THE KING’S BUSINESS
593
Work among untouched African heathen is felt by the missionaries to justify rather unusual homiletic methods. Rev. John Wright, of Benito, Africa, has found his gold tooth an excellent text to start with in trying to attract the attention of an African cro-wd. Missionaries doing this work are never quite certain that they have had a favorable reception until the chief announces a dance in their honor. That demonstrates that the people are pleased. This reminds us of hearing Bishop Taylor tell how when some African tribes men made a deadly attack on him he open ed and shut his mouth, letting his false teeth fall from his gums, and back again into place; and then took them out, shook them at the men, and put them back. As tonished and alarmed, such a medicine man they dared not touch. The following testimonies witness to the value of the Gideon effort for placing Bibles in hotel chambers: > “It is through reading your Bible in the hotels, night after night, that I was brought to know the love of Jesus. I would like to join your association. Let me have particulars that I may help carry on the good work.” Mr. Curry, of Jeanette, Pa., tells the story of a hotel proprietor, sick in another city, who, having no other reading, started in on the Gideon Bible, which he found in his chamber. Result: conversion of a man to Christ, who was saloonkeeper in practice and Roman Catholic in faith. Re turning home, he turned his hotel into a temperance one, and ordered a consign ment of Bibles from the Gideon head quarters for its rooms. The conversion of three officials in an English gold mine in Central Brazil led to the establishment of the Brazil section of the Evangelical Union of South America. These men—electrician, stenographer and assayer—were finally forced out of their positions because of their Christian testi mony. -They put together their savings— $5000—dedicated it to the Lord, hired a hall in Ouro Preto, the capital of Minas,
most diverse places;—in the offices of de partment store heads and in the back rooms of saloons, in private cars of railroad pres idents. and in the offices of penitentiary wardens—and the percentage of his disap pointments is astoundingly small. For the preachers who are discouraged because men are not longer interested in religion, he has stories to tell that could give them a new conception of the possibilities of their jobs.” During the July vacation Miss Verna Eick of Africa wrote: “I am 'out forty- six miles from Elat and expect to leave for an itinerating trip with Miss Macken zie tomorrow. The people are as eager as ever for the Gospel. Today after the services ten women followed me to the tent, and supposing they had come from the meeting, I began a social conversation with them. Soon one woman looked to ward the sinking sun and said, ‘We came to hear the word’s of God, and do you give us only pleasantries?’ I asked if they had not been at my meeting and they replied that they had been to another town and had just returned. Of course they had their ‘words’ before they left. Truly our opportunities are measured ’only by the limit of our endurance.” In the forests of Washington 25,000 men are at work, and in the evening when the axe and. saw have ceased to wake the echoes of the vast recesses,.these men sit down in God’s first and greatest temple without a messenger of the Gospel of Re deeming Love. About 3000 of these men have services every six weeks, around the Gray’s Harbor country where the Presby tery of Olympia has a commissioned lum ber camp missionary. The remaining 22,- 000 men are deprived of services of any kind. Standing on a pulpit which took one thousand years to build, and surrounded ihy pillars of spruce and cedar 200 feet high, which seem to support the very dome of- heaven itself, a missionary could deliver the news of redemption to sixty men each evening for nearly 500 evenings and never repeat his message to a single soul.
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