Psalm 91 and Luke 4:16-19.

Topic reviewed by Rev. Paul W. Kolier. This is the first Sunday in the new year, the year of our Lord 1913. There the figures stand, bright, clean and new. We look wistfully at them and wonder what joys and sorrows, what victories and defeats the period they represent has in store for us. If only by some process the secrets which lie hidden in these four numerals could be revealed! What shall it be? Success or failure in our undertakings? Unchanging happiness in our families or none at all? In our own personal experiences what shall the history be? It is almost oppressive to think how slight a distance we can see in advance of us.

But this is God's merciful arrangement, made for our good. There is something better, however, for us to do these opening days of the new year than to stand peering into the unknown ahead of us. It is to concern ourselves with how we may make this year an acceptable year in the sight of God.

Men differ widely as to the things needed most to meet and master the solemn responsibilities of a new year. One would say "money." Another "health." A third would urge "good resolutions."

These things are not to be despised, and do count in a successful and prosperous year. But other things are needed besides these. Think with me of a few of the truly essential. I. Courage and Self-reliance.

These make an excellent outfit for any man or woman who looks for success in any sphere of life.

The way to master the many difficulties, which all of us must of necessity encounter, is to look them squarely in the face with a fearless gaze and an undaunted heart.

Knowledge and skill are of course necessary, but manliness and courage are indispensable. The greatest men of all ages have not been so much the men of superlative education or intellectual strength as men of indomitable courage and self-reliance.

Just what this year has for us no one can know. But we can be sure that many things that might cause us concern and trial can be overcome by those who approach them with

the courage and confidence of a true Christian. Christians, of all people, should be brave. We have what others do not have, the assurance that God is with us.

II. Diligent Endeavor.

Nothing is more certain than that satisfactory reward will follow our best activities when they are conceived in the purest motives and executed in the name of the Lord. This is not the same thing as saying that all our undertakings will be successful. It is not success but fidelity which brings the greatest satisfaction. Many of our enterprises may fail. Disappointments may meet us again and again. But God will not allow the diligent efforts of an earnest Christian to be lost.

If we would make the year a useful and a happy one we must bend our best efforts to the tasks that lie before us.

III. The Favor of Almighty God.

This is the most important thing of all: to have God's favor. By this is meant the sparing mercy of the Father, the forgiving love of the Son, and the comforting inspiration of the Holy Spirit. If we have not these then we are forlorn and exposed to many dangers, in spite of our money, health and resolutions.

The unchanging God must be our refuge. During this year God will no doubt send His blessings upon the just and unjust. But to be sure of His favor, we must pay our debt to Him. Our debt of gratitude for boundless mercies during 1912, and other years that have gone. Our debt of consecration to His service and a better life. Our debt of true devotion to Him our Lord and Saviour.

These days business men are taking stock to see how they stand. How do we stand with God? This is in many ways a careless age, a godless age. Some men trust to money, others to power, and some only in themselves. But those who put their trust in God are they who walk surest and mightiest. Let God lead you during 1913.

SUGGESTED QUESTIONS.

1. What should be our first thought as we enter the new year?

2. Are good resolutions foolish?

3. Why does not God let us know what is before us?

4. What do you need most to aid you in making this an acceptable year?

A Glimpse at Industrial Work in India
Acts 20:32-35; I Thess. 4:9-12.
Rev. Allen O. Becker,

Superintendent Industrial Work, Guntur, India. Industrial work is one of the newest forms of missionary activity in India. It is one of the most difficult as well.

There are some few industrial institutions in India of long standing but most of them were brought about by the influx of orphans and poverty stricken people produced by the famines of 1876-8 and 1896-1900. These brought to the missions hundreds of children to be cared for in some way. To simply feed these children for a while and turn them loose with the return of better times would perhaps have been the easier course, or to have given them a little education and turn them back would not have been so difficult, but that would not have been carrying out the idea and purpose of God. His command was, "Go ye, and make disciples, . . . baptizing," etc. Most of the famine stricken ones were nonChristians. To have turned them away without doing something for their souls would have been violating God's express command and throwing away golden opportunity.

However, the question which confronted all missions was how to best care for this promiscuous horde of people. One method was the attempt by missions to have the people stay in their homes and to furnish them with materials and let them make from these materials finished products. For instance, here in the Telugu country there were two classes affected principally, the weavers and the shoe makers or leather workers. When the famine came they were not able to purchase yarn and leather to carry on their work. The missions helped them by furnishing thread to weave and leather to make sandals. But this did not supply much of their need. Cooly labor was so cheap and food stuffs so high that they could barely eke out support. Then there were hundreds of widows and orphans who were not skilled workmen and who were left without means of support. In many cases the parents died and left large families destitute. Some provision had to be made for these orphans.

At first they were gathered into camps and institutions and their education was begun. Coming as they did from all classes and to a large extent from the naturally extremely poor classes they did not have the energy and stamina that would enable them to be temporarily cared for and turned loose. It became necessary to introduce a system of industrial training for a class. When our village children from Christian homes are received into the mission institutions, selection is made of the fittest applicants, but with these famine stricken children selection was impossible, we had to take them as they came. As most of the children came from the cooly classes it would have been a mistake to radically change their mode of life and educate their minds only. The saner proposition was to provide manual training as nearly akin to their previous life as possible, only improved, which would enable them to rise out of poverty and ignorant unskilled toil to skilled labor and respectable independence. Of course the main idea of missions is always to reach the soul of the people. The educational and industrial institutions are simply means to this end. They aim to take an irresponsible struggling lump of humanity and under God's grace help to mould that lump into a vitalized and skilled Christian force that will not only be able to support itself with comparative ease but that will become a decent clean and Christian citizen. It comes about therefore that the industrial department of mission work becomes an evangelizing agency.

There are 160 mission industrial schools in India. In these there are 5,752 boys and 3.373 girls being trained.

Fifty-nine different industries are being taught, divided into the following groups, viz.: Building trades, textile industries, needle work, metal work, agriculture, printing, leather work, unclassified, and housekeeping.

Any one of the above groups would make a most interesting study. I have stated above that industrial work is one of the most difficult problems the missions have had to confront. Appliances have been meagre, financial means are scarce and the natural disposition of the people does not have a tendency to learn readily, to be accurate and painstaking as the learning of trades requires. But industries in missions as we now understand the word are a twentieth century product and we have reason to hope that before the century is much older they will be increasing in develop

ment and interest and that present day problems at least will be solved.

Our Guntur Mission has six industries-carpentry, blacksmithing, printing, binding, weaving and tailoring. Our printing department has been in existence for more than twentyseven years and is well established. We shall probably close our weaving department and enlarge the carpentry department, because we are in a country of weavers who do their weaving at odd moments and furnish cloths for the common people, while imported prints from England are so cheap that it would be hard for a person who depended entirely upon weaving and who was not expert to make a decent living. Carpenters, blacksmiths and tailors are in demand. Their work is at a premium.

Some of our boys have passed out into the world. Some, not all, are successful men. But most of them will become men who though as compared with their brothers in the West will not attain to such heights of efficiency, yet as compared with the outcasts they once were, are veritable giants.

Topic reviewed by Rev. Paul W. Koller.

In this age, which some have called a materialistic age, we are not slow in demanding our rights. Most of us are much concerned to acquire what we think our best interests require. We feel that our bodies and brains need development, and we insist upon having what is required to develop them. We need other things, and each one of us is determined as far as in us lies to get that which is needed for our welfare. But we fail to remember sometimes that some things are required of us. God is our Lord and Sovereign, and requires that if we would live eternally with Him we must do certain things. They are set forth in our scripture lesson for today: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind, and thy neighbor as thyself." These are the things that God requires. For our own best interests we dare not forget nor neglect them. must do them if we would live.

We

It is, as you observe, a most comprehensive command, demanding as the measure of our love to God our whole being's love. Love is

the keyword of this requirement of God as well as of our religion.

Thou shalt love the Lord thy God————
I. With All Thy Heart.

This is the first element in God's demand. These words heart, soul, strength and mind are not the language of merely emphatic iteration. There is a deep and separate significance in each one. "With all thy heart." The heart is the seat of the affections and emotions. First and profoundest, God demands our hearts. We are not simply to obey God outwardly, from the finger tips, but inwardly from the heart.

It is upon our affections that God lays His first claim. There are many reasons for this. (1) Because only as we yield God our hearts can we be at peace with Him. There can be no genuine peace where there are clashing loves. In order to have peace we must love what God loves and hate what He hates. (2) Because service from the heart is the only genuine service. (3) Because only as we yield Him our hearts can we live righteously.

It is the heart which is the controlling power. In the long run no man can live any higher than the level of what he loves. II. With All Thy Soul.

The word "soul" is the scripture word which stands for life. It means our existence. Everything we are must be dominated by the thought of God. The central, gravitating point around which reason, conscience, taste, passion and every other part or power, all that makes up your life, shall revolve is God. You enter into business, yet God must rule your acts. You may engage in pleasures, yet they must be such as God smiles on. This means simply putting God first.

III. With All Thy Strength.

Some of the manuscripts put this requirement last, and make it read "From all thy strength." When put last and made to read in that way it seems to mean that all this love of heart and being is to be rendered constantly. We are not to be burning with love one day and cold the next, but to be unchanging in our love and homage.

Are we meeting this requirement of eternal life? Honestly, what place are we giving to God in our hearts and daily living?

Let us ask God to help us to a truer love and a deeper devotion.

There is another side of this command of which we cannot write in this review. But we cannot ignore it in life. It is to love thy

One of the many problems that confronts our Lutheran Church today is the care of her "emigrant" church members, who migrate from one parish to another or from one parish to a faraway country or district where there is no parish at all,

The young people leave the "home-town" and the "home church" and seek better opportunities, better educational advantages in the city. They depart from the paternal roof; they go to college or to the university. The church cannot follow these "emigrant children" as they depart, save with her prayers and well wishes. She trusts that they may find a new church home and she commends them into the care and keeping of the Gracious Heavenly Father. We said, she cannot follow them, but she does in a sense follow them as she sends some one from her midst to them, to keep them mindful of the fact that she has not forgotten them.

We desire to relate with this present day "emigration" problem, as an historical object lesson, what the mother church in Sweden did for the Swedish emigrants on the Delaware.

The idea of founding a colony in the New World was conceived by Gustavus Adolphus, the Hero King of Sweden, in the year 1624, but he never lived to see this plan of a "free state in a new land, an asylum for the persecuted," this "jewel of his kingdom" realized. His fancy pictured them, these intelligent, industrious, happy, free and contented Swedish

seas.

pioneers, a branch of the old Viking stock flourishing in a new land and building up a strong and noble commonwealth beyond the Axel Axenstiern, his prime minister, a man of much energy and remarkable for his broad statesmanship, took up the unfinished work of his royal master. So the war was finished, peace proclaimed and by the treaty of Westphalia, in 1648, Protestantism secured and established, all of which was brought about largely as the result of the administrative and diplomatic ability of Oxenstiern.

An offer which had previously been made to Germany by Gustavus to participate in the founding of the colony on the other side of the great sea was renewed, and in 1637 the plan was put into execution. The first expedition arrived in 1638 in a ship of war called "Kalmars Nyckeln" and a smaller vessel that bore the name "Fagel Grip." The course continued up the Delaware River and a landing was effected at a place which was christened Paradise Point. Land was purchased of the Indians, surveyed by Mans Kling, and Fort Christina was built. Rearus Tarkillus, a native of East Gothland, was the first clergyman of the new colony. A second expedition arrived at "New Sweden," under the leadership of Lieutenant-Colonel John Printz, in 1643.

The Swedish colony on the Delaware, after a short but eventful history, passed from Swedish administration first into the hands of the Dutch and later into the possession of the English. What did the mother church do for these emigrant children on the Delaware? She was not content only to pray for the peace and prosperity of the colony. She labored diligently that they might possess peace and spiritual health. She sent a pastor with them when they departed from home, as we have seen, in the person of the Gothlander, Tarkillus. He was followed by a long line of successors. Lars Lock came over with Governor Printz in 1642. In 1677 James or Jacob Fabritius was called. He came from Holland and officiated in that language, which it seems the Swedish colonists well understood. When he could serve no longer, being incapacitated by old age, another call was sent home to the mother church for a successor.

It is true that this voice from across the seas remained unheard for a time and it seemed as if the mother was growing neglectful of her faraway children, but in 1693, when

one of these letters was read to King Charles XI., it received the enthusiastic and earnest support of Dr. Svedberg, afterwards Bishop of Skara.

Now the "Swedish Mission in America" was established and for "nearly a century," we are told, "the Swedish churches upon the Delaware continued to be supplied not only with a succession of pious and learned ministers, but also with religious books, assistance in building their churches and other appliances for their religious life."

What did the mother church do for her emigrant children?

From 1696 to 1786 she sent them twentyfour clergymen. These she fitted out, paid the expense of their long voyage, and when after many years of faithful service on the mission field they desired to return to old Svea and spend their declining years in the Fatherland, she brought them back and it even happened that she gave them a place in some desirable pastorate.

It is probable that in this way not less than $100,000 were expended and this at a time when Sweden was suffering a financial depression by reason of the Thirty Years' War. She continued through these many years to send faithful shepherds to care for the flock of God beyond the seas. When Swedish was no longer spoken on the banks of the Delaware, when the English language had taken its place, then no longer did the mother church supply ministers for these her "Americanized" children. Then she no longer could do so. At that time they should have been able to care for themselves. Care for themselves they did in a way, but it was not altogether the best way, as the subsequent history of those early congregations sufficiently demonstrates, and in a day when other "emigrations" are taking place within our Lutheran Church, in a day when the language question is a live question, the lesson of what the mother church did for her emigrant children on the Delaware should be read very thoughtfully and with painstaking care both by the "children" and their "mothers."

For "there is not upon record a more remarkable instance of disinterested care for its expatriated citizens than that of the Swedish Government for these obscure members of its race, no longer bound to it by any political ties and separated from it by the wide expanse of the stormy Atlantic."

ing it.

Leader: Read, Deut. 17:16; 28:68; Jer. 42:15; Has. 11:5. Psalm 90. Bullinger.)

(Read responsively.) Hymn 165. (Tune

Appoint in advance two persons to summarize the Thoughts in Daily Bible Readings-one for first four and one for last two days-and have this done here. Special music. (Arranged for in advance, either vocal or instrumental as desired.)

Secretary gives résumé of the year's work-brief and hopeful.

Hymn 51. Summaries by two persons previously appointed of Lesson in THE REVIEW and in Topics. Recitation on The Closing Year.

Pastor gives a summing up and word of encour agement to the workers in his society. Hymn 29. Closing service as in Topics. Benediction by the pastor.

Note-All psalms are to be read responsively. All hymns are from the Luther League Hymnal. Hymn 58. Hymn 134. Psalms I and 91.

lead in responses.

Let the secretary of the society

Gloria Patri (sing after each psalm).
Scripture: Luke 4:16-19, read by the leader.
Prayer by pastor.

Duet (arranged for in advance). Hymn 133, verses I and 2.

Have about three persons, posted beforehand, give three-minute remarks on question: "What are your purposes in life?"

Have chairmen of committees give three-minute remarks on: (1) Estimate Result, (a) forget processes, and (b) do the unfinished work.

Instrumental music (previously arranged for). Summarize discussion in the Topics and in THE REVIEW: (Suggestion: Let the reader take discussion in Topics, and vice-president discussion in REVIEW.) President of the society makes remarks on "Keeping a Sharp Lookout for What Is Ahead." Pastor tells the society how they can be most helpful to the congregation in 1913. Hymn 133, verses 3 and 4. Lord's Prayer. Hymn 40. Benediction by pastor.

see it.

Note-Secure such pictures as you can illustrating the work done and being done in India and Africa. Have a map of the field hung where all can Get facts from Board of Foreign Missions reports and other sources. Be primed!

Organ prelude. Opening service as in Topics.
Hymn 37.
(Hymns from Luther League Hymnal.)
Psalm 72. Gloria Patri.

Collect: Use additional collect, "For the Church," page 9 in the hymnal; leader of meeting repeating collects.

(Continued on page 44.)