The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1922, Sheet 67

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The Lutheran Aioneer.

A MISSIONARY MONTHLY.

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PuBLISHED BY THE EVANGELICAL LutimeRAN SynopicaL CoNFERENCE oF NortH AMERICA.

REV. F. J. LANKENAUD, EDITOR,

Published monthly by Concordia Publishing House, St. Louls, Mo. Subscription price, 50 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 1103, Act of October 3, 1917, authorized on July 5, 1918,

Vol. XLIV.

ST. LOUIS, MO., SEPTEMBER, 1922.

No. 9.

OUR MONTHLY MISSIONARY MOTTO.
‘‘While we are lingering and delaying, souls are perishing.’’

The Heathen Have My Sympathy.

(A translation of the song: “Die armen Heiden jammern
mich,”’)

The heathen have my sympathy;
How deep their woe and sin!

O God, behold their misery!
Their soul is dead within.

They worship idols deaf and blind,
They bow to wood and stone,

Not knowing in their darkened mind
That Thou art God alone.

Nor do they know the Lamb that bore
Our burden lest we die;

Their heart is wretched to the core,
Beneath a curse they lie.

O Father, full of love and pow’r,

Thy mercy we implore.

When strikes the heathen’s happy hour?
When will their night be o’er?

Aloud their sorrows to Thee cry,
And we, Thy children, plead,
Release them soon and let them fly
To Christ, the Friend in need.

They, too, are His possessions dear,
Redeemed upon the tree;

O give them to Thy Son, and hear
Our prayers most graciously.

Then will they praise Thee evermore

On earth, and there on high

With ‘all Thy saints Thy name adore
Where we shall never die. H. OsTernus.

From Out the Depths.

Up from the cotton- and corn-fields of the South,
from the miserable hovels of the towns, from the
back alleys and slums of the merciless cities, there
comes a moaning and groaning, a sighing and bitter
weeping. These sounds of sorrow, borne on the
wings of the evening breeze, rise and swell to a
wailing crescendo and then sink to a quavering
diminuendo and are like unto the groans of travail
coming from the bowels of some giant organ giving
birth to a discordant dirge. Shrieks and sighs, be-
gotten of agony and sorrow and flung aloft, are
freighted by the perfumed evening zephyrs to the
distant hills where they eddy and die midst the
silence of a thousand pines, standing like Titan sen-
tinels in the golden light of a high-hung moon.
Die? No, they do not die, but out there among the
silent hills these sighs and groans, these wails and
shrieks, children of sorrow all, take the form and
fashion of a man. And like a spectre of the night
this scion of melancholy sound stands outlined
against the star-studded sky.. A ragged mantle is
drawn about his naked shoulders, and the friendly
shadows of the pines seek to cover his bare feet,
while the moon-beams play full upon his upturned
face. In the eyes of this phantomlike son of sorrow
there is a look of ever-present fear, while upon his
dusky face are stamped doubt and uncertainty.

For a moment this dusky figure stands outlined