The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1928, Page 159

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THE LUTHERAN PIONEER.

159

Miss Sahib, found me and brought me here.
my mother, and I am her child.”

An old woman in Bed No. 4 exhorts the patients
around her to trust the mission-workers. “TI was
against them once,” she tells them, “but now
1 know what love means. Caste? What is caste?
I believe in the goodness they show. That is their
caste.”

Indeed, the ministry of Christian physicians
comes as a revelation to the tortured victims.

She is

New Converts and the Bible.

The knowledge of the Bible shown by heathen
converts should shame many Christians in America.
The police of a certain country once professed to
believe that a mission-school was “seditious,” and
following the example of Russian police in such
circumstances, they arrested all the native teachers
and many of the students and hurried them off to
jail in another city. The Christians had no idea
what they had been arrested for, but they suspected
it was on account of their faith in Christ. Did they
keep silence? It no more occurred to them than
it did to Paul and Silas. When they were led
through the streets, handcuffed and chained to one
another, they sang the hymn “Glory to His Name.”
Every one felt that God had permitted this trial
because he had something for them to do in prison.
They could tell the other prisoners about Jesus, as
Paul had done. They had their Testaments in their
pockets. When the police searched them, the
Christians asked permission to keep their Testa-
ments; but the officers refused, except in one
instance where one of the teachers persuaded a
guard to let him keep the little book.

The next morning he tore his New Testament
leaf from leaf and passed the leaves through the
cracks between his cell and the next cell, and the
boys there passed them on into the next cell, and
so on until every Christian in that old prison had
leaves from the Word of God. Each one took his
leaf and committed it to memory, then exchanged it
with another boy and committed the new leaf, until
they had committed whole books of the New Tes-
tament. In the months of imprisonment some had
committed the whole of the New Testament. When
they came from prison and told this story to the
missionary who narrated it to me, he tested some of
the boys as to the truth of their statement. “Repeat
John 7%, 36,” he said to one boy. How many
readers of this page can give it? This youth
reflected for a moment how the seventh chapter of

John began, ran down the chapter till he came to
the thirty-sixth verse, and then repeated it word for
word. Several said that, while they were being
tortured, they quietly repeated over and over the
passages which they had learned, and one of them
said: “Jesus came so near, oh, so near, as we
quoted God’s Word.”

BOOK TABLE.

Happy School Days. By Margaret E. Sangster. 271
pages; bound in cloth. Concordia Publishing House,
St. Louis, Mo. Price, $1.25.

The book contains thirty-eight chapters, every one of
which is brimful of good counsel for our schoolgirls. Mrs.
Sangster speaks on many subjects in this book, and she
does so in each case from a sound Christian standpoint,

A girl can only profit by reading these common-sense
counsels.

Luther on Education. By F.V.N. Painter, A.M. 282
pages; bound in cloth. Concordia Publishing House,
St. Louis, Mo. Price, $1.50.

Professor Painter’s book on Luther as educator is as
well worth reading to-day as it was when first published,
almost forty years ago. The author, in four historical
chapters, presents the proper background for Luther’s
educational views and activities, which are described in
the following chapters. In the last two chapters Pro-
fessor Painter gives most happy renderings of Luther’s
Letter to the Mayors and Aldermen of the Cities of Ger-
many in Behalf of Christian Schools and his Sermon on
the Duty of Sending Children to School. What most
forcibly struck the reviewer while rereading this book is
the remarkable up-to-dateness of Luther. It is diflicult
to realize that Luther wrote the last two chapters of Pro-
fessor Painter’s book four hundred years ago.

Two Simultaneous Conventions. A Declaration of Lu-
theran and American Principles. Address delivered
by President R. Kretzschmar, June 14, 1928S, at the
convention of the Western District of the Ev. Luth.
Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and Other States. Pub’
lished by resolution of the convention. Concordia
Publishing House, St. Louis, Mo. Price, 5 cts. per
copy; $2.50 per hundred.

A happy thought on the part of President Kretzschmar
to compare the convention of the Western District with
that of the National Republican Convention held at the
same time in Kansas City, Mo. The comparison gave
opportunity for the presentation of much wholesome
thought.

Handbook for Congregational Officers. By Theo.
Graebner. 252 pages; bound in cloth. Concordia
Publishing House, St. Louis, Mo. Price, $1.25.

Here is one of the most practical books ever put out
by the Concordia Publishing House. In the light of Scrip-
ture and sound Lutheran practise the affairs of a congre-
gation and the duties of its officials are discussed ina clear
manner. Every congregation should own several copies
of this valuable book.

The Lutheran Principle of Indoctrination versus
the Pedagogy of Modernism. By P. E. Kretz-
mann. Reprinted for private distribution from the
Lutheran Witness, the Lutheran School Journal, the
Theological Monthly, and the Sunday-school Teach-
ers’ Quarterly. 22 pages. Concordia Publishing
House, St. Louis, Mo. Price, 10 cts.

The four articles reprinted in this pamphlet deserve
the careful study of all engaged in the religious teaching
of the young. The Lutheran’ principle of thorough indoc-
trination is emphasized, and a ‘cry of. earnest warning is
raised against modernistic religious teaching.