The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1930, Page 111

Transcription machine transcription, uncorrected

⤓ Download .txt · copy text

THE LUTHERAN PIONEER.

111

the supreme gift of the Gospel, cannot be reckoned.
They have placed generations of Africans in a posi-
tion of being their grateful debtors. For the mis-
sionaries sacrificed home, relatives, and comfort for
our sake and for the service of God and humanity.
But for them and their self-denial we would never
have been in a position to express ourselves through
any-medium such as this article. They were the
first whites to establish friendly contacts with native
Africans, in contrast with their commercial fellow-
men, who brought the sword and dispossessed us of
our beloved territory. They were the only friends
among the white race whom we could count upon
for better or for worse. A mission-station was
always a bright beacon and a lighted window in
darkness. Of the three agencies of civilization the
missionary enterprise constitutes the most impor-
tant, the other two being conquest and commerce.
Missionaries in Africa transformed the lives of the
blacks and inculeated the principles of humility,
love, obedience, peacefulness, of work and honesty, of
cleanliness and sanitation. They founded schools, be-
ginning with Sunday-schools and elementary schools
in the twenties, following in the fifties with secon-
dary educational institutions of the type of Love-
dale and Healdown, of which there are now about
thirty in South Africa. These are capped by the
Native University College at Fort Hare, now ten
years old, which trains for degrees in arts, science,
pedagogy, theology, and medicine. In a word, the
missionaries were beneficent pioneers in the human-
ities and peaceful arts of civilization.”

+ —_____

Turkish Intolerance.

The preaching of Christ meets with great oppo-
sition in the Republic of Turkey, a land which
has always been highly intolerant. Some eighteen
months ago the American Girls’ School at Brussa,
in Asia Minor, was closed and its leaders brought
before the courts because three Turkish girl students
had been converted to Christianity.

A new offensive against Christian missions has
just begun. Dkumhuriet, the official newspaper,
announces: “Representatives of the Turkish press
have recently organized a new society to take up the
battle against Christian missionaries. This society
will seek to prohibit missionaries from remaining in
the country and from continuing their propaganda,
as they are the agents of the foreign powers. The
press and other public agents must be enlisted for
this purpose.”

Another new publication, Hareket, says: “Down
with the missionaries! American missionaries and
the United States dollar have set for themselves the
accursed task of making our children stupid in their
American schools and are depriving them of all
nationalistic feeling. The presses of the Bible House
are working night and day to suppress Turkish
culture. Our intelligent people cannot remain in-
different to this any longer. The reaction is coming
just at the psychological moment. We cannot tolerate
that our girls, as at Brussa, shall be alienated from
their religion and their nationality.”

N.L. C. News Bulletin.

The Story of Maung Ba Lin.

Maung Ba Lin was a Buddhist monk. He had
gone into a cave, in company with other priests, to
spend his days waiting for the “light.” ‘To priests
who withdraw from the usual monastery and take
up this cave life is promised that some day a great
light shall dawn for them. Not only a’ spiritual
light, when they shall come to a great understanding
for all their meditation, but at the same time a phys-
ical light shall be given, when their darkened cave
will be flooded with a strange light, so that they will
be able to see as though a noonday sun were shining
upon them.

These monks leave their cave only once daily,
and that is for their morning round of begging food.
One morning as Maung Ba Lin went his rounds, he
found by the roadside, in a pile of trash, a tattered
booklet, which he took back to his cave with him.
He read and reread the story therein told, and he
began to think that at last he was finding the true
light. His tattered book was a copy of John’s gospel
in Burmese. This so grew upon him that he began
to question himself. What had he gained by all these
months in the dark cave, sitting incessantly in medi-
tation? Nothing had been gained except a severe
backache. His mind-was made up to pursue further
the investigation of this strange little book with its
talk of the true light, John 1, 9.

He went forth and hunted up a Christian and
asked him many questions. The Christian led him

“to the near-by missionary, who interpreted further.

the significance of our true Light. He became con-
vinced that he had found the light that his soul had:
long sought, and’ he asked to be baptized. At
Maymyo Bible Assembly, where the young Chris-
tians and their able leaders were gathered together,
he had opportunity for learning and for testing as

.