The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1926, Page 108

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108

THE LUTHERAN PIONEER.

children which must be endured by thousands of
missionary parents. Only few can have any idea of
the distress that fills the sensitive missionary’s heart
when day after day he is forced to look upon suffer-
ing that he cannot relieve. Dear reader, do you
think that you can have an adequate idea of what
the missionary suffers in mind when brought in
contact with the most debasing forms of sin, with
a heathenism whose evils he abhors and whose
powers he dreads? And then think of the strain it
must be to the missionary to look upon the thou-
sands of human beings who are bearing life’s bur-
dens unaided by the strength which Jesus brings
and who are meeting life’s sorrows unhelped by Him
who came to dry the tears of the sorrowful, — to
offer them the help they need and to have the offer

fall upon deaf ears ! — Think you not that this must

be hard to the man that is longing for their souls’
salvation? Think you not that such experiences
must help the missionary to enter more tenderly
into the Savior’s woe when He stood on the Mount
of Olives and stretched out His hands towards the
people and cried in the bitterness of His heart be-
cause they would not come? F. J. L.

Items of Missionary Interest.
By the Eprtor.

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.— This city has wel-
comed Christian missionaries more cordially than
any other city in South America, it is said. The
first Protestant church in South America, built in
1819, found its home there. The only hospital
supported by South American churches is here.
One church in Rio-de Janeiro raises $15,000 a year,
supports a missionary in Portugal, and conducts
fourteen Sunday-schools in its own suburbs. Yet
Brazil has some of the most neglected territory on
earth. In the territory lying north and west of the
San Francisco River lie two-thirds of the whole
area of Brazil and half the area of all South
America. In all this vast stretch of land there are
only twenty-nine Protestant missionaries. One
state\of Brazil with over a million inhabitants has
one native pastor!

Unoccupied Territory, Indeed! From Kair-
wan, the city of thirty mosques, in North Africa,
you could travel 2,200 miles south before reaching
a single Christian mission-station. In the Sudan
40,000,000 people have scarcely been touched by
missionary effort. The people of Northern Nigeria

have developed the only literature of Negro Africa.
And yet no Christian Church has considered it
worth while to send missionaries to this race.

Abyssinia.— This country of Fast Africa is
nominally Christian, yet Moslem influences are
rapidly penetrating the country, and the other
Christian nations of the world are doing nothing
to check the advance.

Arabia. — This country, the cradle of Islam, is
a challenge to Christianity. Its four-thousand-mile
coast-line has resident missionaries at only five
points, and there are no stations inland. It was
reported from there recently that the Emir of Nejd
had invited a medical missionary to his capital.

Indo-China. — In Indo-China, a country having
an area of more than 250,000 square miles and
a population of 18,000,000, only one Protestant
mission is at work.

“Carrying On in China.”’— A hundred years
ago there were not ten Protestant Christians in all
China; to-day there are 300,000, and Chinese mis-
sion-workers outnumber the foreign missionaries
three to one. Just now interest in Christianity is
spreading among the educated classes, who realize
that neither the maxims of Confucius nor a repub-
lican form of government will save the nation in
time of unrest. The native church, too, is awaking
to the necessity of self-support and self-government
and last year gave $900,000 of the $2,000,000 spent
for religious work in China.

Growth of the Protestant Church in China. —
In 1863 there were 2,000 Protestant members in
China. Twenty years later the number had in-
creased to 20,000. In the next ten years the num-
ber grew to 55,000. By 1903 it had increased to
125,000 and by 1913 to 230,000 members. ‘To-day
there are approximately- 300,000 Chinese Protes-
tants.

Growth of Mission-Schools in China. — Fifty
years ago the number of children in Protestant
mission-schools in China was 5,000. In 1900 these
schools had 16,000 pupils. Ten years later the en-
tolment was 22,000. ‘Ten years ago there were
110,000 children enrolled. ‘To-day there are prob-
ably no less than 150,000 pupils in the schools con-
ducted by Protestant missions. :

China and Missions.— Not many years ago
China was a land of filth, blindness was common,
womanhood was degraded, sanitation was unknown,
hunger was prevalent, and life was passed in misery-