# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_Januar 1933 ff. masthead not in scan _S268
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268

Germany is everywhere favored and spread. We found such publications as 'Die kommunistische Internationale,' 'Der Atheist,' 'Die proletarische Stimme der Freidenker,' 'Das Programm der kommunistischen Jugend in Deutschland,' 'Die rote Fahne,' 'Der rote Wähler,' 'Der revolutionistische Schulkampf,' 'Der Angriff Moskaus auf Staat, Kirche, Schule und Familie,' etc., etc."

"It is not fitting for us to join in the accusations of the Bolshevists against the Hitlerian book burning," writes the Lutheran Herald, the paper of the great Norwegian Synod; "for the anti-Christian and immoral books that were burned destroy the foundation of Christian civilization. Let us rather thank God that Germany has been preserved from Communism. As Stanley Jones, well known in eastern Asia, explains, the struggle between Christianity and Bolshevism burns all the way into China and India."

J. T. M.

Lutherans in Canada. According to the News Bulletin of the National Lutheran Council, the Lutheran population of Canada has grown in the last fifty years from 45,833 to 394,052. The largest number of Lutherans is in Saskatchewan, namely 113,631; then follow: Ontario with 96,957, Alberta with 82,409, Manitoba with 46,878, British Columbia with 36,627, Quebec with 8,254, Nova Scotia with 7,949, New Brunswick with 967, Yukon with 239, Prince Edward Island with 76, and the Northwest Territories with 64. Of the 394,052 who call themselves Lutherans, however, only 129,154 belong to a Lutheran church, so that more than half of the Lutherans in Canada are without a church or are in sectarian churches. Let us therefore not forget our extensive field of work in Canada, which needs both our intercession and our support. It is interesting that, according to the report given, in Canada in the year 1921 only 19,534 reported themselves as not belonging to a church; in the year 1931 this number even fell to 16,043. It seems, therefore, that in this respect things stand differently in Canada than in the United States, where people often positively boast that they are indifferent or hostile toward the Church.

J. T. M.

The Jesuit Order. The Roman Jesuit Order has in the last decade developed quite a considerable activity. It numbers at present about 22,000 members. Of these a tenth part, about 2,590 members, serve in the mission field. Among themselves they have about forty-five different missions, which are so placed that they can reach about 170 million non-Christian people. In "Christian" countries about 1,965,000 Catholics with 210,000 catechumens are under the Order. The Order maintains seventeen seminaries with 1,467 seminarians or young men who wish to join the Order. In 9,000 schools 345,000 pupils are taught by the Jesuits. In the Order's 100 orphanages there are some 10,833 orphans, and in its 23 hospitals about 17,000 sick are cared for annually.

The organization of the Roman Church in all areas of its activity is, outwardly considered, the best one can imagine. We Lutherans are not astonished at this; for we know that before the Last Day Antichristendom will attain a quite special bloom. The prophecy that Paul sets before us in 2 Tim. 3, 1-5 refers also to the great Antichrist, about whom the Apostle gives us still more precise information in 2 Thess. 2, 1-12. The working of the Antichrist ought to move us Lutheran Christians to spread the Gospel all the more zealously.

J. T. M.

The Church and the Opium Trade. As the "Apologete" reports, the "Social Commission of the Ecumenical Council for Practical Christianity," the so-called Stockholm Movement, has called upon all Christian churches in all countries to take decisive steps against the opium trade prevailing in the eastern countries, in order to remove this evil from the world. This is its answer to the "Convention for Limiting the Manufacture and Regulating the Distribution of Narcotic Drugs" adopted by the Geneva Opium Conference in the year 1931, which, in order to come into force, had to be approved by twenty-five countries by April 13 of this year. As is reported, this prerequisite has not been fulfilled, so that now the churches are to work with their governments to take up the matter most warmly.

As regards the matter itself, any stand against the opium trade will be greeted with recognition and thanks not only by Christians but also by respectable worldly people. The use of opium, which plunges thousands of people into misery and ruins them in body and spirit, is a disgrace to our time, quite especially for the nations involved, which are regarded as "Christian" in heathen lands.

But there is another opium trade in the world, which is a thousand times more terrible than the one named above and against which all Christians and churches ought to take a stand at once, because it leads millions of people into error and finally into eternal perdition, namely the "opium trade" of unbelief and of false doctrine, which celebrates triumphs in many churches of America and Europe. It is opium for the soul when one tampers with the divine Law and denies God's wrath over sin; and it is opium when one scorns the glorious Gospel truth of the justification of a poor sinner alone by grace through faith in Christ JESUS. Unfortunately this happens precisely also in churches that are connected with the Stockholm Movement. We contribute to this opium trade's being removed from the world if we most zealously proclaim Law and Gospel purely and clearly and bear witness against all pernicious Unionism. If God's Word were heeded in the whole world, then there would also be no more opium trade in the eastern countries. The only rescue for the world, above all in spiritual things, but also in bodily things, is the preaching of the pure Gospel.

J. T. M.

Obituaries.

P. Ernst Werfelmann was born on September 3, 1860, in Willshire Township, Van Wert County, Ohio, as the son of P. J. H. Werfelmann and his wife Luise, née Buuck. When he was three years old, his father accepted a call to Grafton, Wisconsin. There the boy attended school and continued attendance at the congregational school when his father in the year 1871 followed a call to the Holy Cross congregation in Milwaukee. After his confirmation in the year 1875 he first entered the teachers' seminary at Addison, but later decided to give up his studies there and to prepare for the ministry at our seminary at Springfield. In the year 1882 he passed his examination. He then became first the assistant of P. August Reinke in the Bethlehem congregation in Chicago, namely in a newly built branch school, where he at once began instruction with thirty-two children and preached on Sundays. Until the year 1885 he thus served the Bethlehem congregation as assistant pastor. When then some members of this congregation near the mission school united into a new congregation, he became the pastor of this Christ congregation, performed there his whole life's work, and to this congregation forty-six years