The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1922, Page 76

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76

The Lutheran Pioneer.

of them are wild and dirty when they enter our
schools. The teacher has a task, indeed, to get them
under control.

And what do they learn in our mission-schools?
Reading, writing, arithmetic, and other things that
will be of service to them in life. Our schools have
the reputation of doing good work along these lines.
When our schools were under suspicion during the
World War, the Southern correspondent of a New
York paper was compelled to admit: “They have
done, first and last, no doubt, a very creditable
work.” Surely, when an opponent says this, it’ must
be true.

But the best thing which the children learn in
our schools is God’s Word, of which the apostle says
that it makes wise unto salvation and that it is
profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction,
for instruction in righteousness, that the man of
God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all
good works. It is only in very rare cases that
parents make the request that their children be ex-
cused from religious instruction. As a rule the
children gladly participate in the religious lessons.
. When the writer upon the occasion of -his official

visits asks the children what they think to be the
best thing that is taught in our schools, the answers
are: “The Catechism” — “Bible History” — “God’s
Word.” Only in one instance did a little fellow say,
“The Fu’st Readah.” ‘The teacher explained this
answer of the boy by telling me that the little chap
had just been transferred into the First Reader.
When I visited our mission-school in Plaquemine,
La., it had been in existence only four months.
Two boys carried my grip as we went to the station.
Our way led us past the Colored public school. It
was a neat building, while our mission-school had
its home in an ancient, dilapidated plantation house
on the edge of town. The public school had three
teachers, while our school had only one teacher for
a hundred pupils. And yet the boys said as they
passed the public school: “The Lutheran school is
the best in town; for there we learn God’s Word.”

Our schools are opened with song and prayer.
The children are brought up in the nurture and
admonition of the Lord by means of the Word of
God. And if one of our readers should wish to see
a school that is governed by good Christian dis-
cipline, he can find it by visiting, for example,
Teacher Seeberry’s room in St. Paul’s school at New
Orleans. The discipline and order that obtain in
our mission-schools have gone far to establish their
excellent reputation. Despite the tuition that we

charge in our schools many parents prefer to send
their children past the public schools to one of our
mission-schools.

Great is the blessing which these children bring
into the homes and to their families when they sing
our Lutheran hymns and recite their Catechism and
the Bible histories. It is in this way that many
a seed of the divine Word falls into the heart of
parents and other members of the family. The chil-
dren are obliged to learn the Catechism so that they
may repeat it correctly and smoothly. Of course,
new children will sometimes make mistakes. Thus
a good-sized boy repeated the explanation of the
First Article as follows: “I believe that God has
made me and all — preachers.” Some years ago

‘I met a child only seven years old in one of our

mission-schools in North Carolina who was able to
recite not only the Six Chief Parts, but the Chris-
tian Questions and Answers as well. Of course, they

also learn our beautiful Lutheran hymns and chorals, :

and when once they know them, they sing them
wherever they go, on the street, while at play, and
at work. It is by no means an uncommon occur-
rence to see a Lutheran bootblack come down the
street, singing songs like this: “Come, Follow Me,
the Savior Spake,” “We All Believe in One True
God,” “Abide, O Dearest Jesus, among Us with Thy
Grace.” It is well calculated to touch the heart, as
one sits on the porch of some North Carolina par-
sonage in the quiet dusk of the evening, to hear
coming out of the door of a lowly Negro cabin
standing on the edge of the pine forest, and then
softly stealing across the cotton-field, the beloved
strains of some familiar song of our childhood,

such as,
Now the light is gone away;
Savior, listen while I pray,
Asking Thee to watch and keep,
And to send me quiet sleep.

Not all the Negro children that attend our
schools join the Lutheran Church. But often the
seed that is sown sprouts and grows at some later
day. For several years a boy that had attended one
of our schools was lost sight of. When finally the
pastor again saw him, the former pupil was lying
upon his deathbed. “Pastor, my trust is all in my
Jesus,” said the sick boy. And the bright beam of
this hope soon after lightened his way into the
heavenly Paradise, where he now sees his Savior

‘face to face in bliss eternal and light unfading.

Teacher Meibohm, who has been leading hundreds
of Negro children for twenty-eight years to Jesus,
the children’s Friend, tells the following incident:

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