The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1929, Page 57

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THE LUTHERAN PIONEER.

57

rendered to the Bantus, the foundations they laid
for the modernization of the African, not to men-
tion the supreme gift of the Gospel, cannot be
reckoned. They have placed generations of Afri-
cans in a position of being their grateful debtors;
for the missionaries sacrificed home, relatives, and
comfort for our sake and for the service of God and
humanity. But for them and their self-denial we
should never have been in a position to express our-
selves through any medium such as this article.
They were the first whites to establish friendly
contacts with native Africans, in contrast with their
commercial fellow-men, who brought the sword and
dispossessed us of our beloved territory. They were
the only friends among the white race whom we
could count upon for better or for worse.. A mis-
sion-station was always a bright beacon and a
lighted window in darkness. Of the three agencies
of civilization, the missionary enterprise constitutes
the most important, the other two being conquest
and commerce. Missionaries in Africa transformed
the lives of the blacks and inculcated the principles
- of humility, love, obedience, peacefulness, of work
and honesty, of cleanliness and sanitation. . They
founded schools, beginning with Sunday-schools
and elementary schools in the twenties [of the past
century], following in the fifties with secondary
educational institutions of the type of Lovedale and
Healdtown, of which there are now about thirty
in South Africa. These are capped by the Native
University College at Fort Hare, now ten years old,
which trains for degrees in arts, science, pedagogy,
theology; and medicine. In a word, the mission-
aries were beneficent pioneers in the humanities and
peaceful arts of civilization.
From Thinking with Africa.

The ‘‘Silent Missionary.”’

How the “silent missionary” works with the
living missionary is a constant miracle. Without
his “silent partner” the missionary would be help-
less. His message would lack carrying power.

“There is a missionary,” said David Abeel, “who
can go where I cannot, who can do what I cannot.
He is not an American, or an Englishman, or a
Scotchman, or a Hollander. That great mission-
ary is the Bible.”

An example of the cooperation of the silent and
the speaking missionary is the work of the Bible in
an Illinois town. The people there had been noto-
riously indifferent to religion. Christian activity

-

languished. A colporteur sold one hundred dollars’
worth of Bibles in the town, and within a year one
hundred and two persons joined the church. The
missionary found them, for the first time, wide open
to his teaching because of the silent ministrations of
a dynamic Bible.

An infamous modern Sodom ‘known as Flat
Rivers in North Carolina was visited by a colporteur,
who left Bibles in thirty-three homes, received forty
cents in return, paid more than one dollar for board
and lodging, and departed. Thirteen years later the
place was entirely changed, and in every home where
a Bible had been left some of the members of the
family were earnest Christians. Religious activity,
which had formerly been well-nigh impossible in
this community, was now not only possible, but
demanded by these people, whose lives had been
changed by a book.

_A missionary who was compelled to leave his
field for some months placed the “silent missionary”
in charge during his absence. The Gospel of
St. John was given to the people by the Rev. Mr.
Snow for their instruction while he would be away
from the island of Kusaie, Micronesia. Upon his
return he found that the pamphlet had won forty
persons to Christ. A Sunday-school of 118 pupils
was studying the gospel, and many had learned it
by heart. They were overjoyed to find that he had
brought them the Gospel of St. Matthew, just
printed, and that evening the little lamps burned
long as the people, in groups of three or four,
lay within the small circles of light reading the
new book.

How the intelligent use of the Book helps to
make plain the path of the missionary and his
people !

A missionary in Japan gave one of the gospels -
to a man of Yokomachi. The Japanese read and
reread it and then read the entire New Testament.
He told many friends of his wonderful discovery,
and soon a-score of others with him were studying
the Way and asked that a missionary should come to
live among them and teach then more fully. .

A Mexican laborer on a Texas ranch received
a gospel from an American Bible Society agent.
Again the influence began to multiply. After read-
ing it, the laborer asked for more copies for his
fellow-workers. From this beginning there de-
veloped in time three evangelical churches! In
their pulpits the Voice perpetuates the work which
might never have been begun except for the Book
and could not be continued without it.