The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1932, Sheet 194

Transcription machine transcription, uncorrected

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THE LUTHERAN PIONEER

sinful speculation, and the depression has swept it
out of the former owner’s hands. We might have
put some hundreds or thousands into the Church
Extension work, or we should have used some of it
to help pay the debts of our congregation at home.
But we did not. We let the banker have it, the loan

company. Now it is tied up in the bank or lost
altogether. If we thus made the wrong use of our

God-given prosperity, and if we are now pinched, it
behooves any and all of us who are true Christians
not to murmur and complain or to begin saving and
retrenching with the Church and the Lord’s work,
but to repent, ask the good Savior to forgive us our
unfaithfulness, and to request His help and strength
for a more worthy Christian performance in the
future. — Southern Nebraska District Messenger.

Transforming Power of the Gospel. — A native
of India had stolen some valuables from a rajah
and buried them in the rajah’s grounds and then
left that part of the country. Later, after hearing
the Word of God and becoming converted, he said,
“Though the rajah should cut off my head, I must
go back and tell him.” On the train he could not
get admission to the rajah’s carriage; but later,
seeing the door open, he went in and, falling at the
rajah’s feet, told him all. On arriving at the village,
the rajah sent for him and sent also for a man to
go and dig up the treasure. “Now,” said he, “what
made you come and tell me this?” “I am a Chris-
tian, sir.” ‘Then go and send from your mission
some one to come and make my people like you.”

Ancient American Civilization.

A Maya temple, the greatest achievement of
early man in America, will be one of the attractions
at Chicago’s 1933 World’s Fair, “A Century of
Progress Exposition.”

This building, a replica of the nunnery, or
Monjas, of Uxmal, Yucatan, will rise from the
summit of a fourteen-foot terrace just north of
Thirty-first Street, on the Fair Grounds, on
Chicago’s lake front. The first unit will be 149 feet
long by 27 feet wide.

While workmen with modern construction de-
vices will build the first unit of the temple in about
sixty days, the original was built five hundred years
before Columbus set sail for the New World. It
was built by people who had no wheeled vehicles,
possessed no iron or steel implements, and were un-
familiar with the principle of the true arch.

Comparatively little is known about the Maya

191

civilization, although it produced architecture as
fine as that of ancient Greece or Rome. Recent
research, however, has disclosed that this ancient
people had a calendar more accurate than those in
contemporary Europe two thousand years ago,
played a native form of basket-ball, and were the
only American Indian people to develop a system of
writing.

The Monja is thought to have been the nunnery
of the vestal virgins, who seem to have played
a prominent part in the ancient Maya religion.

The ancient Maya religion demanded human
sacrifices. The rain gods were propitiated with of-
ferings of the most beautiful maidens. They were
thrown down a deep natural well. This well be-
came a sacred shrine, to which pilgrims journeyed
from great distances to make their oblations of jade,
copper, pottery, and bells. In times of drought the
Mayas also offered little babies to appease the sup-
posed anger of the rain gods. The tears which the
babies shed were believed to be a good omen for the
passing of the drought.

In spite of their high civilization, their wonder-
ful architecture, their well-paved streets, their great
advance in art and science, these Mayas had a most
cruel religion. They are a living example of the
fact that the true God will remain an “unknown
God” to the wisest and most cultivated man if he
is left to his own devices. As was the case with
other cultured races, so, too, the Mayas show that
hand in hand with material culture may go the
greatest blindness in spiritual things. The ancient
Mayas made paper, used cotton clothing, and made
dyes like the Tyrian purple and cloth of the fur of
rabbits; they had fairs for the encouragement of
trade and agriculture and were expert workers in
metal. But their religion was a devilish religion,
which demanded that they sacrifice their children
to their idols. F. J. L.

WHEAT RIDGE CHRISTMAS SEALS.

Here is a copy of this year’s Wheat
Ridge Christmas Seal which will be on sale
in all our churches. These seals have the
purpose of providing funds to take care of

oor victims of tuberculosis at our Wheat

idge Sanitarium, near Denver, Colorado.
The proceeds of these sales are used to
give indigent Lutherans who are suffer-
ing from the dread White Plague shelter,
food, medicine, and the necessary spiri-
tual care.

Generally the sale of these seals is in the hands of our
Walther Leaguers, who will be glad to furnish you with
& generous supply, so that you may use them liberall:
on all your letters, greeting-cards, and Christmas-gift
packages. Support Wheat Ridge and its cause by buying
and using Wheat Ridge Christmas Seals!