The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1926, Page 137

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THE LUTHERAN PIONEER.

137

formed in Shanghai, China, aims to get the stu-
dents into the churches where they will become
centers of influence and uplift. Mrs. Mary Ninde
Gamewell, a missionary writing from Shanghai,
says that it would doubtless be easy to organize
a returned students’ church, but that nothing would
be more deplorable, since returned students, in
order to be a power for good in their land, must
cease to be a class distinct and exclusive.

“ “They need to mingle with the people,’ says
Mrs. Gamewell. ‘The club for returned students
has accomplished much. In one self-supporting
Protestant Episcopal church a bright, married
woman has taken over some of the pastor’s class-
work, releasing him for more pastoral visitation.
In another church, Cantonese, a young wife and
mother has helped organize a woman’s society, which
works along philanthropic, missionary, and social
lines. As vice-president she is able to keep in the
background and at the same time quietly and tact-
fully to advise, teach, and guide. This society,
. during the past six months, has made forty suits
of clothes for poor children. 4

- “But perhaps the largest and best work is done
by individuals and families without any organized
effort at all. I know a beautiful woman, the mother
of seven children, who is an indefatigable worker
in the Chinese Red Cross Society. Another Shang-
hai woman took a course in nursing in America
while her husband was studying medicine, and now,
as her family cares permit, responds to out-calls.
Wherever she goes, she carries a blessing, not only
as a skilful trained nurse, but as a gentle, refined
Christian woman. She is able, too, when nursing,
to give object-lessons in sanitation and nursing

‘which are not forgotten.

“Jean, partly to augment the family income,
but chiefly through a burning desire to help her
Chinese people, has opened a primary school in
rooms adjoining her own home. She teaches many
things not found in books; for there never lived
a more devoted, selfless little woman than this same
Jean, who in America worked her way through col-
lege and gained the love and esteem of all who
were associated with her. ‘Then there is Pingsah,
with babies of her own to care for, yet finding time
to stress child culture; and she is in constant de-
mand by the provincial educational association for
lectures.

“But nothing has cheered me more than a story
told me recently by one of my Chinese friends.
Said she: Mrs.'T., 2 woman whose husband has an
international reputation, keeps coming to me for

advice about the rearing of her children. She says
I know how to bring up children and she doesn’t,’
and she has been actually begging me to adopt two
of her little girls; for she says she knows they will
then be trained in the right way. But I told her,
‘No, I will not adopt them’ ‘They are her children,
and she must bring them up; but I will gladly
help her in every way I can. She wants me to show
her how to bathe them and to teach her how to dis-
cipline them.

“By associating with the uneducated Chinese,
these foreign-trained women can do much toward
improving methods of rearing children.”

We humbly hope that the reading of above de-
scribed experiences will induce many of our readers
to see the importance of the work we are doing in
our higher schools at Selma and Greensboro and
that they will pray and give so that we may extend
this kind of mission-work. ~ F.J.L.

Should We Give When in Debt?

We recently read in some magazine that in
China a man is not allowed to exchange New Year
grectings with his friends and neighbors until he
has paid all his debts. Then, too, such a poor fel-
low is compelled to go about in broad daylight with
a lighted lantern to indicate that for him the New
Year has not yet come, but that he is still groping
about in the darkness of the old year’s last night.

What if all that are in debt to God over the
whole wide world would be compelled to carry about
lanterns! What a flickering of lantern lights there
would be seen everywhere! Who can say that he
does not owe God? In Him we live and move and _
haye our being. The atmosphere we breathe, every
particle of food we eat, every drop of water we
drink, is God’s. Yes, our very life and body come
from God. What we owe others, though it may be
very much, is but very little in comparison to what
we owe God. It would be wrong for us to ignore
the debts we owe our landlord and our grocer, it
would be wrong for us to neglect to pay those that
work for us; but, surely, what we owe God ought
to come first.

The man who once said that God holds the first
mortgage on all we have by no means was guilty
of an exaggeration. God’s claims come first and
should be first honored by us. In the days of the
Old ‘Testament this important duty of first honor-
ing God’s claim was strongly and continuously im-
pressed upon the children of Israel by the law of