The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1929, Sheet 113

Transcription machine transcription, uncorrected

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THE LUTHERAN PIONEER.

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a former minister of the Chinese government in
Washington, heard of the self-sacrificing labors of
Dr. Lake, became interested in the work of the
Christian missionary, bought the island from a
fishing company, and presented it to him.

Tai Kam is said to be a beautiful, well-wooded
spot with an area of almost seven miles. It is
situated two miles from the coast of China and
about forty miles southwest of the Portuguese
colony of Macao.

The colony is now in possession of sixteen
buildings and has accommodations for two hundred
lepers. There is farmland enough to make the
colony self-supporting. F. J. L.

a >—___—

Sowing the Seed.

A Christian worker in Arizona tells the following
concerning a rough-looking cowboy who one day
came to him for copies of the Gospel according to
St. Mark: —

“T went to San Francisco and threw away much
money in revelry. I slept late after a night of dis-
sipation. When I awoke, I saw a little book on the
table near my bed. It was the Gospel of St. Mark.
I angrily threw it on the floor. I did the same thing
the second morning. Awaking the third morning,
I saw that same little book. This time I took
it with me to a near-by park and began to
examine it. I spend the day reading it. In it
I heard the Son of God say to a leper: “Be
thou clean.’ I heard Him say to a paralytic: “Thy
sins.be forgiven thee’ I heard Him commend the
widow for her mite. I saw Him take little chil-
dren in His arms and bless them. I heard Him
say, ‘Could ye not watch one hour? I saw Him die.
It broke my heart and changed my life. I am
a different man.

“Now, stranger, I spend much time giving away
copies of the Gospel of St. Mark.”

A colporteur who works in the Rocky Mountains
was traveling high over a mountain pass in the dark
one night. For some reason or other his car could
not make the grade to the summit, 9,000 feet in
altitude. The road was wild and desolate, and the
only persons he met were some Mexican sheep-
herders. He decided to spend the night with them.
In the hours about the camp-fire he told the story of
the Man of Galilee and read from some of the little
gospels. In the morning he left with his hosts the
Gospel of San Juan (St. John) in Spanish. Months
later, a hundred miles away, two Mexicans stopped

him on the road and reminded him of the night he
had spent with them and asked for another gospel
to take the place of the one which they had worn out
with reading. They believed themselves fortunate
to have received a copy of the gospel in their own
tongue.

“No, I do not care to have one of your Bibles.
However, if you have a book in which the Lord’s
Prayer is found, I will buy it,” said a man to a col-
porteur of the American Bible Society in Central
America. The sower of seed was equal to the oc-
casion and, handing him a Gospel of St. Matthew in
Spanish, replied: “Here is the book you are looking
for, and it costs only one cent.” From it he read
the Lord’s Prayer to him, and the man bought it
at once.

What Christianity Does.

“As for me, I think one religion about as good as
another. It’s mostly a matter of climate and race
and tradition.”

“That’s so,” said the other man.

is sentimentally attractive.
done ?”
_ A man seated across the aisle who had the air
of a foreigner suddenly leaned forward and said
very politely: “Pardon me, but your remarks, which
I could not help hearing, deeply interest me. May
I say why?”

“Surely, go ahead,’ the first speaker replied,
looking curiously at the foreigner.

“Thank you, sir. I am an Armenian. I was
born in Bitlis. Bitlis has about forty thousand
people. Have you a town of that size you can think
of in America?”

“Just the size of my town,” said the second man.

“Take your own town, then, and call it Bitlis;
and say of your town these things: no hospital, no
doctor, no dentist, no church except the mission, no
press, no telephone, no sanitation, no water system,
no nurse, no public school. And that is your town
here in America. That is, you understand, my town
of Bitlis in Turkey.

“The one bright spot in my town is the Chris-
tian mission, which supports a dispensary and
a school and is the hope of life. During the recent
uprising against the Armenians, in which over three
hundred thousand of them were massacred, the mis- .
sionaries in Bitlis, aided by those in Van, at the
risk of their lives, saved me from torture and death.
All my relatives were murdered, and our property

“Christianity
But what has it ever