The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1927, Sheet 148

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THE LUTHERAN PIONEER.

Let There Be Light.

Countless, O Lord, still tread in gloom
and shun Thy saving light;

Their sin-ruled hearts lead them to doom
And to eternal night.

Into this darkness let Thy Word
Throw forth its wondrous ray;

Illumine souls on error’s path
And turn their night to day.

As once, to lead the Wise Men on,
Thy guiding star did shine,

So let Thy Truth still beam to guide
The lost in every clime.

As once, to ancient Galilee,
Thy glory was made known,
So manifest Thy love to-day
To men in every zone.
Help us to bring Thy saving Word
To’souls on sin’s dread way,
And grant to many still in dark
A glad epiphany. A. G. Somer.

A Missionary Church.

Perhaps no Christian denomination in the world
has put forth so much missionary effort in propor-
tion to its size as has the church organization pop-
ularly called the Moravian Church. Though the

' beginnings: of this Church go back to the days of
John Huss, the Moravians of to-day generally speak
of the year 1722 as the year of their origin. It was
in this year that Herrnhut,: the Moravian refuge,
was founded on the estate of Count Zinzendorf, in
Saxony. The bicentenary of this event was generally
celebrated throughout the Moravian Church in 1922,
and the remarks which follow are mostly gleaned
from the official Moravian Bicentenary Pamphlets,
published in that year.

The village of Herrnhut grew steadily in the five
years following its founding, and by 1727 there were
about three hundred persons in and about it. These
people Count Zinzendorf so guided that many of
them were ready to adopt a kind of constitution on
May 12, 1727. This constitution the Moravians
tefer to as the “Brotherly Agreement.” A few
months later, August 13, 1727, when all had been
persuaded to pledge support of the statutes as in-
corporated in the “Brotherly Agreement,” they cel-
ebrated their first joint Communion service. This
service has been spoken of as “the birthday of the
Renewed Church.”

Following the adoption of the “Brotherly Agree-
ment” in 1727, a, desire to make Christ known began

* Indies as their first Foreign Mission field.

to grow stronger and stronger, and this desire
crystallized into a definite movement by 1732. Cir-
cumstances pointed the Moravians to the West
It was
in August, 1732, that two young men left Herrnhut
with its six hundred well-wishers behind to take up
the weary journey on foot to Copenhagen and from
there took sail to the Island of St. Thomas. Twelve
days before Christmas the two missionaries, Leonard
Dober and David Nitschmann, arrived and at once
began their work among the Negro plantation slaves
of the West Indies. Dober and Nitschmann were
succeeded in a few years by Frederick Martin, and
when this messenger of the Gospel died at the age
of only forty-six years, he had preached the Word
to thousands and received two hundred and fifty
into the Church. To-day the Moravians are working
on ten of the West Indian Islands. ‘The work has
become almost self-supporting, and the number of
native ministers practically equals that of the for-
eign laborers. On Jamaica the Moravians have over
13,000 members, who are served by eight men from
abroad and by eight native ministers, besides thirty-
nine assistants. The Eastern Province in the West
Indies, in 1922, had over 24,000 members with
twelve laborers from abroad and fourteen native
pastors, assisted by seventy-six helpers.

Stach, only twenty years of age, and Boenisch,
one year older, were the first Moravian missionaries
in Greenland. They began their labors in the same
year that their colleagues went to the West Indies.
The hardships they underwent upon their arrival on
the cold, bleak shores of Greenland, and the scorn
and hostility they experienced at the hands of the
natives, have often been described. For five long
years they worked without seeing any results of
their self-sacrificing labors. Then, finally, the cruel
Kjarnak’s heart was touched, and he cried: “I want
to be saved!” Others followed, and in the course
of years there were no more avowed heathen to be
found. In 1899 the Moravians turned over their
stations and members to the Lutherans and retired
from the field. At the time of their retirement
they had six stations and about 1,600 members in
Greenland.

Due to the grace of God and the faithful work
of Moravian missionaries among the Eskimo natives
of Labrador, there are no more heathen on that
dreary coast. In 1752 Ehrhardt, the first Gospel
herald, landed there; but he was soon killed by the
fierce natives. Then, after twenty years, the second
messenger arrived and began his successful work,
which others have continued till to-day.