The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1930, Page 12

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12 THE LUTHERAN PIONEER.

it is to them that he sends up his wail and believes
that it is heard. While he worships saints and
attends mass, in his heart he remains a thorough
heathen.

While in Mexico, a traveler tried to buy a little
idol from an Indian, but was refused with the words,
“T dare not sell it; for it is my god.” When he was
asked whether he did not belong to the Roman
Catholic Church, he replied, “Sure, I reverence the
saints; but I worship my own gods!”

Till now, though working for over four centuries
among them, the Roman Catholic Church, despite
its great resources, has scarcely done more than
touch the fringe of the problem. The Indian
longs for help; he feels his sad condition. Thus,

Mexican Indians Making Baskets.

some years ago over a hundred heads of villages in
Peru waited on a number of Protestant missionaries
in Cuzco, Peru, and asked them to come to the
rescue. They were turned away, because there were
no workers at hand to meet their request for
teachers and preachers to bring to them the knowl-
edge of Christ. They went back to their respective
villages in silence to await what the future might
bring them in their darkness and distress.

The Indians of Latin America thus constitute
an immense mission-field, almost at our very doors.
By means of the Gospel these people could be raised
up out of the degradation into which they have
fallen and made to walk before God in newness of
life; for only the Gospel can free them from the
slavery of sin and the darkness of superstition in
which they are living.

God’s Love-Letter.

The following touching incident the Lutheran
Witness quotes from The Dawn: “An Australian
authoress, Miss Manning, had loved and had been
loved in return. Her lover was going to India and
wished to bare his heart. He wrote her and asked
her not to reply if she could not let him hope. If
she sent no answer, he would take her silence, not
as giving consent, but as a denial. Miss Manning
found no fault with the letter, but wrote her reply
and sent it within the hour. It was a pouring-wet
day, and her brother undertook to take the letter
to the village post-office. Her lover never came,
and she never saw him again. Some years after,
she heard of his marriage and of his remaining on
in India, where he had an honorable and prosperous
career. Twenty-five years after, the Manning family
moved into a new house, and an-old coat belonging
to the brother was brought out into the light. When
the pockets were turned inside out, there the letter
was, yellow and crumpled, but with the seal un-
broken and the stamp untouched. The culprit was
never told, and the lost lover never knew!

“Let us see that at all costs we do not leave un-
delivered God’s love-letter to the world which He
has entrusted to us.” i

Should we not indeed do some earnest heart-
searching? Are not we Christians to be earnestly
reproached because of the fact that, though it is
nineteen hundred years since the Son of God com-
manded us, His disciples, to bring His Gospel to
all nations, we find over ninety-five per cent. of all
Christian pastors and congregations in a few coun-
tries, while the vast majority of our race is left in
deepest spiritual darkness? Have we done what
we could to deliver God’s love-letter to the whole
world? We are told that in the Southern States
of our country there is an average of four Protestant
churches to every thousand of the population, while
in China there is a province with an area of 550,000
square miles and a population of two million having
only two mission-stations! While in our country
as a whole we have one evangelical minister to every
657 of the population, in North Kiangsu, China,
there are thousands of villages with not a single
laborer in one of them! Does this seem to indicate
that we have been diligent in delivering God’s mes-
sage of love to the world?

A little group of Korean believers was asked
one night by a visiting Foreign Missions secretary
what Christ’s Gospel had brought to them. As the

question was put, all present eagerly sprang to their

Se