The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1929, Page 94

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94

THE LUTHERAN PIONEER.

tide. They are delayed by storms and shoals. In
them portions of the Scripture may be installed. The
Scriptures are as tried and tested as the mariner’s
compass. What is more appropriate on a boat than
a copy of the Gospel telling of Him who spent much
of His time on the waters of Galilee? He knew the
sea and its perils and was able to say to the wind
and the storm: “Peace, be still.”

The larger seagoing vessels and liners are not to
be overlooked. The American Bible Society has been
supplying pulpit Bibles to our American ships as
well as to those of other nations. Crews of ships are
often fertile soil for the sowing of the Word of God.
How far a gospel given to one of them may travel
no one can tell. From the Japanese agency of the
American Bible Society comes the following in-
teresting item: —

A special service was recently rendered in the
“floating” population living on boats on the canals,

“rivers, and Bay of Tokyo, where six men with
a motor-boat, working for six days, distributed
seventeen thousand gospels on almost ten thousand
boats. — Selected.

The Dawn of Missions.

On the 30th of June a hundred years will
have passed since the Rhenish Mission Society sent
out its first missionaries, who went to South Africa
to establish their work.

The Rhenish Society was formed on Septem-
ber 23, 1825, after a merger of previous mission-
agencies whose history went back a quarter of a
century before that date. In 1799 nine merchants
and craftsmen of Elberfeld organized a Brunnen-
stube, meeting frequently for study and prayer.
They read the reports of English and Dutch foreign
missionaries, translated them into German, and
gaye them wide publicity by printing and distrib-
uting them under the title “Reports about the Ex-
tension of the Kingdom of Jesus in General, and
Particularly through Missionaries.” As a result of
the publicity given to these reports the Bohemian
Lutheran Church in Berlin founded mission-schools
the following year, and shortly thereafter the
Mountain Bible Society, the Wuppertal Tract So-
ciety, and Jewish mission-work came into existence,
In 1818 a missionary society was founded in Bar-
men, which Jater joined a similar group in Basel.
___ In 1825 it opened its own school and began the

_ publication of a missionary paper.
__ Pastor Liepoldt, leader of the Barmen Society,

said the hour had come to negotiate with the mis-
sionary groups in Elberfeld, Cologne, and Wesel —
the Brunnenstube, the Mountain Bible Society, and
the Wuppertal Tract Society—with a view to
effecting a merger. Delegates from the four groups
gathered in Mettmann, September 23 of that year,
and founded the present Rhenish Society. In the
fall of 1832 the society moved into a home of its
own in Rudolphstrasse, Barmen.

After the first missionaries had established work
in South Africa, in 1829, the field was extended to
the northwest to serve the Nama and Herero tribes.
On Reformation Day, 1844, the first mission-station
was opened in Hereroland.

Looking toward the East Indies as a field for
work, the Rhenish Society opened a station in
Borneo in 1834, one in Sumatra in 1862, and one
in Nias in 1865. In 1888 two missionaries were
sent to New Guinea. Many years previous, in
1846, work had been opened in China with the
beginning of German colonization in that country.

The remarkable success of the Rhenish Society’s
work in all its fields is shown in its current statistics.
It operates 74 main stations and 726 outstations,
manned by a foreign staff of 84 ordained and
16 unordained missionaries and 23 deaconesses.
With these are associated 67 ordained native pastors,
172 native evangelists, 1,010 teachers, and 3,222
elders. The total number ‘of baptized Christians
in all fields of the Rhenish Society is 370,000,
while 26,000 applicants for baptism are on file.

N.L.C. News Bulletin.

Circulating the Bible.

The obligation to circulate the Bible has not
waited upon the progress of civilization, but has
ever preceded it. The faithful colporteurs have been
the forerunners of civilization in every respect. The
stories of the hardships and the privations of these
faithful disseminators of the Word can never be
adequately written or told. ‘There is scarcely a road
or by-path in these far-eastern countries where they
have not gone. Some of their travels have been
pleasant; most of them have been exceedingly irk-
some and tiresome. They have called in the homes
of the rich and have visited the hovels of the poor,
carrying their messages of cheer as contained in the
printed Word. They have utilized every means of
transportation, from the humble wheelbarrow to the
stately coastal steamers. They have faced hard-