The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1929, Page 118

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118

THE LUTHERAN PIONEER.

——————— nn NS,

however, is quite small, numbering only a little over
7,000. The District has thirty-seven Home Mission
workers in the field, who are serving seventy-five
stations. Four new men were called into the Home
Mission field of the District. More men could be
used to good advantage, for a number of promising

. fields cannot be worked because of a lack of man-
power. The representative of the District asked for
a subsidy of $26,000.

The Oklahoma District numbers about 4000
communicant members. Half of the congregations
are self-supporting. Seven places were discontinued
during the year, while two new places were opened.
Two candidates for the ministry and three students
have been added to the force of mission-workers.
Though the need seemed very great, the representa-
tive in his supreme modesty asked for a subsidy of
only $9,000.

For carrying on its extensive Home Mission
enterprises the North Dakota-Montana District
was granted a subsidy of $16,000. All in all, Synod
voted Home Mission subsidies aggregating the sum
of $256,000. F. J. L.

A Mission Thought.

A French writer once said: “Men should be
trained to pity misfortune even more than to bear it.”
Supposing men were taught to pity misfortune more
than to bear it, how their hearts would go out to that
great heathen world, numbering a billion souls, that
has suffered for thousands of years the saddest mis-
fortune that could possibly befall mankind!

Men will show great distress at some sudden
calamity, when a few dozen or a few hundred or
a few thousand have their lives suddenly snuffed
out; but it seems as if they can with great indiffer-
ence look on at this greatest tragedy of all ages,
when not a few dozen or a few hundred or a few
thousand are snatched out of this world by death,
but when actually THIRTY MILLION souls perish

every year — die without a knowledge of God, with-.

out Christ, without hope of heaven! ;
The life which these millions lead here on earth
is one of indescribable wretchedness ; for they live in
constant fear of evil spirits, and they go to amazing
Tengths to propitiate these spirits, not even stopping
short of sacrificing the lives of their loved ones.
Up to quite recent times it was the custom in
India, that, when a man died, the widow mount the
_ funeral pyre, a huge pile of burning logs, and roast
_ herself to death. If she did not do this willingly,

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she was driven from the village and her life made
a continuous torment. And there can be no doubt
that this cruel custom would still be practised in
India if the British government had not prohibited
the horrible practise.

Among the Japanese it is considered a noble
thing for a man under circumstances to commit
suicide by disemboweling himself with a sharp knife
and, while waiting for death to come, falling back
upon a sword held conveniently near by an obliging
friend. This awful operation the Japanese call
hara-kiri.

In China, millions of girl babies are left in the
fields or on the roadsides to die, or they are smoth-
ered immediately after birth by some relatives,
even the mother, and thrown out with the garbage
because they are considered useless and even a burden.
In this same country sick people, when about to die,
are frequently carried out, where the exposure, the
cold, and the rain make short work of the un-
fortunate victims.

The Negroes of Africa often kill one or more of
their number as an offering to the evil spirits, which
they so greatly dread, hoping thus to appease the
anger of these monsters and to bring good luck upon
themselves.

And thus we might go on recounting hundreds
of horrible practises obtaining among the benighted
heathen all over the world; but these few examples
will be enough to show our readers the deplorable
condition in which ‘those are held who are still living
in the slavery of heathenism. Their life is one of
endless terror, for they deem themselves watched,
wherever they may be, by vengeful spirits who
delight in their pain and misfortune. They try all
kinds of expedients to frighten away these spirits
or circumvent their malicious intentions, from the
drum in Africa, the firecracker in China, to the
poisoned arrow in Papua. But they feel that this
continuous, lifelong, hideous fight against the powers
of darkness is, after all, a useless and hopeless one
and that in the end the spirits of evil will win out;
and as a result their lives are an endless round of
fear and hate, cruel reprisals upon supposed enemies,
incredible cruelty, and hellish revenge.

The Godless and Christless condition of these
poor creatures is so wretched that it is utterly beyond
the ability of human tongue to describe it. They
simply drag themselves through years of living
death, longing for release and yet fearing that hour
of death which holds out no real hope of deliverance.
For the heathen there is no hope in death; sad as