The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1925, Page 37

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THE LUTHERAN PIONEER.

37

Sel ee ee —————

tinent is pretty well provided for, though even here

there are great stretches of country filled with a |

large native population for which little or no Chris-
tian work is done. ‘Though about 95 per cent. of
the people of Africa are under the political control
of nominally Christian countries, only 10 per cent.
of the native population are reached by the Word
of God! It is about two hundred years ago since
the first missionary, the German George Schmidt,
landed in South Africa; but though many have
followed him, the progress of missionary effort has
been far outstripped by the progress of commerce.
In all Central Africa less than six million natives
have been touched in any way by evangelical mis-
sions. Western commerce has brought much good
into Africa, but also much that is evil. Commer-
cialized prostitution, one of these imported evils, is
a greater vice than the curse of polygamy which it
has replaced. And prostitution has brought with
it its inevitable penalty in the way of disease. In
North Africa, so it is claimed, far more than 50 per
cent. of the native population are said to be infected
with venereal diseases, in Central and South Africa
conditions are almost as bad, and 95 per cent. of
one tribe of West Africa are infected.

A Ricu Fretp ror THE MeEpiIcAL MISSIONARY.

For various reasons Africa is a rich field for
the medical missionary. In one district of Sierra
Leone, in Western Africa, for example, the death
rate is 53.5 per thousand, almost four times that
in our own country. Infant mortality is particu-
larly high, and every year thousands upon thousands
of children are sacrificed on the altars of ignorance
and superstition. Whole villages are frequently
wiped out by plagues of various kinds. In North
Africa one person in every ninety is totally blind,
and one in every thirty-three is partially blind. In
Central Africa an old person is seldom seen, the
sick are put out to die of starvation or to be killed
by wild beasts or are burned alive. It goes without
saying that the soul of the native African can
in many instances be best approached indirectly
through the body, and that for this reason the med-
ical missionary has enormous opportunities for good
in every way throughout the African continent.
Then, too, the educational and industrial Christian
worker would find thousands of most promising op-
portunities for his activities almost everywhere in
the “Dark Continent.” Just those missions which
have emphasized the educational and industrial
phases of missionary work, without neglecting the
evangelistic phases, have been most successful.

Tire MomamMMEDAN MENACE.

If the Christian Church does not increase its
corps of workers in Africa, there is very grave
danger that the powers of Islam will gain greater
triumphs in the future than they have in the past.
Forty million followers of Mohammed are marching
like a mighty army on the heathen of Central
Africa. Every year they count their conquests by
the thousands. From West Africa comes the call
for help to ward off the Mohammedan menace.
Islam is the implacable foe of Christianity, and

Execution of Malagasy Martyrs.

almost one-third of the people of Africa is Mo-
hammedan to-day. Whole tribes are being “con-
verted,” or rather, perverted, from paganism to
Mohammedanism, largely through the missionary
endeavors of Arabic traders. Against the aggres-
sive work of the followers of Islam, heathenism has
but weak opposition to make. For this reason the
onward progress of Moslemism into the regions of
Central and West Africa is most rapid and per-
sistent. To stay this blighting advance of Islam is,
however, only a part of our Christian duty; we are
also called upon to win the Moslem world of Africa
for Christ. Until the foundations of Islam in North