Front:
6.
From "Missionary Studies for the Sunday School,"Third Series. Copyright 1907, by Geo. H.Trull. Published by the Sunday School Times Co.
Back:
SOME OF INDIA'S NEEDY MILLIONS
This heart-rending scene is, enough to make every one of us turn pale and shudder.
The fact that each individual one, among India's benighted three hundred millions, is an
immortal human soul like yourself, is not only appalling but also appealing, in the highest
degree. The superstitious people imagine if they bathe in some so-called sacred river, at a
certain appointed time, this will wash away all their sins. Their very presence here is a
striking evidence that they are hungering and thirsting after righteousness. Multitudes of
them have come for hundreds of miles, some of them even measuring the whole distance
with their bodies on the ground. Surely such earnest seekers after God deserve the Gospel
at our hands! On the great day of their Merah assemblage, between a million and a-half
and two millions of people make a pilgrimage to the Ganges and the Jumna rivers.
Our own Godavery river, in the Rajahmundry district, is reputed to be among the
sacred rivers (some of which are reeking with filth!). Our Lutheran Church in Europe and
America is among the strongest and most wide-spread of all Protestant missionary agencies
for India's rescue and uplift. We have a chain of mission stations stretching clean from
one end of the country to the other. The Leipsic, the Hermannsburg, the Brecklum, the
Gossner, the Swedish, the Danish and the American Societies (General Synod and General
Council) are represented by 340 devoted men and women, with nearly 3,000 native helpers.
Fully 200,000 souls, one-fifth of the one million Protestant native Christians in India, are
adherents with us of the noble old Augsburg Confession. With this magnificent start, what
might we not accomplish, if the Churches at home would awake to their glorious opportunity?
Our new Hospital will be a potent accession. Have you thought of contributing some article
of Hospital furniture? Ask your pastor about details.
(PUBLISHED BY THE LUTHERAN MISSION WORKER, CATASAUQUA, PA.)
