The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1925, Page 20

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20 : THE LUTHERAN PIONEER.

and from five hundred to fifteen hundred miles
wide would include only two or three missionaries.

“In Northern Brazil there are seven states, with
populations ranging from that of Maine to that of
New Jersey, with no foreign missionary. ... In
Colombia, which is larger than Germany, France,
Spain, and Italy together, there are only two or-
dained evangelical ministers to every million of its
population.

“In Ecuador there is practically no established
mission-work, and no evangelical church-building
has ever been erected in that country.

Besides these large unoccupied territories there
are smaller distinct geographical units just as com-
pletely without missionary service. Arabia has sev-
eral provinces, whose 3,000,000 people have no mis-
sionaries among them. In Syria there is an area
with over half a million inhabitants where no
missionary labors. Among the inhabitants of the
Sinaitic, Peninsula no missionary laborer is to be
found. And in the Malay Peninsula there are sev-
eral districts under British control among whose
million people there is, sad to say, not one Christian
missionary.

Native Stone Houses

“There are eight ordained missionaries in Ven-
ezuela, trying to serve a population of three million.
To educate the eighty-five per cent. of her popula-
tion who cannot read and write, there are two little
primary schools with a small enrolment. In the,
whole history of this republic only one building has
ever been erected for school purposes by either
-church or state, and that was a military academy.”

In the northern part of Peru, a territory as
large as'that of our thirteen original States, there
is not a single evangelical missionary! In this
same republic there are ten provinces, each larger
than Holland, where no evangelical work is done.
The state of Paraguay received its first missionaries
only a few years ago. ah

in Unoccupied Syria.

Besides these wholly unoccupied fields with
their total population of far over a hundred million
people, there are unoccupied areas, in fields in-
cluded within the scheme of existing missionary
operations, that are of even greater importance.
Because these sections lie within some sphere of
missionary influence or adjacent to some occupied
territory, it is often thought that they are being
cared for, when in fact they are as destitute of all
Gospel light as are those large territories of un-
occupied territory that we have spoken of above.
And if a careful survey of these sections should be
made, it is quite certain that their population would
at least equal that of the unoccupied areas already
considered. F.J.L.

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