The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1929, Page 158

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158

publication has appeared in Australia. It is pub-
lished by Rev. F-. Albrecht, missionary of the United
Evangelical Lutheran Church of Australia to the
¥inke River Mission in Northern Territory. The
mission centers in Hermannsburg, an outpost of
civilization in the McDonnell Mountains, and has
made great progress among the natives of that sec-
tion. The Lutheran Herald of Tunanda, South
Australia, points out that this is the first Lutheran
paper published in one of Australia’s native tongues.

Modern Heroes. — “In this century, when con-
veniences of civilization tend to waft men to heaven
on ‘flowery beds of ease,’ it is inspiring that there are
still men and women who have the zeal of those
early Christian missionaries and who are ready to
endure any hardship or face any peril in order to
carry their Gospel around the earth.... Every-
where the American missionary has gone not only
preaching the Gospel, but . . . illustrating it, found-
ing schools, hospitals, orphanages, asylums. ... The
missionaries in China are but the Augustines.. .
and Columbas, the Livingstones and the Morrisons,
the Careys and the Scudders carrying on.”

The Pity of It! — Less than half the boys and
girls in our country between the ages of five and
twenty receive any religious training. This is one
of the reasons that scarcely half of the people in our
country twelve years old and over are members of
any church. Are you doing what you can to bring
our growing boys and girls under the influence of
religious training? Of four thousand boys brought
before a certain judge in Brooklyn charged with
crimes only three were members of a Sunday-school
at the time the crime had been committed. Religious
training is the only cure for crime.

., Another Weak Spot.—But the religious training
must begin in the home; it dare not be confined to
the Church. Church and church-school can never
take the: place of the instruction and training of
Christian parents. Our children need religious
-home-training. Unless our boys and girls receive
conscientious religious training at home and by the
Church, they will not prove to be what they have

i) _ been called, “‘the hope of the world.” While bringing

_ in those that are without, let us not forget our
_ children!

The Cost of Crime in faerie its) million

people could travel around the world for the same

amount that crime costs America every year. This

nount, $3,500,000,000, if used as an endow-

i enable nearly 200,000 young men and

ae to Ree

THE LUTHERAN PIONEER.

education; build one-third of a million comfortable
homes ; permanently found 300 universities ; lay out
a complete park and playground system in each of
300 cities. Verily, the wages of sin is economic as
well as spiritual death. Money voluntarily given to
the work of the Church will in due season save many
times the amount of involuntary investment in loss
and in taxes levied to carry on the battle against
crime. Giving to the Church is the best investment
any man can make of his means.

Islam and the Gospel. — ive times every day
the cry goes up from 100,000 mosques, “There is no
god but Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet.” One
out of every seven of the world’s population is a fol-
lower of Mohammed — almost 250,000,000. Not
more than ten per cent. of the Mohammedans can
read; the children are neglected; polygamy and
child-marriage degrade the homes. Though many
Moslem countries have opened their doors since the
World War, intolerance is ever flaring up, as is to be
seen in Palestine just now.

Lutheran Mission in New Guinea.

For years before the World War several German
missionary societies were working in what was then
German territory in New Guinea, or Papua, an
island north of Australia. During the war these
societies were compelled to cease their labors, and
the work was taken over by the Iowa Synod and the
United Ev. Luth. Church of Australia. Recently,
so we are informed, German missionary workers
have been permitted to come back and resume their
work. The following interesting account we take
from the columns of the Lutheran Standard: —

“The Papuan in his unconverted state gives
evidence of how low it is possible for all mankind to
fall, of how a creature, once godlike, has through
sin become beastlike. ‘To these savage, brutal people
sympathy is unknown, so unknown that in their
language there is no term for it. If a captive taken
in war shows a little life, they truss him up and
then roast him alive in order to hear him scream.

“Obviously there is no romance in barbarous
practises such as this. But there is romance in the
transformations which the Gospel is effecting among ~
these former cannibals. Pastor Kraushaar told, for
example, of a Papuan, a son of a cannibal, who has

been won for Christ, was trained in one of the semi-

naries, and is to-day carrying the Gospel to his

‘countrymen. When this native Christian is com-

pared with the people from whom he, came, one