The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1927, Page 85

Transcription machine transcription, uncorrected

⤓ Download .txt · copy text

THE LUTHERAN PIONEER. : 85

kept after they have been turned over to the societies,
until a permanent home has been found for them.
Of the thirty home-finding societies in the American
Lutheran Church thirteen are conducted by mem-
bers of the Synodical Conference.

In our larger cities a blessed kind of institutional
mission work could be carried on by the Church by
means of day-nurseries, where mothers who by force
of circumstances are obliged to work could place
their small children during working hours. Such
nurseries would probably in most cases provide far
better care for the little ones entrusted to them than
their mothers could or would give them. By means
of these nurseries an opportunity would be offered to
come into more intimate contact with the
mothers and to exert a beneficial influence
over them and their whole families.

In spite of the prevalent opinion that a
child should be reared in a Christian home
rather than in an institution, the fact
remains that the greater number of depen-
dent children are cared for in institutions.
Various circumstances conspire to prevent
the placing of the large majority of
orphaned and other dependent children
from being placed in desirable homes. Tor
one thing, defective children may, as a rule,
be better’ taken care of in institutions.
Again, very few societies find it possible,
despite their best efforts, to find homes
for all the children turned over to them.
Besides, the past life of the child may have
been such that the regularity, discipline, and neces-
sary regulations of an institution will be just what
it needs to correct the bad habits it has formed and
remold its character.

Our Lutheran homes for children, thank God!
are more than mere orphanages. They are actual
homes. Children find in them what an ordinary
orphanage never can give. They provide the chil-
dren not only with clothes, bed, and food, but also
with that parental care and love which children
crave as does the flower the sunshine. In our
orphans’ homes the children are taught home ways,
Christian truth, and right habits of life. They are
prepared there, as far as possible, for the future.
Here loving hearts sympathize with the sorrowful ;
here Christian minds plan to avert tragedies; here
wise lips speak words of good counsel. No less than
eighty homes for dependent children are conducted
under Lutheran auspices in our country, and twenty
of these are within the bounds of the Synodical Con-
ference. ;

There are two institutions to be mentioned that
are conducted among us for children needing
special care, the Deaf-mute Institute at Detroit and
the Home for Feeble-minded at Watertown, Wis.
Though every State in the Union and not a few of
the larger cities have good institutions for deaf-
mute children and homes for the feeble-minded,
these two Lutheran institutions are doing a blessed
work in rearing these children, who are in special
need of care under sound Christian influence, and
teaching them the one thing that is needful. Besides
the home at Watertown there are in our country
four other Lutheran institutions for the care of
feeble-minded and epileptics.

Old Folks’ Home, Monroe, Mich.

Institutional Care of the Sick.

Jesus accompanied the preaching of the Gospel
with a healing and comforting ministry. For this
reason His Church should regard the alleviation of
misery as one of its special responsibilities. In
turning over the service to the sick and needy to the
civic authorities and secular charitable organiza-
tions, the Church is shirking one of its greatest |
opportunities to spread the Gospel of Jesus. Civic
agencies and secular charitable societies can give
only medical and surgical service to the patient,
but a Lutheran hospital can give what is inesti-
mably more. In a Christian hospital men and
women from all stations of life, many of whom have
before given little thought to the welfare of their
souls, may be led to Christ while being restored to
health of the body. The Roman Catholic Church has
seen the wonderful missionary possibilities of the
hospital far more than Protestants have. Authorities
claim that the Catholics have hospital-bed capacity