The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1931, Sheet 104

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THE LUTHERAN PIONEER

a —————————————————————————————— OSS!

Dr. Pieper was a member of the Board for Col-
ored Missions when the editor of the ProNEER en-
tered the service of the mission. His cheery smile
and hearty words of encouragement raised the
drooping spirits of the young worker when he stood
in need of just what the wise judgment of the
Doctor prompted to give him at the crucial mo-
ment; and to his dying day the writer will bear
in grateful remembrance the act of kindness ren-
dered him by this great-hearted man of God.

The Editor knows that the Doctor never lost his
interest in our Colored Missions and that he re-
joiced at its growth and progress. More than once
he told the writer that it was with the greatest
reluctance that he had retired from the Colored
Mission Board.

As we heard of the Doctor’s death, the words of
the psalmist came to our mind: “The voice of the
Lord breaketh the cedars; yea, the Lord breaketh
the cedars of Lebanon,” Ps. 29,5. In the towering
strength of his mentality, the beauty of his char-
acter, and the usefulness of his life, Dr. Pieper is
indeed to be compared to the towering, graceful,
and useful cedar, the king among trees. F. J. L.

A Miracle of Grace.

The conversion of the sinner is God’s perpetual
miracle. There are changes in the lives and souls
of men which can be attributed only to the mighty
working of Him who commanded the light to shine
out of darkness. These changes cannot be the re-
sult of man’s power and skill, but are growths of
a hidden seed of new life, the planting of the Lord
by His Word that He may be glorified. Reforma-
tion of outward conduct may be due, not to grace,
but to selfishness; many a person changes his out-
ward behavior for no other reason than that he may
profit thereby in a material way. In the deepest
shadow of heathenism very high types of external
morality have been developed because by such
morality it was thought possible to gain the good
will of the gods. But regeneration, which means
not a mere outward change of manner and language,
but the transformation of man’s inward nature and
attitude of mind, so that he is now controlled by
new desires, tastes, and affections, — this change,
which turns hate into love and former affection into

repulsion, this re-creation of a man, is as truly the

work of God as was His creation of light on the
_ first day of creation. —
The Ethiopian cannot change his skin nor the

leopard his spots; but even if they could, the
change would be only outward, and in reality they
would still remain the same in spite of the external
change. Actually to change the Ethiopian or the
leopard would require the almighty power of God.

In the Acts, miracles of the radical change of
men are continually recorded. The opening miracle
occurred on Pentecost. Saul is an example of an
enemy turned by divine grace into a friend, a re-
lentless persecutor into an enthusiastic apostle.
The Acts relate to us a goodly number of individual
miracles of conversion and not a few repetitions of
the miracle of Pentecost.

Contrary to the opinion of many Christians the
history of God’s gracious working by the means of
grace is a record of scarcely less wonderful changes
in individual persons and whole communities than
are recorded in the Acts.

The above remarks were called forth by the
reading of the following wonderful account of a
conversion related by an African missionary : —

“There are, it is true, chiefs in West Africa who
long for the Gospel, send delegates after delegates
to the missions, demanding a teacher. Yet not all.
There was Nsom Mewo. He was a comparatively
young man, of that progressive type which possesses
shoes without the Gospel, which has added to its
own vices those of the white man without embrac-
ing his virtues. Nsom hated Christianity. He
knew that such cruel reigns as his would be doomed
if the light of the Gospel should dispel the dark-
ness of heathendom in the land. So he opposed
Christianity with all his power. And he had power ;
all the surrounding villages feared him. He was
rich and had many wives, but I do not think he
had properly paid for one; he had gotten them by
hook and crook, often by stealing. And he was un-
mercifully cruel to them. Would Christian teachers
come through the picturesquely hidden village in
the forested hills, desiring to tell the people of the
things of God, Nsom would appear, saying: ‘I am
a man of Satan, and my town is a town of Satan —
you get out of here!’ He would not let the boys of
his town go to school.

“So when I went there, I was accompanied by
the prayers of the missionaries behind me. A blessed
trip it was; my three carriers and I talked to many
people whom we met on the trail or in the bark huts
under the giant trees, and many of them were won
for the Gospel. The second afternoon we arrived
in Nsom’s town. As the hills were already throw-
ing a shadow over half of the smoking little bark
huts, I went up to Nsom, saying (and I confess