The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1932, Page 29

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THE LUTHERAN PIONEER

Extraordinary Missionary Zeal. — When one
of the Moravian missionaries who had been sent to
the West Indies, there to work among the slaves,
found that he could not reach them as a free man,
he became a slave himself, went with them to their
work, bore with them all their hardships, and thus
gained their confidence and their willingness to
hear his message of God’s love. — We have in this
example of self-sacrifice a faint reflection of that
infinite love of Jesus who, to save the world, left
His heavenly throne and glory and took upon Him-
self the form of a servant, humbled Himself, and
became obedient unto death, even the death of
the cross.

Work Among the Blind in Egypt. — The
Church Missionary Society has received from Gindi
Effendi Ibrahim, himself blind, an account of the
efforts to help the blind of Egypt. The number of
those in the country who are blind or who have only
one eye is no less than half a million. Since 1923
Gindi Effendi has been in charge of this work. In
1925 he opened a school near the Azhar University,
the great center of Moslem learning. Not only did
he teach the sheiks who came to him to read the
Bible in Braille, but he also taught them some
handicraft to enable them to gain a living. Many
of these sheiks afterwards visited him to ask ques-
tions relating to Christianity. Much success is
hoped from this work, as the sheiks in turn go out
as teachers to the-blind all over the country.

How True! — “If we give our religion and
church ‘the leavings’ of our time and strength, then
they will indeed become things ‘left. If we give
our religion our best, it will be the most exalted and
blessed presence in our life.”

Unprecedented Wealth. — Despite the prevail-
ing depression no nation in the world’s history has
ever controlled such enormous wealth of food, gold,
and material resources as America has to-day. . With
only one-fifteenth of the world’s population the
United States has nearly one half the world’s
gold; $28,485,000,000 in savings deposits; more
than 2,000,000,000 bushels of corn and nearly
1,000,000,000 bushels of wheat in elevators and
granaries; 8,000,000,000 pounds of cotton; 62 per
cent. of the world’s petroleum, 70 per cent. of the
world’s life insurance, and 75 per cent. of the
world’s automobiles. Conditions may be bad in
our country, but they are almost incomparably
better than they are in other parts of the world,
both as to prevailing unemployment and adverse
economic conditions.

Anders Ohlsson, God’s Letter-Carrier.

The following remarkable narrative is condensed
from an article which appeared in the Bible Society
Record several years ago: —

‘Although he had been in the country only a few
hours and could not yet speak a word of Turkish,
Anders Ohlsson did not hesitate to lay a gospel on
the desk of each of the Turkish officials before
whom he appeared in the tedious business of secur-
ing his residence permit. His guide and translator,
better versed in the customs of Turkey, rather
gasped at his boldness. But there was such a mani-
fest light of simple earnestness and love in his eyes
that even the crustiest of officials accepted Anders’s
debatable gift with politeness. So began the work
for which, in a few months, he was to lay down
his life.

Bit by bit I came to understand something of
how he had come to Turkey. He had sold his little
farm in Sweden and set out into the world as a
distributor of Bibles and gospels, buying Scriptures
with his own money and giving them away to all
whom he met. He had been on the road five years
or more when he reached Constantinople. In some
countries he had been well received; in others,
notably in Roumania, he had suffered over a dozen
imprisonments. But if was all one to Anders 5 for
he never seemed to think of bodily comfort, and his
prison audiences were more heedful than those of
the street-corner and market-place.

After such experiences in Christian countries he
came to Turkey, quietly prepared to suffer death

at the hands of the Mohammedans, of whom he had ~

heard so many savage tales. But as he went up and
down the streets of Constantinople week after week,
distributing gospels and. being met only with kind-
ness, he formed a kindlier estimate of the Turks.
“How I love the Turkish people!” he often used to
exclaim. “How kind they are! How much they
need to be loved!”

Nothing could have been simpler than his
method of work. He would stop in front of each
shop, which was seldom more than a cubby-hole
opening on the street, and discover by a word or
two what language the proprietor spoke. Taking
from his satchel a gospel in that language, he would
present it with the words, “A letter from God.” As
he passed down a street distributing these “letters”

to every one, there were quiet smiles at his sim-

plicity; but they were kindly smiles. The utter

childlike sincerity of the man made its impression

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