.dt The Story of Lutheran Missions, by Elsie Singmaster--A Project Gutenberg eBook
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PORTRAIT OF A. H. FRANCKE
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[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF A. H. FRANCKE.]
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The | Story of Lutheran Missions
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BY
ELSIE SINGMASTER
(Mrs. Elsie Singmaster Lewars)
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Published by
Co-operative Literature Committee Woman’s Missionary Societies
Lutheran Church
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Copyright, 1917
By the
Co-operative Literature Committee Woman’s Missionary Societies
Lutheran Church
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PRESS OF
SURVEY PUBLISHING CO.,
COLUMBIA, S. C.
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FOREWORD
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For many years there has been both a need and a call
for a book on Lutheran missions, which could be used
as a text book and also as a book of reference. Mrs.
Lewars has met this need and answered this call with
The Story of Lutheran Missions. It is fitting that
this book should make its appearance in the Quadricentennial
Year of the Reformation and that it should
be the first book issued by the first Co-operative Literature
Committee of the Woman’s Missionary Societies
of the Lutheran Church, representing the General
Synod, the General Council, and the United Synod in
the South.
The courage and devotion of our self-sacrificing missionary
pioneers has been little known even among
Lutherans. Our hearts must be thrilled as we read of
the superb courage and the unselfish devotion of the
brave men and women who, surrounded by indifference
were fired with unquenchable missionary zeal to
carrying the Word to the ends of the earth.
“Through peril, toil and pain,” they blazed the way
for Protestant missions. May this study of the Reformation
of the sixteenth century and the subsequent
efforts to carry the Word into all of the world help to
unite our Lutheran forces in a determined missionary
purpose to hasten the transformation of the twentieth
century.
.ce
Co-operative Literature Committee:
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Mrs. E. C. Cronk, Chairman, Member from United Synod.
Miss Sallie Protzman, Member from General Synod.
Mrs. Chas. L. Fry, Member from General Council.
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Literature Headquarters for Missionary Societies:
General Synod, 105 E. 21st St., Baltimore, Md.
General Council, 844 Drexel Building, Philadelphia, Pa.
United Synod, 1617 Sumter St., Columbia, S. C.
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CONTENTS
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| #Foreword:foreword#
| #List of Illustrations:illus#
Chapter I |#The Beginnings:ch01#
Chapter II |#Pioneers and Methods:ch02#
Chapter III |#The Lutheran Church in India:ch03#
Chapter IV |#The Lutheran Church in Africa:ch04#
Chapter V |#The Lutheran Church in China, Japan and Elsewhere:ch05#
Chapter VI |#Lutheran Foreign Missions on the Western Continent:ch06#
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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
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#Portrait of A. H. Francke (Frontispiece):frontis#
#Bartholomew Ziegenbalg:preface1#
#Christian Frederick Schwartz (Preface):preface2#
#Louis Harms:p008#
#Hermannsburg Parsonage:p008b#
#John Evangelist Gossner:p024#
#Men’s Bathing Ghat at Purulia:p024b#
#Stall High School for Girls, Guntur, India:p032#
#Faculty of Watts Memorial College for Men, Guntur:p032b#
#Hospital for Women and Children, Guntur:p040#
#Hospital for Women and Children, Rajahmundry:p055#
#Central Girl’s School, Rajahmundry:p064#
#Chapel of Leper Asylum, Kodur, India, (Joint Synod of Ohio):p072#
#Inmates of Leper Asylum:p072b#
#All India Lutheran Conference in 1914, Delegates from Eight Missions:p088#
#A Malagasy Witch Doctor:p096#
#Native Lutheran Ministers in Madagascar:p096b#
#Main Station at Muhlenberg, Liberia, Africa:p104#
#Girls of Emma V. Day School, Muhlenberg, Africa:p120#
#Carrying Water and Sewing in Garden:p120b#
#Central China Lutheran Theological Seminary, Shekow, Hupeh, China:p128#
#Chapel and Mission Homes, Chikungshan, China, (United Norwegian):p128b#
#Administration Building and Class Rooms, Kyushu, Gakuin, Kumamoto, Japan:p136#
#Pastor’s Residence, Chapel, and Student Dormitory, Tokyo. American \
Missionaries, Native Pastors and Workers with Wives and \
Children:p136b#
#First Graduating Class from Kindergarten at Ogi, Japan:p152#
#Group of Theological Students, Kumamoto:p152b#
#Lutheran Church in Borneo:p160#
#Lutheran Church in Java:p160b#
#Officers and Teachers of Lutheran Sunday School, New \
Amsterdam, British Guiana:p192#
#Ituni School in School Room Which is Also the Church:p192b#
#Some Indian Members of Ituni Congregation:p192c#
#Lutheran Chapel, Monacillo, Porto Rico, with Two \
Missionaries and Two Native Workers:p200#
#Porto Rican Hut with Miss Mellander and Three \
Members of Church at Palo Seco:p200b#
#Immanuel Colored Lutheran College, Greensboro, North Carolina:p216#
#Bethany Indian Mission Band, Wittenberg, Wisconsin (Norwegian Synod):p216b#
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PREFACE
The author acknowledges her indebtedness to the
many persons who have furnished data for The Story
of Lutheran Missions, and to those who have read
the manuscript. The authorities consulted have been
chiefly The History of Protestant Missions by Gustav
Warneck, D.D., The History of Christian Missions
by C. H. Robinson, D.D., The History of Lutheran
Missions by the Rev. Preston A. Laury, Geschichte
der evangelischen Heidenmission by R. Gareis, The
Lutheran Encyclopedia and the Encyclopedia of Missions,
beside numerous magazine articles and reports.
Only enough statistics have been included to indicate
the size of each mission. With the book should be
used such admirable books and pamphlets as Missionary
Heroes of the Lutheran Church, Our First Decade
in China, The United Norwegian Mission Field
in China, Our Colored Mission, Our India Story,
and the many interesting illustrated mission reports.
Above all, maps should be constantly referred to.
If the study of The Story of Lutheran Missions
gives to the reader, as its preparation has given to
the author, a sense of the essential unity of the Lutheran
Church and a renewed love for her and her history,
it will achieve its purpose.
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.ca BARTHOLOMEW ZIEGENBALG.
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.ca CHRISTIAN FREDERICK SCHWARTZ.
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[Illustration: BARTHOLOMEW ZIEGENBALG.]
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[Illustration: CHRISTIAN FREDERICK SCHWARTZ.]
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CHAPTER I. || The Beginnings
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.it The Purpose of the Book.
.it The Missionary Impulse.
.it The Benefits of Missionary Study.
.it The Plan of Salvation.
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.it Salvation Intended for the Whole World.
.it Israel’s Conception of God’s Purpose.
.it The Jew as a Missionary.
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.it The Septuagint.
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.it The Roman Empire.
.it The Supreme Missionary.
.it The Sending of the Disciples.
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.it Paul.
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.it The Early Church.
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.it Its Extent.
.it A Change in Method.
.it Early Missionaries.
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.it The Church and State.
.it Boniface.
.it The Church of Germany.
.it Martin Luther.
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.it “What must I do to be saved?”
.it An Answer Found.
.it A New Evangel.
.it A Pure and Living Stream.
.it The Bible Translated.
.it Luther and Missions.
.ul-
.ul-
.it The Beginnings of Lutheran Missions.
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.it In Europe and Asia.
.it In Africa.
.it In North America.
.it In South America.
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.it Justinian von Welz.
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.it His Appeal Ridiculed.
.it A Martyr.
.it A Hero.
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.ul-
.it The Spring at Hand.
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.it Philip Spener.
.it A. H. Francke.
.it The School at Halle.
.it The First Missionary Hymn.
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Chapter I. || THE BEGINNINGS
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Purpose of
the Book.
It is the object of this book to give a
general survey of the missionary labors
of the Lutheran Church in all lands. A knowledge
of the work of our own Church is of first importance,
both that we may be well informed concerning those
enterprises which we support and that we may through
them become interested in the achievements of other
churches.
This account of Lutheran missions cannot be exhaustive.
Volumes have been written upon the
history of many Lutheran missions. Many names
which deserve record must be omitted and those heroes
who have been selected for mention are no more
devoted, no more noble than many others whose names
are lost to human recollection.
The
Missionary
Impulse.
Even if the specific commands of our
Lord were lacking, we believe that
every good Christian would find
in his own heart a missionary impulse which could
not be denied. There is no good news which we do
not hasten to tell; the man who would withhold from
his neighbors that which would benefit them is rightly
condemned. Would it not be strange if we told all
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good news but the greatest? The Christian has found
peace and life and hope in the Gospel, surely it is
his duty and it should be his chief joy to tell the good
news to others.
The Benefits
of Missionary
Study.
The study of missions is a fascinating
pursuit. Its subject matter is the noblest
in the world--the history of the
evangelizing and Christianizing of mankind. The
characters are heroes and heroines. The effect of
such study is not only inspiring but improving. The
student will gain through diligent attention to the
courses offered by mission boards a mass of general
information which could be gained so easily in no
other way. He will visit all the countries of the
world; he will hear something of their history, their
geography, their flora and fauna. He will see Eliot
and Campanius preaching to the American Indians, he
will see Hans Egede laboring among the Greenlanders,
he will hear of the wise colonial policy of England,
of the amazing devotion and great learning of
the Germans, he will observe the daily life of the mission
stations where the sick are healed, where lepers
are cared for, where to everyone the Gospel is preached.
The opening of windows into the wide world is not
the least of the rewards for a study of missions.
Before beginning the actual history of Lutheran
missions we will review briefly Christian missions before
the establishment of the Protestant Church, so
that the student may connect the present with the
past.
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Salvation Intended
for the
Whole World.
Christ did not present to the Jews the
first intimation of salvation for the
whole world. Just as all spiritual
truths which He elaborated and fulfilled were shadowed
forth in the Old Testament, so was the missionary
idea. Here we find the hidden seeds, the
promises and prophecies which were to mature and
to be fulfilled in the New Testament. God is revealed
as the Creator of the whole world. It was
all mankind which sinned in Adam, the mankind which
God had made “of one blood”. Saint Paul makes
clear to the Ephesians the fact that the Gentiles are
“fellow heirs and fellow members of the body”. God
said to Abraham that in him should “all the families
of the earth be blessed.”
Israel’s Conception
of
God’s Purpose.
Gradually in the nation of Israel there
developed the idea of a new covenant
of grace. With the growth of this
it became more and more clear to Israel’s prophets
and seers that Israel was the center of a great
kingdom which God should gather from all nations.
Many testimonies may be found to this new consciousness.
“For the earth shall be filled with the
knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters
cover the sea.” “For from the rising of the sun
even unto the going down of the same, my name shall
be great among the Gentiles.” In the Prophet Jonah
we have an Old Testament missionary, proud and unwilling,
but a witness, nevertheless, to the fact that
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God’s mercy extended not alone to Israel but to all
His works.
The Jew as
a Missionary.
Unconsciously to themselves the Jews
were engaged in missionary work.
Trained in seclusion, then carried into captivity or
trading in all known quarters of the world, they continued
to worship the living God. They worshipped
Him in private and in public, their synagogues rising
plain and austere among the impure temples of
the heathen deities. Long-suffering, devout, faithful,
they did God’s great task.
The Septuagint.
About two hundred years before the
birth of Christ the Jews accomplished
an important missionary work. They were now no
longer in Judea alone, but lived all over the Roman
Empire. For this scattered host the rabbis translated
the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek, the common speech.
The translation is called the Septuagint because it
was made by seventy men. Here is the first great
spreading of the Living Word. The Septuagint was
read not only by the Jews but by many learned Greeks,
who, while they did not accept its teachings, yet admired
its eloquence. One of the greatest factors in
the success of the early Christian Church was this acquaintance
of the Greeks with the Hebrew Scriptures.
The Roman
Empire.
For the fulfillment of Old Testament
prophecies the world was preparing in
other ways. The Roman Empire was at the height
of its power, its roads led everywhere, it had pushed
back the boundaries of the world, it was adding to
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itself great barbarian nations, little dreaming that all
its pride was to serve the will of the Hebrew’s God!
The Supreme
Missionary.
When the time was ripe, God sent
His Son into the world, the Supreme
Missionary. To convince a doubter of the divine authority
for missions, one need go no farther than to
point to Christ’s earthly life.
The Disciples
Sent Abroad.
Just as God had sent His Son into
the world, so Christ sent abroad His
disciples. Their appointment was made directly by
Him. The command is positive. “All authority hath
been given unto me in heaven and on earth. Go ye
therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing
them into the name of the Father and of the Son
and of the Holy Ghost.” “Thus it is written, and
thus it behooved Christ to suffer ... that repentance
and remission of sins should be preached in His name
among all nations beginning at Jerusalem.” “As my
Father hath sent me, even so send I you.” “Ye shall
receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come
upon you, and ye shall be witnesses unto me, both in
Jerusalem and all Judea, and in Samaria and unto
the uttermost parts of the earth.”
The Record of
Their Missionary
Work.
We have in the Acts of the Apostles
a record of the work of the first missionaries
appointed by Christ. It describes
the disciples gathered together waiting for the
promise of the Father. It describes the pentecostal
visitation with its mighty wind, its tongues of fire, its
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strange speech, Parthians and Medes and Elamites,
Mesopotamians, Judeans and Cappadocians, Asians,
Egyptians, Cretans and Arabians speaking each in
his own tongue “the mighty works of God”. It tells
the history of the Church, of its early work in Jerusalem,
of its miracles and persecutions, of the death
of its first martyr. It tells of the missionary work of
Peter among the Jews, the beginning of work among
the Gentiles. It tells of the conversion of one Saul,
a Jew, who had been laying waste the new Church.
Saint Paul.
In the crises of history, great characters
seem to be almost a special creation.
Such a man was Lincoln, such a man
was Luther, such a man was the apostle Paul.
Paul was a Jew of the straitest sect of the
Pharisees who had kept the most minute provision
of the law and who had felt that the law
was unable to solve the problem of sin. He was acquainted
also with the wisdom of the Greeks. To
him it became clear after his conversion that in Christ
lay the fulfillment of the Jewish law and the way of
salvation for mankind.
To those outside the law Paul became the
first missionary. Through his teaching Christianity
was made a universal religion, by his personal work
he evangelized a large part of Asia Minor and the
chief cities of Greece. His accomplished task was but
a small part of that which he planned. His longing
eyes turned toward the West, toward the “utmost
ramparts of the world”. When the sword of
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the executioner ended his life in Rome, only a small
part of his dreams had been realized.
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.ca LOUIS HARMS.
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.ca HERMANNSBURG PARSONAGE.
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[Illustration: LOUIS HARMS.]
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[Illustration: HERMANNSBURG PARSONAGE.]
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The Early
Church.
Not only the apostles but the whole of
the early Christian Church was filled
with the missionary spirit. To that early period our
eyes turn with longing desire to penetrate farther
into the story of devotion, of passion for the things
of Christ, of persecution, of martyrdom and of eventual
triumph. To us glorious and pathetic relics remain
in tradition, in a few written accounts and in
inscriptions on tombs and funeral urns. In Thessalonica
(now Saloniki), that city in which Paul and
Barnabas were said to have “turned the world upside
down,” were found two funeral urns of this period.
Upon one was the inscription “No hope”; on the other,
“Christ my life.” What a mighty hope had been born
in the hearts of men!
Its Extent.
It is impossible to know exactly the
size and extent of the Christian Church
at any of the early periods of its history. It is estimated
by the conservative that at the end of the First
Century there were in the Roman Empire two hundred
thousand Christians, and at the end of the Second
perhaps eight millions, which was about one fifteenth
of the population. By the time of the Emperor Constantine,
Christianity had become so vast in its extent
and so tremendous in influence that he made it
in 313 A.D. the State Church of the Empire.
A Change
in Method.
As we study the history of the Christian
Church during the next centuries,
we observe a new method of Christianizing. The
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apostles had built up small churches, had watched and
nourished them, had chidden the backsliders, had permitted
no sacrifice of the cardinal Christian principles.
Now there were added to the Empire barbarian countries
upon whose people the Christian religion was imposed,
whether or not they were truly converted,
whether or not, indeed, they were willing to receive
it. There were not lacking, of course, many individual
conversions, there were not lacking hundreds of
Christians who labored with apostolic diligence and
devotion and who doubtless deplored the growing union
of their religion with the corrupt politics of a great
empire.
Early
Missionaries.
Among the famous missionaries of this
period were Gregory, the Illuminator,
a missionary to the Armenians about the year 300;
Ulfilas, who invented a Gothic alphabet so that he
might translate the Scriptures into Gothic; Chrysostom,
who founded in Constantinople a missionary institution,
and Saint Patrick, who converted Ireland.
From the secluded churches of Ireland and the Scottish
Highlands there went forth to Iceland, to the
Faroe Islands, and far into the barbarian sections of
the Empire a new band, Columba, Aidan, Columbanus
and Trudpert. From the young English Church went
Wilfrid to Friesland, Willibrord to the neighborhood
of Utrecht, and Boniface to Germany. Further to
the east the Gospel was proclaimed under fearful difficulties.
At one time it seemed that Christianity
might become one of the religions of old China.
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Church
and State.
Gradually the alliance of the Church
and State came to its inevitable conclusion.
The Church began to share the ambitions of
the State. Christianity armed itself with the sword
and strove to wrest from the Moslem the sepulcher of
the Prince of Peace. A measure of the true spirit of
the Nazarene remained in such as Raymond Lull, who
protested against extending God’s kingdom by the
sword and testified to his convictions by giving up his
life. The great missionary societies of the Church,
the Jesuit, the Dominican, the Capuchin, accepted in
the main the Church’s theory of conquest, a theory
made enormously advantageous by the discovery of
new continents. The missionary enterprises of Spain
and Portugal were marked by hideous oppression of
those who would not accept the offered religion.
Upon the ministers of the Church the alliance with
the State wrought its evil effect. The ambitions of
a bishop of Rome led him in 442 to ask the weak
Emperor that he be made the head of western Christendom.
Henceforth the See of Rome grew more
and more powerful. The Church lost entirely the
democratic quality of its early life. Pope Gregory
claimed toward the end of the Eleventh Century that
he had power not only over the souls of men but over
all rulers. The lives of great prelates grew evil, the
administration of ecclesiastical affairs venal, the pure
Gospel was obscured. A mistaken emphasis was put
upon good works as a means of winning that forgiveness
of sin which God had promised for Christ’s sake.
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Before the missionary stream could flow for the blessing
and healing of mankind, a clear passage must be
opened to its Source.
Boniface.
Among the missionaries who had set
out full of zeal from the English
Church in the Eighth Century was Boniface, a man
of extraordinary energy and power. Among the fields
in which he worked was that of Thuringia in Germany.
Here, among the dark forests, encouraged
and supported by the Pope and by the ruler, Charles
Martel, he preached the Gospel, converting thousands
and binding them to Rome. With the Gospel he gave
them a new sort of superstition, an idolatrous reverence
for Rome and a deep awe of the sacred relics
which he brought with him. He established monasteries,
synods, schools, and required not only faith but
knowledge of the forms of the Church, such as the
Lord’s Prayer and the Creed. When an old man, he
went to visit the country of Friesland which had rejected
his early preaching and there with his companions
was murdered.
The Church
of Germany.
His Church, however, continued.
Closely bound to the great Roman See,
it reproduced all the evils of that powerful organization.
Here were the great celibate orders, here collections
of relics, here a constant demand for money
to build magnificent churches and to support an idle
and ignorant priesthood. Here, especially, was a tremendous
traffic in indulgences by which in exchange
for money the sinner could secure not only release
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from penance on earth and pain in purgatory, but,
to the minds of the ignorant, actual pardon for sin.
The essential truths of Christ’s teaching were forgotten
while men busied themselves with a thousand non-essentials
and found no peace for their souls.
Now, as in other times of dire need God provided
a man should point to the true way of salvation.
Martin
Luther.
In Germany, as well as in all other
parts of the Church, there were many
simple, devout Christians whose superstition was underlaid
by a deep and childlike faith. To two such
pious souls, Hans and Margaret Luther, there was
born in 1483, seven hundred years after Boniface had
died, a son, Martin. Hans Luther was a poor miner
who had moved before Martin’s birth from Möhra to
the village of Eisleben. For this son Hans and Margaret
were ambitious. They wished him to possess
first of all a good character and to that end
trained him strictly. His mother taught him simple
prayers and hymns and that God for Christ’s sake
forgives sin. They wished in the second place that
the lad should rise above their humble estate and for
that reason sent him to school, first to Mansfield and
Magdeburg, then to Eisenach.
University
Days.
When he was eighteen years old Martin
entered the University of Erfurt.
His father had become more prosperous and continued
in his determination that the boy should have every
possible opportunity.
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Luther was popular among his mates. He won his
bachelor’s then his master’s degree and began the study
of the law for which his father intended him. Suddenly
with crushing disappointment to that ambitious
father and to the amazed disapproval of his friends,
he abandoned together the study of the law and the
world itself and entered a monastery.
“What Must
I Do to be
Saved?”
It had not been his studies alone which
had occupied the young man during his
university course, but meditation upon
the needs of his own despairing soul. We have every
evidence that he led a pure and godly life, yet the
weight of that sin to which all mankind is heir lay
heavily upon him. To a man of his time there was but
one way of escape--the monastery, in which he might
work out his salvation. Vowed to celibacy, to poverty,
to obedience, devoting himself to prayer and fasting,
he might hope to be saved.
If “Brother Augustine,” as he was called, had any
fault as a monk, he erred upon the side of too strict
obedience. He followed all the rules of the order, he
fasted, he scourged himself cruelly. But still he found
no peace. God appeared to him an implacable judge,
whose laws it was impossible to keep. He wearied his
fellow-priests with confessions and inquiries, but his
heart was not at rest.
The Answer.
Finally, however, he found an answer
to his question. Partly by the help of
his superiors, chiefly by the aid of the Scriptures, which,
contrary to the custom of the time, he studied diligently,
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he saw a new light. God was a kind Father who
required only that his children should throw themselves
in faith upon His grace, accepting Christ’s sacrifice
for them. Good works were simply the natural
expression of a soul already reconciled with God and
could have in themselves no merit. If one simply
believed, one was justified by his faith. That this
doctrine was not that of the Church, Martin did
not realize.
But he was soon to learn that his discovery was not
acceptable to his superiors. There came into the neighborhood
a monk, Tetzel by name, selling those indulgences
which had become a menace to spiritual life.
Against him and his traffic Luther protested, first in
a sermon and then in a series of ninety-five theses
which he nailed to the door of the Castle Church.
A New
Evangel.
The sale of indulgences began promptly
to decline, and the money, intended
partly for the building of St. Peter’s Church at Rome,
ceased to flow into the treasury. The local clergy
took alarm, the alarm reached to Rome. Threatened,
cajoled, greatly disturbed, but steadfast, Luther clung
to his conviction. “The Christian man who has true
repentance has already received pardon from God altogether
apart from an indulgence and does not need
one; Christ demands true repentance from every one,”
said Luther. At once came a stern reply. It was the
Pope and not Luther who had the right to decide
this and all other questions. Thus reproved, Luther
began to investigate the claims of the Pope upon the
.pn +1
.bn 029.png
lives and fortunes of men. Excommunicated, threatened,
with the fate of the martyr Huss in store for
him, but gathering courage each day, he persisted
until he had separated essentials from non-essentials
and, thrusting aside the judgments and traditions of
men, had founded his theology upon the Word of God.
Tearing out the weeds of false doctrine and false practice,
he cleared the stream of the Gospel to its clear
and living Spring.
The Bible
Translated.
Luther not only opened the stream,
but provided for its continued freedom.
To his German people he gave their Bible. His was
not the first German translation, but it was the first
which was at once readable and true to the original.
With the most painstaking care and with the aid of
his friends, Luther prepared his version, drawn from
the original languages, true to the German idiom, a
joy to laity and scholars alike.
Luther and
Missions.
The interest of Luther in missions has
been the subject of much unnecessary
discussion. There are fervent admirers who claim
for him a missionary enthusiasm which he did not
possess. There are others who deny for him all interest
in this vital question. The truth lies midway.
Missionary enterprise was not one of the first activities
of the new Church, nor was it to be expected
that it should be. The turmoil and difficulties connected
with the establishment of the evangelical religion
occupied fully the minds of the reformers. Germany
was practically an inland nation and a divided
.pn +1
.bn 030.png
nation. It had no ships, no foreign possessions,
no communication with the heathen world. There
were not for the early Protestants as for the early
Christians great Roman roads leading the imagination
afar, there were no large cities where men of many
nations touched elbows. The newly discovered lands
were the possession of Catholic countries in whose domain
the new Gospel, which was really the old Gospel,
would have had no hearing.
Not only Luther but other reformers in other lands
were concerned chiefly with the heathenized Church
about them. For it they labored and prayed. The
business of laying a sound foundation absorbed them.
That the foundation was well laid, the missions of
later centuries will show. In the words of Doctor
Gustav Warneck: “The Reformation not only restored
the true substance of missionary preaching by
its earnest proclamation of the Gospel, but also brought
back the whole work of missions to Apostolic lines.”
The
Beginnings.
There is always a difference of opinion
about the actual beginnings of a
great work. Modern missions offer no exception to
this rule. General historians are unwilling to find any
indication that even in the Seventeenth Century the
Church of the Reformation felt an obligation to
heathen nations. Lutheran historians, searching the
matter more thoroughly and with a less prejudiced
spirit, have discovered various individuals to whom
missions were a matter of deep concern.
.pn +1
.bn 031.png
In Europe
and Asia.
As early as 1557, Primus Truber
translated into the language of the
Croats and Wends to the east of Germany the Gospel,
Luther’s Catechism and a book of spiritual songs.
In 1559, Gustavus Vasa, King of Sweden, and later
Gustavus Adolphus, endeavored to bring into the Lutheran
Church the Lapps, who, though nominally
Roman Catholic, had been in reality heathen, but the
effort was not successful. Denmark, which had acquired
possessions in India, provided for a minister to
the colony, whose chief concern should be the spiritual
needs of the natives. The creditable undertaking
was brought to naught by the wickedness of the
appointed ministers. In 1658, Eric Bredal, a Norwegian
bishop, began preaching to the Lapps. Some
of his assistants were killed; he died and his work
came to no earthly fruitage. But the missionary spirit
was none the less clearly exhibited.
In Africa.
In 1634 Peter Heiling of Lübeck
journeyed to Abyssinia to try to rouse
once more the churches of the East whose spiritual
life had almost ceased. There, after translating the
New Testament into Amharic, he died a martyr.
In North
America.
In 1638 the Swedes established “New
Sweden” on the banks of the Delaware
River in America. That there existed in their minds
an interest in the spiritual welfare of the Indians surrounding
them is recorded in one of the resolutions
for the government of the colony. “The wild nations
.pn +1
.bn 032.png
bordering upon all other sides, the Governor shall understand
how to treat with all humanity and respect,
that no violence or wrong be done to them ... but he
shall rather, at every opportunity exert himself that
the same wild people may gradually be instructed in
the truths and worship of the Christian religion, and
in other ways be brought to civilization and good
government, and in this manner properly guided.”
Among the Swedish Lutheran pastors who obeyed this
injunction was John Campanius who translated in
1648 Luther’s Small Catechism into the language of the
Virginia Indians, a work which antedated by thirteen
years the publication of John Eliot’s translation of
the New Testament for the Indians of Massachusetts.
The work among the Indians lasted for over a hundred
years.
In South
America.
Justinian von
Welz.
The most important name of the Seventeenth
Century in our study of Lutheran
missions is that of Justinian
von Welz, a German nobleman. To him there came
clearly the true vision of the indissoluble relation of
living Christianity and Christian missions. In 1664
he issued two pamphlets, one bearing the title, “An
invitation for a society of Jesus to promote Christianity
and the conversion of heathendom,” the other “A
Christian and true-hearted exhortation to all right-believing
Christians of the Augsburg Confession respecting
a special association by means of which, with
God’s help, our evangelical religion might be extended.”
In the latter pamphlet there were such questions
.pn +1
.bn 033.png
as these: “Is it right that we evangelical Christians
hold the Gospel for ourselves alone?” “Is it
right that in all places we have so many theological
students, and do not induce them to labor elsewhere
in the garden of the Lord?” “Is it right that we evangelical
Christians expend so much on all sorts of dress,
delicacies in eating and drinking, etc., but have hitherto
thought of no means for the spread of the Gospel?”
His Appeal
Ridiculed.
When this appeal was met with opposition
and ridicule, von Welz issued
a still stronger manifesto. He called upon the court
preachers, the learned professors and others in authority
to establish a missionary school where oriental languages,
the lives of the early missionaries, geography
and kindred missionary subjects might be studied.
Alas! von Welz was considered now more fanatical
and insane than before. When he suggested the sending
out of artisans and laymen to tell the Gospel story,
since the learned and influential leaders would not go,
he was thought to be quite mad.
A Martyr.
Forsaking his noble rank, this eager
soul turned away from his own country
to Holland, where he found a minister to ordain
him as “an apostle to the Gentiles”. Arranging his affairs
so that all his wealth might be applied to his
great endeavor, he set sail as a missionary to Dutch
Guiana in South America. There in a few months
he found a lonely grave.
.pn +1
.bn 034.png
A Hero.
In Justinian von Welz the Church of
the Reformation possesses one of her
worthiest and least known heroes. It was not until
1786, more than a century later, that the Baptist William
Carey, considered the first standard bearer of
modern missions, lifted up his admonishing voice. Of
von Welz, Doctor Warneck, the greatest of all missionary
historians, speaks thus: “The indubitable sincerity
of his purposes, the noble enthusiasm of his
heart, the sacrifice of his position, his fortune, his life
for the yet unrecognized duty of the Church to missions,
insure for him an abiding place of honor in missionary
history.” To him another German missionary
historian pays this tribute: “Sometimes in a mild
December a snow drop lifts its head, yet is spring far
away. Frost and snow will hold field and garden in
chains for many months. But have patience. Only a
little while and Spring will be here!”
The Spring
at Hand.
Von Welz’s labors and prayers were
to bear fruit. His teaching sank into
the hearts of some of those who read. In a period of
dreary rationalism which followed there began to
spring up the seeds which he had sowed. Missions
became more and more a subject of discussion among
learned men. Among those who gave the theories of
von Welz his earnest attention was the German scientist
Leibnitz who urged the sending of missionaries to
China through Russia. When men began not only
to think and to discuss but to pray, the Spring was
really at hand.
.pn +1
.bn 035.png
Philip Spener.
To two Lutherans above all other men
the world owes the impulse to modern
Protestant missions. If Philip Jacob Spener and August
Herman Francke had not lived, the preaching of
the pure Gospel to the heathen, already long delayed,
would have had a still later Spring.
Philip Spener was born in 1635 and died in 1705.
He was a man of deep piety and great learning. Occupying
many important positions, among them that of
court preacher at Dresden, he preached and taught
constantly that pure living must be added to pure doctrine,
urging that the “rigid and externalized” orthodoxy
of the Church be transmuted into practical
piety which should include Bible study and all sorts
of Christian work. He held in his own house meetings
for the study of the Bible and the exchanging of
personal religious experiences. From the name of
these meetings, collegia pietatis, the name of Pietists
was given in ridicule to him and his followers.
Among the practical manifestations of a true Christian
spirit which Spener urged was the sending of missionaries
to the heathen. On the Feast of the Ascension
he preached as follows:
“We are thus reminded that although every preacher
is not bound to go everywhere and preach, since God
has knit each of us to his congregation, yet the obligation
rests on the whole Church to have care as
to how the Gospel shall be preached in the whole
world, and that to this end no diligence, labor, or
cost be spared in behalf of the poor heathen and unbelievers.
.pn +1
.bn 036.png
That almost no thought has been given to
this, and that great potentates, as the earthly heads
of the Church, do so very little therein, is not to be
excused, but is evidence how little the honor of Christ
and of humanity concerns us; yea, I fear that in that
day unbelievers will cry for vengeance upon Christians
who have been so utterly without care for their
salvation.”
A. H. Francke.
Most famous among the followers and
admirers of Spener was August Herman
Francke, who was born in 1663 and died in 1727.
He showed as a child extraordinary powers of mind,
being prepared to enter the university at the age of
fourteen. In 1685 he graduated from the University
of Leipsic after having studied there and at Erfurt
and Kiel. In 1688 he spent two months with Spener
at Dresden and became deeply impressed with pietistic
theories. In 1691 he was appointed professor of
Greek and Oriental languages in the University of
Halle, then recently founded. Here he became pastor
of a church in a neighboring village, an undertaking
which was to have world-wide importance.
The villagers in this town of Glaucha were degraded,
poor, untaught. Moved by their need, Francke
opened a school for the children in one room. He
had little money but he trusted God. In a short while
it was necessary to add another room, then two. He
next established a home for orphans, then he added
homes for the destitute and fallen. As fast as his
.pn +1
.bn 037.png
enterprises increased, so rapidly came the necessary
support.
The School
at Halle.
It is not possible to tell here the amazing
history of the Halle institutions
which sheltered even before the death of Francke more
than a thousand souls, much less of the enormous Inner
Mission institutions in other parts of Germany
which had here their inspiration. That activity of
this remarkable man with which we are chiefly concerned
is his missionary labors. In the words of Doctor
Warneck: “He knew himself to be a debtor to
both, Christians and non-Christians. In him there
personified that connection of rescue work at home
with missions to the heathen--a type of the fact that
they who do the one do not leave the other undone.
Home and foreign missions have from the beginning
been sisters who work reciprocally into each other’s
hands.”
.if h
.il fn=p024.jpg id=p024 w=600px
.ca JOHN EVANGELIST GOSSNER.
.sp 2
.il fn=p024b.jpg id=p024b w=00px
.ca MEN’S BATHING GHAT AT PURULIA.
.if-
.if t
.sp 2
[Illustration: OHN EVANGELIST GOSSNER.]
.sp 2
[Illustration: MEN’S BATHING GHAT AT PURULIA.]
.sp 2
.if-
Francke’s institution became a training school for
Christian workers. There was no specific instruction
for such undertakings, but “in those that came in near
contact with him he stirred a spirit of absolute devotion
to divine service, such as he himself possessed
in highest measure, and which made them ready to go
wherever there was need of them.” There came into
the school later, as a lad, the Moravian Zinzendorf,
afterwards a zealous missionary, who describes thus the
effect of the surroundings upon him: “The daily
opportunity in Professor Francke’s house of hearing
edifying tidings of the kingdom of Christ, of speaking
.pn +1
.bn 038.png
.pn +1
.bn 039.png
.pn +1
.bn 040.png
with witnesses from all lands, of making acquaintance
with missionaries, of seeing men who had been
banished and imprisoned, as also the institutions then
in their bloom, and the cheerfulness of the pious man
himself in the work of the Lord ... mightily
strengthened within me zeal for the things of the
Lord.”
From Halle there went forth during the following
century about sixty missionaries, among them Ziegenbalg,
Fabricius, Jaenicke, Gericke and Schwartz, whose
careers we shall study. Here also was trained Muhlenberg,
the patriarch of the Lutheran Church in
America, who intended first to go as a missionary to
India. Here were published in 1710 the earliest missionary
reports in a little periodical which was continued
under different titles until 1880, one hundred
and seventy years. Among those for whom the heart
of Francke yearned were the Jews, in whose interest
he founded the Institua Judiaca. From Halle there
spread an influence not only through Germany but
through the world which is difficult to estimate but
almost impossible to exaggerate. By no means the
least of the missionary activities which had there their
inspiration was that of the Moravian Church, the
most ardent in missionary work of all Churches.
The missionary influence did not have any means
free course. The opposition shown to the theories of
Justinian von Welz continued. Francke was considered
no less of a fanatic. This contrary spirit may
be shown by the expression of a deeply pious clergyman
.pn +1
.bn 041.png
who concluded an Ascension sermon with the
following couplet:
.in 2
.nf
“‘Go into all the world,’ the Lord of old did say;
But now ‘Where God has placed thee, there He would have thee stay.’”
.nf-
.in 0
The First
Missionary
Hymn.
But even in poetic form missionary
activity was soon to find an expression.
In Halle a Lutheran Karl Heinrich
von Bogatsky wrote in 1750 the first Protestant
missionary hymn.
.in 4
.nf
“Awake, Thou Spirit, who didst fire
The watchmen of the Church’s youth,
Who faced the foe’s envenomed ire,
Who witnessed day and night Thy truth,
Whose voices loud are ringing still,
And bringing hosts to know Thy will.
“And let Thy Word have speedy course,
Through every land be glorified,
Till all the heathen know its force,
And fill Thy churches far and wide;
Wake Israel from her sleep, O Lord,
And spread the conquests of Thy Word!”
.nf-
.in 0
Before this time, however, the first call for missionary
workers had come to Halle from outside Germany.
.pn +1
.bn 042.png
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch02
CHAPTER II. || Pioneers and Methods
.sp 2
Pioneers.
.in 4
.nf
Bartholomew Ziegenbalg
Henry Plütschau
John Ernst Gründler
Benjamin Schultze
John Philip Fabricius
Christian William Gericke
Christian Frederick Schwartz
Karl Ewald Rhenius
Thomas von Westen
Per Fjellström
Hans Egede
John Jaenicke
.nf-
.in 0
Methods.
.in 2
German Societies
.in 6
.nf
The Basel Society
The Berlin Society
The Rhenish Society
The North German or Bremen Society
The Leipsic Society
The Hermannsburg Society
The Gossner Society
The Breklum or Schleswig-Holstein Society
The Neukirchen Society
The Neuendettelsau Society
The Hanover Society
The Bielefeld Society
.nf-
.in 2
Scandinavian Societies
.in 6
.nf
The Danish Missionary Society
The Norwegian Missionary Society
The Norwegian Church Mission (Schreuder)
The Norwegian Lutheran China Mission
The Swedish National Society
The Swedish Church Mission
The Swedish Mission in China
The Swedish Mongol Mission
The Jerusalem Association
The Home Mission to the Santals
.nf-
.pn +1
.bn 043.png
.in 2
Finnish, Polish and other societies.
American Societies
.in 6
.nf
Nine Norwegian Societies
General Synod
General Council
United Synod South
Synodical Conference
Joint Ohio Synod
Danish Society
Iowa Synod
.nf-
.in 0
.pn +1
.bn 044.png
.pb
.sp 4
.nf c
Chapter II.
PIONEERS AND METHODS
Pioneers.
.nf-
A Danish
Colony.
In 1526, nine years after Luther had
nailed his theses to the church door at
Wittenberg, the King of Denmark accepted the Evangelical
faith. Subsequently the Lutheran Church was
made the State Church. About a hundred years later
Denmark acquired by purchase an Indian fishing village,
Tranquebar, on the east coast of southern India.
There a Danish colony was established, there a Lutheran
church called Zion Church was built, and thither
two preachers were sent to minister to the Danes.
Eighty years later the heart of a pious King, Frederick
IV, became concerned for the spiritual welfare
of the heathen in this colony. His court chaplain,
Doctor Lütken, who was also deeply interested, set
about securing men who would be willing to undertake
the work. Failing to meet with a response in
Denmark, he applied to friends in Berlin. They recommended
a young German Bartholomew Ziegenbalg.
The Son of a
Pious Mother.
Young Ziegenbalg had been influenced,
as most candidates for the ministry are
influenced, by a pious mother. Both his mother and
.pn +1
.bn 045.png
father had died so early that he could remember very
little about them. One recollection, however, was
clear in his mind. Dying, his mother had called her
children to her bedside and had commended to them
her Bible, with the words: “Dear children, I am
leaving to you a treasure, a very great treasure.” Earnest
and pious, anxious for communion with God,
the young man, who was brought up by a sister, prepared
himself for the ministry. He studied at Berlin
and afterwards at Halle. There his poor health
was a cause of deep discouragement, but Francke
reminded him that though he might not be able to
work in Germany he might seek a field in some foreign
country with a more equable climate.
Called to the
Mission Field.
When his health failed, Ziegenbalg left
Halle and took up the work of a private
tutor. He continued his devotional studies, however,
and held such meetings as Spener had begun.
He formed a friendship at this time with Henry Plütschau,
another Halle student. Together the two covenanted
“never to seek anything but the glory of God,
the spread of His kingdom and the salvation of mankind,
and constantly to strive after personal holiness,
no matter where they might be or what crosses they
might have to bear.” In 1705, Ziegenbalg accepted
a call to a congregation near Berlin. It was here
that he was found by the inquiry of the Danish court
chaplain Lütken. He accepted at once, declaring
that if his going brought about the conversion of but
one heathen he would consider it worth while. His
.pn +1
.bn 046.png
friend Plütschau was anxious to go also, and, ordained
by the Danish Church, the two sailed from
Copenhagen on the ship “Sophia Hedwig” November
29, 1705, for Tranquebar.
A Long
Journey.
The journey round the Cape of Good
Hope consumed seven months, during
which time each of the young missionaries wrote a
book. On July 9, 1706, they arrived at their destination.
There, owing to a difficulty with the captain
who had resented their admonitions, they could not
land for two days. It was well that they did not
know that he had been instructed by the trading company
under which he sailed to hinder their work in
all possible ways. Unwillingly received by the Danish
governor, they settled in a little house near the
city wall.
Beside the Danish of the traders, two languages
were spoken in Tranquebar: the Portugese of the
first foreign settlers and the native Tamil language.
Leaving the easier task to his companion who was the
older, Ziegenbalg set to work to learn the native
tongue. His progress was rapid; in a year he had
completed a translation of the Catechism and in a
few months over a year had preached his first sermon.
By this time he had baptized fourteen souls.
Busy Days.
The record of his busy days seems almost
incredible when we remember
that he was a man of delicate health.
“After morning prayers I begin my work. From
six to seven I explain Luther’s Catechism to the people
.pn +1
.bn 047.png
in Tamil. From seven to eight I review the
Tamil words and phrases which I have learned. From
eight to twelve I read nothing but Tamil books, new
to me, under the guidance of a teacher who must
explain things to me with a writer present, who writes
down all words and phrases which I have not had
before. From twelve to one I eat, and have the Bible
read to me while doing so. From one till two I rest
for the heat is very oppressive then. From two to
three I have a catechisation in my house. From three
to five I again read Tamil books. From five to six
we have our prayer-meeting. From six to seven we
have a conference together about the day’s happenings.
From seven to eight I have a Tamil writer
read to me, as I dare not read much by lamplight.
From eight to nine I eat, and while doing so have the
Bible read to me. After that I examine the children
and converse with them.”
When the two missionaries felt that it was necessary
to build a church, each gave for that purpose
half of the two hundred dollars which was his salary.
The church was dedicated on August 4, 1707, and
by the end of the year it had thirty-five members.
Now Ziegenbalg began to work in the villages of the
Danish possessions outside Tranquebar and established
a school for the education of Christian children in
the city.
.if h
.il fn=p032.jpg id=p032 w=600px
.ca STALL HIGH SCHOOL FOR GIRLS, GUNTUR, INDIA.
.sp 2
.il fn=p032b.jpg id=p032b w=600px
.ca FACULTY OF WATTS MEMORIAL COLLEGE FOR MEN, GUNTUR.
.if-
.if t
.sp 2
[Illustration: STALL HIGH SCHOOL FOR GIRLS, GUNTUR, INDIA.]
.sp 2
[Illustration: FACULTY OF WATTS MEMORIAL COLLEGE FOR MEN, GUNTUR.]
.sp 2
.if-
Early Trials.
The work was not without its hard
trials. When the first financial help
arrived, two years after the missionaries had landed,
.pn +1
.bn 048.png
.pn +1
.bn 049.png
.pn +1
.bn 050.png
the drunken captain upset in the harbor the chest of
treasure and it was lost. The work of the missionaries
was opposed by the Danish chaplains and by the
Roman Catholics. On account of his defense of a
poor widow who had been cheated, Ziegenbalg was
cast into prison for four months.
That the faith of these pioneers was unfailing may
be shown by a prayer, written by one of them on the
fly leaf of a mission church-book in 1707.
“O Thou exalted and majestic Savior, Lord Jesus
Christ! Thou Redeemer of the whole human race!
Thou who through Thy holy apostles hast everywhere,
throughout the whole world, gathered a holy congregation
out of all peoples for Thy possession, and hast
defended and maintained the same even until now
against all the might of hell, and moreover assurest
Thy servants that Thou wilt uphold them even to
the end of the world, and in the very last times wilt
multiply them by calling many of the heathen to
the faith! For such goodness may Thy name be eternally
praised, especially also because Thou, through
Thy unworthy servants in this place, dost communicate
to Thy Holy Word among the heathen Thy blessing,
and hast begun to deliver some souls out of destructive
blindness, and to incorporate them with the communion
of Thy holy Church. Behold, it is Thy Word,
do Thou support it with divine power, so that by
Thy power many thousand souls may be born to Thee
in these mission stations, which bear the names of Jerusalem
and Bethlehem, souls which afterwards may
.pn +1
.bn 051.png
be admitted out of this earthly Jerusalem into Thy
heavenly Jerusalem with everlasting and exultant joy.
Do this, O Jesus, for the sake of Thy gracious promise
and Thy holy merit. Amen.”
Literary
Work.
Ziegenbalg prepared an order of service
and a hymnal and translated the
New Testament into Tamil--the first translation of
the New Testament into an East Indian tongue. An
English missionary society, hearing of his labors, sent
him a printing press. By 1712 he had composed or
had translated thirty-eight books or pamphlets. Among
his original works was an account of the native religions.
The value of this treatise has become more
appreciated as men have realized the importance of a
thorough knowledge of those religious principles which
unchristianized peoples already possess. To such knowledge
was due much of Saint Paul’s success among the
Greeks.
Travels.
Ziegenbalg travelled as far as Madras.
On this journey he talked with native
rulers and British governors and preached to all who
would hear about the only true God.
Reinforcements.
In 1709 three missionaries were sent
to his aid. Of the three John Ernst
Gründler proved most able. When in 1711 it seemed
best for one of the missionaries to return to Europe
to present the needs of the mission, Plütschau was
selected to go. There he accepted a pastorate. The
testimony of Ziegenbalg to his faithful work accompanied
him.
.pn +1
.bn 052.png
In 1714 Ziegenbalg visited Denmark, leaving the
mission in charge of Gründler. Upon his return in
1716 he brought with him a plan for the regular government
of the mission, the assurance of ample financial
support and a helpmate, Maria Dorothea Saltzmann,
who was the first woman ever sent to a foreign
field.
The New Jerusalem
Church.
In February 1717, Ziegenbalg had the
satisfaction of dedicating a large native
church, the New Jerusalem Church, which is used to
this day. He preached the sermon and the newly
appointed governor laid the corner stone. He continued
to establish village schools, he opened a seminary
for the training of native preachers and he provided
work by which the poorest of his converts could
earn a living. Except for medical work his mission
settlement included all the activities of the most complete
missionary enterprises at the present time.
For two more years Ziegenbalg labored, growing
meanwhile aware that his life was drawing to a close.
The record of his service leads us to expect that when
his death took place in February 1719 we should find
him an old man. It is with a shock that we realize
that he was only thirty-six. He was buried in the
New Jerusalem Church.
A Crowded
Life.
The extraordinary accomplishment of
Ziegenbalg has been far less well
known than it deserves to be. Even if we do not take
into account his frail health, the extent of his labors
is little short of marvelous. His literary work alone
.pn +1
.bn 053.png
would seem to have been enough to fill to the full
the thirteen years of his missionary activity. In addition,
he preached constantly; he made long journeys;
he gave constant thought and effort to his schools;
he looked after the poor; he established a theological
seminary. From home came many criticisms. It was
said that he made concessions to the caste system on
the one hand; on the other he was criticised for not
gathering in converts as rapidly as did the Roman
Catholic missionaries who allowed their converts to
keep all their old customs. He was reproached because
he paid so much attention to the schools. The
criticisms, however, which caused him anxiety and
grief serve to-day but to call attention to his splendid
common sense and excellent judgment, which
later missionary experience has tested. The community
of two hundred Christians which he left was not
only converted--it was instructed and established in
the faith.
A Second
Grave.
The death of Ziegenbalg left his
friend, John Ernst Gründler, in
charge of the mission. He had been a teacher at Halle
and partook of the devotion of all connected with that
great institution. For a short time he labored in Tranquebar
alone. Soon after the arrival of three new
missionaries he died and was buried in 1720 beside
his beloved friend in the new church.
Of the three new missionaries, Benjamin Schultze assumed
the management of the mission. He resembled
Ziegenbalg in the variety of his talents. Like Ziegenbalg
.pn +1
.bn 054.png
he felt the necessity for a careful instruction
of the natives. He continued the work of translation,
completing the Tamil Old Testament and translating a
part of the Bible into Telugu and the whole into Hindustani.
After doing faithful work, Schultze, being
unwilling to accept the rulings of the mission which
had sent him to India, entered the service of an English
mission. After sixteen years in India he returned
to Halle.
The Mission
Grows.
During the service of Schultze a mission
station was established at Cuddalore
in Madras. In 1733 the first native preacher
who had been baptized by Ziegenbalg was ordained
to the ministry. Schools were enlarged and another
church was erected. Presently work was begun in
Madura to the southeast of Tranquebar. By 1740,
thirty-four years after Ziegenbalg had begun his work,
the mission counted five thousand six hundred Christians.
In 1741 John Philip Fabricius arrived in India. He
came from a godly family in Hesse and like Luther
had given up the study of the law for the study of
theology. For theology he had gone to Halle and
there had heard the call of missions. On Good Friday
in 1742 he preached his first Tamil sermon and
on Christmas in that year he was assigned to the station
established by Schultze in Madras where he remained
till his death in 1791. Like his predecessors
he became a thorough student in the native tongues.
.pn +1
.bn 055.png
A Scholar.
He revised the translations of Ziegenbalg
and Schultze in a form which
remains unchanged to this day. To his translations
the adjective “golden” has been applied. He translated
also many hymns for the use of his congregation.
Together with a childlike simplicity and amiability
Fabricius possessed great courage. He shared the
hardships and dangers of his people during the “Thirty
Years’ War in South India”, defending his congregation
upon one occasion at the risk of his life.
Another Fabricius whose name should be recorded
was that of Sebastian, the brother of John Philip, who
was for many years the missionary secretary in Halle
and the devoted friend of all missionaries.
Christian William Gericke, “a great and gifted
man”, arrived in India in 1767, coming like his predecessors
from Halle. His first field of labor was
Cuddalore where he preached until war made necessary
the abandonment of the mission. Gericke remained
throughout the conflict, still preaching and
exhorting and supporting his children in the faith. He
saw his converts suffering cruelly and was compelled
to watch the soldiers changing his church into a powder
magazine.
In Madras whither he was invited he took over the
work of Fabricius, who was now old and infirm.
From there he was able to visit occasionally the scattered
members of his Cuddalore flock.
An Evangelist.
The number of his converts amounted
in a short time to three thousand. It
was said that whole villages followed him when he
.pn +1
.bn 056.png
conducted mission tours, which were likened to triumphal
processions. In some villages temples were
stripped of their idols and converted into houses of
worship. When he approached a village the entire
population frequently awaited him. It is related that
the heathen never came to their temples as they came
to this man of God. Worn out, he died in 1803 at
the age of sixty-one.
Another Pious
Mother.
As in the case of Bartholomew Ziegenbalg
so in the case of Christian
Frederick Schwartz, the impulse to the Christian ministry
came from a godly mother. She died when the
lad was but five years old, but she had made her husband
promise that her boy should be prepared for
the ministry.
Like Ziegenbalg and Luther and many other religious
heroes, Schwartz suffered in his youth from the
weight of sin and the fear of God’s judgment. Like
them also he came, after study of God’s Word and
earnest prayer, to rest his soul upon the almighty
promises. At Halle he met Benjamin Schultze who
called upon him to aid in his revision of the Tamil
Bible. Urged by his teachers to consider a call to
the mission field, he felt himself at first to be unworthy.
Finally, however, he agreed to go. When
he informed his father of his intention he met with
dismay and refusal. The elder Schwartz had three
children, of these one son had just died, a daughter
was about to be married and now the third proposed
to go to distant India! Finally the father was won
.pn +1
.bn 057.png
over and, giving his son his blessing, charged him to
win many souls for Christ. How many times in missionary
history has this drama of unwillingness, persuasion
and final yielding been enacted!
A Father’s
Sacrifice.
May all fathers and mothers who give
their children to the great cause have
reason for gratitude as did the elder Schwartz!
In January, 1750, Schwartz and two companions
sailed, only to return on account of fearful storms.
In March they set out once more and reached Tranquebar
at the end of July.
A Diligent
Student.
The first work assigned to the young
man was the teaching of the children
in the schools. He longed to go into the wilderness
of heathendom outside the city and there do pioneer
work, and in preparation for the day when he should
be allowed to go, he applied himself to a study of the
people, their language and their religion. As a result
of his thorough comprehension of their nature and
their needs he was to have a deep and lasting influence
upon them. For twelve years he worked in
Tranquebar and the outlying villages.
In 1755, by the persuasion of the wife of a German
officer, Schwartz and his companions were allowed
to pay a short visit to Tanjore, the city which
was the seat of the native government and which had
hitherto been closed to missionaries.
.if h
.il fn=p040.jpg id=p040 w=600px
.ca HOSPITAL FOR WOMEN AND CHILDREN, GUNTUR.
.if-
.if t
.sp 2
[Illustration: HOSPITAL FOR WOMEN AND CHILDREN, GUNTUR.]
.sp 2
.if-
Opening
Doors.
In 1762 they went on a similar visit
to a little company of native Christians
who had settled in Trichinopoli, for which England
.pn +1
.bn 058.png
.pn +1
.bn 059.png
.pn +1
.bn 060.png
and France had contended for many years. The
city was a center for idolatrous worship and contained
great temples to the elephant god Genesa, to Siva and
to Vishnu. Here also there was a popular Mohammedan
shrine. Well might the visitors feel that all
the evil of heathendom was gathered to greet them.
At that time the English had control of the city
and to the joy of the visitors they besought them to
stay, promising that they would build them a church.
It was decided that Schwartz should remain.
A True
Lutheran.
In making this change an important
question had to be solved by Schwartz.
In order to take up the work which seemed offered
by Providence, he would have to sever connection with
the Danish Lutheran society whose missionary he had
hitherto been and become a missionary of the Church
of England. In the end he decided that he would
accept English support but he stipulated that he would
remain a true Lutheran, preaching the doctrines of
his own faith. He was the first of many efficient
German Lutherans who laid the foundations for the
work of other churches, and who thus furnished
an example of true brotherliness which has often been
forgotten or overlooked.
At
Trichinopoli.
Schwartz had always been diligent,
but now it seemed that his labors became
superhuman. He had prayed for opportunity--here
was unlimited opportunity! He had studied diligently--here
were men of many tongues to whom he
might preach. With true wisdom he began his work.
.pn +1
.bn 061.png
With the methods of the Apostles as his model he
trained the best of his converts to become missionaries
to their own people. Each morning he sent them out,
two by two, and each evening he listened to an account
of their work. He added Hindustani and Persian to
the languages which he already knew so that he might
reach the Mohammedans and the court, and studied to
improve his broken English so that he might preach
to the English soldiers at the garrison. His ministrations
to them after a serious explosion and a battle
brought him gifts from the government and the soldiers.
Presently he built at the foot of the mighty rock
upon which stood a heathen temple a Christian church.
At Tanjore.
Schwartz was now fifty-two years old.
He had accomplished large tasks, yet
the chief labors of his life were still before him. He
learned to his amazement that the spirit at Tanjore
had changed and he was urged to return, not for a
short visit as before but to remain. The new Rajah
of Tanjore sought his advice about the settlement of
certain political differences, and finding a divine call
in this summons, Schwartz left his work at Trichinopoli
in the hands of others and took up his abode in Tanjore
in a house presented by the rajah. Here, supported
by the rajah, who, however, could not bring
himself quite to the point of becoming a Christian,
Schwartz lived for twelve years.
Here the English garrison was transformed as the
garrison at Trichinopoli had been. Two churches
were founded, one for the European residents, the other
.pn +1
.bn 062.png
for native Christians. School houses were built
in which English and Tamil were taught and where
the Christian religion was openly proclaimed. These
schools became the models for the great school system
of the English government. A tribe of professional robbers
forsook their evil lives as the result of Schwartz’s
preaching, sent their children to the schools and settled
down to the cultivation of the soil and to silk culture.
With the city as a center Schwartz travelled in
all directions encouraging, advising, aiding. He established
a congregation at Tinnevelli, to the south, of
which we shall hear later.
The Missionary
Statesman.
In the history of India Schwartz is
described as the missionary statesman.
Such without any will of his own, but on account of
circumstances and his remarkable character, he became.
Foreseeing war with a neighboring ruler in which Tanjore
was likely to be besieged, he stored away quantities
of rice upon which the people fed and which saved
multitudes from death. When the rajah grew old
the governor of the Madras presidency made Schwartz
the head of a commission which was to rule in his stead,
and when the rajah died he himself made Schwartz
regent during the minority of his son. Schwartz tried
to avoid this heavy responsibility, until the rajah’s
brother proved cruel and incapable of governing. Then
the mission house became the capitol of the province
and for two years the “king-priest” reigned. After
the heir had come to the throne, he consulted Schwartz
on all important questions.
.pn +1
.bn 063.png
The character of this missionary hero is beautifully
described by his biographer, Dr. Charles E. Hay.[#]
.pm fn-start
In Missionary Heroes of the Lutheran Church. Philadelphia:
Lutheran Publication Society.
.pm fn-end
“In undertaking all the secular duties thus imposed
upon him, the missionary was never lost in the statesman.
He still gathered his children and catechumens
about him daily, preached whenever a little company of
people could be assembled and superintended the labors
of the increasing number of missionaries sent by
various European societies to India. These all recognized
him as their real leader, and it was universally
felt that the first preparatory step for successful missionary
labor in southern India was to catch the inspiration
and receive the counsel of the untitled missionary
bishop at Tanjore. Around his residence
building after building was erected--chapels, schoolhouses,
seminaries, missionary homes, etc.--all set in a
beautiful garden, filled with rare tropical plants. What
a refuge for the wearied and perhaps discouraged catechist!
What a scene of beauty and peace to allure the
steps of the hopeless devotee of a heartless idolatry!
But the center of attraction for all alike was the
radiant countenance of the grand old man upon whom
his seventy years rested never so lightly--never too
tired to entertain the humblest visitor, always ready
to help by word or deed in any perplexity.”
Illness and
Death.
In October, 1797, the old man fell ill.
Thinking that his end was at hand he
sent for the young rajah whose guardian he had been
.pn +1
.bn 064.png
and urged him once more to hear the heavenly invitation.
Would that we could record that this young
man answered, like so many of his humble subjects,
“I believe”! Improving somewhat, Schwartz summoned
his pupils once more and went on with
his work. The end came at last in February, 1798.
With his grieving mission family gathered about him,
he fell asleep, his last words being, “Into Thy hands
I commend my spirit. Thou has redeemed me, Thou
faithful God.”
A Noble
Tribute.
Claiming him for their own, those for
whom he had labored provided for his
burial. The rajah who followed the bier as chief
mourner built a handsome monument on which he is
represented as kissing the hand of his dying friend.
The East India Company placed a memorial in the
church at Madras with the inscription, “Sacred to
the Memory of Christian Frederick Schwartz whose
life was one continued effort to imitate the example
of his blessed Master. He, during a period of fifty
years, ‘went about doing good.’ In him religion appeared
not with a gloomy aspect or forbidding mien,
but with a graceful form and placid dignity. Beloved
and honored by Europeans, he was, if possible, held
in still deeper reverence by the natives of this country
of every degree and sect. The poor and injured
looked up to him as an unfailing friend and advocate.
The great and powerful concurred in yielding
him the highest homage ever paid in this quarter of
the globe to European virtue.”
.pn +1
.bn 065.png
Thus died this godly man. To those whose aim
is heavenly peace we commend such a life as his. To
those whose ambition includes a desire for earthly
honor we commend him also. The young rajah added
to his handsome memorial another tribute composed
by him and engraved on the stone which covers his
body.
.in 4
.nf
“Firm wast thou, humble and wise,
Honest, pure, free from disguise;
Father of orphans, the widow’s support,
Comfort in sorrows of every sort:
To the benighted, dispenser of light,
Doing and pointing to that which is right.
Blessing to princes, to people, to me,
May I, my father, be worthy of thee.”
.nf-
.in 0
Work for
Another Church.
Aiding and succeeding Christian Frederick
Schwartz in the English mission
was his adopted son, the Rev. J. B. Kohlhoff, who
arrived at Tranquebar in 1737 and worked among the
Tamils for fifty-three years. His son, John Caspar,
was ordained by Schwartz. Together Schwartz and
the two Kohlhoffs worked in India for an aggregate
period of one hundred and fifty-six years. Still another
Lutheran in the English service was W. T.
Ringeltaube, who was trained at Halle. Upon the
foundation which he laid the London Missionary Society
has built nobly and has now after a hundred
years a Christian community of seventy thousand.
.pn +1
.bn 066.png
A Period
of Neglect.
It is estimated that at the end of the
Eighteenth Century the Danish-Halle
mission in India numbered fifteen thousand Christians.
Then a period of rationalism in Europe brought about
indifference and neglect of the mission fields. From
England came the first wave of mounting missionary
zeal and into English hands passed a large part of
the work of the Danish-Halle missionaries. While
we acknowledge that they have continued the work
with zeal and with marked success, yet we cannot
but regret that so much that was ours, so much that
was won by the devotion of Ziegenbalg and Schwartz,
no longer bears the Lutheran name.
Another
Steadfast
Lutheran.
In the service of the English mission
was Karl Ewald Rhenius, a German
Lutheran who was sent soon after the
opening of the new century to that field which had
passed partly from Danish-Halle to English hands.
He went first to Tranquebar and thence to Madras,
where for five years he preached and studied. At the
end of this time he was transferred to Palmacotta,
the chief city of the Tinnevelli district. Here he
began an original work, the founding of Christian
villages. As soon as sufficient natives were converted,
land was bought and they were settled upon it so
that they might be removed from former associations
and temptations. Presently a native organization was
formed the object of which was the aid of new
Christian settlements.
.pn +1
.bn 067.png
In 1832 Mr. Rhenius withdrew from service as a
missionary of the English society, the chief ground of
difficulty being the demand of the society that he be
ordained by the English Church, and for four years
he conducted an independent mission. In character and
capacity for work Rhenius was not unlike Christian
Frederick Schwartz. Beside a great amount of translating
he had time to prepare a valuable essay on the
“Principles of Translating the Holy Scriptures”. He
is notable also as one of the earliest missionaries to
take a decided stand against the observance of caste.
The appeal of Rhenius for his independent Lutheran
mission in India was one of the influences in
the first missionary activity of the American Lutheran
Church. Upon his death his followers returned to
the English Mission. In Tinnevelli where Christian
Frederick Schwartz laid the foundation and Rhenius
helped to build upon it, there are now over one hundred
thousand Christians belonging to the Church
of England.
In the
Far North.
It was in 1704 that the Danish King
Frederick IV. turned his thoughts to
the Christianizing of his East India possessions. Soon
after this time his attention was drawn to a need
nearer at hand. Among the Lapps who lived in the
arctic lands to the north there was great destitution,
both spiritual and material. Here idolatry and sacrifices
to the evil spirits were common and the official
transferral of the country from the Roman to the
Evangelical Church had had no effect, since both
.pn +1
.bn 068.png
before and after the natives were at heart heathen.
Those who were most devout in spirit had worshipped
both the heathen and the Christian gods, feeling that
thus were they safe.
A commission was appointed by the King of Denmark-Norway
in 1714 to inquire into the state of
these northern people. To Finland was sent in 1716
Thomas von Westen, who had himself presented vividly
the misery of these poor Esquimaux. Among them
he found Isak Olsen, a devoted school master who
had been engaged for fourteen years in missionary
work, and who now offered his services for von Westen’s
undertaking.
Concerning this Isak Olsen, it is related in Stockfleth’s
Diary (Dagbog) that he had labored “with
apostolic fervor and faithfulness; in poverty and self-denial;
in perils at sea, and in perils on land. The
Finns hated him because he discovered their idolatry
and their places of sacrifice; almost as a pauper, and
frequently half clothed, he travelled about among them.
When, as it frequently happened, he was compelled
to journey across the mountains, they gave him the
most refractory reindeer, in order that he might perish
on the journey. By all kinds of maltreatment, they
sought to shorten his life, and to weary him out. In
this purpose, however, they were not successful; for
God was with Isak, and labored with him, so that
his toil prospered.” He not only instructed the Finns
in Christianity, but he taught a number of Finnish
youths to write, an art which very few Norsemen
.pn +1
.bn 069.png
had acquired at that time. In 1716, von Westen took
him to Throndhjem, Norway, where he translated the
Catechism and the Athanasian Creed into the language
of the Lapps.
Travelling from place to place, von Westen won
the affection of the benighted people whom he loved.
He exposed before them the foolishness of the sorcerers,
built churches, educated the children and sent
young men to Throndhjem to prepare themselves
to be ministers to their people. The hardships
of three missionary journeys undertaken and carried
out in a few years so wore upon him that he was
added at the age of forty-five to those who have gone
to their reward.
To Swedish Lapland went Per Fjellström (died
1764) who did not only valuable missionary work himself,
but who laid the foundation for all future work
by his translations of the New Testament, the Catechism
and many of the Psalms. Through him and
his associates the whole of Swedish Lapland heard the
pure Gospel.
In 1739, a royal directorate was appointed to guide
and supervise the Church and school system of Swedish
Lapland. It designated Per Holmbom and Per Högström,
as missionaries to that district. Högström,
who died in 1784, is the best known of Per Fjellström’s
associates. He gained great renown among
the Lapps. He has described his mission labors among
them, and his Question Book in the Lapp language, is
a catechetical work of merit.
.pn +1
.bn 070.png
To the west of the Scandinavian countries lies
Iceland, which needed no missionaries. Visiting Europe
in the Sixteenth Century, Icelanders carried back
to their country the story of the Reformation. They
introduced at once the Danish Lutheran liturgy and
translated and printed the Bible. After some opposition,
the work of the Reformation became complete.
A Zealous
Soul.
Beyond Iceland lies Greenland with
its snowy fields, its great glaciers, its
long dark night and its bitter cold. In the Ninth
Century a colony of Norwegians settled there, but
in the course of time perished from cold or starvation
or by the hand of enemies. Their fate was unknown
and they were forgotten when Hans Egede, a
Lutheran pastor at Vaagen in Norway, read of their
settlement and became possessed of a desire to preach
to them that Gospel which had proved so great a
blessing to his own land. In 1710 he wrote to the
King and to several bishops urging that he be allowed
to go as a missionary to these distant folk.
The King was in sympathy with his desire, but not
so his people. The plan was thought to be impractical,
if not insane. Egede’s own family bitterly opposed
him.
But Egede was at once gentle and persistent. Supported
by the devotion of his wife he continued to urge
his cause. He visited the King, but the interview had
a contrary result from that which he hoped. The King
asked those who opposed the project to send in the
reasons for their objection to the court, and so promptly
.pn +1
.bn 071.png
and fully did they respond that Egede became an
object of even greater derision.
The Ship
“Hope”.
Finally Egede persuaded a few men to
subscribe two hundred dollars apiece;
he gave from his scanty store six hundred, and all together
ten thousand dollars was gathered. In a vessel
which he called “The Hope” he set out May, 1721,
accompanied by his wife and little children and some
colonists, in all about forty souls. After a perilous
voyage partly among masses of ice floating in
a stormy sea they landed in Greenland in July. The
situation which they met was uncomfortable and depressing.
“As many as twenty natives occupied one
tent, their bodies unwashed, their hair uncombed and
both their persons and their clothing dripping with
rancid oil. The tents were filled and surrounded with
seal flesh in all stages of decomposition and the only
scavengers were the dogs. Few had any thought beyond
the routine of their daily life. No article that
could be carried off was safe within their reach, and
lying was open and shameless. Skillful in derision and
mimicry, and despising men, who, so they said, spent
their time in looking at a paper or scratching it with
a feather, they did not study gentle modes of giving
expression to their feelings. They wanted nothing
but plenty of seals, and as for the fire of hell, that
would be a pleasant contrast to their terrible cold.
When the missionary asked them to deal truly with
God, they asked when he had seen Him last.
.pn +1
.bn 072.png
“The cold as winter drew near was terrific. The
eiderdown pillows stiffened with frost, the hoarfrost
extended to the mouth of the stove and alcohol froze
upon the table. The sun was invisible for two months.
There was no change in the dreary night.”[#]
.pm fn-start
Hans Egede: the Rev. Thomas Laurie, Missionary Review
of the World, December, 1889.
.pm fn-end
The Reward
of Faith.
The devotion of Egede to these degraded
people was not shared by the
colonists and traders who had come with him. When
the expected ship failed to appear in the spring they
announced that they would return. They had already
begun to tear down the buildings preparatory
to their departure when the faith of Egede was rewarded.
A ship arrived and with it the welcome news
that the mission would be supported.
During the summer, Egede, in his exploration of
the various bays which indent the coast, discovered
the ruins of one of the settlements which he had
read about and which had seemed to beckon him to
Greenland. There were only ruins remaining, but
it seemed to this devoted soul that he could hear the
echoes of Norwegian hymns and Norwegian prayers.
The next year in a journey along the coast he found
many other ruins, among them those of a church fifty
by twenty feet with walls six feet thick. Nearby in
the churchyard rested the bones of pastor and people.
A Devoted
Wife.
Preaching, translating, trying to establish
better methods of agriculture,
now receiving aid from home, now apparently forgotten,
.pn +1
.bn 073.png
Egede labored for fifteen years. Beside the
heavenly assurance of ultimate victory his chief solace
was the devotion of his wife. “She was confined
to the monotony of their humble home, while
he was called here and there by the duties of his
office; but though its comforts were very scanty, she
saw the ships from Norway come and go, and heard
tidings from her native land without any desire to
desert her work. Amid all his troubles her husband
ever found her face serene and her spirit rejoicing
in God. His greatest trial was the want of success
in his work. Though many pretended to believe, he
could find little change in heart or life, for those who
affected to hear the Word with joy, among their own
people still spoke of his instructions and prayers with
derision.”[#]
.pm fn-start
Ibid.
.pm fn-end
Presently a fort was established to protect the colony
and the island from other nations, but the presence
of armed men drove the islanders farther away.
After the death of Frederick IV., the colonists were
commanded to return to Denmark. Egede declined
to go. In 1733 hope was once more kindled by the
announcement that trade would be renewed and the
mission be supported.
A Sad Heart.
But greater misfortunes were at hand.
A fearful epidemic of smallpox ravaged
the country. “In their despair some stabbed
themselves, others plunged into the sea. In one hut
an only son died and the father enticed his wife’s
.pn +1
.bn 074.png
sister in and murdered her, as having bewitched his
son and so caused his death. In this great trial Egede
and his son went everywhere, nursing the sick, comforting
the bereaved and burying the dead. Often
they found only empty houses and unburied corpses.
On one island they found only one girl with her
three little brothers. After burying the rest of the
people, the father lay down in the grave he had prepared
for himself and his infant child, both sick with
the plague and bade the girl cover them with skins
and stones to protect their bodies from wild beasts.
Egede sent the survivors to the colony, lodged as
many as his house would hold and nursed them with
care. Many were touched by such kindness, and
one who had often mocked the good man, said to him
now, ‘You have done for us more than we do for
our own people; you have buried our dead and have
told us of a better life.’” Finally the missionary’s wife
fell also a victim to the plague. Dying she blessed
him and his work.
In 1736, broken in health, Egede returned to Denmark,
invited by the King. There by pen and tongue
he continued to work for Greenland until his death.
The Church
of Greenland.
Upon the foundation laid by Egede
missionaries of a closely-related Church
built a noble superstructure. Appealing to the heart
rather than to the intellect, the heroic Moravians won
the country for Christ. Soon spring dawned in that
wintry land. When a Moravian missionary dwelt
upon the love of God and the agony of Christ, an
.pn +1
.bn 075.png
Esquimaux stepped forward asking eagerly, “How
was that? Tell me that again, for I also would be
saved.”
The mission to Greenland offers not only records
of noble devotion and sacrifice but a touching and remarkable
conclusion. In 1899 the Moravians handed
back to the Danish Lutheran Church the work which
the Lutherans had begun. The missionary task was
complete; with no selfish desire to hold for themselves
in ease what they had won in great difficulty, the Moravians
turned their labors into other fields among
the many which they have so diligently harvested.
The Lutheran Church which has sent so many laborers
into other mission fields has here had a brotherly
return.
A Malady.
The latter part of the Eighteenth Century
offers a less happy missionary
spectacle than the earlier part. Upon religious life,
not only in Lutheran countries but in other Protestant
countries fell the blight of indifference and of
rationalism. When men do not believe the doctrines
of the Scriptures, when a future life becomes a matter
of doubt and personal salvation the subject of
amusement, they cease to feel an obligation to those
who are less favorably situated, and the carrying of
the Gospel message becomes a useless or worse than
useless undertaking.
.if h
.il fn=p055.jpg id=p055 w=600px
.ca HOSPITAL FOR WOMEN AND CHILDREN, RAJAHMUNDRY.
.if-
.if t
.sp 2
[Illustration: HOSPITAL FOR WOMEN AND CHILDREN, RAJAHMUNDRY.]
.sp 2
.if-
This malady of unbelief affected the Church, however,
for only a short time. By the beginning of the
Nineteenth Century men were already returning to
.pn +1
.bn 076.png
.pn +1
.bn 077.png
.pn +1
.bn 078.png
the hope which they had rejected. With the return
came once more that sense of obligation to the heathen
world which had been so clearly seen by von Welz,
Francke, Ziegenbalg and Schwartz.
A Missionary
School.
The new light shone out in the opening
year of the new century. Then
John Jaenicke, who was called “Father” Jaenicke,
established in Berlin a missionary school, the first
Protestant institution whose object was primarily the
direct training of missionaries. For many years Jaenicke
had been the only believing preacher of the
Gospel in Berlin. In spite of a disease which threatened
constantly a fatal hemorrhage, he labored with
a humorous disregard of his physical disability--and
lived to be eighty years old! His church in Berlin
was composed partly of Bohemians, and to these he
preached in the morning in Bohemian, his native tongue.
In the afternoon he preached in German and on Monday
evening he gave a powerful review of his Sunday
sermons, dwelling constantly on two cardinal points,
human sin and divine grace, and crying earnestly to
his people. “You are sinners, you need a Savior, here in
the Scriptures Christ offers Himself to you!”
Visiting the sick, giving alms to the needy, comforting
the desolate, and alas! constantly laughed at and
mocked, this godly man pursued the course which
he had set for himself. As in the case of Francke,
so in the case of Jaenicke an abounding charity concerned
itself not only with those at hand but with
those afar off. From his missionary school, he sent
.pn +1
.bn 079.png
out in twenty-seven years about eighty missionaries.
Before his death the beauty of his character and the
softening heart of his country enabled men to see him
as he was.
The Jaenicke school exists no more as such, but in
the impulse given to missions and in a successor, the
Berlin Missionary Society, it still lives.
.ce
Methods.
A Method
of Work.
For those who are acquainted only
with the missionary methods of the
American Lutheran Church, in which missionary work
is done officially by the various branches of the Church,
it is necessary to explain briefly the different procedure
of Germany and other foreign countries. Where
the Lutheran Church is the State Church, it cares
officially only for those within the State. All other
varieties of Christian work are carried on by societies
which have been organized either by groups of
zealous men and women or else by a single person.
The circumstances connected with the foundation and
the history of these organizations are often intensely
interesting. It is to be regretted that we can give
only a short space to each one.
.ce
German Societies.
A Century
of Service.
No missionary society has had a more
interesting beginning than the Basel
Society. There was encamped on one side of the Swiss
city of Basel in 1815 a Hungarian army, on the other
.pn +1
.bn 080.png
side a Russian army. Destruction seemed certain,
and when it was averted the pious folk determined in
gratitude to establish a mission seminary to train
preachers for the heathen. While this undertaking
is partly Reformed, its intimate connection with the
Lutheran Church makes it proper for us to include
its work in a history of Lutheran missions. Many
of its directors and a large proportion of its workers
have been Lutherans and a great deal of its support
has come from Lutheran sources.
At first the men trained in the Basel school went
into the employ of English missionary societies, but
in 1822, after eighty-eight missionaries had served
the English Church Missionary Society alone, the
society sent its men to its own fields. Between 1815
and 1882 the society trained eleven hundred and twelve
candidates.
The Basel society has certain distinct and peculiar
characteristics. It combines with its evangelical work
industrial work which is managed by a missionary
trading society. It was the first of the German societies
to combine medical with evangelical work. It
trains surgeons, farmers, weavers, shoemakers, bakers,
workers in wood and iron, tailors, printers and mechanics
as well as teachers and ministers.
In 1915, surrounded once more by cannon, but
still in peace, the Basel society celebrated its centennial,
in rejoicing yet in sadness. It has now stations
in India, China and Africa. Its last accessible report
gave its income in 1913 as $586,000.
.pn +1
.bn 081.png
Royal
Approval.
By 1823 the attitude of the Church
toward missions had so changed and
improved that ten distinguished men, theologians,
jurists and officials of the government issued “An
Appeal for Charitable Contributions in aid of Evangelical
Missions”. The organization which they
formed received the royal sanction and was called
the Berlin Society. In 1834 the first missionaries
were sent to South Africa. At present the society
works in Africa and China. Its last income was
$291,000.
Another Large
Society.
As in the case of the Basel Society, so
in the case of the Rhenish Society there
are two elements, Lutheran and Reformed, who work
together in all its enterprises. Its school and headquarters
are in Barmen, Westphalia; its first missionaries
were sent to South Africa in 1829. Its fields lie
in Africa, the Dutch East Indies and China. Its income
was in 1913 $328,000.
In the north of Germany is located the North German
or Bremen Society whose workers are trained at
Basel and whose field is West Africa where it has
offered an amazing sacrifice. Its income was in 1913,
$71,000.
An “Aristocrat
Among
Missions”.
The Leipsic Society, which was organized
in 1836, received its strongest impress
from its director Doctor Karl
Graul, a thoroughly trained theologian and a devoted
supporter of missions. He endeavored to make this
society the center of the missionary work of the whole
.pn +1
.bn 082.png
Lutheran Church. He not only organized, advised
and managed from the home base but spent four years
in India. The society works in India and Africa.
On account of the thoroughness and solidity of its
work it has been called “the aristocrat among missions”.
Its income was in 1913, $179,000.
The First Missionary
Ship.
The Hermannsburg Mission was begun
in 1849. Its genius was Louis
Harms, the pastor of the Lutheran church in the
village of Hermannsburg. Though he was brought
up under rationalistic influences he remained true to
the principles of the Gospel. He believed that missionary
work could be best accomplished by the sending
out of colonies of missionaries who should be a
source of support and encouragement to one another and
who should furnish to the natives an example of Christian
behavior in all the walks of life. His enthusiasm
imparted itself to his congregation which was willing
to make any sacrifice in order that his plans might
be carried out. His first missionary party numbered
twenty, twelve missionaries and eight colonists who
sailed on the ship “Candace” for East Africa. Beside
its African field the Hermannsburg Society has
stations in India and Persia. Its income in 1913 was
$139,000.
The Work of
One Man.
Like the Hermannsburg Mission, the
Gossner Mission owes its existence to
the faith and piety of a single man. This remarkable
person, John Evangelist Gossner, was originally a
Roman Catholic priest who was banished from Bavaria
.pn +1
.bn 083.png
because his preaching and his writing tended
constantly away from orthodox Romanism. Persecuted,
he declared his intention of entering the Lutheran
Church, and was put through a severe examination.
Proving that he held the pure faith, he
was ordained about 1827. He was subsequently pastor
of large congregations, among them that of which
“Father” Jaenicke had been pastor. His labors knew almost
no limit and included home missions, foreign missions,
religious correspondence, writing and works of
mercy of all kinds. That activity with which we are
most concerned is the mission in India which he established
on certain independent principles. He believed,
for instance, that missionaries should work with their
hands and thus provide for their maintenance as did
the Apostle Paul. In ten years he sent out to various
missionary societies eighty missionaries. In 1844
he established a mission of his own among the Kols
in India. To-day the Gossner mission concentrates
its efforts chiefly upon its India station. Its income
was in 1913 $184,000.
Three
Promising
Societies.
Forty years had now passed since
Father Jaenicke founded his missionary
school and the new life of missions
began. For about twenty years no societies were
formed. Since that time there have been many new
undertakings. Among them is the Breklum or Schleswig-Holstein
Society which was founded in 1877 by
a devoted Pastor Jensen. Its fields are India and
Africa and its income was in 1913 $67,000. The
.pn +1
.bn 084.png
Neukirchen Society was founded in 1882 in the Rhine
province, by Ludwig Doll, who vowed during a severe
illness that if he were restored he would give his life
to missions. This society labors in Africa and Java
and had in 1913 an income of $30,000. Most important
among the remaining Lutheran societies are
that of Neuendettelsau which works in Kaiser Wilhelmsland
in New Guinea, and also in Australia, the
Hanover Society with stations in South Africa, and the
Bielefeld Society in East Africa.
German
Missionary
Scholarship.
Before leaving this brief introduction
to the missionary labors of Germany,
we must allude to the fine service paid
by various Germans in the field of missionary literature.
The Germans were the originators of the scientific
study of missions. They have given to missions its
greatest historian, Doctor Gustav Warneck, who for
many years occupied at the University of Halle the
only academic chair in Christendom then devoted to the
teaching and study of missions, and who prepared
monumental volumes discussing his beloved theme.
To his study and to that of other German scholars the
Lutheran Church owes much of that sobriety and
thoroughness with which its mission work has been
done.
.ce
Scandinavian Societies.
In Denmark.
Though the pioneer Lutheran missionaries,
Ziegenbalg and Plütschau, were
sent to India by Denmark, missionary activity languished
.pn +1
.bn 085.png
in Scandinavia for many years. The Danish
Missionary Society, organized in 1821, sent missionaries
to the Greenland mission and a few to the work
of the Basel society in Africa. In 1862 it established
missions of its own in India and Northern China. In
1913 its income was $125,000.
In Norway.
The Norwegian Missionary Society
was founded in 1842 in Stavanger and
consists at the present time of about nine hundred
societies. It works among the Zulus in South Africa,
in Madagascar, and also in China. In 1913 its income
was $234,000. The Norwegian Church Mission
was organized by Bishop Schreuder in 1873.
Its field is in South Africa. The Norwegian Lutheran
China Mission, organized in 1890, has an income of
$62,000.
In Sweden.
In Sweden there are various Lutheran
missionary organizations. The most
important are the Swedish National Society, which
works in East Africa and Central India, and has an
income of $120,000, and the Swedish Church Mission
whose fields are in South Africa and East India and
which has an income of $88,000. Among the smaller
societies are the Swedish Mission in China, the
Swedish Mongol Mission, and the Jerusalem Association.
.if h
.il fn=p064.jpg id=p064 w=600px
.ca CENTRAL GIRLS SCHOOL, RAJAHMUNDRY.
.if-
.if t
.sp 2
[Illustration: CENTRAL GIRLS SCHOOL, RAJAHMUNDRY.]
.sp 2
.if-
A Brave Girl.
One of the interesting characters in
the history of Scandinavian missions
was a young Finnish girl, Maria Mathsdotter, by name,
who, through the preaching of the missionaries had
.pn +1
.bn 086.png
.pn +1
.bn 087.png
.pn +1
.bn 088.png
come to understand the need of her people for
the Gospel. She learned Swedish so that she might
speak to the King and thereupon in 1864 set out to
walk two hundred miles to Stockholm. When a few
days later she started back, she carried with her enough
money to build a children’s home to which Finnish
children could go for Christian and some industrial
instruction. As a result there are to-day a number
of such homes in Finland.
Two Friends.
Among the most popular missionary
societies in Denmark and Norway is the
Home Mission to the Santals, established in 1867 by a
Dane, Hans Peter Börresen and a Norwegian Lars
Olsen Skrefsrud. Lars Skrefsrud was the son of pious
Christian parents, but led a life of such waywardness
that he was finally confined in prison. During his
term of two years he was thoroughly converted
and determined to devote his life when he should be
free to mission work. As soon as he was released he
offered himself to the Norwegian mission in Africa,
but the committee concluded that a man just out of
prison was not a safe agent. He then applied to
Father Gossner, who accepted him for work in India.
In the training school he became acquainted with
Börresen, and so close was their friendship that when
they were placed in different stations they separated
from the Gossner mission to found the Home Mission
to the Santals, which is supported by Danish and Norwegian
Lutherans in all parts of the world.
.pn +1
.bn 089.png
.ce
Finnish, Polish, and Other Societies.
Not the least valuable of Lutheran missionary enterprises
is that of little Finland, which after contributing
to the missionary work of other nations, established
in 1859 on the occasion of the seven hundredth
anniversary of the conversion of Finland to
Christianity the Finnish Lutheran Missionary Society
with headquarters at Helsingfors. In 1867 the society
began its own mission in South Africa, and later
in Japan. Its income was in 1913 $72,000. The
Finnish Lutheran Gospel Society works in China.
The Lutherans of Poland divide their contributions
among various German Lutheran societies, among
them the Leipsic and Gossner societies.
The Lutherans of Friesland, a province of Holland,
contribute to the work of the Bremen or North German
Society.
In the Netherlands there are small Lutheran organizations
which aid in the work of the German missionaries
in the Dutch East Indies.
.ce
American Societies.
The missionary work of the American Lutheran
Church is accomplished both by the various large bodies
and by organizations within the synods whose sole
purpose is missionary work. From the Norwegians
and Danes in America, contributions are sent to the
missionary societies of the fatherland, such as the Home
Mission to the Santals. There are nine American Norwegian
.pn +1
.bn 090.png
organizations--the United Church, the Norwegian
Synod, the Hauge’s Synod, the Norwegian
Free Church, the Brethren Synod, the Elling Synod,
the Santal Committee, the Zion Society and the Intersynodical
Orient Mission--which in 1915 contributed
$235,000, an average of sixty-nine cents per member.
The General Synod contributed in the same
year $117,000, an average of thirty-three cents. The
General Council contributed $119,000, an average of
twenty-four cents. The United Synod in the South[#]
contributed $20,000, an average of forty cents per
member. The Synodical Conference contributed
$56,000, an average of six cents per member. Not
included in the above figures is the work of the Synodical
Conference for the American negro which
amounted in 1910-12 to $66,000. The Joint Synod
of Ohio contributed $16,800, an average of eleven
cents per member. The Danish Society contributed
$7,825, an average of fifty-five cents per member. The
Iowa Synod contributed $16,000. It is estimated that
the average yearly per capita contribution of American
Lutherans to missions is twenty-three cents. The
fields of American Lutheranism include Africa, Madagascar,
China, India, Japan, the East Indies and
South America.
.pm fn-start
Contributions not reported through the regular treasurer
bring the per capita contribution to fifty-three cents.
.pm fn-end
It has been impossible in this brief account to give
a separate place to the work of women’s or other
auxiliary societies, which have contributed so largely
.pn +1
.bn 091.png
to the work of missions. The actual financial additions
brought by these societies may be easily computed,
but not the interest which they have roused,
the information which they have disseminated, the
prayers which they have offered. May they long continue
their generous work!
Many persons and some churches hold the opinion
that missionary work can be done in a haphazard
fashion, each man following what he believes to be
the divine direction within him. Devoted men who
counted their lives as nothing so that they might serve
Christ have gone to preach to the Hindu without understanding
his language or being able to speak it and
have counted with ill-founded joy thousands of converts
who had in reality not comprehended a word of
the message. The coast of Africa has within its soil
the bodies of many missionaries who alone, unsupported
by home supplies, unfitted for their task, have laid
down their lives in a glorious but useless endeavor.
Enterprises of this sort have not been a part of
missionary work in the Lutheran Church, which believes
that the foundation of the Indian or African
Church must be laid surely and substantially, no matter
how slowly, that adult baptism cannot take place
without understanding, that only those may share the
communion of Christ’s Church who know His Gospel,
and that with the precious message to the soul
there should go also the uplifting of the body so that
it may become a worthy vessel.
.pn +1
.bn 092.png
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch03
CHAPTER III. || The Lutheran Church in India
.sp 2
The Land.
.in 4
.nf
The people
The religions
The Caste System
The moral condition
The English in India
The contrasts of India
The word “heathen”
.nf-
.in 0
The German Societies.
.in 4
.nf
Basel
Gossner
Leipsic
Hermannsburg
Breklum or Schleswig-Holstein
.nf-
.in 0
The Scandinavian Societies.
.in 4
.nf
Home Mission to the Santals
Danish Evangelical Lutheran Missionary Society
Evangelical National Missionary Society of Sweden
The Church of Sweden Mission
.nf-
.in 0
The American Societies.
.in 4
.nf
The beginnings
The General Synod
The General Council
The Missouri Synod
The Joint Synod of Ohio
The Synod of Iowa
The American Danes, Norwegians and Swedes.
.nf-
.in 0
Conclusion.
.pn +1
.bn 093.png
.pn +1
.bn 094.png
.pb
.sp 4
.ce
Chapter III.
.ce
THE LUTHERAN CHURCH IN INDIA
.sp 2
The Land.
The pen seems to falter before the task
of describing India, with its varied
landscapes, its dense population, its fascinating history,
its great learning, its dark ignorance. Its area
is one million eight hundred thousand square miles,
which is seven times that of the German Empire and
fifteen times that of the British Isles. From north to
south it measures about one thousand nine hundred
miles and the distance across the upper part of its
great triangle is about the same. In the north the
high wall of the Himalaya Mountains separates it
from the rest of Asia; below lies the broad valley of
the Ganges River; still farther to the south a high
table-land. There are all varieties of temperature,
climate and landscape.
The People.
Even more varied than the temperature
and the landscape is the population,
which numbers about three hundred and twenty
millions or about one fifth of the population of the
globe. The people are divided chiefly into two large
groups, the Aryans who live for the most part in the
north and who have continued the ancient Indian
civilization, and the Dravidians in the south who in
.pn +1
.bn 095.png
development belong among the “nature peoples.” In
addition there are about sixty-five million Mohammedans,
of many races and nations, whose religion is a
uniting bond. The Indians speak in all one hundred
and forty-seven languages and dialects.
The Religions.
The chief religion of India is thus described
by Doctor Warneck. “Two
hundred and eight millions have been
won by Brahmanical Hinduism, which combines the
most varied forms from the sublimest philosophy to
the coarsest idolatry, profound speculations and the
wildest fantasies, even childish absurdities, moral
truths and immoral myths in wonderful mixture.”
The Indian believes in so many gods that it is difficult
for him to conceive of one God. Next to Brahmanism
in number of adherents comes Mohammedanism
and below it the demon worship of the mountain
tribes.
The Caste
System.
In addition to the many perpendicular
divisions of the people into religious
sects, there are the horizontal divisions
of caste. This strange institution from which emancipation
is almost impossible is an immeasurable hindrance
to Christian missions. We have been taught
that there are four castes, (1) priests, (2) warriors,
(3) merchants and sudra, including peasants, artisans
and servants, and (4) outcastes. But these are
only general divisions. In South India there are said
to be nineteen thousand caste divisions. Every trade
.pn +1
.bn 096.png
.pn +1
.bn 097.png
.pn +1
.bn 098.png
becomes a caste, and even the Christian Church is
regarded as a caste.
.if h
.il fn=p072.jpg id=p072 w=600px
.ca CHAPEL OF LEPER ASYLUM, KODUR, INDIA. (JOINT SYNOD OF OHIO)
.sp 2
.il fn=p072b.jpg id=p072b w=600px
.ca INMATES OF LEPER ASYLUM.
.if-
.if t
.sp 2
[Illustration: CHAPEL OF LEPER ASYLUM, KODUR, INDIA. (JOINT SYNOD OF OHIO)]
.sp 2
[Illustration: INMATES OF LEPER ASYLUM.]
.sp 2
.if-
The Moral
Condition
of India.
[#]“The moral condition of the people
should be described as one of apathy
or even deadness rather than as one
of violent and malignant opposition to virtue. Their
lives are destitute of stimulus and incentive. Their
religion furnishes no motive for the present and incites
no aspiration for the future. The thought of
bettering their own condition or of doing aught to
benefit another’s is foreign to their minds. The Oriental
doctrine of fate is ever present to quench all upward
endeavor. It is their destiny to be what and
as they are, and who are they to contend with destiny?
Their chief faults are licentiousness and lack of truthfulness.
Intemperance is not usually a vice of the
Hindu people, though in recent years the introduction
of cheap foreign liquors, and the course of the
government in licensing drinking-places, has stimulated
the use of intoxicating liquor among all classes.
The disposition of the people is mild, and crimes are
no more common among them than among the people
of other races.”
.pm fn-start
Encyclopedia of Missions: “India”.
.pm fn-end
Of the evils of child marriage and the wrongs of
widowhood we need take no space to tell. To him
who does not believe in missions, who holds that for
India its native religions are best, its own thought
sufficient, it is only necessary to point to the two
million wives under ten years of age or to the evils of
.pn +1
.bn 099.png
the temple system. India still requires help from
without and from above.
The English
in India.
About the year 1000 a Mohammedan
conqueror entered India from Afghanistan
and gradually all India was
brought under Moslem control. There was continual
strife, however, between the Moslems and the original
Hindus who, here and there, were able to rise against
the galling rule of their conquerors. Early in the
Seventeenth Century the English came to India first
as humble merchants, then as rulers. When in 1857
the India mutiny, fomented by dispossessed native
princes, shook the power of the great East India Company,
the English government took the place of the
company and India became British territory.
To-day the fourteen provinces, in which are
six hundred and seventy-five native states, are British
soil. Whatever we may think the right or wrong of the
power by which Great Britain has seized and held her
vast possessions, we can feel only admiration for her
colonial administration. She has come to feel toward
India a sense of duty; she has governed justly; she has
established good order and peace. She has taken care of
the sick, has educated the young and has fed the starving
in time of famine. She has, best of all, made it
possible for the Christian Church to do its great work.
The Contrasts
of India.
The contrasts of India are described
by a writer in the Missionary Witness.
“This is a land of blazing light, and
yet, withal, the land of densest darkness. There is
.pn +1
.bn 100.png
wonderful beauty with repulsive ugliness. A land
of plenty, full of penury. Ultra cleanliness and unmentionable
filthiness. There is kindness to all creatures,
combined with hardest cruelty. All life held
sacred in a land of murders. A people of mild speech
given to violent language. Proud of learning and
sunken in ignorance. Seekers for merit, resigned to
fate. Unbelieving and full of cruelty. Belief in one
god co-existent with the worship of 330,000,000 deities.
Intensely religious, yet destitute of piety. Altogether,
India is lost humanity gone to seed; a diseased
degenerate herb become a noxious weed. At
least this is the condition of her society.”
The Word
“heathen”.
It is characteristic of the wider charity
and also the wider knowledge of our
time, that we speak of unchristianized nations as
“non-Christians” rather than as “heathen,” a term
which, especially in India, has given offense. The
exchange of terms is one greatly to be desired, since
it removes a cause of offense and also makes clearer
than ever the power of the Gospel to enlighten and to
bless. For the darkness and misery of India there
is one hope of change--that she may cease to be “non-Christian”.
To India Lutherans were, as we have seen, the
first of the Protestant Churches to carry the Gospel.
Since the landing of Ziegenbalg and Plütschau in
Tranquebar, eighty-six years before the Baptist Carey
went to Bengal, Lutherans have been preaching and
teaching according to the command of their Master.
.pn +1
.bn 101.png
.sp 2
.ce
German Societies.
The Use
of Maps.
We shall consider first of all the German
missionary societies and their
labors. Before beginning the study of any particular
field the reader should refer to the brief account
of the origin and history of these societies in
Chapter II. He should also refer constantly to the
map, marking, if possible, on a map of his own the
position of each foreign field. Thus he will add
not only accuracy but interest to his missionary study.
A Gift for
Missions.
The Basel Society, which is, it should
be remembered, not wholly Lutheran
in organization, support, or workers, had already established
missions in other places when, in 1834, it
received a gift of $10,000 from the Prince of Schönberg
with the stipulation that it should start a mission
in a new place. The spot selected was the Malabar
district on the west coast of India on the
opposite side of the peninsula from Tranquebar and
thither three missionaries were promptly sent.
Hard Hearts in
a Fertile Land.
The country which they had selected
was beautiful and fertile, but the
hearts of the inhabitants were hard
soil. A proverb expressed their carelessness and indifference:
“What can man do? Idleness is good,
sleep is better, death is best of all.” In the mission
field six different languages were spoken, and thus
long study and much literary work were required
before permanent results could be hoped for.
.pn +1
.bn 102.png
Establishing their first station at Telicheri the missionaries
worked out into the surrounding country.
As soon as possible they began to preach, to establish
schools and to translate the Bible into the native
tongues.
An Experiment.
Not the least of their difficulties was
the lack of tried missionary principles.
One worker was convinced that the only way to impress
the heathen was to live their life with them. Persuading
other new missionaries to his way of thinking,
he left the mission buildings and established himself
with thirty Hindu boys in a little hut. The floor
served for chairs and table and the missionary ate
with his pupils three times a day their meal of rice.
An illness brought him to his senses and he returned
to a sane way of living.
With such devotion and diligence did the Basel
missionaries labor that when one of the earliest workers
was married eight years after the establishment
of the mission one hundred and twenty Christians
came to the wedding. Spreading northward into the
Bombay Presidency the mission had established by
1913 twenty-six stations with sixty missionaries and
not less than twenty thousand Christians.
A Christian
Settlement.
One of the chief stations is at Mangalore.
Outside the town is Balmatta
Hill round the base of which lies a Christian village.
Here live the missionaries and their wives, here are
schools, here a theological seminary for the training
of native workers. Near by is an almshouse; in this
.pn +1
.bn 103.png
building weavers ply their trade; yonder there is a
printing establishment; here are stores, a bakery, a
carpenter shop. Crowning all, there stands on the
hill top the Church of Peace.
Shall
Missionaries
Provide Work
for Converts?
The famous industrial work of the
Basel Society is actively promoted.
Here idle hands are trained to work,
here those who have been makers of
wine are given an occupation better suited to a
Christian profession, here the very poor are able to
earn their livings. There is a difference of opinion
about the value of industrial work in connection with
missions, some students believing that the spiritual
work is hampered and confused by this connection with
commercial life and that undesirable and unfaithful
converts are attracted by the prospect of having work
to do. This danger, however, the Basel Mission seems
to have avoided. An unprejudiced observer writes:
“Even those who for these reasons believe that only
necessity will justify the starting of mission industries,
have to admit that this Basel work has made a
real contribution to economic progress and to the
dignifying of labor as worthy of a Christian.” It
is interesting to note that in the Basel weaving shop
at Mangalore was first made khaki cloth, which now
covers so many million soldiers.
The most famous of the Basel missionaries in India
was Doctor Gundert, who labored for more than
twenty years, then returning to the Fatherland assumed
the work left by Doctor Barth, another Lutheran
.pn +1
.bn 104.png
director of the Basel Society. His remaining
years were filled with labor for the cause which he
loved, writing, speaking and editing missionary journals.
His wife, Julia, was the first woman missionary
sent out by the Basel Society.
A Stirring
Charge.
The Gossner Mission was founded in
1844 when Pastor Gossner sent four
missionaries to India with the instructions, “Believe,
hope, love, pray, burn, waken the dead! Hold fast
by prayer! Wrestle like Jacob! Up, up my brethren!
The Lord is coming and to everyone he will say,
‘Where hast thou left the souls of these heathen?’”
Arriving at Calcutta the first group of missionaries
endeavored to establish a colony but were not
successful. They saw among the coolies on the city
streets, many men of a distinct type and discovered
that they were Kols. Among these people, once of a
better standing, but now degraded and oppressed, the
Gossner missionaries determined to set to work.
.if h
Discourage-ment.
.if-
.if t
Discouragement.
.if-
Selecting the capital of the local government,
Ranchi, for their headquarters
they named the spot where they settled Bethesda.
For five years they worked without gaining a single
convert. Utterly discouraged they asked for permission
to seek another field. To this request Pastor
Gossner answered as follows: “Whether the Kols
will be converted or not is the same to you. If they
will not accept the Word they must hear it to their
condemnation. Your duty is to pray and preach to
them. We at home will also pray more earnestly.”
.pn +1
.bn 105.png
Reward.
Presently four natives were baptized,
others came to inquire, and a church
was built. When it was begun there were sixty members
of the congregation; when it was completed there
were three hundred. So thoroughly was the work of
evangelization done, so well grounded were these
degraded people in the faith, that in 1857 at the
time of the great mutiny when the natives of India
rose against the English the nine hundred adherents
of the Gossner mission refused to give up that faith
to which they had been baptized. Here is an extraordinary
episode in missionary history. In 1845 the
deepest degradation, misery and superstition, which
included the worship of idols and demons and even
the recollection of the sacrifice of living beings--in
1857 the most exalted Christian faith and courage.
From now on the mission prospered and its converts
multiplied. Presently work was begun among the
Hindus and Mohammedans in the Ganges Valley
with a station at Ghazipur.
A visitor to Ranchi has written down some of his
impressions of the chief station of the Gossner mission.
Impressions of
a Mission
Station.
“In Ranchi I could have spent a month
with the greatest delight, there is so
much to see and to hear. There is a
Christian hostel here on the mission premises, which
seems to be a great power for good. It is a large
square courtyard with open rooms all around, in which
any Christians are allowed to put up who may be in
.pn +1
.bn 106.png
from the district on business; they get their firewood
free, and the only condition of admittance is that they
attend morning and evening worship. Occasionally
heathen people stop there too. The idea is a capital
one, as it keeps the missionaries in touch with their
native converts in a way which otherwise it would
be very difficult to accomplish. We visited the printing
press and the boys’ and girls’ schools. I was
particularly struck by the bright little girls, who
answered so intelligently when I questioned them,
and whose part-singing was beautiful. The Kols
are naturally musical, their ear being, as a rule, very
good. The girls sang softly and sweetly; some of them
even sang alone for me. They were being taught by
a native who seemed to have a great deal of musical
talent; he had just picked up a new thing himself--by
ear, I suppose--and was putting it to notes for his
girls.
“I was greatly struck by the practical work being
done by these German missionaries. The children
were being taught in an elementary and practical manner
suitable to their village life. For instance, the
girls were given a sum; one stated it on the blackboard,
another worked it out in her head and gave the
answer, and then both had a pair of scales and weights
with some sand, and before the others they weighed
out the amount which, according to the sum, they
were entitled to. In the same practical way the girls
were taught cooking and other things which would
be useful to them as the wives of country villagers.
.pn +1
.bn 107.png
“I was taken to see the theological seminary and
boys’ boarding school, and the fine church, where about
eight hundred of the native congregation meet every
Sunday for the worship of the true God; and yet
we are told that missions are a failure!
“One very striking thing in the seminary was the
singing class; I was amazed at the splendid way in
which they rendered selections from Handel’s ‘Messiah’.”
Purulia.
One of the chief enterprises of the
Gossner Mission is its famous leper
asylum at Purulia. The asylum was founded by Missionary
Uffman in 1888, the immediate occasion being
the driving of a number of poor lepers from their
miserable huts. The missionary offered them a refuge
in his compound and there relieved them as much as
possible. From this small beginning has grown the
largest and finest institution of its kind in India.
There is a model village on a tract of fifty acres of
evergreen woods, with sixty spacious houses, offices,
dispensaries, a hospital, prayer rooms and a lofty
Lutheran church. Four-fifths of the inhabitants are
Christians. The medical treatment is that prescribed
by the latest investigations of scientific men who have
discovered the blessed fact that the prevention of
leprosy for the children of lepers is possible and inexpensive.
Hope in
the Midst
of Misery.
A visitor describes thus a Christmas
celebration. “The lepers came marching
out singing hymns and playing instruments.
Some limp slowly, some blind ones are led
.pn +1
.bn 108.png
by their comrades, some are carried. At last all are
seated in the sunshine. There were knitted garments,
mufflers, scrapbooks, toys, something for everybody,
and how grateful they were! But when we saw the
disfigured hands held out for the gifts, or little leper
girls caressing their new dolls, our hearts were deeply
touched, and we could hear those leper boys making
music with their new instruments almost through the
whole night.
“Hear this grateful letter from a leper saint. ‘Lady,
Peace! your love-heart is so great that it reached this
leper village--reached this very place. I being Guoi
Aing, have received from you a bed’s wadded quilt.
In coldest weather, covered at night, my body will have
warmth, will have gladness. Alas, the wideness of the
world prevents us seeing each other face to face, but
wait until the last day, when with the Lord we meet
together in heaven’s clouds--then what else can I
utter but a whole-hearted mouthful of thanks? You
will want to know what my body is like--there is no
wellness in it. No feet, no hands, no sight, no feeling;
outside body greatly distressed, but inside heart
is greatest peace, for the inside heart has hopes. What
hopes? Hopes of everlasting blessedness, because of
God’s love and because of the Savior’s grace. These
words are from Guoi Aing’s mouth. The honorable
pencil-person is Dian Sister.’
“Beyond question this work at Purulia is one of
the most successful concrete results of Christian missions
that the world can show.”
.pn +1
.bn 109.png
A Costly
Sacrifice.
The founder, Missionary Uffman,
paid a costly sacrifice of devotion to
the cause which he loved in the death of his oldest
daughter from leprosy. Among the workers for the
lepers was the Rev. F. P. Hahn, who gave forty-two
years of labor in the mission, dying in 1910. He had
been awarded, as have been other Lutheran missionaries,
the Kaiser-i-Hind golden medal, which the British
government bestows only upon those who have
rendered distinguished service in humanitarian causes.
The reports of the Gossner Society for 1913 recorded
fifty German missionaries and seventy-one
thousand Christians. The Gossner mission is the
largest of the Lutheran enterprises in India.
The Command
of God
Unheeded.
The Danish-Halle mission among the
Tamils in Tranquebar had been
founded by Ziegenbalg and Plütschau
as we have seen. Then during a period of unbelief
at home, this noble mission declined. It was no wonder
that the command of God was forgotten when a
writer upon ecclesiastical affairs could express himself
thus: “The Church of Christ is not suited to such
nations as the East Indians, the Greenlanders, the
Laplanders, and the Esquimaux. These people belong
to the race of apes and it is useless to preach the
Gospel to them until they become men.”
A Decline.
At the time of the one-hundredth anniversary
of the founding of the mission,
Madras, Cuddalore, Tanjore and Trichinopoli
had been allowed to pass into the hands of English
.pn +1
.bn 110.png
missionaries, smaller stations had ceased to be occupied
at all, and the Danish-Halle Society was limited to
work at Tranquebar and Poriear. In 1825 a royal
command put an end officially to the mission.
In 1837 there died the last Danish-Halle missionary,
Kemerer by name, who bewailed upon his death-bed
the sad condition which he left. But the church
which he loved was not to remain without witnesses.
The Leipsic Society, whose origin we have described
above, sent to Tranquebar in 1840 John Henry Charles
Cordes, who was a son-in-law of Kemerer.
A Single
Witness.
Alone, Cordes set to work. Feeling
the need of native helpers he began
once more a training school for them at Poriear. When
in 1845 England bought Tranquebar he saved the mission
to the Lutheran Church. At first the circumstances
under which Cordes labored were disheartening
in the extreme. Then two missionaries, Ochs and
Schwartz arrived. A third station at Majaweram,
begun and given up by the English, was incorporated.
A Delicate
Question.
In 1846 several hundred Tamils from
Madras turned from the mission of the
Church of England into the mission of the Leipsic
Society on account of caste difficulties. One of the
most delicate questions which must be met by missionary
policy in India is that of caste. It has been the policy
of most churches to decline to recognize that which
is so contrary to the spirit of the Christian religion.
The policy of the Leipsic missionaries has been to
ignore the question, trusting to the purifying and uplifting
.pn +1
.bn 111.png
effect of the Gospel eventually to solve the
problem.
Old
Citadels
Retaken.
Gradually under Missionary Cordes
and his successors some of the old
work of the Danish-Halle Mission was
resumed and new stations were established. Work
was begun once more in Madras, where Schultze had
labored. Cumbaconam, where Christian Frederick
Schwartz had preached, where ten thousand heathen
priests were supported by the populace, where heathen
temple touched heathen temple, heard again the Gospel,
preached now by another Schwartz. In Sidabarum
where the natives declared: “Christians may not live
here; the God Siva will not endure it,” the Leipsic
missionaries won seven hundred converts.
For more than thirty years Cordes worked in India
and until his death in 1892, fifty years after he had
been ordained as a missionary, he busied himself with
missionary affairs.
Brotherly
Support.
The Leipsic Society is famous for the
thoroughness and solidity of its work.
Its last report gives twenty-four main stations which
lie chiefly in the districts of Trichinopoli, Tanjore,
Coimbatore and Madura. It has also small missions
in Rangoon, Penang and Colombo for the sake of the
Tamil Christians who have emigrated to these places.
In the southern part of its territory it is aided by the
Swedish Church Mission. Together the Leipsic Mission
and the Swedish Church Mission have fifty-eight
.pn +1
.bn 112.png
missionaries at work. There is a Christian community
of twenty-two thousand and there are fourteen
thousand pupils in the schools.
The following description given by a young Leipsic
missionary in 1890 indicates at the same time the
enormous task before the Church and the courage with
which the scattered workers are endeavoring to
solve it.
A Great
Festival.
“On the evening of November 5th we
went by rail together to Majaweram,
in order to celebrate Brother Meyner’s wedding. This
fell just in the time of the great Bathing Festival to
which as many as fifty to sixty thousand assemble. On
the chief day we went to the bathing-place, and looked
at the matter a little more closely. There was a
tumultuous throng; hardly to be penetrated. We were
the only white faces among all these dusky multitudes.
The best place for viewing the whole affair appeared
to be the flat roof of the idol temple. We climbed up
to it by a ladder, without any opposition. From here
we could overlook the human masses; they stood close
packed together, some bathing, some chatting, etc. We
saw also how they were carrying about different idols,
which were adorned with gold, silver and precious
stones. All were greeted by the crowd with uplifted
hands and loud acclaims. In view of this our hearts
might well sink, as we beheld heathenism yet subsisting
in its full, unbroken might. If we did not
know that God’s truth gains the victory, we should
despair of the possibility that India will ever be converted.
.pn +1
.bn 113.png
It is an almost impregnable citadel of Satan,
and the individual mission stations are like oases in
the waste, and the individual missionary is as a drop
in the ocean. For instance, in each of such cities as
Sidabarum, Cuddalore, Cumbaconam, etc., of forty
or fifty thousand inhabitants, there is only a single missionary!
What can a single man effect over against
such masses? Even yet it is only a siege from without--we
have not yet made our way into the interior
of the fortress. Nevertheless we will not therefore
despond, but with fresh courage attack the task in the
name of the Lord--you at home with prayer and gifts,
we in the land itself by preaching the Gospel to the
poor, blinded people, and attracting such as are willing
to let themselves be saved. We know that the Lord
by little can accomplish much. But Thou, O Lord
Jesus, accept our poor, weak will, our slender strength,
take also the offer of our youth, and fashion us into
men, and into instruments of Thy mercy! Do Thou
Thyself fulfill Thy work in power and bring hither
to Thy flock them that are scattered abroad in the
world, so that Thou canst soon appear in Thy glory
and conduct us out of the conflict and strife of time
into Thy kingdom of peace! Amen.”
A quarter of a century has changed greatly the
situation in India. The siege has advanced nobly and
many fortresses have been taken.
.if h
.il fn=p088.jpg id=p088 w=600px
.ca ALL INDIA LUTHERAN CONFERENCE IN 1914. DELEGATES FROM EIGHT MISSIONS.
.if-
.if t
.sp 2
[Illustration: ALL INDIA LUTHERAN CONFERENCE IN 1914. DELEGATES FROM EIGHT MISSIONS.]
.sp 2
.if-
Another Brave
Record.
The station of the Hermannsburg Society
in India is in the southern part
of Telugu land in the Presidency of Madras and the
.pn +1
.bn 114.png
.pn +1
.bn 115.png
.pn +1
.bn 116.png
district of Nellore. This mission has a history of
bitter opposition from the natives and cruel sufferings
from cholera, but its workers have bravely persisted,
longing for a larger force. After fifty years of work
they write hopefully: “Our work in the Telugu mission
is a blessed one. The plot is small, but it will
be a great harvest field. Our preaching meets with
great opposition, but opposition is better than a dull
indifference. Had we but the means to offer salvation
to the pariahs they would come in throngs.”
After fifty years the mission reports a staff of fifteen
missionaries in twenty stations and a Christian community
of more than three thousand. A leper asylum
is one of its enterprises.
A Promising
Field.
The last of the German missionary
societies to establish itself in India is
the Breklum or Schleswig-Holstein Society. It had
been recommended to work in the Bastar land, but
the king refused to allow the missionaries to stay and
they went therefore to Salur in 1883. Though the
mission is still young, it provides for all varieties of
missionary work, its schools are first-class, it has established
a training school for native workers and a
leper asylum and deaconesses are in charge of Zenana
work.
The Breklum Mission lies partly in high land
where the temperature is that of Europe. Here in the
hills the various popular religious cults of India had
not penetrated; the inhabitants were demon worshipers.
Among them the Gospel has been received. To
.pn +1
.bn 117.png
the missionaries it seems that dawn is at hand; in the
words of one, “there is throughout the land a rustling
as though rain is coming.”
In 1913 the mission reported twenty-seven German
missionaries and sixteen thousand five hundred converts.
Work
Interrupted.
It is with a sad heart that the lover
of missions contemplates the condition
of German missions in India to-day. Instead of the
longed-for and expected harvest there is blight and
desolation; instead of plenteous rain there is drought.
These Germans, pious, diligent and successful, find
drawn across the history of their work a deeper rift
than that which was drawn by the mutiny of ’57.
Removed from their missions and either held as prisoners
of war or returned to Germany, they watch with
distress as the labor of years is disastrously halted.
The Basel mission which is partly manned by Swiss,
is not so seriously affected as the Leipsic, the Hermannsburg,
the Gossner and the Schleswig-Holstein
or Breklum missions, which are deprived of their
workers and deprived of support.
Lutherans in other lands are doing all that they
can to care for these enterprises. The Leipsic Mission
will be looked after by the Lutheran Church of
Sweden; the Schleswig-Holstein or Breklum Mission
by the General Council; the Hermannsburg Mission
by the Joint Synod of Ohio, and the Gossner Mission
by the General Synod. In this cause the American
Norwegian and Danish bodies have offered their services,
.pn +1
.bn 118.png
as might have been expected from their characteristic
liberality.
.ce
Scandinavian Societies.
A Trans-formation
in
Fifty Years.
The Home Mission to the Santals,
founded, as we have learned in Chapter
II by Hans Peter Börresen and
Lars Skrefsrud was so called because the founders
wished it to have the nature of a “home” from which all
sorts of improving influences should flow. The Santals
are akin to the Kols of the Gossner mission. Terribly
oppressed, especially by Hindu money lenders, they
rose in 1860 in a bloody rebellion which called public
attention to their misery. In 1867 the two ardent
Scandinavians set to work among them, and in a short
time saw the harvest beginning to ripen. The chief
station is at Ebenezer and round about are many
smaller and independent stations. Good schools and a
mission press from which a monthly paper, “The
Friend of the Santal”, is issued, are among the means
for education. The thirteen thousand five hundred
Christians are so well trained that a great part of the
mission work is conducted by them. In Assam the
mission provides for its converts who have gone thither
to work on the tea plantations.
The mission is supported, as we shall see, not only
by the Scandinavians of Europe, but by those of
America.
The Danish Evangelical Lutheran Missionary Society
has since 1862 stations in Pattambakam
.pn +1
.bn 119.png
in South Arcot. It has twenty-seven men and women
at work and a Christian community of over seventeen
hundred.
The terrible heat of Southern India is one of the
conditions which make especially heroic the service
of the Scandinavians who are accustomed to an almost
arctic climate. In 1886 a Danish missionary wrote
to his friends at home with no expectation that his
letter would ever be printed:
Heroic
Service.
“Though only May, it is now ninety-six
degrees in the house night and day.
Our little son, four years old, will often throw himself
despairingly on the floor, exclaiming, ‘O mother,
this country is too warm, too warm; can’t we go into
the great ship again and sail home to Denmark?’ In the
morning we find no application of our Danish hymn,
‘Renewed in strength by nightly rest’. The power of the
hot, scorching wind is the same day and night. Yet
we are thankful for general health. But we cannot
help thinking how, when nature is the most withering
upon us, she is opening into her fullest loveliness in
Denmark. This very day letters were received from
home, and all spoke of the Spring, of the beeches that
were ready to leaf, of wood anemones and violets, of
gardens filled with Easter lilies, crocuses, hyacinths,
and all the other delicate and gracious flowers which
are now covering the Danish land. Nor did the letters
merely speak of them; for in one there were violets,
in another tender beech leaves. We are fresh from
.pn +1
.bn 120.png
seeing all this; how living it all becomes on the receipt
of such letters. Involuntarily we exclaim:
.in 4
.nf
‘The Pentecostal feast does nature keep
In robes of flowery magnificence.’
.nf-
.in 0
Ah! how lovely is Denmark!”
The contributions of Norway to India are given to
the Home Mission to the Santals.
Help in Time
of Famine.
The Evangelical National Missionary
Society of Sweden works among the
Gonds in the Central provinces of India. Beginning
in 1877 it has now extended its work to include all
natives in its vicinity. It has fifty-three Swedish
workers. The most important station is Chindwara,
where the senior missionary lives and where there are
training schools and two large orphanages founded
during the terrible famines of 1896 to 1900. Other
institutions established during that trying period are
industrial schools for men and women which are now
self-supporting. There is also a hospital and very
active Zenana work.
A Missionary
Family.
The Church of Sweden Mission in
India was begun in 1855 when two
Swedish missionaries went into the service of the Leipsic
mission in Tamil land. In 1869 they were joined
by Dr. C. J. Sandgren, who is still alive and at work
surrounded by five of his children as fellow workers.
In 1901 several stations of the Leipsic mission were
handed over to the independent control of the Swedes
and since then the mission has grown rapidly. Madura
is the central station and at Tirupater there is a fine
.pn +1
.bn 121.png
hospital. The mission has profited greatly by the mass
movements toward Christianity which have taken place
in recent years in South India, in which whole villages
have asked for baptism, a condition which brings new
missionary problems.
It is to this mission that there has passed during the
war the work of the Leipsic Society.
.ce
American Societies.
The Patriarch
of the
American Lutheran
Church.
Among the heroes of the American Lutheran
Church is Henry Melchior
Muhlenberg who was born in Germany
in 1711 and died in America in
1787. He was educated at the University of Göttingen
from which he went to Halle to teach in the
Orphanage and to prepare himself for missionary work
in India. Instead he accepted a call to become the
pastor of the scattered congregations of Lutherans in
Pennsylvania. When he arrived in 1742 he found the
people without church buildings or schools and at the
mercy of imposters who claimed to be clergymen. At
once he began to preach and to organize. Travelling
from New York to Georgia, doing pastoral work,
forming constitutions for churches and for the first
American Synod, he filled forty-five years to the brim
with valuable work. Of him Doctor Henry E. Jacobs
says: “Depth of religious conviction, extraordinary
inwardness of character, apostolic zeal for the spiritual
welfare of individuals, absorbing devotion to his calling
and all its details, were among his most marked characteristics.
.pn +1
.bn 122.png
These were combined with an intuitive
penetration and extended width of view, a statesman-like
grasp of every situation in which he was placed,
an almost prophetic foresight, coolness and discrimination
of judgment, and peculiar gifts for organization
and discrimination.”
Under the ministrations of Doctor Muhlenberg the
Lutheran Church in America was firmly established.
That his heart turned longingly to the first field of
labor which he had selected, we know from his own
records. In giving an account of the Third Convention
of the Ministerium of Pennsylvania, he said
that when the delegates gathered for an evening meeting
at his house he told them of the Mission among
the Malabars and among the Jews. Doubtless he
was consoled by the hope that there might go from
his American Church those who would do what he
had wished to do.
The First
Missionary
Undertaking.
The missionary consciousness of the
new church found its first expression
is an unsuccessful effort to evangelize
the American Indian. In Georgia a little was accomplished
by the pious Salzburgers, but the withdrawal
of the Indians from the neighborhood of white settlements
and the growing and natural distrust which they
felt for the whites soon put an end to missionary work
among them.
A Missionary
Institute
Discussed.
At the first meeting in 1820 of the
General Synod, to which belonged the
Synods of Pennsylvania, New York,
North Carolina, the Joint Synod of Ohio, and the
.pn +1
.bn 123.png
Synods of Maryland and Virginia, the founding of a
missionary institute like those of the Fatherland was
suggested and discussed. Before this time congregations
had contributed individually to the work of
foreign missions through the American Board, an inter-denominational
society.
The First
Missionary
Society.
At the meeting of the West Pennsylvania
Synod in Mechanicsburg in 1836
there was formed at the recommendation
of the General Synod a Central Missionary Society
whose object was “to send the Gospel of the Son
of God to the destitute portions of the Lutheran
Church in the United States of America by means of
missions; to assist for a season such congregations as are
not able to support the Gospel; and, ultimately to co-operate
in sending it to the heathen world.” Later
the name of the society was changed to “The Foreign
Missionary Society of the Evangelical Lutheran
Church in the United States of America.”
.if h
.il fn=p096.jpg id=p096 w=600px
.ca A MALAGASY WITCH DOCTOR.
.sp 2
.il fn=p096b.jpg id=p096b w=600px
.ca NATIVE LUTHERAN MINISTERS IN MADAGASCAR.
.if-
.if t
.sp 2
[Illustration: A MALAGASY WITCH DOCTOR.]
.sp 2
[Illustration: NATIVE LUTHERAN MINISTERS IN MADAGASCAR.]
.sp 2
.if-
Two Appeals.
There had come meanwhile to the Lutheran
Church in America two appeals
from the foreign field, one from Missionary Rhenius in
India whose career we have described in Chapter II,
the other from Gützlaff in China, whom we shall study
in Chapter V. It was decided in answer to the appeal
of Rhenius that John Christian Frederick Heyer
should go to India as the first missionary of the General
Synod. When it appeared probable that difficulties
would arise on account of the connection with the inter-denominational
American Board under whose direction
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Heyer was to go, he resigned, and in 1841 was
sent by the Pennsylvania Synod which had withdrawn
from the General Synod after the first meeting. The
death of Rhenius and the return of his followers to
the English mission made it possible for the Americans
to select a wholly new field.
The First
American
Lutheran
Missionary.
In April, 1842, a hundred years after
the arrival of Muhlenberg in America,
Mr. Heyer became the first fruit of his
missionary hopes. Heyer was of German
birth and had come to America when he was
fourteen years old. From 1817 till 1841 he had been
a home missionary, laboring in difficult and widely
divided fields in Pennsylvania and Maryland, Indiana
and Kentucky, Illinois and Missouri. Travelling from
settlement to settlement often amid the greatest hardships,
he had established churches and Sunday schools.
No Longer
a Young Man.
When he accepted the call to India, he
was almost fifty years old. A younger
man might well have hesitated to meet the dangers
of the sea, the menace of a foreign climate, the loneliness
of exile. But Heyer knew neither fear nor hesitation.
That he realized that dangers existed is shown
by his own words: “I feel calm and cheerful, having
taken this step after serious and prayerful consideration,
and the approbation of the churches has encouraged
me thus far. But I am aware that ere long,
amidst a tribe of men whose language will be strange
to me, I shall behold those smiles only in remembrance,
and hear the voice of encouragement only in dying
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whispers across the ocean, and then nothing but the
grace of God, nothing but a thorough conviction of
being in the path of duty, nothing but the approving
smile of Heaven can keep me from despondency.”
Eager to
Begin.
It was thought best that Mr. Heyer
should begin his work in the Telugu
country north of Madras. It was the beginning of the
hot season when he arrived and he was advised to
remain in Madras and commence the study of the
language. But his impatient spirit would not let him
rest. In spite of the intense heat, he travelled to
Nellore and thence to Guntur, where, invited and
welcomed by a godly Englishman, Henry Stokes, who
was collector of the district and who had earnestly
wished for a missionary, he made an end of his long
journey. On the first Sunday of August 1842, he
held a service with the aid of an interpreter.
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Reinforce-ments.
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Reinforcements.
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At once, according to the sound
method of the Lutheran missionary,
he set about the establishing of schools. He began
a school for beggars and another for a scarcely less
despised class--Hindu girls. This was the first Hindu
girls’ school. Within the first year he was able to
report three adult baptisms. In two years two missionaries
came to his aid, a German, the Rev. L. P.
Valett who came to start a mission of the North German
Society at Rajahmundry and the Rev. Walter
Gunn, who was sent out by the General Synod.
A Visit Home.
In 1846 failing health compelled Father
Heyer, as he is affectionately called,
to return to America. Two years later he returned
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to Guntur, the visitation among the churches
of the home land having been denied him. During
the two years, however, he had studied medicine,
in Baltimore, receiving his degree at the age of fifty-four.
“Oh Grave,
Where is
thy Victory.”
In India he discovered that in his absence
little new work had been accomplished
on account of the feeble health
of Mr. Gunn. Now, however, began a period of
rapid advance. Father Heyer made missionary journeys
into the Palnad district, and soon, encouraged
by many conversions, he built in Gurzala, its chief
town, a mission house, the money for which was furnished
by Collector Stokes. Heyer’s courage is shown
by an incident of his life in Gurzala. The climate of
this section is deadly, and on reaching there Heyer
had his grave and coffin prepared so that his body
might be buried and not burned. But he did not
contract the fever and when he left the field he burned
the coffin and repeated at the grave the words of Saint
Paul, “O grave, where is thy victory?”
In 1850 the mission station of the North German
or Bremen Society at Rajahmundry was taken over.
Back to
the Home
Mission
Field.
In 1857 Father Heyer returned once
more to America, not to rest but to
devote twelve years to home mission
work in the distant fields of Minnesota.
In the meantime discord arose at home. The
disruption brought about in all elements and institutions
of American society by the Civil War had its
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sad effect upon the Church. Support and missionaries
for the foreign work failed, and the Rajahmundry
station was about to pass from the hands of
its founders into those of the Church Missionary
Society of England. Father Heyer was in Germany
at the time, but hearing of the danger threatening
his beloved work, he set sail for America, and appeared
suddenly at the meeting of the Pennsylvania
Ministerium at Reading to plead that the mission
be retained. He would go to India at once, he said,
and in August 1869 he turned his face for the third
time across the sea. He remained in Rajahmundry a
little over a year. Then handing over his work to a
successor, the Rev. H. C. Schmidt, he returned to
America where he died in November 1873.
To India
Once More.
Of him his biographer, the Rev. Dr.
L. B. Wolf says: “He needs no
eulogy. His work at home and abroad
makes him the most cosmopolitan character of his
time. He had a world-vision, and his soul was restless
unless it was in touch with the whole world. He
saw what few in his day were able to see, that the
Church stands for one supreme work which must be
performed in the whole world and for all men. He
will live in his Church when men of his day of much
larger influence and more commanding place shall
have been forgotten, all because he permitted no bounds
to be set to the sphere of his work, except those which
he recognized as set by his Savior and Lord.”
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Other
Laborers.
Beside Father Heyer there labored in
the early days of the Lutheran mission
the Rev. Walter Gunn, who died after
seven years of devoted service; the Rev. Christian William
Grönning, a missionary of the North German
Society, who entered the service of the American Lutheran
Church when Rajahmundry was transferred;
the Rev. A. F. Heise, who was compelled by ill health
to resign after eleven years of work; the Rev. W.
E. Snyder, who died in 1859; the Rev. W. I. Cutter,
who was compelled to return on account of the health
of his wife after a short term; and the Rev. A.
Long, who died of smallpox after eight years of
faithful service.
The Field
Divided.
In 1869 the mission field in India was
permanently divided, the Gunter station
and the surrounding district becoming
the charge of the General Synod, the Rajahmundry
station becoming the charge of the General
Council of which the Ministerium of Pennsylvania
was now a part. Between the two missions there
have been always the most cordial and helpful of relations.
In spirit they have been one.
At Work
Alone.
We shall consider first the work of
the General Synod. At the time of the
division of the mission field the Rev.
E. Unangst was the only representative of the American
Lutheran Church in India. For three years he had
had no helper. He had seen since his arrival in 1858
seven missionaries die or depart; nevertheless his heart
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did not fail. For thirty-seven years he labored almost
without interruption and happily participated not only
in the sowing but in the reaping of the harvest.
A Civil
War
Veteran.
The Rev. Dr. J. H. Harpster, a veteran
of the Civil War, served his first
term as a missionary from 1872 till
1876. Returning for a second term in 1893 he was
nine years later allowed by the General Synod to
assume temporary charge of the Rajahmundry mission,
then passing through a period of confusion. In
the service of the Rajahmundry mission he continued
until his death. To him his fellow workers paid this
tribute: “As a missionary he was indefatigable, as
a preacher eloquent and inspiring. He labored in
season and out to inculcate self-support. Altogether
this was a man to love.” His work at Rajahmundry
accomplished all that had been most hopefully expected,
for in place of the discord and disorganization
which he found he left peace and order and the promise
of a great future.
Almost
Fifty
Years of
Service.
In 1873 the Rev. Dr. L. L. Uhl was
sent to Guntur, and there (in 1917)
he is still laboring, vigorous, optimistic
and in the words which Dr. Harpster
applied to his own mental condition, “immensely content.”
Laborers younger than he have fallen, a few
have become discouraged, but Dr. Uhl is still at work.
The Children’s
Missionary.
In 1872, when a farewell meeting was
held in Harrisburg for Dr. Uhl, there
was in his audience Adam D. Rowe,
who determined then to devote himself to missionary
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work. Conceiving the plan of collecting from the
children of the Church the means for his support, he
sailed for India. Worn out by his active labors, he
died in 1882. Similarly there fell while at work,
the Rev. John Nichols and the Rev. Samuel Kinsinger.
A missionary who has been spared for many years
of service is Dr. Anna S. Kugler, who went to India
in 1883. Beginning in a humble way by caring for a
few afflicted women, Dr. Kugler has stimulated and
directed the founding of a large and finely equipped
woman’s hospital. Capable, enthusiastic and deeply
consecrated, she has been rewarded for years
of unceasing labor by the realization of many of her
hopes. The importance of Christian medical work
is illustrated by an experience of Dr. Kugler. A
neighboring rajah, various members of whose family
had been cured in the hospital, expressed his gratitude
not only by a large gift, but also by the making
of a metrical translation of the Gospels into Telugu.
To-day the Guntur Mission has in its service thirty-nine
missionaries and twelve Anglo-Indian assistants.
In addition it has eight hundred and sixty-one native
workers, who include Bible women, colporteurs and
catechists. It has a baptized native membership of about
fifty thousand. It possesses twenty-one church buildings
and school buildings, one hundred and ninety-six
schoolhouses and prayer houses, two hospitals,
three dispensaries and two college and high school
buildings. Its college is the only Lutheran college
in India. Its last biennium has been extraordinarily
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blessed and unceasingly does it call like all other missionary
enterprises for more workers, larger sums of
money, and more fervent prayers.
A Man of
Practical
Ability.
The record of the Mission of the General
Council is a brave one. When
Father Heyer returned to Rajahmundry
after his appeal to the Ministerium of Pennsylvania
that the station be not given over to the Church
of England, he was followed in a few months by the
Rev. F. J. Becker, who had scarcely more than begun
his preparation for active service when he died.
In a few months his successor, the Rev. H. C. Schmidt,
arrived, and subsequently the Rev. Iver K. Poulsen.
For a short time, until the final return of Father
Heyer to America, there were three missionaries on
the field. Beside his fine service as a preacher and
teacher, Doctor Schmidt is especially remembered for
his wise care of the property of the mission. He is
the third of a trio of workers in the Rajahmundry mission
who have stood in the eyes of their Church above
their fellow men, the others being Father Heyer and
Doctor Harpster. At the time of Doctor Schmidt’s
retirement, Doctor Harpster became the director of
the mission. Of him we have given above a brief
account.
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.il fn=p104.jpg id=p104 w=600px
.ca MAIN STATION AT MUHLENBERG, LIBERIA, AFRICA.
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.sp 2
[Illustration: MAIN STATION AT MUHLENBERG, LIBERIA, AFRICA.]
.sp 2
.if-
A Sad Toll.
The Rev. Poulsen withdrew in 1888
after seventeen years of active service
in the Rajahmundry mission, and, coming to the
United States, died at the age of sixty-seven in the
active pastorate. Within a few years two promising
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.bn 136.png
young men, A. B. Carlson and H. G. B. Artman,
both trained in the Philadelphia Theological Seminary,
arrived, took up the work which so urgently
needed them and in a short time died. Two others,
the Rev. Franklin S. Dietrich and the Rev. William
Grönning also laid down their lives, the former
after seven, the latter after four years of service.
Grönning, a son of C. W. Grönning, was a brilliant
scholar, an eloquent preacher and a trained musician.
His parentage and his early training had bred in him
a deep love for missions and his loss was irreparable.
Not the least heavy of the blows which the mission
suffered was the death of the Rev. F. W. Weiskotten,
who was sent to India to inspect and report on the
affairs of the mission. Accompanying his daughter to
the field, he died on the homeward journey and was
buried at sea off the coast of France in December
1900.
To-day the Rajahmundry mission reports over
twenty-four thousand members, about thirteen thousand
of whom are communicants. Its missionaries
number eighteen and the total number of all its workers
is about five hundred and fifty. It owns valuable
property and conducts a widely useful medical work.
The first money which was given toward the Rajahmundry
hospital was contributed by the children in
the surgical ward of the German Hospital in Philadelphia.
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A Touching
Story.
The first medical missionary, Doctor
Lydia Woerner, describes in an incident
of her day’s work the misery of
India and its great hope.
“Early one bright sunshiny morning, during the
monsoon season, I came through a side street in our
town, passing a long, high, gray wall. Above the wall
I saw palm, banana, mangoe and tamarind trees, which
almost hid the roofs of several houses.
“As I looked I noticed a little green door in the
wall. When I asked my helpers about the place,
they all knew it by the little green door, which they
told me was always locked on the inside. It had several
small holes through which the secluded women
peeped without being seen. Our Bible woman had
tried many times to gain entrance, but was told by
voices from behind the little green door that her presence
would pollute the place. One of the helpers suggested
that we pray to God to open that little green
door for us.
“A few nights later, during a terrific storm and a
pouring rain, two native officials came with an urgent
call to take me to the house of another official. I did
not know him nor where he lived, but they told me
his wife had been suffering intensely for several days,
so my helper and I picked up the emergency bag and
started off with them. On the way we were told that
every native midwife available had tried to relieve the
patient, but had failed. Large offerings had been
made to the gods in their favorite temple. Even the
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river goddess had been implored to give help, by
sacrifices thrown into her waters. As a last resort,
they had come to seek help from the missionary doctor.
“We were drenched and stiff, as we crawled out of
the oxcart. It was very dark. The streets were
flooded, but a flash of lightning revealed to us that we
were in front of the little green door--and it was open.
Outside, under umbrellas and blankets, were groups
of men--friends of the husband--who had come to
sympathize with him because his wife was giving him
so much trouble. The sympathy was all for the husband.
Probably, after all the trouble his wife was
making, she would give him only a girl child!
Inside was bedlam! A crowd of women were shrieking
and crying. Little fires had been placed in pots
all over the veranda. Smoking censers were swinging
at windows and doorways, to prevent the evil spirits
from entering the house.
“The husband came to meet me with a lantern. He
was much distressed, and besought me in beautiful
English to grant him help in his great calamity. This
was his third wife. The gods were against him. He
had no child--only three daughters! Not one word of
anxiety or sympathy did he have for his suffering wife.
“I saw her lying on an old cot, with a coarse bamboo
mat and gunny bag for bedding. She was a beautiful
young Brahman girl. The cot was on the outside
veranda, exposed to wind and rain. The patient had
already been partially prepared for death. She was
covered with burns and bruises, and was very weak,
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but she looked at me with her beautiful eyes, and implored
me not to treat her as cruelly as the others had
done. It was a weird scene, with the flickering little
lamps, the beautiful ill-treated patient, and the curious
faces of the women peering at us out of the darkness.
“Under great protest the relatives finally allowed the
patient to be moved into a small veranda room. By
and by things calmed down, and the people left for
their homes. All was quiet, and the patient’s confidence
and strength revived. At dawn we left a
smiling young mother holding her newborn son in
her arms, and a father proud and happy, because
now he had a child, an heir to his large estate.
“The little green door opened to let us out. A little
child had opened it, and never since that night
has it been closed to us or to the Gospel message.”
The General Council conducts a mission in the City
of Rangoon in Burma. The native catechist, who has
been in charge of the work for three years, writes that
he has won thirty souls for his Lord. He says
further:
The Letter
of a Native
Worker.
“Though the year has been a black one,
full of trials, temptations, accidents
and poisonous fevers and break of work
on account of the present war, such as
the world has never witnessed, yet God has brought
us through safe and given us the victory. And when
the time shall come for the strife and toil, the tumults
and wars, the tears and groans of creation to end forever,
then shall come the jubilee, the grand coronation
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song shall be sung by the resurrected redeemed hosts
of the Lord, saying, ‘Thou art worthy to take the
book and to open the seals thereof; for Thou wast
slain and hast redeemed us to God by Thy blood out
of every kindred and tongue and people and nation;
and hast made us unto our God kings and priests;
and we shall reign on the earth.’”
In 1894 the Missouri Lutheran Synod began work
in India in the Salem district of the Madras Presidency,
their first station being at Krishnagiri. There
the pioneer missionary the Rev. Th. Naether labored
until his death in 1904. In 1907 the work was extended
to Travancore. The mission has eleven chief
stations and fourteen missionaries.
The women’s societies of this synod are very active,
their contribution including not only money but large
shipments of garments for the children in the mission
schools. The medical work of the mission, the retreat
for missionaries in the hills, and the school for
missionaries’ children are supported entirely by the
women’s societies.
The Joint Synod of Ohio which had taken over before
the war the Kodur and Puttur stations of the
Hermannsburg mission has now agreed to support the
entire mission.
The Lutheran Synod of Iowa sends contributions
to the work of the Leipsic Society.
The Danes and Norwegians in America support
the Home Mission to the Santals. The Swedes are
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a part of the General Council and help to support
her mission.
We owe to the Rev. George Drach the closing words
of our Indian story.
“To-day there are no less than twelve different
missions in various parts of India, supported and controlled
by societies and boards of the Lutheran Church
in Europe and America, numbering according to the
census of 1911, a native Christian constituency of
nearly two hundred and fifty thousand. To emphasize
their unity in faith and to consult concerning the
best method of mission work, as well as to plan for
closer co-operation, delegates were sent by the various
Lutheran missions to an All India Lutheran Conference
at Rajahmundry, held December 31, 1911 to
January 4, 1912. This was the second conference of
this character, the first having been held at Guntur
four years ago.
All told, eighty European and American and twelve
Indian delegates came together at Rajahmundry in
order to advance by the fostering of Christian fellowship
among Lutheran brethren and by practically
helpful deliberation, the cause of Christ in India.
They represented the Leipsic, Missouri, Swedish and
Danish missions of the Tamil country, the Hermannsburg,
Breklum, American General Council and American
General Synod Missions of the Telugu country,
and the Gossner Mission of the North. The delegates
came from the South of India where the breezes
have not yet spent all the spicy fragrance of which,
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softly blowing, they robbed Ceylon’s isle; they came
from the sun-scorched plains of Central India, where
great rivers roll seaward in tepid sluggishness; they
came from the far north where the vast, snowy reaches
of the Himalayas abruptly bound the view. It was a
joy to see them, young men still in the newness of the
first years of missionary service, perhaps still studying
the vernacular of their fields of work; men in the
prime of life who had tested their strength upon the
tasks God gave them to perform amid surrounding
heathendom, and who had become wise in counsel and
strong in achievement; older men whose whitening
hair confirmed the story, told by their battle-worn
faces, of decades of service against the forces of Satan,
and who yet burned at heart with the zeal of young
warriors. Moreover, there was not a department of
woman’s work in missions that had not its goodly complement
of women present at the conference.... Could
any other Church, besides the Lutheran, have gathered
together in one body such a unique, diversified yet
united conference of Indian missionaries and Christians?...
The conference marked an epoch in the
work of Lutheran missions in India, which, united,
strong and zealous, will not be content until they
occupy advanced ground in the movement of the army
of the Lord Jesus Christ.”
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.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch04
CHAPTER IV. || The Lutheran Church in Africa
.sp 2
The Land.
.in 4
.nf
The People
Womanhood in Africa
The Riches of Africa
A Continent Betrayed
The Traffic in Gin
Mohammedanism in Africa
Africa under European Flags
The Picture not all Dark
The First African Missionary a Lutheran
.nf-
.in 0
The German Societies.
.in 2
(West Coast)
.in 4
.nf
Basel
Gossner
North German or Bremen
.nf-
.in 2
(South Africa)
.in 4
.nf
Rhenish
Berlin
Hermannsburg
Hanover
.nf-
.in -2
(East Africa)
.in 4
.nf
John Ludwig Krapf and Johann Rebmann the Founders
Bielefeld
Berlin
Leipsic
Breklum or Schleswig-Holstein
Neukirchen
.nf-
.in 0
Germans at Work for Other Societies.
Scandinavian Societies.
.in 4
.nf
Norwegian Missionary Society
Norwegian Church Mission (Schreuder)
Swedish State Church
Swedish National Society
.nf-
.in 0
.pn +1
.bn 145.png
Finnish Lutheran Missionary Society.
Norwegian Missionary Society in Madagascar.
American Societies.
.in 4
.nf
Norwegian Synod
United Norwegian Church
Norwegian Free Church
General Synod
.nf-
.in 0
.pn +1
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.pb
.sp 4
.ce
Chapter IV.
.ce
THE LUTHERAN CHURCH IN AFRICA
The Land.
The continent of Africa has been likened
to a great ear which waits upon
the word of the rest of the world. It is enormous in
extent, its area being nearly twelve million square miles.
If a line should be run east and west a little north
of the Equator, the northern section would enclose
all North America, the southern section all Europe.
The coast line is low, and the country near the coast
unhealthy; the interior is high, composed of vast
table lands and mountain ranges. The Congo River,
which is said to be thirty times the size of the Mississippi,
rushes to the sea over gigantic waterfalls and
through deep-cut channels which are almost unfathomable.
Besides the Congo there are three other large
rivers, the Niger, flowing toward the west, the Nile,
toward the north, the Zambesi toward the east.
The People.
It is estimated that the native population
of Africa numbers about
one hundred and seventy-five millions. Among this
vast throng there is the widest diversity of character,
religion and speech. Beside the negroes
there are millions of Arabs, Copts, Berbers and
Moors. One of the better tribes of negroes, the
Kondes of Central Africa, is described by a Lutheran
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missionary. “You can hardly imagine, for Africa,
anything more idyllic than a Konde village. First,
well-tilled fields announce that it is near; then we often
see a widely-extended banana grove. The dwelling
houses are often so neat and clean that they would
draw attention even in Europe. The people are strong
and of muscular build, their color is dark. You notice
among the men many whose features speak of reflection.
They are sober and honest. There appears,
therefore, to be such a soil for the diffusion of the
Gospel as is seldom found.”
Of the worst tribes it is difficult to speak or write.
Their degradation seems to put them below the level of
the beasts. Indescribable practices, cannibalism and
slavery are common. A member of the Congo medical
service said of that section of the country: “At
N’Gandu, we found that the chief had gathered together
about ten thousand cannibal brigands, mostly
of the Batatela race. Through the whole of the Batatela
country for some four days’ march, one sees
neither gray hairs, nor halt, nor blind. Even parents
are eaten by their children on the first sign of approaching
decrepitude. N’Gandu is approached by
a very handsome pavement of human skulls, the top
being the only part showing above ground. I counted
more than a thousand skulls in the pavement of one
gate alone. Almost every tree forming the fortification
was crowned with a human skull.”
Commenting upon the conditions in which many
Africans live, a missionary says that “when eleven
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men, women and children, and seventeen goats live
together in a hut seventeen feet square, it is difficult
for the flowers of love and tenderness to flourish.”
If we wait for evolution to raise these poor people,
we will wait forever. Fortunately, here and there,
another theory of human development has been applied
with magical results.
The African
Woman.
A student of Africa and the Africans
has seen in the shape of the continent
the figure of a woman with a huge burden on
her back, looking toward America. If it is true that
“the index of civilization of every nation is not their
religion, their manner of life, their prosperity, but the
respect paid to women”, then we need seek no further
for proof of the sad degradation of the Dark
Continent. Bought and sold, rented or given away,
living in polygamy or worse conditions, “she is the
prey of the strong, her virtue is held of no account,
she has no innocent childhood, motherhood is desecrated,
and when she wraps vileness about her as her
habitual garment, it is encouraged.” In the words of
Doctor Dennis, “she is regarded as a scandal and
a slave, a drudge and a disgrace, a temptation and a
terror, a blemish and a burden”. It is far easier for
an African to accept the Gospel for himself than to
believe that it is intended also for women. Doctor
Day describes the vigorous driving away of the women
from his services by the headman or “king-whip” who
laid about him briskly as he cried out, “This God-palaver
is not for women!”
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The Riches
of Africa.
The riches of Africa are for the most
part surmised rather than accurately
known. The country is fertile and crops can be cultivated
with a minimum of effort. Great forests
abound--ebony, teak, rosewood, mahogany and almost
every other known kind of timber. An investigator
with a fondness of mathematical speculation has said
that the forests of Africa would build a boardwalk
round the globe six inches thick and eight miles wide.
The names of certain localities, “Diamond fields”,
“Gold Coast”, “Ivory Coast”, tell us of the riches to be
found therein. The coal deposits are estimated as
covering eight hundred thousand square miles.
The copper fields equal those of North America
and Europe combined; the undeveloped iron ore
amounts to five times that of North America.
Nor is the power for the development of these
riches wanting. Human strength is there; the
black who carries on his back for the many hours
of a long march a sixty pound burden can learn to
apply his muscles to other tasks. Water power is
there in enormous waterfalls, and there are many navigable
rivers.
W. E. Burghardt Dubois, himself of African descent,
declares that in Africa may be found not only
the roots of the present war, but the menace of future
wars. Of the process by which the European
nations have gained possession of practically all the
black man’s continent he speaks with passionate indignation.
“Lying treaties, rivers of rum, murder, assassination,
.pn +1
.bn 150.png
mutilation, rape and torture” have marked
the progress of these nations in their campaign for
African land. There is the spoil “exceeding the gold-haunted
dreams of the most modern of imperialists”
there is the prize for which nations will struggle indefinitely
unless a new spirit is bred among them.
A Continent
Betrayed.
The great missionary command, “Go
ye into all the world and preach my
Gospel to every creature” is a sufficient direction for the
Christian world in its relations with Africa; but re-inforcing
it there is, or there should be, our enormous
obligation to this most benighted country. Africa
is the most helpless continent, the most degraded,
and, alas, that it should be so, the most fearfully
abused. Livingstone described it as the open sore of
the world. Small countries have been exploited, the
Papuans of Australia have been almost exterminated,
the American Indian has been driven from hunting
ground to hunting ground until all that he can call
his own is a small donation of the vast land which was
once his. But Africa is a whole continent which has
been betrayed. The white man has in the main not
sought to enlighten, to show the hideousness of sin,
to point the better way, but upon the evil fires of
paganism he has poured gin so that the smouldering
ashes have leaped into destroying flame. The slavery
which was one of the most horrible products of
paganism he did not try to abolish, but himself stole
and bought human beings; in all one hundred million
souls.
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The history of the African rum traffic would seem
to take forever from England and Germany and the
United States their boasted name of Christian. Upon
the heart of our Doctor Day this fearful evil lay with
a heavy weight. Said he:
The Traffic
in Gin.
“Within a stone’s throw of us lay a
large steamer laden to the water’s edge
with rum. When we remember that one of these
steamers carries four thousand tons of freight and that
hundreds of them are running to the country laden
with rum, the very vilest that chemistry can invent
and concoct, we may have some conception of what
it means, not only to the heathen, but to missionaries
at work there. At the mouth of every river and stream
wherever there is a rod of beach smooth enough to
land, the traffic goes on. In the name of God, in the
name of all that is high and holy, why do not the
owners of these ships, who live in luxury in Boston,
Liverpool, Hamburg and London, paint their ships
black and run up the black flag, or better still, nail
it to the mast? Never pirate sailed the seas whose
crimes were so black as the crimes now perpetrated on
this continent in the name of commerce.
“At Freetown, our ship had a lot of powder to
discharge. It could not be landed at the regular
wharf, but must be landed in a state of quarantine a
quarter of a mile away. What a farce! There lay
the liquor ship landing thousands of cases of rum,
dangerous in a thousand fold greater sense than all
the powder that ever went into the dark continent.
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.if h
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.ca GIRLS OF EMMA V. DAY SCHOOL, MUHLENBERG, AFRICA.
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.ca CARRYING WATER AND SEWING IN GARDEN.
.if-
.if t
.sp 2
[Illustration: GIRLS OF EMMA V. DAY SCHOOL, MUHLENBERG, AFRICA.]
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[Illustration: CARRYING WATER AND SEWING IN GARDEN.]
.sp 2
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Think too of the awful caricature of ships carrying
in their holds these untold millions of gallons of rum,
holding on Sabbath the beautiful services of the Church
of England! More than all this, along this coast are
ships of war, bristling with cannon, and on these ships,
too, are read the Sabbath service, and there is a chaplain
to read daily prayers. They are here to protect
commerce, a trade that is transforming so many of
these people into driveling idiots, gibbering maniacs,
thieves, harlots, everything that is low and wicked,
then launching their sinful souls into the lake that
burns.”
To the horror of its own situation Africa is not dull.
Like the American Indian, like every poor besotted
wretch in his hours of sanity, the African has besought
that this curse be removed. In 1883 the natives
of the diamond fields implored the Cape Parliament
to have public houses removed at least six
miles. The petition was refused.
.if h
Mohammed-anism
.if-
.if t
Mohammedanism
.if-
in Africa.
A little over six hundred years before
the Christian era Mohammed
preached his new religion in Arabia, urging upon those
who followed him prayer, almsgiving, fasting and pilgrimage
to Mecca, and allowing them slavery, concubinage,
polygamy and easy divorce. With the rapidity
of fire in a field of dry grass the new faith
spread, not the least productive of the methods of
the prophet being wars of subjugation and extermination.
.pn +1
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The Mohammedans soon conquered North Africa
sweeping away the early Christianity, and then crossed
into Spain from which they were finally driven. For
a long time the great desert served as an impenetrable
barrier to further advance in Africa, but presently they
crossed the desert, and when Christian missionaries
arrived on the west coast, they found that Islam had
preceded them. Forbidding none of the old practices
of heathendom, imposing only a few new rules which
are easily followed, the Mohammedan faith has had an
enormous following. Between the Crescent and the
Cross West Africa must make her choice and upon the
Christian Church depends the decision.
In meeting Islam and its active missionaries the
Christian cannot but be sadly aware that the evil of
drink was and is condemned by the prophet and his
followers and that to a true Mohammedan all forms
of alcohol are taboo, a fact with which the Mohammedan
has not failed to taunt his rival.
Dr. Zwemer and Dr. Westerman estimate the total
population of the Moslem world to be two hundred
million of whom forty-two million are in Africa. To
them as well as to the pagan should the Gospel message
go.
A missionary book or a missionary address to which
I am not able to give credit describes the parting of
an English trader from the African woman with whom
he had lived during a long residence in Africa, who
had served him and truly loved him. Having accumulated
.pn +1
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riches, he was about to return to England
without even bidding her farewell, but she had heard
of his departure and followed him to the shore, where
throwing herself at his feet, she besought him not to
cast her aside. Indifferent to her grief, annoyed by
her importunity, he angrily thrust her from him and
embarked. Such have been the dealings of the white
race with Africa.
Africa Under
European
Flags.
Except for a few almost negligible sections
the continent is under European
flags. France owns a colony twenty
times the size of France itself; Great Britain a colony
as large as the United States, which extends almost
without interruption from the coast to Cairo, a
distance of six thousand miles; Germany, a colony
one and one-half times as large as the German Empire
in Europe; Belgium, a territory equal to that of
Germany; and Portugal, Spain and Italy a twelfth of
the continent between them.
The Picture
Not All Dark.
But the picture is not all dark. The
mention of Africa recalls to our minds
the names of Livingstone, of Robert
Moffatt, of David A. Day. The Christian world has
in Africa its records of shame, it has also its records
of glory. It has at Kimberly the deep shafts of diamond
mines, symbol of the pride and lust of man’s
heart; it has nearby the graves of many pious German
Lutherans. Lingering along the western shore
there must be still the cries of the afflicted, the
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wailing of mothers torn from their children, of
husbands beaten from their wives! Yet here are
the graves of the children of David A. Day. Into
the distant interior penetrated the slave raiders,
torturing, driving the inhabitants from their villages,
binding them with chains, marking their course with
blood; yet here is buried the heart of Livingstone.
Whether or not we heed the call, we are bound to
Africa by an unbreakable bond.
The First
African
Missionary
a Lutheran.
It is a satisfaction and an inspiration
to know in the searching of heart which
should be ours that our own church
has heeded the Ethiopian call. If it
is true that “when the history of the great African
States of the future comes to be written, the arrival
of the first missionary will be the first historical event”,
then will the Lutheran Church have its Peter Heiling
(Chapter I) to record as the first of the Protestants
to concern himself directly with the spiritual
welfare of the Africans. Would that there were no
such gap as that which exists between his going to
Abyssinia in 1634 and that of the next Lutheran
missionaries!
For purposes of Lutheran missionary study, we shall
divide Africa into three sections: first, the West Coast;
secondly, South Africa; thirdly, East Africa. As
in the case of India we shall consider first the work
of the German, then the work of the Scandinavian,
then the work of the American Lutherans.
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.sp 2
.ce
THE GERMAN SOCIETIES
.ce
The West Coast.
The Spirit
of Faith.
To the eastern side of the so-called
Gold Coast went in 1828 the Basel
Society to begin a costly work. “Sober and patient”--thus
Doctor Warneck describes them. Opposed to
them were superstition, dense ignorance, a fearful climate,
to say nothing of all the difficulties produced by
colonial politics.
Between 1828 and 1842 the society sent to the West
Coast of Africa seventeen ministers, ten of whom
died within one year, two others in three years, and
three returned to their native country confirmed invalids.
Yet steadily they pressed from the coast into
the still darker interior, working among the Ga, Chi
and Ashanti negroes. In Africa there are few native
tribes which have a written language, hence the first
work of the substantial missionary is to create one.
Wars among the natives and wars among the great nations
disturbed the mission, but the work went on in
spite of all obstacles. After thirty years of labor three
hundred and sixty-seven Christians were counted, after
sixty years eighteen thousand. Station after station
has been founded, school after school established. A
theological seminary trains the natives to preach, the
famous Basel industrial enterprises train their hands
and eyes, and medical missionaries heal their bodies
and show them how to live in cleanliness and decency.
.pn +1
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“The Door-Keeper
of
the Gold
Coast.”
Among the most devoted heroes of this
mission, was Andrew Riis, a Lutheran.
At one time when three or four missionaries
had died and persecution had
dimmed somewhat the lamp of faith, he was advised
to return to Europe. But he would listen to no such
advice. Sending back the message, “I will remain”,
he went farther into the interior. Presently there arrived
two other missionaries and with them the young
woman to whom Riis was engaged. When the two
newly arrived missionaries died, Riis was left once
more, the only “door-keeper” on the Gold Coast. Now
he sailed for Europe, not to give up the mission but
to rouse the home churches to its support. Successful
in this effort, he returned to the field and the mission
began anew, now quickly to become prosperous.
The changed conditions in this dark land are described
in a German missionary journal.
A City
Transformed.
“In June, 1869, the missionary Ramseyer,
of the Basel Missionary Society,
was dragged as a prisoner into Abetifi, then a city of
Ashantee, with his wife and child. They spent three
days in a miserable hut, with their feet in chains.
Human sacrifices were then common in Abetifi, which
was under the tyrannical rule of the Ashantee chieftains.
To-day, in the same streets, under the same
shady trees, instead of the bloody executioner going
his rounds, a Christian congregation gathers together
every Sunday. Christian hymns, such as, “Who will
be Christ’s Soldier?” ring joyfully through the streets.
.pn +1
.bn 160.png
The people come out of their houses, the chieftain is invited;
he comes with his suite and listens to the joyful
tidings of salvation. And it is not vain; many have
become the disciples of Jesus. Many even dare to tell
their fellow-countrymen in the streets what joy and
peace they have found in Him.”
In 1896 the Basel mission opened its eleventh station
at Kumassi. It has twenty-four thousand three
hundred church members with a school roll of nearly
eight thousand pupils. There are thirty-six missionaries
and forty-three other Europeans who direct the
industrial and commercial work. The mission extends
from Ashanti beyond the Volta River.
The Beauty of
Nature and the
Depredation
of Mankind.
The Basel mission has also a flourishing
work in the German colony of
Kamerun, among the Bantu negroes.
The beauty of the land in which they
work and the human misery are described by one of
the missionaries. “It is a beautiful wild country which
often reminds us of Switzerland; on all sides we see
chains of mountains separated by deep valleys, roaring
torrents, foaming waterfalls, and forests of palm
trees reaching to the highest summits. How many
times our hearts have leaped for joy at the glory of
the scene! And, on the other hand, what a sorrow
it is to see humanity fallen so low! The inhabitants
of this paradise live in a real hell, always in unspeakable
dread of evil spirits and of death. The dying
often quit this world with cries of terror. The different
tribes fight constantly with one another. Their
.pn +1
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moral condition is incredible. There are actually certain
localities which exchange their dead in order to
devour them.”
How vividly this description brings to our minds
a danger not often considered at home, the fearful
effect which constant sight of the most hideous immorality
upon the missionary who is himself but a man.
God be thanked that they hold fast to all that is pure,
thinking, in the midst of monstrous crimes, of those
things which are lovely!
The Basel Society has here thirteen main stations
which extend nearly a hundred miles into the interior.
Here there are sixty-three European missionaries. The
Christian community numbers twelve thousand.
The Gossner Mission, whose chief work is in India,
resolved in 1914 to send missionaries to Central Kamerun.
Just before the outbreak of the war four
missionaries were sent out to make preliminary studies.
On the Slave Coast the North German or Bremen
Society has had a mission since 1847. This society
has no mission school of its own, but draws its workers
from the mission school at Basel. Its African mission
has been continued only at enormous sacrifice. In
fifty years sixty-five men and women died. The climate
is dangerous, the hearts of the natives are stubborn.
The territory in which the mission is situated
is partly German and partly English, a fact which
causes not only political but linguistic complications
since German must be the language of one section,
English of the other.
.pn +1
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.if h
.il fn=p128.jpg id=p128 w=600px
.ca CENTRAL CHINA LUTHERAN THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, SHEKOW, HUPEH, CHINA.
.sp 2
.il fn=p128b.jpg id=p128b w=600px
.ca CHAPEL AND MISSION HOMES, CHIKUNGSHAN, CHINA. (UNITED NORWEGIAN)
.if-
.if t
.sp 2
[Illustration: CENTRAL CHINA LUTHERAN THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, SHEKOW, HUPEH, CHINA.]
.sp 2
[Illustration: CHAPEL AND MISSION HOMES, CHIKUNGSHAN, CHINA. (UNITED NORWEGIAN)]
.sp 2
.if-
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Nevertheless, the Bremen missionaries have persisted.
To-day they have nine stations with a staff of
twenty-eight, and over ten thousand native Christians.
A thorough study has been made of the language,
customs and religion of the people, who belong to the
Evhe tribe.
Assisting in the work of the Bremen Society are
deaconesses. The lives of these godly women have had
a marvelous effect especially upon the native women.
.ce
South Africa.
A Land of
Many Nations.
By South Africa we mean the great
southern portion of the continent extending
from Cape Town up to the
Zambesi River, which flows toward the east and the
Congo which flows toward the west. Here, in addition
to the native tribes who are chiefly Hottentots,
Bushmen and Bantus, Kaffirs and Zulus, are large
settlements of whites, who, unable to go beyond this
section on account of the climate, are more and more
steadily making the country their own. Their presence,
as may easily be imagined, complicates and makes
immensely difficult all mission work. To this fertile
land, rich in gold, diamonds and other minerals, have
gone naturally the adventurous and in many cases the
wicked of other nations. There have been already
fearful struggles between native and foreigner, black
and white. When we realize that among the five
hundred and seventy-five thousand baptized native
Christians, one hundred and twenty thousand are Lutherans,
.pn +1
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our interest in the sadly complicated situation
becomes keen.
The Missionary
Press.
The first German society to work in
South Africa was the Rhenish which,
like the Basel Society, is not wholly
Lutheran. This society in 1829 established stations
first in Nama Land, then in Herero Land, then in
Ovambo Land. Here we have another record of opposition,
of native wars, of indifference. The mission
station lies almost entirely in the German colony. It
has in all fifty-two missionaries. The number of
Christians is now more than twenty-six thousand.
Here also, the Germans have translated and taught
with the greatest care. The press is constantly used to
bind together the scattered Christians in the sparsely
settled districts, two monthly religious papers, one
in the Nama, the other in the Herero language, being
published.
A Labor
Not in Vain.
Says Doctor Warneck: “It has been a
laborious work of patience that the
missionaries have done in these great countries, industrially
so poor,--a work made difficult by the great
inconstancy of the Hottentots and the strong opposition
of the Herero, as well as by the entanglements of war,--and
more than once in Herero Land the workers
were on a point of withdrawing. But German fidelity
at last carried the day. Now the whole of the great
region from the Orange River to beyond Walfisch Bay,
far into the interior of Great Nama Land and Herero
Land and even up to Ovambo Land is covered with a
.pn +1
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network of stations. All the points that could be occupied
have been made mission stations and the whole
population has been brought under the educative and
civilizing influence of Christianity.”
The Rhenish Society has also a mission in the
southern part of Cape Colony. Its first station was
at Stellenbosch, near Cape Town, established in 1829.
The society has now in all a membership of twenty-one
thousand four hundred Christians. A number of
its churches are financially independent. Here as
everywhere there are discouraging backslidings into
the old sins of drunkenness and impurity, but even
so the light has shone and will shine with increasing
brightness.
The Discovery
of Diamonds.
The Berlin Missionary Society began
work in South Africa in 1834, first
among the Koranna people between the Orange and
Vaal Rivers, and later, in 1838, in Cape Colony itself,
its first station being at Peniel. At first few foreigners
penetrated into this district between the Orange and
the Vaal, but in 1870 when diamonds were discovered,
Cape Colony, in spite of the protests of the Orange
Free State to which it had belonged, annexed it. At
once thousands of adventurers poured in, both black
and white. In 1860 the missionaries went north into
the Transvaal.
The Berlin Mission is the largest in South Africa.
Its last report names fifty-eight stations and one
thousand sub-stations. The Christian community,
which numbers sixty thousand is organized in five
.pn +1
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synods of Cape Colony, the Zulu-Xosa district, Orange
River Colony, South Transvaal and North Transvaal.
Among the notable Lutheran missionaries of the
Berlin South African mission have been Merensky, a
famous writer upon missionary subjects, Grützer, who
gave forty-nine years of devoted service to the mission,
Wuras, who gave fifty and Doctor D. Kropf who
did valuable work as a translator.
Another Berlin missionary of large achievement describes
his early experience, writing in 1889:
“After having worked myself weary through the
week, when on Sunday I saw these wild men of the
wilderness sitting before me, absolute obtuseness toward
everything divine, together with mockery and
brutal lusts written on their faces, I sometimes lost all
disposition to preach. Those fluent young preachers
who not only like to be heard, but to hear themselves,
ought to be sometimes required to ascend the pulpit
before such an assemblage. There is not the least
thing there to lift up the preacher of the Divine Word
or to come to the help of his weakness. As when a
green, fresh branch laid before the door of a glowing
oven shrivels up at once, such has sometimes been my
experience when I had come full of warm devotion,
before the Kaffirs, and undertaken to preach. I have
sometimes wished that I had never become a missionary.
Once the hour of Sunday services again approached.
The sun was fearfully hot, and I felt weary
in body and soul. My unbelieving heart said: ‘Your
preaching is for nothing’, and Beelzebub added a lusty
.pn +1
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amen. The Kaffirs were sitting in the hut waiting
for me. ‘I’ll not preach to-day’, said I to my wife,
but she looked at me with her angelic eyes, lifted her
finger, and said gravely: ‘William, you will do your
duty. You will go and preach’. I seized Bible and
hymn book, and loitered to church like an idle boy
creeping unwillingly to school. I began, preluding
on the violin, the Kaffirs grunting. I prayed, read
my text, and began to preach with about as much
fluency as stuttering Moses. Yet soon the Lord
loosened the band of my tongue, and the fire of the
Holy Ghost awakened me out of my sluggishness. I
spoke with such fervor concerning the Lamb of God,
that taketh away the sin of the world, that if that
sermon has quickened no heart of a hearer yet my own
was profoundly moved.”
The writer, Missionary Posselt, lived to baptize
one thousand Kaffirs.
The Progress
of Tropical
Medical
Treatment.
One of the interesting developments in
the Berlin Society mission has been the
great decrease in sickness, owing to the
progress of tropical medical treatment.
No employee of the society, whether missionary, wife
of missionary or artisan, is sent to Africa without a
thorough course in tropical hygiene. To those faithful
scientists who discovered the cause of malaria is
ascribed the success of the Panama canal; no less are
they to be thanked for the continued life and work of
many missionaries.
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The Hermannsburg Mission entered South Africa
in 1854. Its field is located among the Zulus in Natal
where there are twenty-one stations and twelve thousand
eight hundred Christians, and among the
Bechunas in the Transvaal where there are twenty-eight
stations and sixty-one thousand Christians.
The Ship
“Candace.”.
We have learned in Chapter II of the
origin of the Hermannsburg Mission
in the mind and heart of Louis Harms. After a year
or two, a number of German sailors, recently converted,
sought admission to the training school, and
at their suggestion a ship was built and named the
‘Candace.’ This ship was to carry the Gospel to
South Africa, and on October 8, 1853, she sailed
from Hamburg. On board were sailors, colonists and
missionaries who were to found a missionary colony.
To each separate class Pastor Harms gave separate
directions, but upon all he urged the necessity for
prayer. “Begin all your work with prayer; when the
storm rises, pray, when the billows rage round the
ship, pray; when sin comes, pray; and when the devil
tempts you, pray. So long as you pray it will go well
with you, body and soul.”
The missionary colony hoped to settle among the
Galla tribes, but were driven away by the Mohammedans,
therefore they returned to Natal. On the 19th
of September, 1854, they established their first station
near Greytown, giving it the dear name of Hermannsburg.
Each artisan began to practice his trade, a house
was built, and before three months had passed
the first converts of the Zulu church were baptized.
.pn +1
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A Truly Lutheran
Mission.
No Lutheran mission has so intense a
Lutheran spirit as the Hermannsburg
mission, whose founder wished all the Lutheran
symbols and especially the beautiful Lutheran liturgy
to be recognized and used by mission churches as well
as by churches in the fatherland.
The good ship “Candace,” one of the most famous
and probably the first of the missionary ships of the
world, made many journeys. Not the least interesting,
at least to those concerned, was her second when she
carried to Natal reinforcements and additional colonists,
among them a wife for each of the missionaries
who had made the pioneer journey.
The Hermannsburg mission has not lacked a baptism
of blood. In 1883 thirteen stations were destroyed
and Missionary Schroeder met a martyr’s
death.
The Hanover Free Evangelical Lutheran Church
Missionary Society, branched off from the Hermannsburg
Mission in 1892. It has six stations in Natal
and Zululand with about twenty-two thousand Christians,
and among the Bechunas in the Transvaal three
stations with thirty-six hundred Christians.
.ce
East Africa.
German
East Africa.
The colonial expansion of Germany in
the eighties stimulated missionary interest
and activity in its newly acquired possessions in
East Africa, where is situated the largest and most
thickly populated of the German Colonies, with about
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seven and a half million inhabitants. The mission field
is a difficult one, the natives belonging to one of the
lowest human groups. Hard of heart, slow to give up
their heathen customs, especially that of polygamy,
affected in some sections by Islam, they are difficult to
impress and reluctant to be won. Yet among them a
harvest has been reaped.
The East African mission field is inseparably connected
with the name of a Lutheran, John Ludwig
Krapf, who in the employ of an English missionary
society founded Christian missions in this section.
A Call to
Service.
[#]Krapf was born in 1810 near Tübingen
in Germany. A fondness for geography
coupled with the reading of a pamphlet describing
the spread of missions among the heathen impelled
him when he was a mere boy to prepare himself for
missionary work. After studying at Basel, he became
pastor of a congregation, but he could not shut out
from his heart the needs of unchristianized lands. “In
the needs of my congregation I recognized those of
non-Christian lands in a measure that affected me very
deeply; in their sorrow I recognized the wretchedness
of the heathen. The grace which I myself enjoyed
and which I commended to my own people, was, I felt,
for the heathen as well, but there might be no one
to proclaim it to them. Here, everyone without difficulty
may find the way of life; in those lands there
may be no one to show the way.”
.pm fn-start
The account of John Ludwig Krapf is taken largely
from the Rev. F. Wilkinson, Missionary Review of the
World, November, 1892.
.pm fn-end
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.pn +1
.bn 173.png
.pn +1
.bn 174.png
.if h
.il fn=p136.jpg id=p136 w=600px
.ca ADMINISTRATION BUILDING AND CLASS ROOMS, KYUSHU GAKUIN, KUMAMOTO, JAPAN.
.sp 2
.il fn=p136b.jpg id=p136b w=600px
.ca
PASTOR’S RESIDENCE, CHAPEL, AND STUDENT DORMITORY, TOKYO.
AMERICAN MISSIONARIES, NATIVE PASTORS AND WORKERS WITH WIVES AND CHILDREN.
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.if-
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.sp 2
[Illustration: ADMINISTRATION BUILDING AND CLASS ROOMS, KYUSHU GAKUIN, \
KUMAMOTO, JAPAN.]
.sp 2
[Illustration: PASTOR’S RESIDENCE, CHAPEL, AND STUDENT DORMITORY, \
TOKYO. AMERICAN MISSIONARIES, NATIVE PASTORS \
AND WORKERS WITH WIVES AND CHILDREN.]
.sp 2
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A Slave
Market.
Following his inclination, he offered
himself for missionary work and was
sent by the Church Missionary Society of England,
which used Basel missionaries in the work, to its Abyssinian
Mission. Leaving England in 1837, he reached
Alexandria and started up the Nile. At Cairo he
had his first glimpse of Africa’s great curse, the traffic
in human beings. He visited the slave markets and
there saw the wretched creatures men, women and children,
lying fainting under the burning sun, to be
examined like cattle by purchasers. Like Abraham
Lincoln on his journey down the Mississippi, Krapf
vowed eternal hatred for the hideous institution of
human slavery.
The First
Repulse.
Journeying to Adoa in the highlands
of Abyssinia, Krapf joined other missionaries
trained at Basel and employed by the Church
Missionary Society, Blumhardt and Isenberg by name,
but they were soon driven away by the ruling prince.
Thus repulsed, Krapf determined to go to Shoa in the
south of Abyssinia, and, accompanied by Isenberg, he
arrived there after a severe illness in June, 1859. There,
when Isenberg had returned to Egypt, Krapf worked
for several years alone.
Once More the
Door Closed.
In 1842, he left Shoa to meet his future
wife, Rosina Dietrich, in Egypt
and to help on their way two new
brethren who had arrived on the coast. Travelling
on foot, ill, fatigued and several times set upon by
robbers, he reached the coast where he expected to
.pn +1
.bn 175.png
find the two missionaries, only to learn that they
had been there and had gone back to Egypt. When
he with his bride returned to Shoa they found that
its ruler, like the ruler of Adoa, had closed the kingdom
against him.
The First
Sacrifice.
The need of the Gallas, a nation
to the south to whom no Gospel messenger
had been sent, had lain heavily upon the heart
of Krapf and now, driven from Shoa, he tried to reach
them, but found it impossible. Thereupon he determined
to do what he could by circulating the Scriptures.
Joining himself to a caravan, he started for
the interior, with him his young wife, whose newborn
baby was in the course of a few weeks buried
in the desert.
“Cast Down
But Not
Destroyed.”
Alas, even this long journey and these
trials were in vain, for once more was
Krapf forbidden to proceed with his
work. The brave man, disheartened, but not completely
cast down, wrote home: “Abyssinia will not
soon again enjoy the time of grace she has so shamefully
slighted.... It is a consolation to us and to
dear friends of the mission to know that over eight
thousand copies of the Scriptures have found their
way into Abyssinia. These will not all be lost or
remain without a blessing. Faith speaks thus: Though
every mission should disappear in a day and leave no
trace behind, I would still cleave to mission work with
all my prayers, my labors, my gifts, with my body
and soul; for there is the command of the Lord Jesus
.pn +1
.bn 176.png
Christ, and where that is there is also His promise
and His final victory.”
A Christian
Grave in
East Africa.
Krapf now determined to attempt to
gain a footing on the coast, in order
from there to reach the Gallas, whose
language he had learned. With this object in view,
he sailed, with his wife, in an Arab vessel from Aden
in November, 1843. Strong headwinds and a heavy
sea compelled them to return to Aden. In spite of
their exertions, the water gained upon them in their
leaky boat, and on reaching the entrance to the harbor
the land wind drove back the vessel toward the
open ocean. Half an hour after they were taken from
the vessel it sank. Eight days later Krapf sailed again,
and after four or five weeks’ journey arrived at Mombasa.
Scarcely, however, had he begun to work at
Mombasa when he was called to pass through another
sorrow, in the loss of his wife. In prospect of death
she prayed for relatives, for the mission, for East
Africa, and for the Sultan, that God would incline his
heart to promote the eternal welfare of his subjects.
The next day she appeared much better, but the day
following much worse, while her husband himself was
so weakened by fever as to be obliged to leave the
care of her almost entirely to others. The next day
she breathed her last, and on the following morning--Sunday--they
buried her, according to her wish, on
the mainland in the territory of the Wanika, her newborn
daughter by her side. Krapf, even amid all
.pn +1
.bn 177.png
these trials, wrote in a letter to the secretary of the
missionary society: “Tell the committee that in East
Africa there is the lonely grave of one member of the
mission connected with your society. This is an indication
that you have begun the conflict in this part of
the world; and since the conquests of the Church are
won over the graves of many of its members, you may
be all the more assured that the time has come when
you are called to work for the conversion of Africa.
Think not of the victims who in this glorious warfare
may suffer or fall; only press forward until East
and West Africa are united in Christ.”
Two Friends.
In 1846 he had the joy of welcoming
a fellow laborer, a Lutheran, Johann
Rebmann. The two men were exactly opposite in nature.
Krapf, restless and energetic, entertained far-reaching
plans, and even saw in imagination a chain
of missions stretching from Mombasa to the Niger,
and thus connecting east and west Africa; Rebmann,
on the contrary, believed in settling in one place and
staying there. Nevertheless, the two men worked in
harmony. When they finished the building of a house
in a village not far from the sea-coast, Krapf felt that
the first step toward the dark interior had been taken.
After twelve years of labor, Krapf visited Europe.
When he returned to Africa he took with him two
missionaries and three mechanics, an undertaking which
was not altogether happy. But in the midst of discouragement
he took heart.
.pn +1
.bn 178.png
Still
Undismayed.
“And now let me look backward and
forward. In the past what do I see?
Scarcely more than the remnant of a defeated army.
You know I had the task of strengthening the East
African Mission with three missionaries and three
handicraftsmen; but where are the missionaries? One
remained in London, as he did not consider himself
appointed to East Africa; the second remained at
Aden, in doubt about the English Church; the third
died on May tenth of nervous fever. As to the three
mechanics, they are ill of fever, lying between life and
death, and instead of being a help look to us for help
and attention; and yet I stand by my assertion that
Africa must be conquered by missionaries; there must
be a chain of mission stations between the east and
west, though thousands of the combatants fall upon
the left hand and ten thousand on the right.... From
the sanctuary of God a voice says to me, ‘Fear not;
life comes through death, resurrection through decay,
the establishment of Christ’s kingdom through the
discomfiture of human undertakings. Instead of allowing
yourself to be discouraged at the defeat of
your force, go to work yourself. Do not rely on
human help, but on the living God, to whom it is all
the same to serve by little or by much.... Believe,
love, fight, be not weary for His name’s sake, and you
will see the glory of God.’”
Twice Krapf tried to penetrate into the distant
interior but was both times compelled to return without
establishing missions. In 1853 he returned to
.pn +1
.bn 179.png
Europe on account of ill health, but the next year
set out to Africa once more, only to be compelled on
account of weakness to give up the journey.
Once more, however, he visited the country of his
love. Wishing to open a mission in East Africa
the Methodist Free Churches requested him to accompany
their missionaries and to assist them in establishing
the mission. He agreed to go and said of the
new station: “The station Ribe will in due time celebrate
the triumph of the mission in the conversion of
the Wanika, though I may be in the grave. The Lord
does not allow His Word to return unto Him void.”
A Heroic
Life Ended.
Returning to Europe, Krapf continued
to work and to pray for missions until,
in November, 1881, he was found
dead, kneeling in the attitude of prayer.
The Missionary
as Explorer.
The names of Krapf and Rebmann are
associated not only in heroic missionary
labors but in important linguistic
work and most valuable geographic discoveries. When
they declared that there existed in the center of Africa
snow-capped mountains and an inland sea, they were
laughed at, but as a result exploring expeditions were
sent out to discover that what the missionaries claimed
was true. The American poet Bayard Taylor, struck
by the marvelous variety of temperature and verdure
upon Mt. Kilimanjaro, whose base was surrounded by
tropical forests and whose summit was wrapped in
snow, celebrated it in verse.
.pn +1
.bn 180.png
.in 4
.nf
“Hail to thee, monarch of African mountains,
Remote, inaccessible, silent and lone--
Who, from the heart of the tropical fervors,
Liftest to heaven thine alien snows,
Feeding forever the fountains that make thee
Father of Nile and creator of Egypt!
I see thee supreme in the midst of thy co-mates,
Standing alone ’twixt the earth and the heavens,
Heir of the sunset and herald of morn.
Zone above zone, to thy shoulders of granite,
The climates of earth are displayed as an index,
Giving the scope of the book of creation.
There in the wandering airs of the tropics
Shivers the aspen, still dreaming of cold:
There stretches the oak, from the loftiest ledges,
His arms to the far-away lands of his brothers,
And the pine looks down on his rival, the palm.”
.nf-
.in 0
David
Livingstone.
This section of Africa cannot be passed
without a mention of that other hero,
David Livingstone, the missionary, scientist, and explorer,
who said, “I am tired of discovery if no fruit
follows it”, and “The end of geographical achievement
is only the beginning of missionary undertaking”, who
was a king among men and who considered it his only
glory that he was a “poor, poor imitation of Christ.”
There is a very particular reason for including a
mention of Livingstone in a history of Lutheran missions,
because his impulse to become a missionary was
directly inspired by a Lutheran, Karl Frederick Gützlaff,
whom we shall study in Chapter V. Livingstone
.pn +1
.bn 181.png
was interested in missions and had resolved “that he
would give to the cause of missions all that he might
earn beyond what was required for his subsistence.”
When he read Gützlaff’s appeal on behalf of China
he determined to give himself. For various reasons
Africa rather than China was determined upon for
the scene of his labor.
The first German movement toward a missionary
possession of the German colonies in Africa was in
Bavaria where a group of men who had been influenced
by Krapf, planned a Wakamba mission. Their society
is generally known by the name of their headquarters,
Bielefeld. One of the leading spirits and a director
of this society was Bodelschwingh, the famous leader
of Germany’s Inner Mission movement. Bodelschwingh,
like Francke, was an illustration of the
fact that they who do mission work at home do also
mission work abroad.
The principal field of the Bielefeld Society is Tanga
and the country lying behind it. In 1907 it began a
new mission in the northwest corner of German East
Africa, a densely populated district between Lakes
Victoria Nyanza, Kivu and Tanganyika. In its
two fields the mission has thirty-five missionaries and
about two thousand Christians.
Careful and
Painstaking.
The careful and painstaking methods
of the German missionaries are indicated
in a description of the winning of their first
converts in their newer field. Three years after they
had begun to work, a youth appeared for baptism.
.pn +1
.bn 182.png
He was followed by six other young men. Then a
number of girls asked for instruction and presently
a leprous woman whose interest had been gained by
the tender care of the missionaries. For more than
a year these inquirers received instruction. At the end
of that time four young men and three young women
were considered worthy of baptism.
The Berlin Society began work in 1891 in the extreme
southwest corner of the German possessions.
Gradually extending, it has now fifty-seven missionaries
and about four thousand native Christians. The
mission field lies among the Konde tribes at the
northern end of Lake Nyassa.
The Leipsic Society had begun its work before the
possession of this section by Germany. The people
among whom it labors belong to the Chaga tribes at
the foot of snow-capped Mt. Kilimanjaro. Its stations
extend also southward and westward. It has
in all twenty-eight missionaries and about twenty-seven
hundred Christians.
The Breklum Society began work in 1911 in the
Uhha country on the western shore of Lake Tanganyika
where it has three missionaries.
The Neukirchen Society has a mission in German
territory in Urundi between Lake Tanganyika and
Lake Kivu with five missionaries, and also in British
territory near the mouth of the Pomo River, where
there are nine missionaries.
In Africa as well as in India there is a long list
of faithful Germans who worked in the missions of
.pn +1
.bn 183.png
other churches. Among them Nylander went as a
missionary of the English Church Missionary Society
to Sierra Leone in 1806. Until his death in 1825 he
remained at his post, never returning home for a
furlough. Doctor Schön reduced the Hausa language
to order and wrote for it grammars, dictionaries
and reading lessons. Upon him the French Institute
conferred a gold medal for his brilliant
philological work. Livingstone declared that Schön’s
name would live long after his own had been forgotten.
Sigismund Kölle compiled the Polyglotta
Africana, a comparison of a hundred African dialects.
He was first a missionary in Sierra Leone and afterwards
in Egypt, Constantinople and Palestine.
A Lutheran
in Jerusalem.
Another German Lutheran who has
been employed by other societies was
Samuel Gobat, who was born in Berne,
Switzerland, in 1799. When he was nineteen years
old he entered the Basel Missionary Institute. After
he had thoroughly prepared himself there and in Paris
in the Arabic, Ethiopic and Amharic languages, he
offered himself to the Church missionary Society of
England and was sent to begin in 1826 a mission in
Abyssinia. Before he sailed for his mission field he
received Lutheran ordination. For three years he
traveled extensively in proclaiming the Gospel both
to the priests who ministered to the sadly degenerate
Abyssinian Church and to the people, then he was compelled
to leave on account of ill health. He continued
his missionary activity by superintending the translating
.pn +1
.bn 184.png
of the Bible into Arabic at the Church Mission
in Malta; in 1845 he was made Vice President of the
Protestant College at Malta. Subsequently he was
appointed Bishop of Jerusalem, his election to this important
position being preceded by his entrance into
the English Church. He died in Jerusalem in 1879,
“notable for his piety, vigor, tact and good judgment.”
.ce
Scandinavian Societies.
In 1844 the Norwegian Missionary Society sent
Hans Schreuder as a missionary to Zululand. Here
at Umpumulo he and thirty companions started a
mission. After twenty-five years’ constant and faithful
work, the number of Christians was two hundred
and forty-five. To-day there are five thousand seven
hundred church members divided among thirteen
stations. The training school carries its students
carefully through a nine months’ course in the Gospels,
the Catechism and Church history, besides providing
exercise in preaching and instruction concerning the
care of souls. The pupils go out two by two on
Sundays to preach in heathen kraals. Their instructor
says of them, “For diligence, attention and
Christian walk, I can give them the highest praise.
It has been a delight to work among them, for they
seem to grasp more and more the central teaching
of Christianity.”
In 1873 Hans Schreuder, the pioneer, left the service
of the society to establish the Norwegian Church
Mission, which now has four stations and two thousand
.pn +1
.bn 185.png
Christians. Schreuder was the father of Norwegian
missions. His appeal, “A Few Words to the Church
of Norway,” in 1842, aroused the country to a sense of
its missionary obligation.
Co-operation.
The Swedish State Church established
in 1876 a mission in South Africa
among the Zulus, selecting this spot because of its
nearness to the Norwegian mission from which the
Swedes expected advice and co-operation. In this expectation
they were not disappointed. In sympathy and
collaboration with them are also the neighboring Berlin
missionaries. A common hymn book, prayer book
and catechism are used. The native pastors of the
three missions are trained by the Swedes, the teachers
by the Norwegian and the evangelists by the Germans.
Oscarberg is the oldest station. The Zulu war and
the Boer war both caused great loss and suffering to
the mission. The work was extended in 1902 to
South Rhodesia. In all its stations the mission has
about six thousand native Christians.
In Abyssinia and extending into British East Africa
is the mission of the Swedish National Society. To
this field the society was directed by Louis Harms in
1865. Its people, whom the missionary-explorer Krapf
longed to reach, are Gallas, a vigorous and superior
African race, one of the few who have not been influenced
by Mohammedanism. Like Krapf, the Swedes
hoped to have access to these people through the
Abyssinian Church. To their hopes was put a cruel
period by the murder of one of their missionaries. In
.pn +1
.bn 186.png
1881 a second effort was made to reach them. Prince
Menelik of Shoa promised free passage and also
Negus of Abyssinia, but both broke their word.
Finally slaves who were carried from the Galla country
were trained by the persistent missionaries and sent
back. Among them, Onesimus Nesib, who was baptized
in 1872, has translated the whole Bible into the
Galla language and has written various Christian
books and a large dictionary.
The Eritrea station of the Swedish National Society
is in the Italian colony of that name on the Red Sea.
Here the missionary press, printing in seven languages,
is busily at work. To the natives of these parts the
missionaries have given their first written language.
Boarding schools, day schools and a hospital are among
the mission enterprises.
A German missionary who visited Finland in 1867
roused among the Lutherans there an interest in Africa.
As a result the Finnish Lutheran Missionary Society
established a mission among the Ovambo people, near
the great mission of the Rhenish Society. For
thirteen years their missionaries labored without a
single convert. Then the rulers ceased to oppose mission
work and the mission began to succeed. In nine
stations are two thousand eight hundred Christians.
After long instruction the King of Ovamboland was
baptized in 1912 and dying shortly after gave testimony
to his faith upon his death-bed. Subsequently
his successor was publicly baptized together with fifty-six
of his subjects.
.pn +1
.bn 187.png
.ce
Norwegians in Madagascar.
Planting.
The French island of Madagascar lies
to the southeast of the continent of
Africa and has a Malay population of about four
hundred thousand. Work was begun in 1818 by English
missionaries with the approval of King Radama,
who acknowledged the suzerainty of England. Interrupted
for some months by the death of most of the
pioneer party, the mission was recommenced in the
year 1820, in the capital city, Antananarivo, in the
interior highland, and was carried on with much success
until the year 1835, when the persecuting queen,
Ranavalona I, began severe measures against Christianity,
and all the missionaries were compelled to leave
the island. But during that period of fifteen years of
steady labor, the native language was reduced to a
written form, the whole Bible was translated into the
Malagasy tongue, a school system was established in
the central province of Imerina, many thousands of
children were instructed, and two small churches were
formed. About two hundred Malagasy were believed
to have become sincere Christians, while several thousands
of young people had received instruction in the
elementary facts and truths of Christianity. That was
the period of planting in Madagascar.
Persecution.
The second period in the history of
Malagasy Christianity was that of persecution
which continued for twenty-six years (1835-61).
During this time persistent efforts were made to
root out the hated foreign religion. But the number
.pn +1
.bn 188.png
of the “praying people” steadily increased, and although
about two hundred of them were put to death
in various ways, the Christians multiplied tenfold
during that terrible time of trial.
The truly Christian death of these martyrs is described
in a native account. “Then they prayed, ‘O
Lord, receive our spirits, for Thy love to us hath
caused this to come to us; and lay not this sin to their
charge.’ Thus prayed they as long as they had any
life and then they died--softly, gently; and there was
at the time a rainbow in the heavens, which seemed to
touch the place of the burning.”
Harvest.
In 1862 mission work was re-established,
and then began the third period
in the religious history of the country, emphatically
that of progress. From that date until the present
time Christianity has steadily grown in influence.
A great outward impetus was given to the spread of
Christianity in the early part of 1869 by the baptism
of the queen, Ranavalona II, and her Prime Minister,
and the subsequent destruction of the idols of the
central provinces, and still more by the personal influence
of the sovereign in favor of the Christian religion.[#]
.pm fn-start
The material for this account was gathered from the
Missionary Review of the World--Article by James Sibree--June
1895.
.pm fn-end
A Model
Mission.
Among the societies which entered
Madagascar at this period was the
Norwegian Missionary Society which
settled in the province of Betsileo in 1867. With admirable
.pn +1
.bn 189.png
administration at home, and in spite of serious
difficulty with an opposition mission established by the
Jesuits, they have accomplished a task which is universally
praised by missionary historians. They have
at work, besides many Norwegian and some American
missionaries, ninety-six native pastors and over nine
hundred catechists. There are two medical missions
and a leper asylum, schools and printing offices. It is
reckoned that among the one hundred and thirty
thousand Christians in the Island, eighty-four thousand
are Lutherans.
Among the great names of the mission are those of
Dahle, who established a Seminary for native workers,
and Doctor Borchgrevink, a medical missionary.
.ce
American Societies.
The Norwegians in America, always closely connected
with the Church of the Fatherland, sent their
missionary contributions at first through the fatherland
societies, the Norwegian Missionary Society and
the Norwegian Church (Schreuder’s) Mission. To
Schreuder’s Mission the Norwegian Synod (American)
still contributes, having sent in 1915 about $10,000.
.if h
.il fn=p152.jpg id=p152 w=600px
.ca FIRST GRADUATING CLASS FROM KINDERGARTEN AT OGI, JAPAN.
.sp 2
.il fn=p152b.jpg id=p152b w=600px
.ca GROUP OF THEOLOGICAL STUDENTS, KUMAMOTO.
.if-
.if t
.sp 2
[Illustration: FIRST GRADUATING CLASS FROM KINDERGARTEN AT OGI, JAPAN.]
.sp 2
[Illustration: GROUP OF THEOLOGICAL STUDENTS, KUMAMOTO.]
.sp 2
.if-
In the work in Madagascar American Norwegians
have a large and important part. In 1892 the Norwegian
Missionary Society assigned to the United Norwegian
Lutheran Church (American) the southern
part of the island. In 1897 this field was divided
once more, the Norwegian Lutheran Free Church
.pn +1
.bn 190.png
.pn +1
.bn 191.png
.pn +1
.bn 192.png
(American) taking the western section. Together
these two societies have a territory covering about
thirty thousand square miles, with a population of
almost four hundred thousand. The United Church
contributed in 1915, $42,000 for its work and the
Norwegian Free Church almost $17,000. Together
they have a Christian community of about twenty-six
hundred.
To the work of the Leipsic Society in East Africa
the American Lutheran Synod of Iowa contributes
and to the work of the Hermannsburg society, the Joint
Synod of Ohio.
The Synod of South Carolina, now a part of the
United Synod in the South may be said to have been
the first Lutheran body in America to send a missionary
to Africa. This was Boston Drayton, a colored member
of the English Lutheran Church of Charleston,
who sailed in 1845. Of him or of his work, little more
is known.
An African
Republic.
The Republic of Liberia was established
in 1821 “to be reserved forever
for the settlement of American
freed slaves.” The little republic contains about fifty
thousand of the descendants of these early settlers and
about two million aborigines, who are divided into
eight tribes. Among them fetish worship, superstition,
polygamy, tendency to constant strife, and other characteristic
African faults abound. In this republic the
mission of The General Synod was founded by the Rev.
Morris Officer in 1860. Mr. Officer had served for
.pn +1
.bn 193.png
a year and a half as a missionary of the American
Board, but his heart longed for a mission of his own
Church, and his diary shows his deep satisfaction when
he was authorized to begin. He describes the making
of roads, the planting of banana and coffee trees, sweet
potatoes and flowers. He tells of the first children in
the school, forty boys and girls captured from a slave
ship. When he decided upon a site for the mission he
knelt down among his native helpers and prayed for
God’s blessing upon the new endeavor.
In a year and a half Mr. Officer was compelled to
return on account of ill health. In the meantime reinforcements
had arrived and the sad and stirring history
of this little mission had begun, a history
which might be celebrated, in the words of a writer
for the Missionary Review, in some spirited poem like
“The Charge of the Light Brigade at Balaklava.” Of
eighteen missionaries sent out during the first thirty-six
years, six died within two years after reaching the
field, while eight returned within three years with
greatly shattered health.
An Ideal
Missionary.
In contrast to this shadow we have the
history of Doctor David A. Day, who
lived and labored for twenty-three
years in this dangerous country. A man of strong body
and fine mind, Doctor Day was an ideal missionary.
Possessing deep faith with which to meet serious problems,
and a keen sense of humor with which to meet
smaller difficulties, he labored until he was worn out.
Returning to America when he dared linger no longer,
.pn +1
.bn 194.png
he died almost in sight of the home land, his wife,
whose devotion was no less than his, having died
two years before. Mrs. Day was made of the same
heroic stuff as her husband. As the end of her life
approached she urged her husband to remain in Africa
where he was so much needed rather than join her,
great as was her desire to see him. How many noble
missionary wives have made similar sacrifice!
The great regard in which Doctor Day was held, as
well as the impressionable and affectionate nature of
the people among whom he worked, is shown in an
incident recorded in his biography. When the news
came from America that Mrs. Day was dead, the little
children of the mission gathered a bunch of white
lilies which they put into the hands of one of their
number who carried them into the room, where,
stunned and grief-stricken, Doctor Day bent under the
first shock of his bereavement. Silently laying the
flowers before him, the little girl kissed his feet and as
silently withdrew. Surely missionary work has its
earthly as well as its heavenly reward.
To-day the Muhlenberg mission has fifteen men and
women at work. It counts its native Christians at
three hundred. A valuable and interesting expansion
of the work is the employing of Doctor Westerman, a
distinguished German philologist, to prepare grammars
and dictionaries of the native languages, which, to prepare
for greater growth, the missionaries must learn.
Like all of Africa this mission begs for more workers,
more money, more interest, more prayers.
.pn +1
.bn 195.png
Here closes the record of our work in Africa. It has
given many examples of faith and courage to missionary
history, it has added many names, John Ludwig
Krapf, Rosina Krapf, Schreuder, Day, to the roster of
Africa’s apostles. But in the words of Frederic Perry
Noble, Africa’s chief missionary historian, “Lutheranism
is yet in its attitude toward missions a sleeping
giant.” Since Mr. Noble gave expression to this
opinion, Lutheranism has made a beginning in African
mission work. Still, however, she is not yet aroused.
As in India, so in Africa, German missions and missionaries
have suffered cruelly in the present war.
May the true spirit of Christ so influence His Church
henceforth that missionary and not military warfare
may fill the pages of history.
.pn +1
.bn 196.png
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch05
CHAPTER V. || The Lutheran Church in China, Japan and Elsewhere
.sp 2
China.
.in 4
.nf
The Land
The People
Religion
Character
History
.nf-
.in 2
Early Missions.
.in 4
Karl Frederick Gützlaff
.in 2
Societies
.in 4
German
.in 6
.nf
Basel
Rhenish
Berlin
.nf-
.in 4
Scandinavian
.in 6
.nf
Danish
Norwegian Missionary Society
Norwegian Lutheran China Mission
Swedish Mission in China
Swedish Lutheran Mission in Mongolia
Lutheran Gospel Association of Finland
.nf-
.in 4
American
.in 6
.nf
United Norwegian Lutheran Church
Hauge’s Norwegian Lutheran Synod
Norwegian Synod
Norwegian Free Church
Norwegian Brethren
.nf-
.in 0
Japan.
.in 2
The Land and the People
Societies
.in 4
American
.in 6
.nf
Lutheran Gospel Association of Finland
United Synod in the South
General Council
Danish American
.nf-
.pn +1
.bn 197.png
.in 0
East Indies
.in 2
Societies
.in 4
.nf
Rhenish in Sumatra, Borneo, Nias, etc.
Neukirchen in Java
Dutch in Batoe Islands
.nf-
.in 0
Australia Neuendettelsau
New Guinea Neuendettelsau, Rhenish
The Near East
The Jews
.pn +1
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.pb
.sp 4
.nf c
CHAPTER V.
THE LUTHERAN CHURCH IN CHINA, JAPAN AND ELSEWHERE
China.
.nf-
The Land.
China is the most ancient of the great
empires of the world. It comprises
more than four million square miles and is divided into
eighteen provinces. Among the various annexed countries
are Tartary, Mongolia and Manchuria. There
is a wide variety of scenery and climate, there are
mountains of great elevation and there is an enormous
and fertile river plain, which lies on the lower courses
of the Huang Ho and Yang-tse-Kiang Rivers and
which supports a larger population than any other
region of the globe of equal size.
A Danish Lutheran missionary describes thus the
features of the Chinese landscape:
“The soil of the valley is clothed with light green
or yellow rice-fields, through which the water course
winds like a glittering silver ribbon; along the stream,
or on either side of the valley, wave the delicate leafy
crowns of the bamboo reeds, bowing to the slightest
breeze. If we look up to the mountain-sides on either
hand, these are covered below with mulberry groves,
cotton plantations, and trim tea-grounds, which are
.pn +1
.bn 199.png
often disposed in artificial terraces, which sometimes
also bear corn. Higher up, as far as the mountain
will consent to be ‘clothed’, grow woods, among whose
foliage the light leaves of the camphor-tree, the reddish
leaves of the tallow-tree, and the dark green leaves
of the arbor vitae occupy a conspicuous place; but
there are also found cedars and cypresses. Where the
wood sinks into shrubbery, it frequently consists of
azaleas and similar plants, which we grow in green-houses
or in windows fronting the south, and which
in the flowering time afford a spectacle of dazzling
beauty. There are also found groves of roses or jessamines.
On the whole, there are many very beautiful
landscapes in China. Nor are there wanting wild
mountain regions of an Alpine character. Deserts
there are none; but, on the other hand, there are
dreary and melancholy marshes, and the coasts are often
flat and tiresome.
“While plant life is thus richly developed in China,
the opposite is true of animal life. There is certainly
no region on earth where it plays so slight a part
and is so scantily represented as here. The greedy
and reckless children of men have consumed or expelled
the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air.”
.if h
.il fn=p160.jpg id=p160 w=600px
.ca LUTHERAN CHURCH IN BORNEO.
.sp 2
.il fn=p160b.jpg id=p160b w=600px
.ca LUTHERAN CHURCH IN JAVA.
.if-
.if t
.sp 2
[Illustration: LUTHERAN CHURCH IN BORNEO.]
.sp 2
[Illustration: LUTHERAN CHURCH IN JAVA.]
.sp 2
.if-
The People.
The people, numbering about four hundred
million, live chiefly in large
towns and in dense settlements along the rivers.
Millions live on the rivers in houseboats. The Chinese
are industrious and thrifty and at the same time
ignorant and exceedingly unprogressive. Only a small
.pn +1
.bn 200.png
.pn +1
.bn 201.png
.pn +1
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class is educated, and education, like all else that is
Chinese, has hitherto looked to the past for its subject
matter. It consists of the fixing in mind of the
ancient classical writings and the acquiring of the ancient,
classical style. To the foreigner the language
offers obstacles which are almost insurmountable.
There are only four hundred different words, but
these are so modified by inflections and by the tone of
the voice that their variations are legion. One of the
early missionaries said that in order to acquire the
Chinese language one must have a “body of brass,
lungs of steel, a head of oak, the eyes of eagles, the
heart of an apostle, the memory of an angel and the
life of Methuselah”. The written language is even
more difficult to learn than the spoken language and
both present the greatest difficulty to the missionary
in that they contain no such words as sin, holiness,
regeneration, spirit, God, which are so essential a part
of the Christian vocabulary.
Religion.
Three religions are firmly established,
Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism.
These are not clearly differentiated, by any means,
but the individual frequently selects from each the elements
which please him. Doctor Warneck describes
this strange eclectic religion as follows: “All of them
reverence Confucius, regulate their life--to a certain
extent--according to his precepts, and are devoted to
ancestor worship; all have recourse, especially in sickness
and need, to the magic arts and superstitious hocus
pocus of the Taoists and almost all commend their souls
.pn +1
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at death to the Buddhist priests, have masses read for
the soul and make use of the Buddhist burial ceremonial.
The polite man says to the man of different
belief, and the enlightened man who no longer believes
anything repeats it: ‘The three doctrines come
to the same thing in the end’.”
There are in China also about thirty million Mohammedans.
Character.
The Chinese character is as difficult to
impress as the Chinese language is hard
to learn. Since the Chinese worships that which is
old, the stranger and foreigner seems to him indeed
a “devil”; since he is self-righteous, he does not consider
himself an object for missionary effort. It was
at first laughable to him that missionaries should come
to his land with so foolish a purpose. In scores of
cases he punished the effrontery of their undertaking
with death.
Nevertheless upon his hardened and indifferent
heart there has been wrought a wonderful work. To
Christian nations he has learned to look not only for
a better educational system but with increasing eagerness
for a better religion. Recently an edict was passed
declaring Confucianism to be still the State religion,
but at the same time thousands were thronging to
hear the speakers in a nation-wide Christian campaign.
China no
Longer a
Closed Land.
Until the middle of the Nineteenth
Century China was closed to foreigners.
In 1842, at the end of the infamous
Opium War by which England forced the opium
.pn +1
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trade upon unwilling China, five ports were opened,
Shanghai, Ningpo, Foochow, Amoy and Canton, and
the Island of Hongkong was ceded to England. In
these ports missionaries went at once to work. In
1850 the Taiping Rebellion seemed to promise for
a while not only sweeping reforms but the possible
acceptance of the religion of the foreigners, but it
degenerated into a barbarous and cruel rebellion which
was eventually subdued by “Chinese” Gordon at the
head of the Imperial troops.
In 1856 there was another Opium War in which
France joined. At its close nine more ports were
opened. In 1860 there was a third war and finally
twenty-four ports were opened. Now missionaries
were allowed free course through the Empire, but
they had become more than ever in the eyes of the people
“foreign devils”.
The Boxer
Uprising.
In 1900, by which time it was estimated
that in spite of fearful opposition
there were two hundred and fifteen thousand
Christians, came the Boxer uprising. Disapproving
of the progressive policies of the young Emperor
alarmed by the threatening advance of Germany,
Russia, England and France, the Chinese determined
upon a wholesale slaughter, not only of missionaries
and other foreigners, but of native Christians
as well. With indescribable barbarity thousands
were slain, among them one hundred and thirty-four
missionaries, fifty-two children of missionaries and
sixteen thousand native Christians.
.pn +1
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The effect upon Christian missions was extraordinary.
As though the rain of blood and fire had
been a refreshing shower, the harvest sprang up. Truly
the blood of martyrs was once more the seed of
the Church. Within ten years after the uprising the
number of Christians had more than doubled.
The First
Missionaries.
The first Christian mission to the
Chinese was that of the heroic Nestorians
in the Seventh Century of which
little but a traditional account remains. Roman
Catholic missions record the names of many heroes,
but on account of the hardness of the heart of the
people and also on account of the lack of wisdom of the
missionaries, no permanent missions were established.
Before the treaty ports were opened in 1842,
the English missionary Morrison visited the country
secretly and began Protestant missions by translating
the whole Bible into Chinese. Equal in devotion and
diligence and with a peculiar interest for us was another
missionary, Karl Frederick Gützlaff, a Lutheran whose
ardent appeal for China helped to quicken the missionary
spirit in the American Lutheran Church and
also inspired David Livingstone to give his life to missions.
A Letter to
the King.
Gützlaff was born of humble folk in
Pyritz in Pomerania in 1803. When
he was twelve years old he was apprenticed
to a saddler, but he had other intentions for his
life, and wrote in poetical form his desire to become
a famous man. This poem the lad addressed to no less
.pn +1
.bn 206.png
a person than the King of Prussia, through whom he
was sent first to Halle to school and afterwards to
the institute of Jaenicke at Berlin. In 1826 he went
as a missionary of the Netherlands Society to Java.
After several years of labor, he determined to penetrate
into closed and inhospitable China. When the
Netherlands Society declined to give him permission,
he left their service in 1831 and became an interpreter
on a coast vessel.
Appeals for
Help.
Meanwhile during his service in Java,
Gützlaff had learned the Chinese language,
the most difficult of the many tongues which
his extraordinary gift for language enabled him to
master. Now in the many journeys which he made
up and down the coast, he began to preach and to
distribute thousands of tracts of his own translating.
He wrote to England and America earnest appeals
that workers be sent to share in his labors. Presently
he was made an interpreter in the English consular
service, in which position he had wide opportunity
for Christian work. At the end of the Opium
War he gave valuable service by his knowledge of the
country and the people. Tradition records that at
this time among China’s vast population there were
six Christians.
Though five ports had been opened by the treaty
of Nanking, foreigners were not allowed to go far
beyond them. To meet this difficulty, Gützlaff began
the training of bands of native workers who should
carry the Gospel to the most distant of the eighteen
.pn +1
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provinces. He continued to preach and to call upon
the home lands for aid. In 1849 he visited Europe.
Travelling rapidly, he flew “like an angel” through
most of the European countries, preaching, pleading
and endeavoring to form societies, which should
divide vast China into missionary provinces. Among
the few who heard and answered his plea was, as we
have seen, David Livingstone.
A Cruel
.if h
Disappoint-ment.
.if-
.if t
Disappointment.
.if-
In 1850 Gützlaff returned to China.
The bands of native workers which he
had trained with such enthusiasm had
not lived up to his high hopes but had basely betrayed
him. Before he could do much toward repairing
the damage which they had wrought, he died
at the age of forty-eight. He was buried in Hong
Kong and over his body was erected a mighty stone
bearing in English the inscription, “An Apostle”, and
in German, “The Apostle to the Chinese”.
Author and
Translator.
The literary labors of Gützlaff were
enormous, especially when we consider
that he was constantly occupied with other affairs as
missionary and interpreter. He translated the Bible
into Siamese; he aided the Englishman Robert Morrison
in his translation of the Bible into Chinese;
he published a monthly magazine in Chinese and wrote
in Chinese various books on useful subjects. Among
his English and German works were a “Journal of
Three Voyages along the Coast of China in 1831,
1832 and 1833,” “A Sketch of Chinese History, Ancient
and Modern”, “China Opened” and “The Life
of Taow-Kwang.”
.pn +1
.bn 208.png
As remarkable as Gützlaff’s talent and industry was
his enthusiasm. Where his work did not succeed,
failure was brought about not by any lack in himself
but in those of whom he expected larger things than
they could accomplish.
A missionary historian describes a memorial to Gützlaff,
which seems singularly appropriate to his life of
devotion.
A Memorial.
“We were passing through the Straits
of Formosa at midnight when we saw
suddenly before us on China’s wild coast a towering
lighthouse. At the same moment a loud cry came over
the water, ‘Gützlaff!’ We asked who was summoned
and they answered that the lighthouse was named
for the missionary Gützlaff, and thus by the use of
his name instead of the accustomed ‘Beware’, was
his memory recalled.”
.ce
German Societies.
It is proper to include here as elsewhere the histories
of those German societies, which, though they
are not wholly Lutheran, yet employ and are supported
by many Lutherans. The three Lutheran or
partly Lutheran organizations which have missions in
China are the Basel, the Berlin and the Rhenish societies.
In response to the appeal of Gützlaff, the Basel
Society sent to China in 1847 two missionaries, Lechler
and Hamberg. Greeted with joy by Gützlaff,
they set about learning the Chinese language and began
.pn +1
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at once to preach with the aid of interpreters.
Their work was begun in the southwestern part of
Canton, the most southern of China’s eighteen provinces.
So well did they labor that by 1855 they had
one hundred and seventy-five Christians. Gradually
a thoroughly organized mission was established with
the characteristic Basel features of industrial work
and careful education. In 1897 the mission celebrated
its fiftieth anniversary, together with the fiftieth
anniversary of the work of Missionary Lechler,
the latter a rare and notable occasion in the history
of missions.
Fifty Years
of Service.
To-day the Basel Society works in two
districts, one in the highlands, the
other in the lowlands of Canton. It
has a staff of forty-seven missionaries, who are divided
among seventeen main stations, and one hundred
and ninety-seven out-stations.
In addition to its foreign forces it has at work
two hundred and twenty natives. Its communicant
members are seven thousand, the total number of its
Christians eleven thousand.
With the Basel missionaries there went to China
in 1847 two missionaries from the Rhenish Society,
Genahr and Kuster. They established themselves
in the province of Canton and nearer Hong Kong
than Lechler and Hamberg. The mission has had
during the seventy-five years of its existence many difficulties,
but, though it has never grown to be very
large, it has accomplished a fine work.
.pn +1
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A Missionary
Sermon.
One of the first of its misfortunes was
the death of Missionary Genahr, who
contracted cholera from a Christian who had been
cast out by his employers. The earnest spirit of this
pious man may be read in a little missionary sermon
from his pen concerning those easy-going Christians
who think that it lies entirely within their own good
pleasure whether they will do anything for work
abroad. “In the Book of Judges, fifth chapter, twenty-third
verse, we find: ‘Curse ye Meroz, said the
angel of the Lord, curse ye bitterly the inhabitants
thereof; because they came not to the help of the Lord,
to the help of the Lord against the mighty.’ In an
old book we find the following questions and answers
upon this verse:
“‘Who was commanded to curse Meroz?’ Answer:
‘The angel of the Lord.’
“‘What had Meroz done?’ ‘Nothing.’
“‘How? why, then is Meroz cursed?’ ‘Because she
has done nothing.’
“‘What should Meroz have done?’ ‘Come to the
help of the Lord.’
“‘Could not the Lord, then, have succeeded without
Meroz?’ ‘The Lord did succeed without Meroz.’
“‘Then has the Lord met with a loss thereby?’
‘No, but Meroz has.’
“‘Is Meroz, then, to be cursed therefor?’ ‘Yes,
and that bitterly.’
“‘Is it right that a man should be cursed for having
.pn +1
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done nothing?’ ‘Yes, when he should have done
something.’
“‘Who says that?’ ‘The angel of the Lord; and
the Lord Himself says (Luke 12:47); “He that knew
his Lord’s will and did it not, shall be beaten with
many stripes.”’”
Danger and
Loss.
In 1871 two of the stations of the
Rhenish Society were destroyed by a
fanatic mob who accused the missionaries of desiring
to poison all those who were not Christians. Again
in 1898, stations were destroyed by robbers and rebels.
Fortunately the Boxer uprising in 1900 left
the property of this mission almost untouched and the
missionaries returning after it was safe, were able to
begin almost where they had left off.
At Tungkum the society has a large hospital, whose
superintendent had in 1899 twenty thousand consultations.
The latest reports gave two thousand five
hundred church members divided among seven stations,
at which there are twenty-three missionaries.
In 1873 the Rhenish Society took over what remained
of Gützlaff’s mission.
A Missionary
Scholar.
Among the missionaries of the Rhenish
Society was Doctor Ernest Faber,
a scholar of immense learning, who, after being in
the service of the Society for eight years joined the
General Protestant Missionary Society. He is especially
famous for his translations of the Chinese
classics and it was said of him that he spoke a better
Chinese than the natives themselves.
.pn +1
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A Chinese
Saint Paul.
The Berlin Society has two separate
fields of labor in China. The first is
in the Province of Canton, near the
missions of the Basel and Rhenish societies. The mission
has its record of loss and persecution during the
native uprisings and also its stories of victory. In its
early history the station at Thamschui was the scene
of a cruel attack. The mob was led by a young man
blowing a trumpet and calling to his followers to
exterminate the foreign devils, who meanwhile fled
from house roof to house roof and finally escaped.
Subsequently this young man was converted and became
a powerful evangelist who like Saint Paul endeavored
with all his power to build up that which he
had hitherto torn down.
In Time of
Famine.
The second station of the Berlin Society
is in the Province of Shantung.
In consequence of the assistance given during the
famine in 1889, when over $200,000 was distributed
and over one hundred thousand lives
saved, many became interested in Christianity as the
religion which inspires deeds of kindness and mercy;
and during 1890 it is said that over a thousand
persons were baptized whose attention was drawn
to the religion of Christ by the fact that the missionaries
were so prominent in securing this aid and distributing
it. In this work and its reward the Berlin
Society had a part.
The following letter from a missionary of the
Berlin Society describes vividly a Chinese city and
gives an account of the work of the Christian evangelist.
.pn +1
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A Chinese
City.
“We hired a bearer and proceeded
through the endless confusion of the
narrow, dirty streets of Canton, through the evil smells
of a many-thousand-year-old decaying culture, on past
all the innumerable shops and idol temples, halls of
justice and idol altars, past all the numberless human
forms, poor and rich, well and sick, vested with silk
or covered with rags, painted with vermilion or consumed
with leprosy, which flood the lanes of the giant
city of Southern China, out through the great iron
Northern gate, through several streets of the suburbs,
past scattered huts--and now the great alluvial plain
of the Northstream delta stretches before our eyes.
A pure air breathes over the land and encompasses
us after we have escaped the exhalations which rest,
suffocating and heavy, upon the city of a million
souls.
In the
Mountains.
“In the schools and on the crossways,
where the passing wayfarers were resting
in the tea-huts, we sought opportunities to preach
the Word of God. Often we found them, often we
waited in vain. Many a guest listened an instant, then
silently took up his bundle and went on his way. There
was nothing in the proclamation of the Word that engaged
the man’s interest. Companies of heathen hungry
for salvation, and hanging upon the lips of the missionary,
were not to be found in the mountains; such, we
may well say, are not to be found anywhere in China.
The Lord alone knows where a seed-corn of eternity
sinks into a human heart. The man takes it with him;
.pn +1
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often it sinks out of reach or is choked by the thorns
and briers of heathenism, yet often, after the lapse of
years, it shoots up again into the light. At one tea-hut,
which was covered with the leaves of the fern
palm, there gathered around us a great company of
women. They were burdened with stones out of the
neighboring quarry, at the same time carrying their
infants on their hips. They laid off their loads and
listened, and some asked very intelligent questions,
‘Sir, if we are not to worship idols, how shall we
pray to the heavenly Father?’ A heathen, sitting
near, disturbed us by his unseemly witticisms. The
language is rich in such equivocal turns. People do
not understand the reference, and are taken in by the
seeming harmlessness of the phrase. The helper explained
to me the more usual of them. They open
a view into the hideous depths of heathenism.”
This description was written many years ago. To-day
the missionary historian rejoices to record that
there are companies of Chinese hungry for the news of
salvation. In many instances the largest auditoriums
in great cities have proved too small for the throngs
which pressed to attend evangelistic meetings.
The Berlin Society has a staff of thirty-six missionaries
in fifteen main stations. Its baptized Christians
number about ten thousand.
The contribution of German Lutherans to mission
work in China is not to be reckoned altogether by figures.
Here as elsewhere the Germans have thoroughly
studied the native languages, and have devoted much
.pn +1
.bn 215.png
time to the writing of grammars and dictionaries and
the making of translations so that the foundation might
be well laid. Their labors have been a benefit to
other missionary societies as well as to their own.
.ce
Scandinavian Societies.
The Danish Lutherans have a mission in Manchuria
which was begun in 1895. Two stations are in
the south and one at Harbin. There are forty-two
men and women at work and the number of baptized
Christians is nearly one thousand.
The missionaries appointed at the opening of the
work in China visited on their way the United States
and roused interest in many churches of the United
Danish Evangelical Lutheran Synod, which now aids
in the China work of the Fatherland Society.
The Norwegian Missionary Society has six stations
in the Hunan Province, in which there are fifteen hundred
church members and one thousand catechumens.
The Norwegian Lutheran China Mission works in
Northern Hupeh with twenty-nine missionaries and
has won about eight hundred and fifty Christians.
The Swedish Mission in China, founded in 1887,
labors in connection with the China Inland Mission,
a large and successful inter-denominational mission,
which has more than twenty thousand communicants.
To this work other Swedish societies contribute.
A Pioneer.
The founding of the Swedish Mission
in China was due to the influence of
a visit from Lars Skrefsrud, one of the founders of
.pn +1
.bn 216.png
the Home Mission to the Santals in India. His
burning enthusiasm for the cause of missions influenced
Erik Folke to become in 1887 a pioneer in China. He
studied the Chinese language in the school of the
China Inland Mission and then arranged for the
founding of an independent Swedish Mission, which
should, however, work in connection with the China
Inland Mission. Mr. Folke’s fearful experiences during
the Boxer uprising so affected his health that it
was necessary that he should return to Sweden where
he serves as president of the Home Committee.
The field of this Swedish Mission is composed of
the parts of the Provinces of Shensi, Shansi and Honan,
which meet at the turn of the Yellow River from south
to east. It numbers almost as many inhabitants as
Sweden. Among the mission institutions are opium
refuges where those afflicted with the opium habit
may go for treatment.
The Swedish
Martyrs.
There is a small Swedish Lutheran
Mission in Mongolia, begun in 1899
with three missionaries, its station being at Hallang
Osso, eighty-five miles north of Kalgan. This mission
suffered greatly during the Boxer uprising, its
three missionaries being killed. It seemed for a long
time that labor in this district was worse than useless,
but a few faithful workers have persisted. Now the
three missionaries who are on the field believe that
the harvest will shortly be gathered.
The Swedish missions have laid many sacrifices
upon the altar of the cause which they love. The
.pn +1
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total number of Swedes murdered in the Boxer uprising
was about forty, one-third of the whole number of
the westerners who were killed. A number of these
were Lutherans. If the blood of its martyrs is the
seed of the Church, there opens for Sweden a great
future in China.
The Lutheran Gospel Association of Finland carries
on a mission in Northern Hupeh with sixteen
missionaries in four stations.
.ce
American Societies.
A Generous
People.
The Danish Lutherans support, as we
have seen, the mission of their fatherland.
Five American Norwegian Lutheran bodies have
missions in China, to which they contributed in 1915,
about $118,000.
The United Norwegian Lutheran Church is at
work in the south central portion of the Province of
Honan, where it took over in 1904 several stations of
an independent society. It has now six stations
and forty-nine missionaries. The Christians number
about fifteen hundred. Among the stations are
Sinyang, where there are training schools for native
workers and Kioshan where the mission hospital is
situated.
Hauge’s Norwegian Lutheran Synod began its work
in China in 1891. The main station is Fan Cheng and
the territory lies partly in the Honan and partly in
the Hupeh Province. The field of this mission covers
.pn +1
.bn 218.png
six thousand square miles and has a population of between
three and four millions. The working force
includes twenty-one missionaries, two of them medical
missionaries, and ninety-eight native helpers. The
Christians number twenty-six hundred.
The Norwegian Synod has had a mission in Honan
since 1912. Here ten missionaries are at work in
three stations.
The Norwegian Free Church has been at work in
Honan since 1915. There are six missionaries at work
in a section the population of which numbers two million.
The Norwegian Lutheran Brethren Society established
its mission in Honan in 1900. There are fourteen
missionaries at work.
Another
Large Field.
The Augustana Synod[#] has had since
1905 a mission in the Honan province
and now has fourteen men and five women at work
there. The field is in the form of a triangle with one
corner at Hsu-Cheo, one at Nan-Yang-Fu and the
third at Honan-Fu. Its area is about ten thousand
square miles, a little less than the State of Minnesota,
with a population ten times as large, that is, about
three million. The province of Honan was one of
the last to submit to the invasion of the missionary
and the first missionaries of the Augustana Synod suffered
during their search for a mission field from the
feeling against the foreigner. Their experience is
vividly described by their first missionary, the Rev.
Edwins.[#]
.pm fn-start
A part of the General Council.
.pm fn-end
.pm fn-start
This account is taken from Our First Decade in China,
published by the China Board of the Augustana Synod.
.pm fn-end
.pn +1
.bn 219.png
A Perilous
Journey.
“To our knowledge no danger threatened
us at any time except on the second
day of our journey. Then it happened that we
were attacked at a country village where two of the
common Chinese open-air theatres had attracted a concourse
of about two thousand idle spectators. Through
the village street, which was crowded to the utmost,
our clumsy mule carts had to make their way. On
seeing that we were foreigners many in the crowd
began to yell out a kind of unearthly war-whoop. Our
drivers were somewhat uneasy and desired to move
on as fast as the dense crowd would make way. The
two-wheeled cart swayed from side to side on the uneven
road. A basket of Chinese steamed bread was
upset by a slight collision with one of our carts. The
vendor, a young boy, screamed loudly as his little
loaves rolled on the ground and were snatched up by
the thievish bystanders. This episode increased the
commotion. Little by little, however, our carts plowed
their way through the dense mass of surging humanity,
and we were soon on the point of leaving the crowd
behind us, but then the mob followed us hooting and
yelling and hurling at us and our mules and vehicles
whatever missiles were at hand. Some of our little
company received heavy blows. The mules pulling
the foremost cart stopped and for a moment it seemed
.pn +1
.bn 220.png
that we must be surrounded, but fortunately our drivers
succeeded in getting the animals started again and
by rapid driving we managed to outdistance the howling
mob.”
Provided with a military escort, travelling by another
route and aided by the workers of the China Inland
Mission, the Americans selected their field. To-day
thirty-two missionaries are preaching and teaching.
Two hospitals and a school for the blind have been
established. In 1915 the Synod contributed $40,000
to this work.
Co-operation
a Reality.
Recently all the Lutheran Missions in
Central China united in a co-operative
plan of educational work, which it is expected will
result in economy and efficiency. A union theological
seminary was established at Shekow in Hupeh Province
near Hankow and a union college, a union publishing
house, and a union periodical are under consideration.
In the words of a Lutheran missionary historian:
“Co-operation is not only a watchword but
an established reality in the Lutheran missions of
China; and thus the foreign missions of our American
Lutheran Church excel the home churches in wisdom
and working efficiency.”
The Heart
of China.
The opportunities of the Lutheran
Church in Central China are set forth
in Our First Decade in China. “It will appear in
looking at the map of China and noting the important
position that the Lutheran Church holds geographically,
that God has meant her to be a dominating force
.pn +1
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in new China. He has entrusted to her the very heart
of China. The Lutheran Church occupies in the central
provinces territory equal to all of Illinois and
Iowa and half of Wisconsin, or as large as the whole
of New England plus New York, Pennsylvania, New
Jersey, Delaware and half of Maryland. In this territory
she is ministering to a population of fifty million
souls.”
The Work of
a Century.
A hundred years have passed since
Robert Morrison, the English missionary,
baptized his first convert and recorded
in his diary. “At a spring of water issuing
from the foot of a lofty hill, by the seaside, away from
human observation, I baptized him in the name of
the Father, Son and Holy Ghost.... May he be
the first fruits of a great harvest.” To-day there
are in China over five thousand foreign missionaries,
seventeen thousand native workers and two hundred
and thirty-five thousand communicant members of the
Protestant Church. Of these about ten per cent. are
Lutherans.
.ce
Japan.
The Land.
Japan proper consists of four large islands,
Yezo, Hondo, Shikoku and Kyushu
and about three thousand smaller islands. In
the northern part the climate is severe, in the southern
part semi-tropical. From north to south through the
center of the large islands runs a long line of volcanic
mountains whose highest peaks are still active. From
.pn +1
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this high ridge the land slopes gradually to either
shore. Only about one-tenth can be cultivated, an
area which is equal to about one-tenth of the State
of California. From this soil about fifty-three million
persons draw their sustenance.
The Religion.
Like the Chinese, the Japanese selects
his religion from among three
great religions, Shintoism, Buddhism and Confucianism.
Like the Chinese he frequently thinks it well
to mix the three. If he is a Confucianist, he is thoroughly
trained in the rules which govern man’s relation
to the State and to his fellow man; if he is a
Buddhist, he learns self-control and self discipline in
order that he may at the last become absorbed into
a vague impersonal deity; if he is a Shintoist he worships
the rulers and his ancestors.
The Japanese
a Lover of
Beauty and
a Fatalist.
The Japanese is intensely patriotic and
invariably civil and courteous. His
love of beauty finds expression in almost
every detail of his life, his
practical ability needs no further proof than the
adaptation of the nation’s millions to its circumscribed
area. His life is happy; but the volcanic eruptions,
numerous earthquakes, dreadful tidal waves which
bring to his lips a patient smile and a fatalistic word
“No help for it” must stir in the depths of his human
heart other feelings, however unexpressed of terror
and dismay. To him, so far lifted above many other
non-Christians but lacking the chief thing, the Christian’s
.pn +1
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God offers peace for terror and assurance for
dismay.
.ce
Scandinavian Societies.
There is but one European Lutheran Society
in Japan, the Lutheran Gospel Association of Finland,
which has six men and three women in its field northwest
of Tokyo, where it began to work in 1902.
.ce
American Societies.
“Kyushu
Gakuin.”
The mission of the United Synod in
the South was begun in 1892. It has
met with the difficulties and obstacles common to all
young enterprises and is now well-established. Its
chief stations are in Saga, a city of thirty-five thousand,
in Kumamoto, a city of sixty-five thousand and in
Fukuoka, which, together with its twin city Hakata
has a population of eighty thousand. The island of
Kyushu upon which these cities lie is densely populated,
and there is an average of only one Protestant
Christian to over one thousand of the people. In the
city of Kumamoto is located the educational institution
of the United Synod and the only Lutheran
educational institution in Japan, called Kyushu
Gakuin, which consists of a middle school and a
theological department for the training of native
workers. Here almost six hundred boys and young
men are being educated, who are but a small part of
those who would gladly come if there were larger
accommodations. The work among the little children
.pn +1
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in Sunday schools and kindergartens meets with hearty
support at home, a work whose joys it is easy to comprehend.
The United Synod has at work four missionary
families and two single women. Its baptized
membership is over six hundred.
Candidates
for Chris-tian
Work.
The second American Lutheran body
to enter Japan was the Danish Synod
which established itself in 1898 in the
same neighborhood, its chief station
being at Kurume. At Kurume it has a baptized membership
of one hundred and forty four. From this congregation
ten young men have during the last few years
offered themselves for training in Christian work.
The Danes send to the school at Kumamoto a resident
professor, the Rev. J. M. T. Winther, who is a highly
efficient teacher.
A Student
Dormitory.
The last of the American Lutherans
to establish a mission in Japan was the
General Council, which in 1908 began work in Tokyo,
the chief city of the Empire. It has now a second
station at Nagoya. Besides its preaching and educational
work the mission conducts a dormitory for
students who come to Tokyo to attend the university.
It is hoped by means of Christian influence and by
the Christian services which these young men are required
to attend to win many. There are two missionary
families in residence and a baptized membership
of twenty-eight. The General Council maintains
a professor in the school at Kumamoto and contributes
.pn +1
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at present a third of the running expenses of
the school.
One of the many happy features of Lutheran work
in Japan is the friendly co-operation of the three
American Boards. It is the intention of them and
their missionaries to build up a single, united Japanese
Church. Freely aiding one another, all lending their
services to the building up of the school in Kumamoto,
they are directed by a common conference and their
financial matters are managed by a single treasurer.
The Christian
Church in
Japan.
In the words of a missionary of the
United Synod in the South, “Every
indication points to the ultimate success
of the Church in Japan. Only
lethargy and unbelief can rob her of the victory....
The leaven of Christ’s Gospel has been working in
Japanese society for half a century, and under its
influence the whole lump is gradually undergoing a
subtle change. There are higher ideals of social and
civic righteousness; different conceptions of responsibility
toward the weak; a growing consciousness of
sin, which never existed before; dissatisfaction with
present religious and moral conditions; an impelling
desire to progress along the lines of the highest material
and spiritual development of the west.... A
learned professor in the Imperial University, himself
a non-Christian, has said: ‘Buddhism can never again
control the thought of Japan; Christianity will rule
the life of New Japan.’”
.pn +1
.bn 226.png
.ce
The East Indies.
Where Every
Prospect
Pleases.
Southeast of India lies a group of large
islands known by the name of East
Indies. These are colonial possessions
of Holland. Their population numbering thirty-eight
million is divided among various tribes of the Malay
race whose character is as varied as that of the different
tribes of Africa. The land is rich and its
products many, among them sugar-cane, coffee, rice,
spices and all varieties of tropical fruits. Many sections
are covered with forests of valuable timber.
There are Lutheran missionaries on the islands of
Borneo, Sumatra, Nias, Java and on the group to the
west of Sumatra, which are called the Batoe Islands.
Borneo.
On the fertile and beautiful Island of
Borneo the Rhenish Society[#] has had
its missionaries for eighty years. Beginning along the
southeast coast, the missionaries pushed gradually into
the interior by way of the rivers. The Dyaks among
whom they labored were the fiercest of savages and
“head hunters.” Finally eight stations were established
and the future appeared bright, when in 1859
during a rebellion of the Malays against their Dutch
rulers, the Dyaks became involved. In the struggle
which ensued, all the inland stations were destroyed
and seven of the missionaries were murdered. In a
few years the work was recommenced. To-day there
are eighteen missionaries and the native church numbers
about three thousand five hundred.
.pm fn-start
It should be remembered that the Rhenish Society is
largely but not entirely Lutheran.
.pm fn-end
.pn +1
.bn 227.png
Sumatra--A
Great
Achieve-ment.
For more than fifty years, since 1861,
the Rhenish Society has conducted a
mission in the island of Sumatra. The
larger part of the population is Mohammedan, but
in the interior there are tribes who still retain their
primitive religion. Among these tribes are the
Bataks, who have a speech and written characters
of their own. Once cannibals, they had been before
the advent of the Rhenish Missionary Society the
object of evangelizing work which had failed. In
spite of constant danger the early missionaries continued
faithful. The annals of missions have scarcely
anywhere a greater victory to record. There is now
a well organized church partly self-supporting.
Thirty Batak native preachers have been ordained
and work is carried on at forty-one main stations and
five hundred out-stations. Twenty-seven thousand five
hundred Batak children are being educated in five
hundred schools. There is a training school for
native preachers, a hospital, a leper asylum and a
large industrial school. The Christian community
numbers about one hundred and fifty thousand.
The Work of
Deaconesses.
During the last twenty years the Rhenish
Society has sent out deaconesses to
take special charge of the work among
women. They manage the girls’ schools, teach and
give Bible lessons to married and unmarried women
and try in every way to further the development of
their own sex.
.pn +1
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Not only have the Rhenish missionaries won a large
harvest from among the Bataks, but they are winning
also many converts from among the Mohammedans,
a much more difficult task.
The effect of the Christian religion is described in a
letter from a Rhenish missionary in Sumatra.
A Land
Transformed.
“What a difference between now and
thirteen years ago! Then everything
was unsafe; no one dared to go half an hour’s distance
from his village; war, robbery, piracy and slavery
reigned everywhere. Now there is a free, active Christian
life, and churches full of attentive hearers. The
faith of our young Christians is seen in their deeds.
They have renounced idolatrous customs; they visit
the sick, and pray with them; they go to their enemies
and make conciliation with them. This has often made
a powerful impression on the heathen, because they saw
that the Christians could do what was impossible to
heathen--they could forgive injuries. Many heathen
have been so overcome by this conduct of the Christians
that they came to us and said: ‘The Lord Jesus has
conquered.’”
The failure of Mohammedanism to meet the deep
need of the human soul is shown in another letter from
a Rhenish missionary in the same field.
In the
Last Hour.
“Here I must make mention of the
faithful Asenath, whom on the last day
of the old year we committed to the bosom of the earth.
After an illness patiently endured for two years she
felt her end approaching. As the last provision for her
.pn +1
.bn 229.png
way she wished yet once more to enjoy the Holy Supper.
I administered it to her in her roomy house before a
large assemblage. As I was about to give her the
bread she said, ‘Let me first pray.’ And now the
woman, who for weeks had not been able to sit upright,
straightened herself up, and prayed for fully ten
minutes, as if she would fain pray away every earthly
care out of her heart. I have seldom heard a woman
pray in such wise. Thereupon she received the sacred
elements. The next day I found with her a Mohammedan
chieftain, who on taking leave wished her health
and long life. ‘What say you?’ she replied, ‘after that
I have no further longing. My wish is now to go to
heaven, to my Lord. Death has no longer any terrors
for me.’ Astonished, the Mohammedan replied: ‘Such
language is strange to us. We shrink and cower before
death, and therefore use every means possible to
recover and live long.’
The Beams of
a Living Hope.
“Even so I think of our James, whose
only son died. When at the funeral
I pressed his hand, with some
words of comfort, he said: ‘Only do not suppose that
I murmur and complain. All that God does to me, is
good and wholesome for me. I shall hereafter find
my son again in life eternal.’ So vanish little by little
the comfortless wailings of heathenism; the beams of
a living hope penetrate the pangs and the terrors of
death, as the beams of the sun the clouds of the night.
And, as the hopelessness of heathenism is disappearing,
so is also its implacability. When Christians contend,
.pn +1
.bn 230.png
and at the Communion I say to them: ‘Give each
other your hands’, often they say: ‘Nature is against it;
but how can I withstand the graciousness of my
Saviour?’ Such words are not seldom heard. And am
I not well entitled to hope, that they, as a great gift of
my God, warrant a confident hope in the final and
glorious victory of the Prince of Life, and of his great
and righteous cause?”
Nias.
On the Island of Nias and in some of
the lesser islands, the Rhenish missionaries
have been at work since 1865. Here there
are about a quarter of a million inhabitants who are
racially related to the Bataks. Persisting through
many years with but a few baptisms, the missionaries
were finally rewarded. There are now thirteen
stations with eighteen thousand Christians. The number
of inquiries is greatest in those portions of the
island where heathenism is the least broken, and the
whole island seems to be open to the Gospel.
The Rhenish missionaries have in all in Malaysia
Christian communities whose total inhabitants number
one hundred and sixty-five thousand, of whom seventy-five
thousand are church members. It is a rule
of the Rhenish society to exercise the greatest
care in baptizing converts so that only those shall be
accepted who are worthy and who understand the step
which they are taking.
Java.
The beautiful Island of Java to the
Southeast of Sumatra has been called
Holland’s treasure house. Though the island has
.pn +1
.bn 231.png
been under Christian control for three centuries the
results of mission work do not make a very large
showing. The largest of the Protestant Christian
societies at work is the German Neukirchen Mission
which has eleven principal stations, with twenty-nine
workers. Java is inhabited chiefly by Mohammedans
who have here a university and who have issued the
Koran in the Javanese language. These Mohammedans
are more willing to listen to the Gospel teaching
than those in many other parts of the world.
The Batoe
Islands.
On the Batoe Islands south of Nias, a
Dutch Lutheran Missionary Society
has a station with two missionaries and five hundred
Christians.
.ce
Australia.
The
Destruction
of the Native
Australians.
Originally the continent of Australia
was occupied by Papuans, who have
been gradually exterminated or driven
into reservations. The history of the
Australian native affords a record of injustice and
almost incredible cruelty. The first foreign settlers
were a band of criminals quartered there by England;
then as the richness of the country became known,
there arrived other settlers who with almost unthinkable
barbarity dispossessed and murdered the natives,
shooting them down like beasts, poisoning them in
crowds, so that to-day the great expanse of Australia
has within it not more than fifty-five thousand Papuans.
.pn +1
.bn 232.png
This little remnant is cared for by the government
and to it go missionaries of various denominations,
among them those of the Neuendettelsau
Mission which has two stations, one at Elim-Hope in
Queensland and another at Bethesda in South Australia.
The Australian Immanuel Synod which is
composed of Germans living in Australia has a station
at New Hermannsburg in South Australia.
.ce
New Guinea.
Success Amid
Danger.
In 1886 the Neuendettelsau Society
began to work in New Guinea.
There in Kaiser Wilhelm’s Land, which is a German
protectorate, it has four stations. The climate is
dangerous, the language difficult to learn, and the
various tribes at enmity with one another. Nevertheless
the first fruits have been gathered, so that in 1909,
three thousand six hundred Christians were reported.
Thirty-five missionaries are on the field.
To the work of this mission the Lutheran Synod
of Iowa contributes.
In Kaiser Wilhelm’s Land there is also a mission of
the Rhenish Society, which has three stations round
Astrolabe Bay.
.ce
Lutherans in the Near East.
An Untilled
Field.
“The Mohammedan world, which extends
over the whole of North Africa,
part of southeast Europe, and from Arabia and Asia
Minor, through Persia as far as China and the Dutch
.pn +1
.bn 233.png
East Indies, and which numbers one hundred and ninety-six
million five thousand adherents, is still almost
entirely closed against the Gospel. This is true
not only where there is Mohammedan rule, and
where conversion to Christianity is by direction of the
Koran punished with death, but also in the Christian
colonial dominions of British and Dutch India.
Missions to Mohammedans are carried on by societies
and individuals, but considerable congregations have
nowhere yet been formed from the confessors of Islam
with the single exception of those in Java and Sumatra....
Besides Mohammedan fanaticism, a special
hindrance which has to be reckoned with is the unfortunate
connection of religion with politics. Not
only are the Mohammedan governments inspired with
the greatest distrust towards evangelical missionaries,
as if they were the instigators of sedition, but missions
are also impeded by the political jealousy of the
Christian powers.”
Thus wrote Doctor Warneck, the great Lutheran
historian of missions in 1902! He went on to speak
of the policies of Russia, England and Germany,
which jealously forbade the touching of Turkey. The
good man is no longer living--what would be his
emotions if he could look in 1917 upon the Near East
and the confusion which political jealousy has wrought!
.if h
.il fn=p192.jpg id=p192 w=600px
.ca OFFICERS AND TEACHERS OF LUTHERAN SUNDAY SCHOOL, NEW AMSTERDAM, BRITISH GUIANA.
.sp 2
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.ca ITUNI SCHOOL IN SCHOOL ROOM WHICH IS ALSO THE CHURCH.
.sp 2
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.ca SOME INDIAN MEMBERS OF ITUNI CONGREGATION.
.if-
.if t
.sp 2
[Illustration: OFFICERS AND TEACHERS OF LUTHERAN SUNDAY SCHOOL,
NEW AMSTERDAM, BRITISH GUIANA.]
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[Illustration: ITUNI SCHOOL IN SCHOOL ROOM WHICH IS ALSO THE CHURCH.]
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[Illustration: SOME INDIAN MEMBERS OF ITUNI CONGREGATION.]
.sp 2
.if-
The Lutheran Church has made but little effort
either to revive the ancient Christian churches of the
East, or to convert the Mohammedans. The most
ambitious plans were those of the Basel Society whose
.pn +1
.bn 234.png
.pn +1
.bn 235.png
.pn +1
.bn 236.png
leader, Christian Frederic Spittler, dreamed of an
apostolic road from Jerusalem to Gondar in Abyssinia.
The early work of the Basel Society in Russia and
Persia was ended by imperial command.
A Lutheran
Orphanage.
Among the various German missionary
enterprises in Palestine which draw
a large part of their support from Lutheran sources,
is the Syrian Orphanage outside Jerusalem, which for
sixty-six years has been training children in useful
trades. Here carpentry, joinery, printing, tailoring,
shoe-making, blacksmithing and brick-making are
taught. Its founder was Pastor Schneller, at whose
death it was continued by his son. Now more than
two hundred boys are enrolled, many of whom are
confirmed in the Lutheran Church. A few years ago
a school for the blind was added which received both
boys and girls, who are taught basket-weaving, chair
and brush-making.
Another German enterprise which is partly Lutheran
is the German Orient Mission founded in 1895.
From its printing press at Philipopolis it has issued
translations of the New Testament and other religious
literature into Turkish. Two Turks who were
converted were compelled to take refuge in Germany.
The German Jerusalem Union has been at work
since 1852. Its chief care is for the German churches
in Palestine, but it conducts also mission work in the
old Christian Arab population.
The German Jerusalem Association was founded in
1889 for the benefit of the German Evangelical congregation
.pn +1
.bn 237.png
in Jerusalem. This is in no sense a missionary
enterprise, but the fact that it is supported
and authorized by the German government gives importance
to all the German Lutheran work in Palestine.
In 1898 the German Emperor and Empress
were present at the dedication of the Church of
the Redeemer, supported by this organization. This
church building stands within the walls of the city
not far from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
The Work
of Deaconesses.
Schools and hospitals at Jerusalem,
Beirut, Constantinople and Cairo are
supported and conducted by the Kaiserswerth
Deaconesses, who for sixty years have labored
in the East. The last report gave one hundred and
twenty-eight as the number actively engaged.
The Danish Lutherans have small stations in Syria,
Asia Minor and Arabia.
The Church of Sweden conducts a hospital in Bethlehem.
The only direct work by American Lutherans for
the Near East is done through the small Intersynodical
Orient Mission Society of the American Norwegians,
Swedes and Germans, whose field is Kurdistan. The
Joint Synod of Ohio supports a missionary in Persia,
a vast and uncultivated field, where there is one missionary
to two hundred and twenty-one thousand of the
population. There has also been another Lutheran
Society at work, the Syro-Chaldean.
.pn +1
.bn 238.png
A Lutheran
Scholar.
It is doubtful whether all other enterprises
for the conversion of the Jews
have equalled in bulk or importance the work of a
Lutheran, Dr. Franz Delitzsch, one of the most celebrated
scholars of his time, who was born in 1813,
and who died in Leipsic in 1890. His greatest devotion
was given to mission work for the Jews, and
for them he translated the New Testament into Hebrew.
The first chapters appeared in 1838; by 1888
eighty thousand copies had been published. Though
to millions of Jews the languages of the countries in
which they sojourned had become familiar, yet to
them religion and religious instruction could be given
in no other tongue than the sacred Hebrew to which
they were accustomed.
Doctor Delitzsch’s translation was not the first
which had been made, but like Luther’s translation of
the Bible into German it far surpassed in accuracy
and literary value all that had gone before.
On account of his close friendship with the fathers
of the Missouri Lutherans in this country, Doctor
Delitzsch’s name is a familiar one to a large part of
the American Church.
Beside his translation of the New Testament he
contributed many other works to Hebrew literature,
tracts upon various subjects, commentaries, and a
monthly journal.
.pn +1
.bn 239.png
.pn +1
.bn 240.png
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch06
CHAPTER VI. || Lutheran Foreign Missions on Western Continent
.sp 2
South America
Porto Rico
The American Indian
Alaska
The American Negro
Conclusion.
.pn +1
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.pn +1
.bn 242.png
.pb
.sp 4
.ce
Chapter VI.
.ce
LUTHERAN FOREIGN MISSIONS ON THE WESTERN CONTINENT
.ce
South America.
The Land.
To a large proportion of the Americans
who are interested in missions Asia and
Africa are better known than the great continent of
South America which lies so much nearer. Of the
physical features of South America it is necessary to
speak in superlative terms. Here is the largest river
in the world, the Amazon, with thirty thousand miles
of navigable waterway, here are the densest forests,
here is the greatest mountain range. The continent is
five thousand miles long and at its broadest point,
three thousand miles wide. Its long coast line offers
splendid harbors; its interior table lands abundant
minerals and metals and a fertile soil.
For many centuries the Indian held South America
for his own. Unmolested from without, troubled only
by quarrels with his neighbors, he lived and died for
the most in slothful ignorance.
The First
Immigrants.
This quiet was interrupted when the
Spaniards and Portuguese took possession
of the country by right of conquest.
Once opened to the world, the continent became
the destination of thousands of settlers, not only
.pn +1
.bn 243.png
from Spain and Portugal but from other European
nations, many of whom built up large fortunes. The
relation between them and the natives is described by
R. J. Hunt. “Some of the early colonists were of a
friendly disposition, and treated the natives kindly,
much in the same way as they did their horses or their
dogs; others, with a high sense of honor, were just and
considerate to the aboriginees; a fair percentage of
them, especially those in the wild, remote districts,
freely mingled with the natives and married one or
more of their women; but the great majority looked
upon the natives with suspicion and distrust if not
with abhorrence.
The Opening
of the Country.
“With the influx of immigrants and
the natural increase of the descendants
of the pioneers came the growth of
trade, the extension of agricultural pursuits,
and the opening of mines. There came simultaneously
the desire for independence and the consequent
rise of republics with a demand for progress
and a clear determination of territorial bounds. Railways
were opened in various directions, the great rivers
were supplied with steamers, trade was increased, companies
were formed and numerous interests started.
For scientific and commercial purposes expeditions up
the great waterways and across the trackless plains
were organized and carried out with varying success;
but even to-day there remain vast regions unknown
and unexplored except by the red Indians.”[#]
.pm fn-start
Missionary Review of the World, July 1911.
.pm fn-end
.pn +1
.bn 244.png
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.bn 245.png
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.if h
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LUTHERAN CHAPEL, MONACILLO, PORTO RICO, WITH TWO MISSIONARIES AND TWO
NATIVE WORKERS.
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PORTO RICAN HUT WITH MISS MELLANDER AND THREE MEMBERS OF CHURCH AT PALO SECO.
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[Illustration: LUTHERAN CHAPEL, MONACILLO, PORTO RICO, WITH TWO \
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MEMBERS OF CHURCH AT PALO SECO.]
.sp 2
.if-
The Darkness
of South
America.
In spite of the fact that its ten political
divisions are republics, and that it
has produced men of distinguished
rank as scientists and scholars, South
America is on the whole a land of dense ignorance,
not only among the Indian population but among the
mixed or pure descendants of the European settlers.
In spiritual things the ignorance is tenfold increased.
Of the hundreds of tribes of Indians, many have never
heard the Gospel, and to only ten millions of the population
has it been presented in any intelligible form.
Rome, which has claimed South America for its own
has done little to raise the natives from their degraded
condition or to enlighten their darkness, and has opposed
most bitterly the spread of the pure Gospel
among them. The priests declare that the Protestant
Bible is an immoral book which will do great harm to
him who reads, and make every effort to destroy all the
copies which they can find. Nor do they offer their
own version. Doctor Robert Speer is reported to have
said that visiting seventy of the largest cathedrals in
South America, he could find but one Bible, and that
a Protestant version, about to be burned. Of the religious
condition, Doctor Warneck says, “The Catholicism
is of a kind that, according to even Catholic
testimonies, is more heathen than Christian. There
are many crosses but no word of the Cross; many
saints, but no followers of Christ.”
Against the domination of the Catholic Church
the most intelligent of the population have rebelled
.pn +1
.bn 247.png
and men especially have ceased to believe in the priests
or their teaching. May they upon leaving the old
find true guides into new and better things!
The
Population.
The latest statistics give the following
as population of South America:
.in 2
.ta l:25 r:12 w=60% ew=100%
Whites | 18,000,000
Indians | 17,000,000
Negroes | 6,000,000
Mixed White and Indian | 30,000,000
Mixed White and Negro | 8,000,000
Mixed Negro and Indian | 700,000
East Indian, Japanese and Chinese | 300,000
| ----------
A total of | 80,000,000
.ta-
.in 0
Since South America offers vast resources in a
sparsely settled country, its population will unquestionably
increase rapidly by immigration.
The Roman
Catholic
Church in
South
America.
Recent activity on the part of the
Protestants in the interest of the nominal
Christians of South America has
roused much opposition among Roman
Catholics. Among Protestants themselves
the question has been debated with an earnest
desire to see the right and wrong of this problem. To
this question Dr. Robert Speer has given the following
reasons for his belief that such mission work
is legitimate and necessary. (1) The moral condition
of South America warrants and demands the presence
of the force of evangelical religion in a country
where from one-fourth to one-half of the births are
.pn +1
.bn 248.png
illegitimate and where male chastity is unknown.
(2) The Protestant missionary enterprise with its
stimulus to education and its appeal to the rational
nature of man is required by the intellectual needs of
South America. (3) Protestant missions are justified
in order to give the Bible to South America. (4)
Protestant missions are justified by the character of
the Roman Catholic priesthood. (5) The Roman
Church has not given the people Christianity. It
offers them a dead man, not a living Saviour. (6)
The Catholic Church has steadily lost ground; the
priests are reviled and derided; religion is abandoned
by men to priests and women. (7) Protestant missions
may inspire and compel self-cleansing in the
South American Catholic Church. (8) Only the
Protestant religion, free from superstition, reformed,
Scriptural, apostolic, can meet the needs of South
America.
The missionary occupation of South America has
been small; indeed no country has so low a percentage
of missionaries. It is said that in any of the ten countries
a missionary could have a city and a dozen of
towns for his parish. In some of the countries he could
have one or two provinces without touching any other
evangelical worker.
As Lutheran missionaries in the person of Ziegenbalg
and Plütschau were the first to enter India; as Peter
Heiling, a Lutheran, was the first to enter Africa, so
the Lutheran missionary Justinian von Welz, of whose
stirring appeal to the Church we have told in Chapter
.pn +1
.bn 249.png
I, entered South America, where in Surinam he died
in 1668. It gives us at least some small comfort to
realize that of all the South American countries Surinam
is to-day the most thoroughly evangelized, even
though it is the Moravian and not the Lutheran
Church which has done the work. After the time of
Justinian von Welz we search in vain for Lutheran
missions in South America for many years.
German
Lutherans
in South
America.
Among the emigrants to South America
have been large numbers of Germans.
For these the Church at home
has cared so that there are many well-established
Lutheran congregations. Here and there
these congregations have undertaken a little missionary
work among the natives, but there has been no organized
effort for their evangelization as in the case
of Africa and Asia.
North American
Lutherans
in South
America.
American Lutherans have one mission
in South America, that of the General
Synod in New Amsterdam in British
Guiana, a colony with a population of
about three hundred thousand of which
about four thousand are Europeans, the remainder
East Indians, negroes and native Indians. In 1743
Dutch and German Lutherans founded here a Lutheran
church which continued for a hundred years.
Then, the congregation having fallen away, service was
discontinued. The property consisted of a beautiful old
church, a church house and parsonage, a good deal of
valuable land and an endowment of twenty thousand
.pn +1
.bn 250.png
dollars. In 1878 the church was again opened and the
Rev. John R. Mittelholzer became its pastor, and the
congregation united with the General Synod.
The Missouri Synod has eighty-three congregations
among the Germans in Brazil and Argentina, a theological
seminary and many schools. Some of its pastors
work among the Portugese speaking natives.
Of various recent plans for Lutheran work in South
America it is still too soon to speak.
The appeal of South America to the Lutheran
Church is thus expressed by those who have studied
the subject.
“Among the population of South America German
and Scandinavian Lutherans are present in larger proportion
than the members of any other Protestant denomination.
Has the
Lutheran
Church an
Opportunity in
South
America?
“In Montevideo, Uruguay, there is a
colony of five hundred German families.
In Bolivia, there are also many of
our people. In Chile there are eighty
thousand Germans. They are numerous
in Bogota and Barronquilla, Colombia, and in
Guatemala, where Roman priests are prosecuted and
Protestant ministers welcomed by those in authority.
In Brazil, which is 220,000 square miles larger than
the entire United States, the Statesman’s Year Book
declares that there are one million Germans, besides
many Scandinavians. In Paraguay, President Schierer
is a German, and there are at least two hundred
thousand of our people. In fact, there is not a
.pn +1
.bn 251.png
State or island of this vast domain where our
people are not found as sheep without a shepherd.
They occupy prominent and influential positions in
government, and are dominant in the business world.
Once interested, they would furnish the means
and the men to care for our own, and extend the work
among the intellectuals, the peons, the Indians, and
the negroes of Latin America. Our Lutheran Church
has the largest opportunity, consequently the greatest
obligation, of all the Protestant Churches in these
southern lands.”
.ce
Porto Rico.
In Porto Rico, where many of the conditions of
South America are repeated on a much smaller scale,
nine Protestant churches are at work. Since the island
is under the control of the United States, missions have
no political opposition to meet. Here, as in South
America, the natives have many crosses but no true
cross, many saints but few true believers in Christ. A
missionary relates a discussion between two members
of the native church, one of whom worshiped the Virgin
who was supposed to dwell at Lourdes, another a
Virgin who dwelt at some other shrine. Of Christ they
knew nothing.
Here the General Council has had a mission since
1899. It has in all nine congregations and twelve
stations with more than five hundred communicant
members. Among its stations are Catano, San Juan
and Bayamon where it owns fine church properties
.pn +1
.bn 252.png
and has excellent parochial schools. In Catano there
is a kindergarten in connection with the parochial
school to which Miss May Mellander has given years
of devoted service. In Catano the missionaries instruct
native teachers.
The experience of the General Council in Porto
Rico has been that of all workers in Latin America.
They have discovered that the Roman Catholic Church
has lost its hold on the people and that thousands are
longing for a better way.
.ce
The American Indian.
The American Indian was so called, as we know,
from the fact that the discoverers of this continent
supposed they had reached the eastern coast of India.
Indians belong to one race, though they call themselves
by many different tribal names. How large
their number was before the advent of the white man
it is impossible to tell; now, greatly diminished by
wars among themselves, by oppression, by diseases
brought from abroad and especially by the white man’s
brandy, they number about three hundred thousand.
Of these the majority live in reservations appointed to
them by the government of the United States whose
later policy has been to care for them with such
thoroughness that for most of them independent development
is difficult. It is reckoned that among the
three hundred thousand about ninety-two thousand
are Christians. These are reliable, sober and
settled. Almost none of the Indians educated in the
.pn +1
.bn 253.png
Christian schools return to the habits of their forefathers.
The work of the Lutheran Church among the Indians
began, as we have seen, in the Swedish settlement
along the Delaware River. In Georgia the
work of the Salzburgers was closed by the removal
of the Indians, an almost inevitable consummation
in the days when the Indians were constantly
shifting in flight or by compulsion from place
to place. The Rev. J. C. Hartwig, one of the pioneer
ministers of the American Lutheran Church who died
in 1796 left his property, amounting to about seventeen
thousand dollars for the establishing of a training
school (Hartwick Seminary) for ministers and missionaries.
He had in mind especially missionaries
who should work among the American Indians. The
school was established and when application was made
to the government to begin work among the Indians
of Otsego County, New York, President Washington
answered that a special act of Congress would be required
before permission could be given.
Among the unconverted Indians the Lutheran
Church is at work in various places to-day.
The Norwegian Synod has had a mission among
the Winnebago Indians in Wisconsin since 1885. For
its support they contributed in 1915, $6,000.
Here also Elling’s Synod of the Norwegian Church
has a mission.
In Arizona the Missouri Synod has a mission.
.pn +1
.bn 254.png
In Arizona the Wisconsin Synod has four mission
stations--at Globe, a town of about eight thousand
inhabitants, at Peridot on the San Carlos Indian Reservation,
at East Fork, and at Cibecue. The community
at East Fork has been recently visited with
serious epidemics, but the twenty-five children in the
Lutheran school all survived and were able to return.
The village of Cibecue lies far from the railroad and
the Indians there have not been affected by the vices
of civilization. Here it was not possible during the
last year to receive all the children who came.
The Danish Synod has been at work in Oklahoma
since 1892. It contributed in 1915, $2,500 to this mission.
.ce
Alaska.
Alaska is the name given to the northwestern corner
of North America which was bought by the United
States from Russia in 1867. Its area is about five
hundred and ninety thousand square miles and is equal
to that of all the northern States east of the
Mississippi with the addition of Virginia, West Virginia,
Kentucky and Tennessee. The population in
1890 was sixty-three thousand, of whom twenty-five
thousand were Indians and Esquimaux. The
natives are superstitious and devoted to the worship
of departed spirits. Though the North of Alaska is
uninhabitable, the South has a temperate Summer.
Here the Norwegian Synod began missionary work
in 1894 at Port Clarence. The mission was begun in
.pn +1
.bn 255.png
buildings furnished by the United States government,
which had suggested the undertaking. The first missionary,
the Rev. T. L. Brevig, not only served the
colony of Norwegians and Lapps, but went promptly
to work among the native Esquimaux.
The Synod of Wisconsin has four or five ordained
ministers in Alaska.
.ce
The American Negro.
The American Negro offers to the American Christian
Church one of its most pressing responsibilities.
Brought to this country against his will, held for many
years in slavery in which independent development
was out of the question, then by political necessity given
in addition to his freedom the right to help govern
the country in which he had been a slave, he has furnished
for himself and for the white race a problem
like no other problem in the world.
Before the Civil War the Christianization of the
negro was carried on by pious individuals, many of
them slave-holders and by various churches. There
were in 1860 before the outbreak of the war about
half a million negro Christians, belonging chiefly to
the Baptist and Methodist churches. This number
has increased until to-day a conservative estimate
would fix the number of Christian negroes at seven
and a half million.
Another motive than the desire to win the negro
for the kingdom of God has entered into much of the
philanthropic work undertaken by the white race. This
.pn +1
.bn 256.png
is the realization of the menace to the State from so
large an uneducated, uncivilized and alien race within
it.
That the negro is capable of profiting by education
and capable of becoming a valuable citizen is
proved in many ways, not the least remarkable of
which is his progress in religious matters. It is said
that no other people give a larger percentage of their
earnings to religious work. Over eight per cent of
the total wealth of the negro church is vested in its
church properties. Late reports mention four large
publishing houses which issue only negro church literature.
All the important negro churches now
maintain home and foreign missionary departments,
which contribute over $50,000 a year to foreign missions,
over $100,000 to home missions, employ two
hundred missionaries and give aid to three hundred and
fifty needy churches.
The conditions which make it imperative that the
American should raise his negro associate are expressed
by Booker Washington. “When I was a boy I was
the champion fighter of my town. I used to love
to hold the boys down in the ditch and hear them
yell. When I grew older, I found that I could not
hold another boy down in the ditch without staying
there with him. Nor can any race hold another down
in the ditch without staying down in the ditch with it.
Those white Christians who fear the rise of the negro
to intellectual and material independence may put
.pn +1
.bn 257.png
their fear aside if they give him with education the
Christian religion.”
The early Lutheran pastors in America showed a
practical interest in the spiritual welfare of the negroes.
In 1704, the Rev. Justus Falckner baptized
the daughter of negroes who were members of the
first Lutheran congregation in New York. The beautiful
prayer which he made upon this occasion has been
recorded.
“Lord, merciful God, Thou who regardeth not the
persons of men, but, in every nation, he that feareth
Thee and doeth right is accepted before Thee; clothe
this child with the white garment of innocence and
righteousness, and let it so remain, through Jesus
Christ, the Redeemer and Saviour of all men.”
The Rev. Dr. John Bachman, pastor of St. John’s
Lutheran Church, Charleston, South Carolina, had
many negroes in his congregation. He sent to Gettysburg
Seminary, Daniel Payne, a colored man who afterwards
became a bishop of the African Methodist
Church.
The Lutheran Church is represented in work for
negroes by the Synodical Conference, which is composed
of the synods of Missouri, Wisconsin, Minnesota,
Michigan and Nebraska, and various smaller
bodies. It resolved in 1877 to take up work among
the negroes, its first missionary being the Rev. J. F.
Doescher, who began his activity at a missionary gathering
at New Wells, Missouri. Travelling through
Arkansas, Tennessee, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi
.pn +1
.bn 258.png
and Louisiana, he preached wherever he could
find opportunity, in cities and villages and also on
large plantations. His work was continued by other
missionaries and by the Lutheran churches near by.
In 1914 there were forty-six preaching places served
by forty-nine laborers, thirty-one of whom are colored.
The total membership of baptized Christians
was two thousand four hundred and thirty four.
As early as possible in the history of this work it
was determined to educate young men to be preachers
and teachers and young women to be teachers in the
colored mission. The first promising boys were sent
to Springfield, Illinois, to be trained. In 1903, Immanuel
College, the first colored Lutheran college was
established in Greensboro, North Carolina. Beginning
in a school house, the college is now at home in
a large stone building which was dedicated in 1907.
In New Orleans the Mission supports Luther College.
To both of these institutions women are admitted.
The six women graduates from the Teacher’s
Course of Luther College and the eight women graduates
from the Teacher’s Course of Immanuel College
have given the mission valuable service as teachers.
In the thirty-five years of its history the Synodical
Conference has raised $525,000 for the work of the
colored mission. About $30,000 of this sum has been
raised by the colored churches themselves. The annual
expenses of the mission work are now about
$30,000 per year. To its funds the Norwegian
Synod contributes.
.pn +1
.bn 259.png
The Joint Synod of Ohio became interested in the
work for negroes in 1890, when the first colored pastor
was received into its membership and a committee
was appointed to take charge of the work. Until 1911
the undertaking was limited to one small congregation
in Baltimore, then an advance was made in the
establishing of a mission school and the securing of
candidates for the ministry. In 1915 activity was extended
into the heart of the South and work was begun
in Jackson, Mississippi. A desirable church property
has been secured and a parochial school is conducted.
In 1916 a school was established in Prattville, Alabama.
In all there are about one hundred confirmed
members, two hundred children in three parochial
schools, one superintendent, one colored pastor and
three teachers.
.ce
Conclusion.
A study of Lutheran or other missions would be
a vain and useless undertaking if it did not leave
the student with his eyes upon the future instead of
upon the past, if it did not in the light of what others
have done show him his own duty toward the millions
still untouched. As a work of individuals, Christian
missions may truly be said to be a magnificent accomplishment;
as a work of great denominational bodies
of Christians the result is small. The adding of figure
to figure may seem to produce enormous totals.
As we have added the seventy thousand Christians of
the Gossner mission in India, the twenty thousand of
.pn +1
.bn 260.png
the Basel mission, the fifty thousand of the American
Lutheran mission and others until we had a total of
two hundred and sixteen thousand Indian Lutheran
Christians, we have said to ourselves that the work was
well begun. When the total number of Protestant
Christians in India has been estimated at three million
five hundred thousand we have felt a thrill of pride.
But India has a population of three hundred million!
Truly our beginning is small! In Africa the Protestant
Christians number about one million seven hundred
thousand; and the population one hundred and
eighty million; in South America the Protestant Christians
number two hundred thousand and the population
eighty million! China, Japan, the vast Mohammedan
East--to what a task does a study of missions open our
eyes!
For this task our study should give us determination
and courage. Though the results have seemed small,
they have been, in comparison to the number of workers,
enormous. We observe a thickly settled section of
India, a few men and women,--preachers, a medical
missionary, a few nurses,--around them in seventy years
fifty thousand Christians! Were our Lutheran Church
really to awake, how rapidly and yet how thoroughly
could the work be done! Those who have gone before
us have opened the doors, ours is the opportunity
to enter. It is estimated that in India one of every
four inquirers for truth is knocking at the door of
a Lutheran mission. Africa lies open to whoever
will possess her, in China our standard bearers have
.pn +1
.bn 261.png
claimed a great territory; South America is ours by
right of first possession. This opportunity is not one
which may be seized or rejected; thus clearly presented
it becomes a responsibility.
Another promise for the future is the material aid
which the Church will receive from those whom she
has converted and trained. In her fields in China, in India,
in South Africa, a native Church is being slowly
moulded. The Christian courage in the Boxer uprising
proves that China can stand fast. Likewise
did the great mutiny show the devotion of thousands of
Indian Lutherans to the Christian religion. Wherever
there are converts there are candidates for Christian
service. A story told by Rev. C. F. Kuder of
the Rajahmundry mission is rich in suggestion for us
all.
.ce
A New Definition.
“Four hundred Lutherans were assembled in one of
our annual conferences in India. Missionary Eckardt,
who is the Livingstone of our Mission, was speaking.
He has gone farther inland than any of his predecessors
had gone. His district embraces three hundred
thousand people, who have no hope of hearing the
Gospel unless he brings it to them.
.if h
.il fn=p216.jpg id=p216 w=600px
.ca
IMMANUEL COLORED LUTHERAN COLLEGE, GREENSBORO, NORTH CAROLINA.
.ca-
.sp 2
.il fn=p216b.jpg id=p216b w=600px
.ca
BETHANY INDIAN MISSION BAND, WITTENBERG, WISCONSIN. (NORWEGIAN SYNOD)
.ca-
.if-
.if t
.sp 2
[Illustration: IMMANUEL COLORED LUTHERAN COLLEGE, GREENSBORO, NORTH
CAROLINA.]
.sp 2
[Illustration: BETHANY INDIAN MISSION BAND, WITTENBERG, WISCONSIN.
(NORWEGIAN SYNOD)]
.sp 2
.if-
“He stood up that day at the conference, and said
that up in the hills, where there were a number of
Christians, but more heathen, a hill had been given him
by a heathen, on condition that a church would be built
on it. He said that it would be a center for all the
.pn +1
.bn 262.png
.pn +1
.bn 263.png
.pn +1
.bn 264.png
Christians in that locality, and a constant call to the
heathen to come to the living God. The difficulty
was: how to get the money to build the church? He
did not want to ask the Christians in America for it;
so he asked whether our Christians in India would not
help him?
“The conference listened with interest and sympathy.
The hill-country had for years been its home mission
field. After much casting about for some satisfactory
method, the suggestion was made that all the Christians
be asked to practice self-denial from Ash Wednesday
to Palm Sunday, bringing their free-will offerings
to the service on Palm Sunday.
“When the proposition was announced to the Rajahmundry
congregation, the interested faces, quickened
eyes, and, in some cases, the tucking of heads to one
side, all bespoke approval and willingness to help.
“And what did the members do? They cut off a
little here and a little there; true, only a little, for if
it had been much, there would not have been anything
left for themselves. More than a little would have
been all.
“There were women who were widows in the congregation,
whose income was about five cents a day.
With that they had to provide food, clothing and, in
some cases, shelter. Of course, it goes without saying
that living in India is very cheap, but it goes equally
well without saying that such widows do not live on
broiled pigeons, peacocks’ tongues, and other delicacies.
The truth is, that they must practice self-denial,
.pn +1
.bn 265.png
not only in Lent, but throughout the year. They
rarely are able to have enough to eat to satisfy hunger
fully. It is estimated that over sixty million people
in India go to bed hungry every night.
“But what did they do? In the evenings, when they
measured out their rice, they would say to themselves:
‘I must help to build that little church up in the hills,
so that the women up there may learn to know my
Redeemer. I could eat all this rice, but if I can live
with so much, I can also live on a few mouthfuls
less. I’ll give up a little rice cheerfully, so they may
have that meat which perisheth not.’
“Then they would take out a pinch of the raw rice
and put it aside in a bowl for safe-keeping. This they
did until Palm Sunday. Then they measured the rice
saved and brought its value to the Lord.
“No, it was not much--probably, in most cases, not
more than ten cents--but it was given of their necessity--taken
out of their mouths.
“In the boys’ school were some one hundred and
sixty boys, from about nine to fifteen years of age.
Money? They had so little they scarcely knew the
color of it; but deep down in their hearts was an
earnest desire. They, too, felt they must help to build
the little church on the hills!
“One evening, a day or two before Ash Wednesday,
the manager heard many voices at the door of the
teacher who had charge of the boarding department.
There was an interested consultation, and then he
heard the boys troop back to their rooms with many
.pn +1
.bn 266.png
little shouts of gratulation and glee, and many a
“bagunnadi” (it is good).
“The next morning the teacher came to the manager
with a queer smile.
“What were the boys up to last night?’ queried
the latter.
“‘They asked for permission to go without their supper
once a week, on condition that the money saved
be given them for the little church up in the hills,’
was the reply.
“‘What did you say to them?’
“‘I said they might, if you consented.’
“‘Oh,” said the manager, ‘I think it will not hurt
them. Let them try it; but we must keep a watch
on them that they do not get sick.’
“‘Yes,’ replied the teacher, ‘but they were not satisfied
with that. They worked out how much it would
make, and this morning they came back to request
that they be allowed to go without supper twice a
week!’
“The manager, catching their enthusiasm, said, ‘Let
them try it.’
“Growing boys have hearty appetites, and it was not
easy for those lads to go to sleep supperless every Tuesday
and Thursday evening during those weeks, but
there was never a murmur.
“Palm Sunday came. No one ever saw brighter-eyed
boys than those who walked to church that morning
from our school. When the offerings were received,
they put a solid lump of silver coins on the
.pn +1
.bn 267.png
plate. It contained twenty-five rupees--eight dollars
and thirty-three cents.
“The girls in their school had been securing an offering
in a similar way, and they brought only thirty
cents less.
“That day there was laid on the plate a total offering
of ninety dollars!
“This is the Telugu Lutheran definition of self-denial.”
If the devotion of the Church at home even distantly
approached such devotion as this how quickly
might the work be accomplished!
The world is still overshadowed by the apparently
impenetrable cloud of a great war. The condition of
hundreds of mission stations is a matter for serious
anxiety. When the war closes it is likely that there
will be new boundaries, British colonies now German
colonies, or German colonies now British colonies.
Each change of this kind will bring into existence
new complications for missionary policy to meet. The
Christian Church will need faith and courage to take
up a task so sadly interrupted and marred.
It is certain, on the other hand, that the Church
will have access to new mission fields. Such has been
the single gleam of brightness through many war
clouds in the past.
For the Church of Christ the war has a lesson which
must be learned. There is but one cure for war--the
evangelization of the world. May all the Christian
world by missionary effort prevent the repetition of so
.pn +1
.bn 268.png
terrible a catastrophe! May especially our own Church
come daily into a clearer realization of her mission!
As the time of Christ and his apostles was a time of
seed-sowing, so was the time of the Reformation. By
Martin Luther the world was shown once more the
Way of Salvation. By Martin Luther the Holy Bible,
the infallible guide, was put once more into the
hands of mankind, so that true religion and true liberty
might be forever preserved. Let us look well to our
ways that after the seed-sowing may come the harvest.
.sp 4
.pb
.sp 4
.ul
.it Transcriber’s Notes:
.ul indent=1
.it Missing or obscured punctuation was corrected.
.it Typographical errors were silently corrected.
.it Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent \
when a predominant form was found in this book; otherwise it was not changed.
.ul-
.ul-