The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1928, Page 126

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126

THE LUTHERAN PIONEER.

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The darkest record of all, however, is reserved
for Africa, where rivers of blood have been poured
out in human sacrifices. The almost universal
practise in connection with the death of African
chieftains is a bloody holocaust at the burial.
Cameraon, in an account of his journey across the
continent in 1874, speaks “of the atrocious san-
guinary rites which attend the death of African
despots.” The resting-place of a chieftain’s body
is often a bed of living women, and his grave is
deeply saturated with the blood of victims slain
in his honor.... On the death of Eyamba, a native
king, a massacre of his wives and slaves and even
of many other women took place; of his hundred
wives thirty were slaughtered. ... The king of
Eboe, at his death in 1893, was accompanied by
forty sacrificial victims. . . .

In Uganda, King Mtesa confessed that “before
the coming of the white man to his country he had
practised the horrid rites of the kiwendo, when
thousands of victims were ruthlessly slaughtered in
the performance of the sanguinary rites of Uganda.
It was said that when Mtesa rebuilt his father
Suna’s tomb, the throats of two thousand un-

‘happy human victims were cut at the dead king’s
grave.” ...

And now let us from the same book learn’ what
Christianity has done to arrest and abolish the hor-
rors of human sacrifices.

The humanizing influence of missions, we read,
wherever they have entered, has been an unfailing
remedy for this ghastly rite. The Gospel doctrine
of forgiveness, based upon the sacrifice of Christ,
has also taught both its folly and its worthlessness.
That which Christianity has made only a grim tra-
dition of the early paganism of our ancestors
is still to be found in the present-day haunts of
darkness... .

The Breaking up of a West Coast Inferno.

The royal mausoleum at Batama, with its official
shambles, has been destroyed. ‘The “Festival of
Yams,” with its six hundred victims, is no longer
celebrated with ghastly immolations. The fetish-
trees are now no longer soaked to the roots with the
life-blood of his victims. His horrid mandate of
the sacrifice of dne of his slaves, for his entertain-
ment every night before he slept, has ceased. He
can no longer offer four hundred virgins that their
‘blood may be mixed with mortar to form a richer

_ réd/in the painted stucco of his palace... .

Suppression of Human Sacrifices in Old Calabar.

The records of the Old Calabar Mission of the
United Presbyterian Church of Scotland yield clear
and emphatic data upon the subject we are now
considering. .. .

The Yoruba Mission of the Church Missionary
Society has a record . . . of steady effort and final
victory. ... The readers of Mr. Michelsen’s book
on missions in the South Seas and of Dr. Gill’s Life
tn the Southern Isles will find examples of the power
of Christianity to stay these inhuman rites. . . .

The existence of the custom of human sacrifices
in India, until the advent of British rule, cannot be
denied.... The Khonds in Orissa, one of the
aboriginal hill tribes, seem to have attained a
revolting preeminence in the practise. Mission-work
among them has been largely instrumental in chang-
ing all this.... It becomes a simple truism that
where Christianity enters and the Gospel illumines
the mind and softens the heart, human sacrifices
are regarded as an abomination and are no longer
offered.

Interesting Mission Facts.

We cull the following data from the Pictorial
Mission Review, published by the Fiscal Office of
the Missouri Synod. This Pictorial Mission Review
has been published for general distribution among
the members of the Missouri Synod and may be had
gratis by every pastor of the Synod in needed
quantities.

In South America the Missouri Synod is sup-
porting 64 missionaries, who are serving 261 con-
gregations and preaching-stations, with 13,070 com-
municant members. It subsidizes two institutions
there for the training of pastors and teachers. The
entire annual cost of this missionary enterprise is
$70,000.

The Home Missions enterprise carried on by the
twenty-seven North American Districts of the Mis-
souri Synod requires an annual outlay of $700,000.
These Home Missions employ 879 missionaries and

- teachers, who serve 1,569 mission-congregations.

The Foreign Missions of this church-body are
located in India and China and cost $234,000 an-
nually. Fifty-four foreign missionaries and 315
native workers are at present serving 80 congrega-
tions and 98 preaching-stations with 10,518 bap-
tized members and 79 schools with 2,553 pupils.
In two seminaries native workers are being trained.

The important Immigrant and Seamen’s Mis-