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THE LUTHER.AN PIONEER.
Taking the Bible into the Homes. - The AmerThe Introduction of Christianity ican Bible Society at present has about 3,200 into Denmark. workers. They distribute nearly 10,000, 000 copies of the Bible annually. One colportcur, seventy-five Far up towards the North, cradled upon the years old, has tra.veled 65,000 miles, visited 185,000 waves, lies Denmark, a little country, but rich and homes, and distributed more than 110,000 volumes beautiful, a free country, inhabited by a free-born of the Scriptures in the mountains of West Virginia. and noble people, the only land aud race in the Recently a ]lrazilian colporteur in oue month vis- world which from t he earliest t imes has never been ited 841 homes, spoke to 8,335 persons, and sold or vassal to another power or has bowed down before gave a.way 1,748 Bibles; Testaments, and gospels. a foreign ruler. In the olden days the race that Abyssinia. -- A year ago nine missionaries · lived in Denmark was a warlike people; from it the opened a mission-station at Addis Ababa, Abys- Cimbrians set for th, ,,,ho ravaged Rome ; from it sinia. Some months later two more stations were the Vikings set sail to harass t]1e coasts of E ngland opened in Soutl,iern Abyssinia. In October last and Frauce. They worshiped various gods, among seven more workers went out to enter this :field. them the war god Thor, who was greatly esteemed; The missionaries e:\.-pect to open s.everal new stations and the Danes considered it to be t he greatest happiness to die in battle in order thereby to go forth in the nea.r future. · What One Bible Did. - l\'.Iany years ago a Jew to the highest of the gods, Odin, who hospitably bought a Bible in a Bible house in Constantinople. regaled the brave warriors. Also upon t his land the He wanted only the Old Testament, but because he eye of God rested, and t he time came for H is mescould buy t he whole Bible for less than he could get senger to journey there in order to plant the Cross the Old Testament alone from the Je,vish publishing upon Danish soil. The man to whom Goel gave H is call was a Benehouse, he made the purchase. He became interested in the New Testament and in due time accepted dictine monk by the name of Ansgar, a Frank, born .Christ. His wife did the same. About twenty-five 801 A. D. at Corbie, on the river Somme, in years ago . this couple removed to San Francisco. Northern France. '.rhe son of an officer in Emperor · Th~ir ruling passion was to ·spread the Bible among Charlemagne's army, J1e lost his ~ot her when he the Jews. When the man died se,•eral years ago, was five years old .and, while still a boy, entered a he left all he had to .the San Francisco agency of monastery in the neighborhood. Later, as a young the Bible Society, reserving for his aged wife· no monk, he lived in the monastery: Corvey, on the more than an annuity during her life. river Weser, in Germany, founded by the monks Missionary ~nterprise of the Mormons. - The from Corbie. He is called the Apostle of the North Mormons of Utah are annually spending $10,000,000 because he labored not only in Denmark, but also for missions. They are very busy in ·GermaJ;J.y and in Sweden. Altho~gh he was not the first missionAustria, where 300 active missionaries are working ary in these lands, :- since missionary work had and are said to have made 15,000 converts. already been done in 822 by Bishop Ebbo, of Reims, N. L. O.B. - Ansgar is entitled to the name, as it was owing Those Jr{inisters' Children. - At a commence- to him that the Gospel obtained a firm footing in ment of the Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Ga., the North. . The original cause of his journey to Denmark President J. R. McCain said that, while only ten per cent. of the students of the school were the ,vas that one of the Danish petty kings, Harald, who daughters of ministers and missionaries, more than was at loggerheads with other chieftains, sought fifty per cent. of all the honors had been carried off help from the German emperor Ludwig, whose land by them. What Dr. W. T. Ellis says is probably adjoined Denmark on the ·south. The emperor, who truE!, "It is better to be the child of a minister than was a Christian, promised to help King Harald, but of a millionaire." Dr. Ellis is not a minister I · made it a condition that Harald and his fellows be Leprosy in Porto Rico. - This beautiful island baptized and take Christian priests with them to has no less than 60,000 active cases of ·leprosy and Denmark. Since nobody at the emperor's court cared to tuberculosis out of a population of ~ess than one and a half million. The government has established undertake the journey to the land of the warlike a camp for lepers and a sanitarium for tubercular and pagan Danes, attention was focused upon the ~tients. A missionary is supervising the religious pious Ansgar; and! when he was asked whether he was willing' to go, despite the fact that his brother work.
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