The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1930, Sheet 112

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_ 110

THE LUTHERAN PIONEER.

And then, yet another thought forces itself upon
us: How much more earnest are the poor heathen
in their blindness than are we in our service! Be-
cause we are happy in the blessed love of the
heavenly Father, should it not be our greatest
delight to make our God, the God of love, known
everywhere ? F.J.L.

The Little Tot Cries.

Who? Little Cleonese J. Young, aged six, a niece
of the writer. One day she came to her mother
crying as if her little heart would break. The
mother inquired what in the world could be the
matter. Little Cleo exclaimed amidst her tears:
“IT am a Lutheran. That Baptist preacher has
nothing to do with me. He is not going to bap-
tize me. I have been baptized. I am a Lutheran.”

The Baptist preacher had reached the close of his
revival work and was on the eve of baptizing his
candidates, when Cleonese’s elder sisters, looking at
the parade as they went down to the creek, began to
tease Cleonese, saying, “He is going to baptize you
also, Cleo.”

A few days after the baptism the elder sisters
asked Cleonese, “What would you do if papa and
‘mama and all of us should go and join the penor
Church ?”

Cleonese promptly replied, “I will stay right j in
the Lutheran Church. I don’t care who goes.”

May our dear Lord strengthen the little one’s
faith and keep her i in the true faith of our Church
unto her end! Rosa J. Youne.

Another Case of Tears.

Little Beatrice McNeil is nine years old. This
little girl lives with an aunt who is a non-Lutheran,
heeding the advice of outsiders. The Baptists, with
whom the aunt is affiliated, resolved to force little
Beatrice to attend the Baptist Church and Sunday-
school. After making several unsuccessful attempts,

‘the aunt began to use authority. One Sunday she
forced little “Bea” to go to the Baptist Sunday-
school. The little girl was not permitted to speak
for herself. She had to go, but she went crying,

_ Crying, and crying all the way, crying even while in

a phe Sunday-school. ;
~ Upon the child’s return the aunt discovered this

: pitiful sight: Beatrice moving slowly along behind

th :

going to cry that way, you may go back to your
Lucious Church.”

Beatrice told me about it, saying, “Miss Rosa,
I cried.”

Smiling, I replied, “Well, Bea, if crying will do
any good, cry again.”

Now little Beatrice’s uncle, who is not a member
of any church, is taking Christian instruction, and
the aunt is inclining toward our Church also.

Rosa J. Youne.

Christianity and the Bantus.

The following words of appreciation were written
by a native African. He is now a professor at the
first college of university rank ever established for
the Bantus of South Africa, the South African
Native College at Fort Hare. He is the author of
several books, among them Zhe Black Problem.

“When the first white missionaries arrived in
South Africa over a hundred years ago, the aborig-
ines lived in manifest darkness under the haunting
specter of superstition. The hinterland bush was
infested by man-hunting savages. The reign of the
witch-doctor was everywhere supreme; he stood
above correction even by the chief, virtually wield-
ing powers of life and death over any individual
suspected, rightly or wrongly, of mischief. The
Bantus, though boasting an efficient system of com-
munistic tribalism, led a life devoid of spiritual out-
look, enslaved by tyrannical witchcraft, and harassed
by the constant dread of malevolent spirits. Departed
spirits controlled the affairs and destinies of living
men, whom they were able to behold from some
mysterious point of vantage.

“Such were the circumstances, and such were the
people among whom the first missionaries came to
labor. They brought words of hope to the hopeless
and of knowledge to the ignorant, substituting the
sure salvation by Christ: Jesus for the erstwhile
blind fatalism. From all accounts they were fervent
Christians, sincere in their love for the people whose
spiritual redemption was their concern, and deeply
genuine in their social relations with them. They
did not hesitate to live in the often verminous huts
of wattle and daub in which dwelt their converts,
eating and traveling with them, and conducting
themselves as if they were spiritually, socially, and
politically their guides, philosophers, and friends.

“The value of their work, the good they have
rendered to the Bantus, the foundations they laid
for the modernization of the African, not to mention