The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1929, Sheet 56

Transcription machine transcription, uncorrected

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o4 THE LUTHERAN PIONEER.

poisons to the poisons they sell to others. The whole
of Haitian society is thus saturated with secret
terror. -

“This state of things is a clear challenge to our
Christian Negroes in the United States. May the
love of Christ constrain them to undertake mission-
work among these neglected members of the same
race! Competent Christian Negro farmers from
the South might well settle in small colonies of
two or three families in and about the rich island,
making a comfortable living and evangelizing at
the same time.” F. J. L.

Fields White Already to Harvest.

Recently the following caught our eye in the
Intheran Missionary : —

“A missionary from Palestine says he saw such
a sight as had never before met his eyes —a field
absolutely white. He asked his helper, ‘What is
that?’ The answer was, ‘That is a field of wheat.’
“But why is it white?’ the American asked, though
he expected the answer to he just what it was. ‘It
is overripe. There are not enough men here to cut
all the grain, and this has been left too long.
Unless it is cut at once, the owner will get no
harvest, for the birds will eat much of it, and the
rest will fall on the ground and rot. When a field
gets white like this, it must be harvested at once
if it is to be saved.’ Just then from different direc-
tions there came two large flocks of birds, which
settled on the field to enjoy the feast so temptingly
spread before them.” :

May we attach an application to the narration
of this interesting experience? In our seminaries,
God is preparing a large number of young men for
labor in the spiritual wheat-fields of this world.
This year there will probably be 150 harvesters
ready to leave the seminaries of the Synodical Con-
ference to go out and garner the ripening harvests
in our own country and in other lands. They. are
ready to go wherever the Lord may want to send

them through us. We have been praying, “Lord,

send Thou laborers into Thy harvest!” ‘The Lord
has heard our prayer; He has made hundreds of
our sons willing to go out —they are waiting for
us to send them. The Lord has heard our prayer,
for He has provided us with the means to fit out
and send these sons of ours who are waiting to be
sent out. Now, it is up to us to show that we were
"in earnest when we prayed, “Lord, send Thou la-
borers into Thy harvest!” or whether we did not

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really mean what we said. God preserve us from
such insincerity !

Everywhere the fields are white already to har-
vest. In our great and ever-growing industrial
centers there are overripe fields to be found in great
abundance; millions upon millions are annually
falling a prey to the enemy because we are not gath-
ering in the ripening grain. In our countrysides
throughout the land, East and West, North and
South, there are great fields ready for the harvest.
In India and China, all over Asia and Africa, and
in Europe much precious grain is falling to the
ground and rotting because not sufficient laborers
are sent into the harvest. The flocks of Satan are
devouring harvests which God would have us gather
into His barn.

What will we do about it? F. J.L.

The Unoccupied Sudan.

The Sudan is a land of many races and of a great
number of languages and peoples. It stretches from
east to west over a territory larger than that from
New York to San Francisco. In the extreme East
we have the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, the central and
western parts are French territory or under I’rench
control, excepting Nigeria, Ashanti, Sierra Leone,
and a few other small parcels, which are British, and
Liberia, which is an independent Negro republic.
The region between Lake Chad and the Anglo-
Egyptian Sudan, now a part of French Equatorial
Africa, before the World War comprised the native
kingdoms of Wadai, Adamawa, Kanem, and Ba-
ghirmi, and the natives still have a measure of self-
government under French commissionerships. The
population of this territory is upward of 4,000,000.
The total population of the Sudan is estimated
by some authorities at about 40,000,000, while
others put it at a lower figure. In Northern Nigeria
there is an empire larger in area than all Japan and
inhabited by people who are said to have been
armed with guns in battle when our forefathers
were acquainted with nothing but the bow and
arrow. ‘This region is probably the home of the
Hausas, the most important race in the central
zone of Africa. The Hausa language is the only
native African language with a literature of its own.
Northern Nigeria is a critical Moslem center. The
head of the Nigerian Mohammedans lives at Sokoto.
The Hausas are a race of traders and are a people of
unusual intelligence and enterprise, and they are
the leaders in the southward march of Islamic con-

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