The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1930, Page 154

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154

many of them are tempted to think that they have
no need of the Church in the great city to which
they have come. The great task of the Church is
to go after these migrants and seck to convince
them that it has an important part in their lives
and that it is ready and willing to meet their spir-
itual needs.

Industrial unrest to a more or less degree and
not infrequently an unwholesome radicalism make
the ministrations of the Church with its Gospel
preaching even more necessary. Unemployment
and consequent want create conditions that consti-
tute a loud and insistent challenge to the Church to
bring to those affected the balm and tonic of Christ’s
Gospel. .

The steady flow of Negroes from the South to
our great Northern cities brings with it spiritual
problems which the Church has so far failed fully
to solve. The large number of females seeking em-
ployment in offices and factories and the consequent
loss of work for males in many cases creates serious
industrial and social problems in whose solution the
Church may be of great indirect service by the pub-
lishing of its glorious message of the Gospel of
Christ.

The city with its open wickedness, its greed, its
selfish and inconsiderate ambition, its apparent re~
fusal of responsibility; in short, its utter, glaring
materialism, cries out aloud to the Church, “Come
and help us!” We fully realize that the heart of
the man, woman, or child in the city is no more
wicked than is that of the person living in the
country; but the life in the city is more showy and
dazzling, more extravagantly gay and flashy and
consequently more enticing and tempting. The
music in the city is more alluring and seductive, the
amusements are more general, and the very number
taking part in them makes them more dangerous.

All these various conditions, all these many
problems, and all these countless dangers that are
found in our great cities constitute a challenge for
the Church of our day such as it never had before.
May God grant us vision to see the great spiritual
need of the cities; may He grant us courage to ac-
cept the challenge this need holds out to us; may
He in His boundless grace grant us power to carry
on in His name, bringing to sin-sick man wherever
he may be the one remedy, the Gospel of Christ.
F.J.L.

Ir is in days of trial that it will come out
_ whether our religion is of the right kind.

THE LUTHERAN PIONEER.

How We Live.

The wife of a missionary in India, not a Lu-
theran, having heard that they were being accused

of being extravagant, recently checked up on their ,

manner of living and then wrote down the result : —

“Our compound is pretty. But surely that is
no sin, since we planted trees and flowers ourselves,
with practically no output of money. I believe that
God put His blessing on both trees and flowers, and
they shine for Him. No, I am not ashamed of our
compound because it is beautiful and not extrava-
gant. We often baptize men who are not capable
of learning a trade, but are capable of helping to
work in the garden. We are always glad to have
something to give them to do to earn an honest
living.

“Our house? Its walls,are of mud. If I drive
a nail in very, very gently, it will stay in place and
hold a motto. But I do not dare to put too much
strain on the walls. The house is old, old, old. It
leaks dreadfully. We are going to have to try to do
something to stop the leaks before long. The damp-
ness is unhealthful, and we do not want to be sick
and unable to go on with our work. But I wonder
if the mud walls will be strong enough to hold up
a roof which is rain-proof. The present roof is of
the small kind of tiles, which go to pieces quickly.
Crows get on our roof and lift up tiles with their
beaks to hunt the white ants which are underneath
eating the woodwork.

“Our doors? My, my, the trial the doors are
tome! We have no window in the house, but many
doors. I went through the house this very morning
to look carefully at each door because I wanted to
write the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but
the truth about them.

“Two or three of them will really close, not
being even partly open at the top or bottom. The
rest of them either do not close at all or only partly.
Of course, I can get them nearly shut, but not really
in place. And the door frames' would not stand the
strain of holding them tightly shut even if the doors
would fit into place. The door frames are simply
going to pieces. Some of them are so bad that
I kick off another piece every time my foot happens
to touch one of them. There is not a really good
door frame in the house, judging according to the
standards of ordinary people of America or England.

“And the doors themselves have great jagged
holes right through them, where pieces of the wood
have fallen out. And that is true although it is

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