THE LUTHERAN PIONEER Working Among the Silent. The old home missionary was a 1·omantic figure. T he1·e was something truly heroic about his vent u1·ing into unknown and untried regions, carrying the good news of the Gospel to places where it bac1 never been heard. Ile was a pioneer in the fullest sense and often had most exciting experiences. But the old kind of home missionary passed away with the settling of the country. Our home missionaries of to-day, while still finding t11eir fores :filled with rich experiences, have more or less circumscribed areas in which they work, and there is but little "roughing it" in the daily routine of most of them. However, there is one missionary who still gets bis good share of traveling in our day. 1'bis is the missionary working among t he deaf. The Lutheran Missouri Synod has nineteen ministers thus employed in this country and Canada. One of these m i sionaries has a field extending from Duluth, Minn., to Calgary, .Alberta, Canada, a distance of •over a thousand miles. Another one of these mis:Sionaries serves people in Washington, D. C., Ohio, 'Kent ucky, Alabama, and Georgia. Another, to m ention only one more, preaches in Missouri, .Kansas, and Oklahoma. Most people do not realize that there are about 80,000 deaf-mutes in our country. In a city of a hundred thousand persons you would probably find about sixty to seventy deaf-mutes. In 0l!r larger industrial centers there are hundreds of people unable to hear and speak. These hundreds and thousands derive no benefit from the many ordinary church services held every Sunday for men and women able to hear. The sermons and hymns which may inspire you who can hear, bring no instruction and solace to those who sit in unending deepest silence. . Here the missionary to the deaf-mutes step~ in to help. He travels from city to city, holds services, and ministers to the deaf wherever he finds them. There is something singularly touching about these silent services. Though not a word is spoken by the preacher, you can see the play of emotion on the faces of his "hear~rs," - rather, spectators. Though not a sound is heard, yet these deaf-mutes ~'sing" our hymns in the sign-language. The coming of the missionary is always quite an e,vent in the lives of the silent men and -women to whose wants he ministers. Many of them will come for miles to attend the services. These services also
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give the deaf-mutes an opportunity to satisfy t heir social wants, which can only partially be satisfied by their association with those who hear. In a measure the deaf, though surrounded by men a.nd women, live in a wol'ld of their own; they are isolated though living among thousands of their fellow-men. For this reason they welcome the opportunity to meet with their own kind and come many miles both to. these services and to the small social gatherings which often take place after the ser vices. It may seem strange to some of our readers, but yet it is true, that many of the deaf, though living in this so-called Clnistian country, have never heard of Christ, their Red~emer. Deaf children, just because they are deaf, are· not taken to church
Chapel and Parsonage -of Deaf-Mute Congregation at Minneapolis, Minn.
as hearing children ue, .and even if they were, they would there and in an ordinary religious instruction period ha,•e no opportunity to receive Christian instruction. Then, too, the parents are not in a position to impart this knowledge to them. The result can only be great or total ignorance of the life-giving truth of the Gospel. Our missionaries to the deaf tell us that they are often the first to bring the tidings of the world's redemption through Christ to the members pf their missions. It seems strange that parents of deaf children · should not try to lea-rn the sign-language in order that they might converse with their ehildren; but experience shows that ·very few parents take that trouble. In many instances the deaf child has no one to associate with in or out of the home, except in those rare instances when it meets other deaf children. Our missionaries do a good work in urg-
