The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1924, Page 71

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schools, and the like.

The Lutheran Pioneer. 71

when the annual mission-festivals are held every-
where.

WHERE can I read about our Negro Missions?

In the Pronger and in the Afissionslaube, as
well as in other papers published in the Synodical
Conference.

WHAT did many of us forget to do last year?

Many of us forgot to give to this important
cause. Did I?

WHEN should I give to the cause of our Negro
Missions ?

I should give through the regular collections in
church and in the missionary society and at the
mission-festivals.

WITERE can 1 hear more about our Negro
Missions ? : }

Ask your pastor to get one or more of the in-
teresting illustrated lectures published by the Board
and to be had free with lantern and slides by ad-
dressing Rev. Theo. I’.. Walther, 6402 Easton Ave.,
Sl. Louis, Mo. Or you might express the wish to
your pastor that he request one of the speakers at
the mission-festival to tell you about the work.

WHAT should I make up my mind to do in
the future?

To pray for the success of our laborers among
the Negroes, to remember this cause as liberally as
possible with my gifts, and to interest as many of
my fellow-Christians as I possibly can in the great
work of Negro Missions carried on by the Lutheran
Synodical Conference of North America.

WHAT is the annual budget required to carry
on this work? :

$175,000 for regular expenses every year, and,
besides, $150,000 to put up much-needed chapels,

. F.J.L.

Burning a God in China.

You know the people in China have a great
many gods. Some of them are images made of
clay, wood, stone, or some metal and are kept in
large, beautiful temples. But there is one, a paper

god, which we find in every home; and about this |

idol T want to tell you.

It is called the “kitchen god” and is only a rude,
bright-colored picture on coarse, thin paper, pasted
up on the wall, inside a little shrine. There is

always a shelf before it, with a pot of ashes stand-

ing upon it. The people do not pray to this god;

but they worship it by lighting little sticks of in-
cense and setting them up in the pot of ashes and,
while the incense is burning, getting down on their
hands and knees before the god and knocking their
heads on the ground two or three times. This they
generally do in the morning and evening; but in
some families they are very careless about it, and
sometimes for wecks-they do not worship at all.
But if any one in the family is taken sick, or if
any trouble comes, they are very apt to think it
is because they have neglected the “kitchen god,”
and so they begin to worship it again.

They think that this god watches over the
family, and that he sees and hears what they do
and say. ‘The strangest thing about it I have not
yet told you. Just before New Year there comes
a day when in every home the “kitchen god” is
taken down and burned up. The people say that
they send their god up to heaven to report what
they have done during the year. With him they
burn little pieces of brown paper, cut up to repre-
sent ladders, on which he is to go up. They know,
of course, that they have done a great many wrong
things which they do not want reported; so the
morning before the god is to be sent up, they bring
an offering of molasses candy, in balls, on a plate,
and set it before him, leaving it there all day. The
god cannot eat it, of course; but they say it is to
stick his lips together so that he cannot tell the
wrong things they have done. In the evening, after
they have burned him up, they eat the candy them-
selves. ‘Then, after a few days, they buy a new
god and put it up in the place of.the old one.

These poor, blind heathen-do not know of any
better way to get rid of their sins than this, because
no one has told them of Jesus, who died to save us
from our sins. —A/issionary Echoes.

The Chopped Bible.

A few years ago a Bible-distributor, while pass-
ing through a village in Western Massachusetts,
was told of a family in whose home there was not
even the cheapest copy of the Scriptures, so intense
was the hostility of the husband to Christianity.
The distributor started at once to visit the family,
and found the wife hanging out the week’s washing.
Tn the course of a pleasant conversation he offered
her.a neatly bound Bible. With a smile which said
«hank you,” she held out her hand, but instantly
withdrew it. She hesitated to accept the gift, know-