The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1927, Sheet 86

Transcription machine transcription, uncorrected

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THE LUTHERAN PIONEER.

Work at Penal Institutions.

The Church has also the duty to visit the pris-
oner in his prison. She should not refuse to go even
to the jail and the penitentiary to seek the lost and
to set aright the erring. What greater opportunity to

Bethlehem Lutheran Orphans’ Home,
New Orleans, La.

show the great power of Jesus’ saving grace than by
bringing the-Gospel to the criminal in his cell?
Visits in reform schools, jails, and other penal insti-
tutions will be attended by God’s blessing, and ser-
vices held there will not fail to bring fruit; for God
has said that His Word shall never return void.
Many a soul has been rescued by such ministrations,
and many a moral ruin has been rebuilt by the
Master Builder through His Gospel.

The prisoner is in need particularly when the
time of his release is at hand. Then is the time that
the missionary can be of inestimable service in
helping the friendless ex-prisoner to find an oppor-
tunity to show his willingness to walk on the right
path. Without the encouragement of one who has
confidence in him, the ex-convict will probably find
no employment anywhere. Unsympathetic eyes will
meet him everywhere, and if at that crucial moment
no one comes to his assistance, the powers of dark-
ness will soon seduce him to walk the road to destruc-
tion again.

The Place of Deaconesses in Institutional Missions.

Though the deaconess has been found to be a
great help in every phase of church-work, her work
has proyed especially useful in hospitals, homes for
the aged and infirm, homes for the feeble-minded
and epileptic, and in like institutions. In the
various charitable institutions she has many oppor-
tunities for service. Her ministry of love in old
people’s homes, children’s homes, orphanages, sani-

tariums, settlement houses, hospitals, day-nurseries,
dispensaries, and other institutions gives her many
opportunities to show the world in numberless ways
that Christianity is not a mere creed, but a life of
faith. There is ample scope for consecrated service
in the deaconess’s calling. Within the bounds of
the Synodical Conference there are at present four
deaconess schools, attended by forty-two students.
A number of graduates have gone out from these
schools and are working in both the foreign and
home fields. The call for graduates from these
schools far exceeds the supply. As these graduates
increase in number, their value will become more
and more apparent, and the demand for ever-
increasing numbers of deaconesses will become more
insistent. Jor example, in the Methodist Church
the number of deaconesses has since 1890 increased
from 3 to 881. In the American Lutheran bodies
outside of the Synodical Conference the deaconess
movement has also taken on greater dimensions
from year to year, and the service rendered is ever
becoming broader and more varied.

Institutional Care of Children.

The Christian home is the ideal place for the
rearing of the child, and the Church should do its
utmost to help every child in securing the blessings
of a Christian home. When a child must be removed
from its own family home, Christian foster-parents
should be sought for such a child, and where insti-
tutional care is necessary, the institution should
come as near a real Christian home as possible.

Lutheran Children’s Home, Winfield, Kans.

The desirability of providing the child with
Christian home-life has brought about the founding
of a considerable number of children’s friend or
home-finding societies in our midst. The object
of these societies is to gather up the orphaned,
neglected, and destitute children and to place them
in Lutheran homes. . These societies generally have
receiving homes, where the children are temporarily