Better Buildings

Two AMERICAN pilots were forced down on a Pacific island. They wandered through the jungles for a week and finally came to a clearing which had neat, clean buildings on it.

There was an at- mosphere of cleanliness and order in that village. They were taken to the chief of the tribe, and much to their sur- prise, the chief greeted them in good English, saying, “We greet you, not as Americans or as fliers or as saviors of our islands, but as fellow Christians.”

These pilots were astonished but discovered that English mission- aries had come to that isolated island fifty years before, and had actually transformed a tribe of cannibals from man-eating savages into decent, clean, Christian men and women. Later that afternoon the chief of the tribe insisted upon taking the pilots to see the native church. The chief naturally thought that two Christians from a Christian nation would want to see the church the first thing. ; One of the pilots, in telling this story to one of my chaplain friends, said, ‘I was so darned tired that all I wanted to do was to get.some food and go to sleep for a week; but that old chief was so much in earnest about showing me his church and was so sure that the church would be what I would want to see more than any- thing else, that I didn’t have the nerve to refuse or to tell him that I was so tired I could drop in my tracks.

In addition to that, the church was on the top of a steep hill and I dreaded that climb in the tropical heat. In fact, I doubted if I could make it at all. How- ever, I started up that steep hill behind the old boy. “When we got to the top, there was one of the most beautiful chapels I have ever seen on earth.

It was Gothic in form, finished inside with beautiful mahogany. The altar place was a gem of beauty and reverence. That old chief was justly proud of it. “IT asked him who built it and he answered with pride, ‘We did! with the help of the missionaries.’

“Then he took us behind the church to show us a crude jumble of stones, piled up like a pyre, with crude mud sticking between the stones, ugly and unsightly. “T asked the old chief what it was, and he said, “That was our first church.’ “What a contrast between the two!’ I remarked.

“Then he said a mouthful to me: ‘As we become better Christians we become better builders!’ And it was worth being forced down on that island, with all the hardships that were involved, to hear that so-called savage say, ‘As we become better Christians we become better builders.’ “Wow! What a wallop that sentence has in it for these days as we look forward to building a new world on the broken foundations and the debris of the ruined world.

‘As we become better Christians we become better builders.’ That old chief had the heart of the world’s salvation in that simple sentence,” said the young pilot, adding for emphasis a repetition of the old chief’s phrase, “ ‘As we become better Christians we become better builders.’ ”