The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1931, Page 140

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140

THE LUTHERAN PIONEER

Another Foreign Mission Item. — The Presby-
terian Church needs eighty new missionaries to
meet the requirements of the field during the present
year. Many of the demands have come from India
and China.

Lose Two Workers. — The mission of the
American Lutheran Church in New Guinea has
recently sustained the loss of two workers. Mis-
sionary Stolz died while en route home on furlough,
and the wife of Missionary Inspector Lehner died
of pneumonia following malaria.

Which Are You? — There is a vast difference
between a post and a tree. It is a difference of life:
the tree has life, and the post has not. Plant a tree,
and it begins to grow; put a post into the ground,
and it begins to rot. The question is, What would
you be in your church, a living tree or a dead post?

“Somebody Has to Pay for the Piping.” —
When a colored preacher came to one of his mem-
bers to ask for a contribution for the church, the
man hesitated and said that the Gospel was the
Water of Life and that water was free. “Right,”
said the preacher, “but somebody has to pay for the
piping!” Water, indeed, is free, but that does not
excuse men from paying for the piping and plumb-
ing. The Gospel is free, but that does not exempt
men from their bounden duty to support the church
and those who preach the Gospel. God has made
this plain when He says: “Let him that is taught
in the Word communicate unto him that teacheth in
all good things.” — Good News.

A Missionary’s Sacrifice. — We know from pub-
lished statements that the workers of the American
Lutheran Church in New Guinea receive very small
salaries. But now we hear that one of these mis-
sionaries has given to the mission treasury of his
body the entire amount of his savings, a sum equi-
yalent to almost $500. By great thrift he has saved
this sum out of his meager salary, and he has given
it in recognition of the support of the church toward
his education and also in realization of the great
need of the mission.

Are You a Missionary? — Dr, Grenfell, the
noted missionary of Labrador, was one day attend-
ing a dinner given in his honor. A lady sitting at
his side asked him, “Is it true that you are a mis-
sionary?” “Isn't it true that you are?” was his un-
expected reply.—Are you, dear reader; are you?
For God’s sake and your own sake and your fellow-
man’s sake, do not put off answering this question!
All Christians have the call from God to be mis-
sionaries; but, sad to say, so very few realize it.

Out of the Ordinary. — At the close of the
World War, Germany ceded the Marshall Islands to
Japan, with the stipulation that the islanders should
continue to be taught the Christian religion. In
accordance with this agreement the Japanese gov-
ernment sent out four Japanese Christian mission-
aries and has now increased this number to six.
Surely a remarkable thing: a heathen government
sends missionaries to the heathen of the Marshall
Islands, pays the salaries of these missionaries,
provides them with residences, grants them medical
allowances and allowance for each child, and gives
them a furlough every three years with passage back
and forth. Strange indeed!

Just Too Bad for the Skeptic! — A skeptic was
traveling through Central Africa. On one occasion
he stopped with a tribe that had been cannibals. He
found the chief of the tribe reading the Bible, and
he said to him flippantly, “Surely you are not read-
ing that out-of-date book?” The chief looked up,
and pointing the traveler to a huge pot boiling over
a near-by fire, said: “If it were not for this old
Book, you would be in that pot.”

Dr. Kugler’s Successor. — Dr. Nellie S. Cassell
was recently made physician-in-charge at the Guntur
Lutheran Hospital in India, to succeed the late
Anna §S. Kugler. Dr. Cassell, though only twenty-
eight years old, already has an enviable surgical
record. The Guntur hospital has been named the
Kugler Hospital in honor of the late Dr. Kugler,
who served almost a half century as a medical mis-
sionary in India.

Union Seminary in India.— Three Lutheran
churches in India and the four mission-societies
supporting them have opened a union theological
seminary in Madras. For the present this united
seminary is only an experiment; for the bodies con-
cerned are by no means sure of the advisability of
the project. We understand that in opening this
union school, doctrinal differences were not con-
sidered as seriously as they should have been.

The Weak Made Strong.

It is now twenty years since Mercedes Flores,
a mulatto girl, was born at Camaguey. Three
months later her mother died, and her father heart-
lessly left her to be cared for by strangers. A woman
from Remedios took pity upon the child and for ten
years fed and clothed her. For a few months she.
attended school. During this time she visited oc-