .txt · copy text

84

The Lutheran Pioneer.

perate zone. Everything can be grown there pro-
ducible in the United States and many other things
besides. It has mineral resources that rival those
of our country; its coal and iron ore deposits are
seemingly inexhaustible.

But China is in the bondage of heathen darkness
and superstition. The hold superstition has upon
the Chinese is almost incredible. It controls the
practise of medicine and leads to the perpetuation
of awful tortures. It prevents the growth and

spread of knowledge and gives the most terrifying
explanations of simple phenomena of nature, and
leads the people to commit acts of unbelievable
cruelty.

Mission School in Hankow.

China needs: Christianity, that is the only up-
lifting power for its benighted millions. At present
there are 5,000 missionaries at work in this large
mass of people —about one to every 66,000 souls.

* * *

About one-fifth of the human race —or about
300,000,000 souls — dwells in the region between
the Himalayas and the equator, and between the
border of Persia and Siam. ‘This vast area contains
2,146,000 square miles (about three-fourths that of
the United States), with 163 persons to the square
mile as compared with 35 in our country.

Here, in what is known as India, lives an ancient
people that is very religious in the observance of the
ordinances and customs of its heathen religion.
A missionary one day saw a woman lying prostrate
~ on the ground; he saw her raise herself and put her

~

feet were her head had been, and prostrate herself
once more, and so she went on. He asked her what
she was doing, and she gave in answer one Indian
word, which means, “A vision of it.” He knew that
woman was going to travel miles and miles in this
way to see what she thought a sacred flame coming
from a mountain. Gross idolatry and superstition,
and the iron-bound law of caste or class distinction
—it is stated that there are-nearly two thousand
castes of Hindus, and over eighteen hundred divi-
sions in the Brahmin caste alone — are keeping this -
people enslaved. The Christian religion again is the
only force that can free the hearts and minds of
this people from the ignorance and servitude of
heathendom.
* * *

Japan, the so-called civilized country of Asia, is
another field that calls for thousands of Christian
workers. The people are literate and ftelligent.
Ninety-eight per cent. of Japanese children are in
national schools. Newspapers are plentiful. ‘Tokio
is one of the world’s greatest student centers. ‘The
products of Japan’s factories are marketed over the
whole world. Though alive in a material way, the
nation is spiritually dead. Buddhism and Shinto-
ism, the latter the state religion of Japan, are
heathen cults, strong in their opposition to Chris-
tianity. Again, the Word of Him, who is the Way,
the Truth, and the Life, is the only vitalizing power
that can raise the Japanese people out of the depths
of depravity and immoral degeneration.

es * *

Africa has heen called “the dark, sobbing con-
tinent.” Over its eleven million square miles, in
which the areas of Europe, India, China, and
Mexico could easily be engulfed, somewhere between
139 and 150 millions of ignorant, debased, and
savage people are scattered.

The forces of Islam, that is, the Mohammedan
religion, are especially active to educate the natives
to the worship of their God, and inculcate their re-
ligious principles. Africa has been stirred indus-
trially, politically, socially, and, to some extent, re-
ligiously, by the World War. <A million and more
sons of Africa served as soldiers, laborers, and car-
riers in the great conflict. They have brought home
to their fellow natives some knowledge as to the
rest of the world unknown to them. In many ways
Mohammedanism has’seized upon this fact and im-
proved its opportunities offered by the war to spread
its wares.