The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1926, Page 107

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THE LUTHERAN PIONEER.

107

or ice igloos, but in summer, spring, and fall their

; homes are skin tents. Their clothes are made from
animal skins, and it takes about five caribou skins
every year for each Eskimo, whether man, woman,
or child.

Their arrow-heads are, as a rule, made of cop-
per and are of many shapes. All they have in the
way of clothing, weapons, cooking utensils, sleds,
dog harness, and the like is home-made.

Some most praiseworthy things can be said of
these Blond Eskimos. When one of them gets sick,
he is taken care of by the rest of the tribe. When
their old people grow infirm and helpless, they are
not deserted, as is the case among many savages,
but most tender and considerate care is given
them by the younger people. Children are seldom
punished and get good treatment.

Up to this time no missionaries have come to
these people. We hope that some day the messen-
gers of the Gospel will be able to reach also these
primitive and superstitious fellow-men and bring
them the tidings of their Savior. F.J.L.

Pleasing Theories and Unpleasant Facts.

The evangelization of the world seems com-
_ paratively easy when you sit in a great synodical
convention or read reports of a world survey which
shows by statistics, graphs, and pictures just how
the whole work is to be done. But somehow things
do not look just the same when you come face to
face with the missionary problem itself, whether it
be in the slums of the large city, on the western or
northern frontiers, among the Negroes of the South,
or in China or India.

Some way or other even good logic at such times
becomes illogical, and the particular field you are
working in seems to be more difficult than the
whole world-field. The burning deserts of Arizona
seen from the seat of a wheezy Ford on a fifty-mile
journey look much larger than on the map in your
atlas. On the map one dot represents 100,000
Chinamen, but when you are working among them
in Hangkow, one Chinaman at times represents
a hundred or even a thousand obstacles.

This contrast between surveys and reports on
paper and the hard realities of actual mission-work
as experienced by the laborers in the field must ever
be borne in mind when we consider the real problem
of missions.

Remember that there are very vital things that

you cannot put down in tables of numbers and
which you cannot reproduce by means of pictures.
You can photograph Indians in picturesque cos-
tumes and reproduce exuberant vegetation, but you
cannot take pictures of smells and disease germs.
Neither can you tabulate loneliness and homesick-
ness and heartache. Yet these are the things which
make the great difference between the shedding of
ink and the sweating of blood for the expansion of
Christ’s kingdom. .
It is proper that the powers of the Church should
be mobilized to the fullest possible extent; it is
proper that the Church should try to get an esti-
mate of its forces in man-power and money-power
and plan to use all its powers to their fullest
strength; but while doing so, let us ever bear in
mind that the great army of evil is busy preparing
new defenses and getting ready new intrenchments.
Satan and his minions have strong carnal
spiritual weapons and will not yield with
a struggle. Satan is busy bringing forth new vj
and new venom in his battle against the Gospeh@f
Jesus. And it is these forces of darkness, of which

the makers of statistics and budgets often have o
a theoretical knowledge, that the missionari
the field must oppose face to face and see intl
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their hideousness and power. Of course, the
Christian missionary knows that he has God ont
side and that one man with God is a majority

for all that the true missionary is but a man of

and blood, and the thought of his own weakness and
the enemies’ great strength often threatens to
whelm him.

Words of appreciation from the home base
mean much to the worker in the field; assuran
the intercessions of those back of the front lines
go far towards strengthening the arm of the wapror
in the battlefield of missions.

While the true missionary is in his work for
Christ’s sake, he is human enough to appreciate any
token of recognition of his services which he is
giving vicariously for us that stay at home. While
he laughs at the little physical discomforts which
often make life unpleasant, the fact that others
know of these discomforts and appreciate his self-
denial makes them easier to bear. » One need but
visit a missionary upon some lonely outpost and see
how hungry he is to talk with some one from home
to understand what loneliness means. - Then, too,
no one in America can understand the depressing
sameness of a missionary’s life in the interior of
Africa. Then, also, think of the separation from

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