The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1920, Sheet 87

Transcription machine transcription, uncorrected

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The Lutheran Pioneer.

Aggressive missionary work is necessary if Chris-
tianity is not to be driven from the field. Africa
needs the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It alone can
transform the African’s moral nature, set his feet
upon the rock of truth, and regenerate him into
a child of God.

It has been computed that the population of the
entire world —1,600,000,000—could live within the
area of South America without being unduly
crowded. It has the largest stretch of undeveloped
fertile land in the world. TEducation and the truths
of the Christian religion are the crying needs of the
South American countries. Latin America is al-

ga iy ST
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Christ or Buddha?

Jt is morning in India — twenty-five hundred
years ago —a bright, beautiful, Oriental morning.
The shadows are slipping into the caverns of the
mountains, like some dark spirit of the night,
ashamed to be seen in the glorious light of the morn-
ing sun. ‘The far-stretching plains are covered with
flowers and dotted with cities older than history,
with temples dedicated to many gods, lifting their
tall spires heavenward, as though searching for some
ray of light that would dispel the darkness of hea-
thenism. Beautiful, beautiful India, surely the gods

Village School in India.

most as illiterate as India. The entire group of her
twenty republics spends for education of all kinds
only as much as New York City annually spends on
its schools. The city of Brooklyn has as many
churches as are to be found in the whole of Argen-
tina — Protestant, and Roman Catholic combined.
But a small portion of South America’s 85,000,000
inhabitants knows the way of salvation.
BEG * *

The above survey plainly shows that the Chris-
tian Church has a great deal of work to do. What
ig being done in missionary activity is making but
small inroads into the vast kingdom of Satan. Let
our earnest prayer be: “Thy kingdom come.”

St. Paul’s Parish Paper, Indianapolis, Ind.

have smiled upon thee, and thou hast rightly been
called “The Gem of the Orient.”

Now the stillness of the morning air is broken
by the sound of voices. Coming around the moun-
tain-side we behold a company of men clad in the
bright costume of the Orient. They are walking
slowly and chanting in a low, musical voice, “All
praise be given unto the ‘great spirit of life,’ who
has kissed India with the brightness of his presence ©
and sent to-us Buddha, the son of his own heart, to
be our prophet and priest.” Buddha walks in their
midst, slightly taller than they, dressed in a robe
of spotless white, richly embroidered with gold and
silver. He alone is silent. His hands are crossed
over his bosom, his head bent as though in medita-