The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1933, Page 126

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126

THE LUTHERAN PIONEER

two chiefs were quarreling, and no one would escort
them further. They were told that they would be
killed and eaten if they went on alone; but they
refused to be intimidated. After a while they were
ambushed, speared through and through, boiled, and
eaten. Their bones were left to bleach under a tree
that has become famous. <A granite monument has
been erected on which is this inscription in German:
“Here lie the bones of two American missionaries,
Munson and Lymann, killed and eaten in 1834.
John 16,1—3. ‘The blood of the martyrs is the
seed of the Church.’ ”

For thirty years the exact spot was unknown;
but when some of the Battaks became Christians,
they told what they knew and were hotly criticized
by the other Battaks for doing so. To this day one
finds keen sorrow among the people, and sons and
grandsons of those who took part in the crime often
ask if their sins have been forgiven. The Battaks
themselves subscribed the money that made the
monument possible. In 1863 a lone German,
Dr. Nommensen, started the work that has now
achieved such great things. He learned the lan-
guage on the coast and determined to carry the glad
tidings of the Gospel to this lake region. When he
arrived and explained why he had come, the Battaks
told him they did not want him among them. He
replied that he had come as their friend and would
help them. They threatened to eat him if-he would
not move one. He answered that it wasn’t polite
to eat one’s friends and that he would stay. A little
later they invited him to a feast. He politely ac-
cepted. As soon as he~ate, he got very sick and
vomited. They had given him dog poison enough
to kill several dogs, and it was too strong to keep
down. When he got rid of it unharmed, they were
filled with awe and decided that the Great Spirit
was with him. He lost his teeth from eating the
strong poison, hut remained there until his death
in 1918.

We visited some of the institutions. One was
their manual-training school, which has a four-year
course. They teach the students to do all their own
building, such as erecting dwellings and churches,
building bridges, and making water-wheels and
furniture.

In their leper asylum there are 497 patients,
under a self-governing régime. A German physician
is in charge. He is assisted by a Battak teacher-
preacher. They have their own water system, also
an electric plant, which furnishes light for their
ninety honses and runs a washing-machine and a

rice-cleaner. The men and women live in separate
enclosures. The men have their king and the wo-
men their queen. When they are sent there, they
must stay there for life. They seem happy and are
kept busy. The government gives a subsidy of about
$3 in gold a month for each inmate, which provides
for the entire establishment.

Their training-school for teachers and pastors
interested us greatly. When young men come for
training, their parents must supply the money for
rice and vegetables. They do all the work around
the place and have a school band. The enrolment,
at present is only seventy. All the buildings are
located around a rectangular piece of land, with the
missionary’s house at one end and the chapel at the
other. We had the privilege of speaking to the stu-
dents and of hearing them sing. The tunes are
German, but the words are Battak translations of
German hymns.

Robert Arthington—a ‘‘Miser’’
for Christ.

A generation ago, on the 9th of October, 1900,
there died at the age of seventy-seven years one -
of the most remarkable characters the Christian
Church of England has ever produced. In the an-
nals of the Baptist Missionary Society and perhaps
in all British missions the name of Robert Arthing-
ton is the most notable after that of Dr. Carey. By
his self-sacrifice and voluntary poverty he made pos-
sible the largest single bequest to Foreign Missions.
that has been known in Great Britain. The whole
story of the advance of the English Baptist Mis-
sionary Society in the last twenty-six years is closely
linked up with the Arthington Fund, and it is no
small part of the financial embarrassment of the
present time that, with the exhaustion of that fund,
the full responsibility of maintaining those vigorous
and fruitful enterprises which were started by that
fund and have thus far been supported by it, is
about to fall upon the society.

Robert Arthington was born of a Quaker family
in Leeds on the 20th of May, 1823. His father,
Robert Arthington, gave up his business as a brewer
for conscientious reasons, and his mother, Maria
Arthington, was a woman of high character and re-
finement. She had considerable literary gifts and
wrote several volumes of poetry. He had no
brother, and his sisters left no children. He him-
self never married. He had the advantage of a good
education, acquired first in Leeds and afterwards at