The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1930, Page 31

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1905.

THE LUTHERAN PIONEER. 31

was finally divided up among Russia, Poland, and
Germany. After the Peace of Versailles Lithuania
once more became a free and independent state.

The religious history of this people is interest-
ing. From the plains of Central Asia they brought
their idols, Perkunos, Pikolos, and Potrimpos, and
to these gods of their fathers they held so tenaciously
that they were the last people in Europe to be Chris-
tianized. The Lutheran Reformation was intro-
duced about 1544. Under the rule of the Russian
ezar the Lithuanians received very little religious
instruction. Their spiritual shepherds were also
holders of great tracts of land, and often they loved
these earthly possessions more than the souls of
those entrusted to their spiritual care.

Many Lithuanians are deeply religious. Credit
for this must be given the lay preachers of the
Stundist movement. The Stundists believe that
they have an immediate call from heaven to preach
salvation to the people, and they are aided by the
people and pastors among whom they work. They
are legalists of the deepest dye. They speak much
of spiritual wrestling, as the Pentecostals do, of
deep contrition, God’s wrath and hell-fire, and of
the great Judgment. <A person must be able to pray
loud and long. Smoking and drinking are crimes
punishable by hell itself. (Of course, there are ex-
ceptions.) By reading the Bible, they are often
brought to a realization of their guilt and then find
in the Gospel forgiveness and salvation for their
souls.

It is difficult to say just when the first Lutheran
Lithuanians began to emigrate to America. Many
of them were Catholics; but also Lutherans began
to come to this country. Here they remained with-
out spiritual care for a long time, since there was
nobody to serve them in their native tongue. But
in 1895 the Lord, taking care of His own, as He
always does, sent them a pastor in the person of the
exiled Rev. M. Keturakat. He gathered the Lithua-
nians here in Brooklyn and other cities in the East,
preached God’s Word to them, and administered the
holy Sacraments. He extended his mission-field to
Chicago and Collinsville, Ill. To the last-named
place he was later called by the Wisconsin Synod.
On August 9, 1903, the first Lithuanian missionary
of the Missouri Synod, Candidate H.S. Brustat,
a graduate of the Springfield, Ill., Seminary, was
installed at Bridgeport, Conn., and other mission-
fields in.the East. From here he also visited and
served the Lithuanians in Brooklyn, where he or-
ganized St. John’s Congregation on February 5,
About six years, up to 1913, he lived in

Brooklyn, and then he was called to different
mission-fields.

This fact and the death of another missionary
brought on a crisis in our mission-work at Brooklyn
and in the Eastern States, until the writer, who
had served German congregations in Minnesota
twenty-four years and had forgotten much of the
Lithuanian language, was called to work in the
Atlantic field on May 10, 1914. He had to serve
five places at that time: Brooklyn, Bridgeport,
Naugatuck, New Haven, and Boston. Later changes
were made by the calling of new missionaries and
by the resignation of a missionary, so that the writer
repeatedly had to serve the same fields.

Here in Brooklyn the work has been beset with
difficulties from the very start. A source of danger
and difficulty for us is the fact that our Lithuanian
colony has its share of Socialists, Communists,
Bolshevists, and atheists, and these are the guiding
spirits in the all-powerful labor unions. Besides,
the Stundist movement has extended its work to
America, and here in New York we have very many
Stundists. They undermine the influence of the
pastor, arguing that the minister is not converted,
that he is not anointed with the Holy Ghost, and
that his prayers are false, because he prays out of
a book, and stands instead of kneeling. Unfortu-
nately their efforts have been successful in the case
of a number of weak Christians, who have either left
the Church entirely or are trying to belong to both.
On the other hand, however, we find that the preach-
ing of the Gospel has made such a deep impression
upon many Lithuanians that neither Bolshevist nor
legalist can efface it. Also among our people the
Gospel of Jesus Christ is a power of God unto
salvation.

When judging of the success of our Lithuanian
Missions, we must beware of thinking in terms of ~
mere numbers, as many of us unfortunately do.
Very often we are able to record a victory of the
Gospel over the sinful heart of man.

When I first came to Brooklyn, the scattered
Lithuanians were a disunited people, without any
racial or religious consciousness whatever; but con-
tact with the Gospel has brought one group after
another together. In years past God has taken many
members of the congregation from our midst by
death, many moved to other cities, while from the
Old Country we are not getting any. Besides
Brooklyn the writer also has been serving Baltimore
for the past three years. At Brooklyn he preaches
in three different languages. He conducts two ser-
vices every Sunday. There are thirty Lithuanian,