The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1927, Page 125

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THE LUTHERAN PIONEER.

125

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Loyalty. — A native pastor in Central China
was offered a salary ten times as large as the small
sum which was given him by the Missionary Board.
But he replied: ‘Matthew left the customs to fol-
low Christ, and do you think I am going to leave
Christ to follow customs?” With him it was not
a question of easy position or money, but one of
loyalty to Christ.

A Japanese Hymn-Book. — The Methodist Pub-
lishing House in Tokyo, under the skilful. manage-
ment of Messrs. Cowen and Spencer, is doing a great
work for the Christianization of Japan. It has pub-
lished and sold 150,000 copies of the hymn-book,
recently compiled in Japanese. This is an astonish-
ing circulation when it is remembered that there
are only 65,000 Protestant communicants in the
empire. — Nashville Advocate.

Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself.— A foreign?

missionary recently told of a woman, who, on a
schoolteacher’s salary of $1,000, lived on one half

and with the other half supported a substitute in.

China. She then felt that she was really two per-
sons and carried out her life-long devoted desire to
be a foreign missionary. She received a letter every
week from her substitute, prayed for her by name
every day, and realized the truth of what a friend
of hers had said, namely: “This teacher serves the
Lord twenty-four hours a day and thus practically
lives the life of the angels, who serve Him day and
night; for at the antipodes her substitute is work-
ing while she sleeps.” — American Messenger.

Surely No Apology Needed. — Dr. Pentecost was
one day speaking with a business man about be-
coming a Christian. Before leaving, he began to
apologize for introducing the subject, whereupon
the merchant, stopping him, said very earnestly :
“Don’t ever apologize, Dr. Pentecost, for speaking
to a man on that subject. I’ve been waiting for
twenty years for some one to speak with me about
my soul.” Most people are just as willing to talk
on that subject. You won’t have to apologize for
it very often during a lifetime.

Things As They Are.

India is a land of great extremes and contrasts.
In its resources it exceeds that of any other country
of its size in the world. And yet there is poverty
in India such as is not seen in any other country.
Nine-tenths of its population actually struggle to
earn their existence (it cannot justly be called a liv-
ing) at the age of five years. It is only in the

harvest seasons that most of the poor people get
enough to eat. The majority of them cannot even
afford to eat the wheat and rice which they raise.
Instead, they prepare a simple gruel from ground-
millet seeds.

The physical condition of the people of India
is only a rough picture of their spiritual situation.
Hinduism keeps its followers in superstition and
ignorance. It teaches that man will finally be saved
from sin to meet the Divine Being by not less than
8,400,000 incarnations. That is, the soul, after the
person dies, may enter a donkey, a rat, or any other
animal being. In this way a Hindu believes that,
by killing an animal, he may destroy the soul of a
close relative. This encourages the existence -of
animals that spread deadly diseases, besides destroy-
ing food and other things necessary for man’s
welfare.

According to Hindu custom nearly every girl is
married in her early childhood and cannot remarry
after her husband’s death. There is very little or

. comparatively no home life among the Hindu people

such as we know and love it. The nearest word to
home in their language means only “house.” :

All believe that they will eventually be saved.
The Hindu gurus (teachers) tell their followers
that, if they will forsake all and practise many kinds
of severe and fanatical penances, they will obtain
their Nirvana (absorption into the Divine Being)
without the many reincarnations. This is the reason
why so many pilgrims make long and hard pilgrim-
ages to Benares and many other places of pil-
grimage. From among these are the most devout
Hindus, who are called Saddhus (holy men), who
go about, often almost naked, and spend much of
their time in meditation, with their bodies covered
with ashes, while their hair is long, matted, and
unwashed.

Perhaps the most cruel of all the Hindu social
and religious customs is the caste system, which
keeps every person in a certain rank of society and
trade. Whatever caste the father is in the son must
be in also. They cannot eat the food which the
member of another caste has prepared. They dare
not even eat together with a person belonging to
another caste. So strong is the caste system that
many would rather die than break their caste. When
a Hindu becomes a Christian, he is “outcasted” by
every Hindu. He becomes an “outcaste.” In this
way the Christian convert loses everything, even
a chance to earn a living. This explains why mis-
sions are obliged to start some industrial work in
connection with their missions for the many new