The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1929, Sheet 57

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THE LUTHERAN PIONEER.

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quest. Nigeria, for this reason, is of great impor-
tance from a missionary standpoint. The. whole
northern portion of Nigeria, comprising a territory
of approximately 200 miles wide and 750 miles long
and a population of 10,000,000, has only two Chris-
tian mission-stations. Both of these stations are
under the Church Missionary Society of England.
The one at Karo is manned by a man and his wife;
the other, at Zaria, has two men (one of them a doc-
tor) and a woman.

The Anglo-Egyptian Sudan is, with the excep-
tion of a few stations on the Nile and several in the
extreme southern part, an unoccupied field. The
large region of Darfur and Bahr-el-Ghazal, though
well populated, has no mission-stations. To the
north lies the vast Sahara, over which France holds
sway. In all the Sahara, a territory greater in ex-
tent than all India, there is not a single missionary,
nor is any part of it even within the prospective of
any mission. Though thinly populated, its popula-
tion cannot be much less than a million, consisting
of nomads of the desert and the inhabitants of the
oases and valleys. A railroad is contemplated from
Algiers to Kuka on Lake Chad, and once this will
be an accomplished fact, it may prove a highway to
carry the Gospel of Jesus to the inhabitants of this
desert.

The Spanish possession of Rio del Oro stretches
along the Atlantic southward from Morocco. It has
a population of possibly 150,000 and has no mis-
sions. ‘To the south of Rio del Oro stretches a vast
territory, having a coast-line of about 3,500 miles, to
Nigeria. ‘his territory is nine times the size of
France and has about the same population. Very
few are the Christian mission-stations in this large
area. That part of this territory under the French
government —and most of it, by far, is French
possession —has not a half dozen stations. Por-
tuguese Guinea, with its million people, has not
a single Protestant mission-station. The British
possession called Gambia has a population of 160,000
and one small Wesleyan station. Three-fourths of
Liberia is untouched by Christian missions. Within
a radius of more than 200 miles of Lake Chad there
is not a single mission-station. And other areas of
equal size may be found in various parts of the
Sudan that are equally unoccupied. “Arise, shine!”

E FE. J. L. -

oe

Tur moment I make of myself and Christ two,
I am all wrong. But when I see we are one, all is
test and peace. — Luther.

Christianity and the African.

When the first white missionaries arrived in
South Africa over a hundred years ago, the abo-
rigines lived in manifest darkness, under the haunt-
ing specter of superstition. The hinterland bush
was infested by man-hunting savages. The reign
of the witch-doctor was everywhere supreme; he
stood above correction even by the chief, virtually
wielding powers of life and death over any indi-
vidual suspected, rightly or wrongly, of mischief.
The Bantu, though boasting an efficient system of
communistic tribalism, led a life devoid of spiritual
outlook, enslaved by tyrannical witchcraft and har-
assed by the constant dread of malevolent spirits.
Departed spirits controlled the affairs and destinies
of living men, whom they were able to behold from
some mysterious point of vantage.

Such were the circumstances and such were the
people among whom the first missionaries came to
labor. They brought words of hope to the hopeless
and of knowledge to the ignorant, substituting the
sure salvation by Christ Jesus for the erstwhile
blind fatalism. From all accounts they were fervent
Christians, sincere in their love for the people .
whose spiritual redemption was their concern and
deeply genuine in their social relations with them.
They did not hesitate to live in the often verminous
huts of wattle ‘and daub in which dwelt their con-
verts, eating and traveling with them, and conduct-
ing themselves as. if they were spiritually, socially,
and politically their guides, philosophers, and
friends. : .

During wars, whether with Buropeans or be-
tween tribes, the lives of missionaries were held
sacred even by the most bitter foes of the white
invaders. This phenomenon alone is extraordinary
testimony to their friendly relationship with in-
digenous people. A single quotation from Professor
du Plessis will illustrate this: —

“Missionaries were the counselors of the chiefs
under whom they dwelt and labored. In many
eases the missionary was the uncrowned king of’
the community, able by his personal influence to
persuade a whole tribe to move to mote suitable

‘sites and richer pasture-lands. The repeopling of

what is now the Eastern Free State is in great
part due to the missionaries, who induced wander-
ing tribes to cedse their fugitive existence or their
predatory career and to adopt the settled life of
agriculturists.”

The yalue of their work, the good they have