The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1931, Page 168

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168 THE LUTHERAN PIONEER.

We admire the missionary zeal of our Omaha
Lutherans, and we admire the way in which they
take hold of the problem and try to solve it. We are
sure that our brethren have their congregational
burdens to carry, just as other congregations have;
but this fact is not holding them back from cou-
rageously taking over this new responsibility which
they feel they have to their colored fellow-men. God
bless them in their undertaking and crown it with
abundant success! F.J.L.

A Valuable Home Mission Agency.

It is surely permissible to call the family altar
such. Countless thousands have been brought to the
Savior by means of family devotion. Luther real-
ized this and made it an important part in his plan
for evangelization. The Bible in the hands of the
father and the prayer on the lips of the mother have
set thousands of sons and daughters upon the path
of godliness. The great evangelistic value of a
mother’s prayer is forcibly brought out in the fol-
lowing unsigned communication the Editor recently
received from a reader of the PIoNEER in Colorado.

We print the letter in these columns, hoping that
fathers and mothers reading it will be encouraged
to continue their “inner mission” work by leading
a life of prayer before their children, while those
parents who have neglected their duty in this respect
will be admonished to enter upon this promising
kind of mission-work. May parents ever bear in
mind that they, first of all, have the God-appointed
task — and what a blessed task it is ! — to lead their
children to Jesus. But here is the letter: —

“When my mother became feeble with age and
could no longer take care of herself, she came to our
home. The first night as she was put to bed by my
wife, just as she had once put me and my brothers
and sisters to bed and tucked us in when we were
small, she said an evening prayer which I had not
heard for forty years. It came back to my remem-
brance with wondérful power and clearness. And it
was said in the same familiar voice I had so often
heard in childhood.

“During those forty years I had been away from
home. Many of the experiences of childhood were
forgotten. Like with other youths and men there
were griefs and joys, thrills and ambitions, respon-
sibilities and rewards, successes and failures, that
crowded upon one another, and the sweet and gentle
impressions received in early childhood had become

_ dormant.

“But they were not dead. They could not be.
Whatever is written on the receptive tablets of early
childhood’s mind cannot be erased. I became con-
vinced of that when on her first night with us
Mother prayed that familiar prayer: —

“Nun, so schlaf’? ich ruhig ein,

Gott, mein Gott, wird bei mir sein;
Gottes Allmacht wird mich decken,
Solliec mich die Nacht erschrecken.
Ohne Kummer schlaf’ ich ein,

Gott, mein Gott, wird bei mir sein.
“(Now I lay me down to sleep,
God, I know, my soul will keep;
He will guard me through the night
Till I see the morning’s light.
Without care I go to sleep,

God, I know, my soul will keep.

“T thought of the wonderful providences in
life — how nothing that is planted in the garden of
man’s existence can perish. Whether good or evil,
all is as seed sown out to grow. It may, for the time
being, fall on unresponsive soil. It may not sprout
now because conditions are not favorable. But it is
there. And when in the many vicissitudes of life,
conditions are right, it will grow to bless you or to
curse you. lappy is he whose mind had for its
gardener a Christian mother!

“Forty years of oblivion could not annihilate the
memory of that prayer. Life’s span may be short
or long, yet it is not long enough to permit blotting
out any impression made on the child’s mind. There
may be other experiences as unknown to me as the
memory of that prayer was before my mother came
to us. Before life is over, the need and the comfort
of reliving those experiences may return. And when
such a time comes, behold, there they are ready to
spring up and serve us, to smooth out roughnesses in
our path that would otherwise make it very hard to
travel.

“However some of us may undervalue an early
religious training, I believe no one who received it
ever went through life but at some time or other
he had occasion to thank God that this part of his
education had not been neglected.

“It is wonderful how extremes will meet. The
language used by the dying, unconscious though
they may be, is said to be that which was taught by
a mother. The very best way to prepare for death
is to have the start made at the beginning of life.
To face serenely the hardships that come to us in
mature years, we should have the most important
preparatory work done when innocence and happi-
ness are supreme.”