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Title: The Story of Lutheran Missions
Author: Singmaster, Elsie
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Story of Lutheran Missions" ***
[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF A. H. FRANCKE.]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The
Story of Lutheran Missions
BY
ELSIE SINGMASTER
(Mrs. Elsie Singmaster Lewars)
Published by
Co-operative Literature Committee Woman’s Missionary Societies
Lutheran Church
------------------------------------------------------------------------
COPYRIGHT, 1917
By the
Co-operative Literature Committee Woman’s Missionary Societies
Lutheran Church
PRESS OF
SURVEY PUBLISHING CO.,
COLUMBIA, S. C.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
FOREWORD
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.
CO-OPERATIVE LITERATURE COMMITTEE:
MRS. E. C. CRONK, _Chairman_, Member from United Synod.
MISS SALLIE PROTZMAN, Member from General Synod.
MRS. CHAS. L. FRY, Member from General Council.
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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS
FOREWORD
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
CHAPTER I—The Beginnings
CHAPTER II—Pioneers and Methods
CHAPTER III—The Lutheran Church in India
CHAPTER IV—The Lutheran Church in Africa
CHAPTER V—The Lutheran Church in China,
Japan and Elsewhere
CHAPTER VI—Lutheran Foreign Missions on
the Western Continent
------------------------------------------------------------------------
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Portrait of A. H. Francke (_Frontispiece_)
Bartholomew Ziegenbalg
Christian Frederick Schwartz (Preface)
Louis Harms
Hermannsburg Parsonage
John Evangelist Gossner
Men’s Bathing Ghat at Purulia
Stall High School for Girls, Guntur, India
Faculty of Watts Memorial College for Men, Guntur
Hospital for Women and Children, Guntur
Hospital for Women and Children, Rajahmundry
Central Girl’s School, Rajahmundry
Chapel of Leper Asylum, Kodur, India, (Joint Synod of Ohio)
Inmates of Leper Asylum
All India Lutheran Conference in 1914, Delegates from Eight Missions
A Malagasy Witch Doctor
Native Lutheran Ministers in Madagascar
Main Station at Muhlenberg, Liberia, Africa
Girls of Emma V. Day School, Muhlenberg, Africa
Carrying Water and Sewing in Garden
Central China Lutheran Theological Seminary, Shekow, Hupeh, China
Chapel and Mission Homes, Chikungshan, China, (United Norwegian)
Administration Building and Class Rooms, Kyushu, Gakuin, Kumamoto,
Japan
Pastor’s Residence, Chapel, and Student Dormitory, Tokyo. American
Missionaries, Native Pastors and Workers with Wives and Children
First Graduating Class from Kindergarten at Ogi, Japan
Group of Theological Students, Kumamoto
Lutheran Church in Borneo
Lutheran Church in Java
Officers and Teachers of Lutheran Sunday School, New Amsterdam,
British Guiana
Ituni School in School Room Which is Also the Church
Some Indian Members of Ituni Congregation
Lutheran Chapel, Monacillo, Porto Rico, with Two Missionaries and
Two Native Workers
Porto Rican Hut with Miss Mellander and Three Members of Church at
Palo Seco
Immanuel Colored Lutheran College, Greensboro, North Carolina
Bethany Indian Mission Band, Wittenberg, Wisconsin (Norwegian Synod)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: BARTHOLOMEW ZIEGENBALG.]
[Illustration: CHRISTIAN FREDERICK SCHWARTZ.]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER I.
The Beginnings
THE PURPOSE OF THE BOOK.
THE MISSIONARY IMPULSE.
THE BENEFITS OF MISSIONARY STUDY.
THE PLAN OF SALVATION.
Salvation Intended for the Whole World.
Israel’s Conception of God’s Purpose.
The Jew as a Missionary.
The Septuagint.
The Roman Empire.
The Supreme Missionary.
The Sending of the Disciples.
Paul.
The Early Church.
Its Extent.
A Change in Method.
Early Missionaries.
The Church and State.
Boniface.
The Church of Germany.
Martin Luther.
“What must I do to be saved?”
An Answer Found.
A New Evangel.
A Pure and Living Stream.
The Bible Translated.
Luther and Missions.
THE BEGINNINGS OF LUTHERAN MISSIONS.
In Europe and Asia.
In Africa.
In North America.
In South America.
Justinian von Welz.
His Appeal Ridiculed.
A Martyr.
A Hero.
The Spring at Hand.
Philip Spener.
A. H. Francke.
The School at Halle.
The First Missionary Hymn.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER I.
THE BEGINNINGS
[Sidenote: 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.
[Sidenote: 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 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.
[Sidenote: 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.
[Sidenote: 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.”
[Sidenote: 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 God’s mercy extended not alone to Israel but to all His
works.
[Sidenote: 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.
[Sidenote: 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.
[Sidenote: 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 itself great barbarian
nations, little dreaming that all its pride was to serve the will of the
Hebrew’s God!
[Sidenote: 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.
[Sidenote: 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.”
[Sidenote: 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 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.
[Sidenote: 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 the executioner ended his life
in Rome, only a small part of his dreams had been realized.
[Illustration: LOUIS HARMS.]
[Illustration: HERMANNSBURG PARSONAGE.]
[Sidenote: 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!
[Sidenote: 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.
[Sidenote: 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 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.
[Sidenote: 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.
[Sidenote: 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. Before the missionary stream could flow for the blessing and
healing of mankind, a clear passage must be opened to its Source.
[Sidenote: 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.
[Sidenote: 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 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.
[Sidenote: 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.
[Sidenote: 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.
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.
[Sidenote: “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.
[Sidenote: 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, 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.
[Sidenote: 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 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._
[Sidenote: 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.
[Sidenote: 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 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._”
[Sidenote: 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.
[Sidenote: 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.
[Sidenote: 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.
[Sidenote: 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 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.
[Sidenote: 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 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?”
[Sidenote: 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.
[Sidenote: 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.
[Sidenote: 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!”
[Sidenote: 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.
[Sidenote: 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. 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.”
[Sidenote: 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 enterprises increased, so rapidly came the necessary support.
[Sidenote: 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.”
[Illustration: OHN EVANGELIST GOSSNER.]
[Illustration: MEN’S BATHING GHAT AT PURULIA.]
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 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 who concluded an
Ascension sermon with the following couplet:
“‘Go into all the world,’ the Lord of old did say;
But now ‘Where God has placed thee, there He would have thee stay.’”
[Sidenote: 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.
“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!”
Before this time, however, the first call for missionary workers had
come to Halle from outside Germany.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER II.
Pioneers and Methods
PIONEERS.
_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
METHODS.
German Societies
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
Scandinavian Societies
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
Finnish, Polish and other societies.
American Societies
Nine Norwegian Societies
General Synod
General Council
United Synod South
Synodical Conference
Joint Ohio Synod
Danish Society
Iowa Synod
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER II.
PIONEERS AND METHODS
PIONEERS.
[Sidenote: 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_.
[Sidenote: 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 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.
[Sidenote: 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
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.
[Sidenote: 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.
[Sidenote: 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 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.
[Illustration: STALL HIGH SCHOOL FOR GIRLS, GUNTUR, INDIA.]
[Illustration: FACULTY OF WATTS MEMORIAL COLLEGE FOR MEN, GUNTUR.]
[Sidenote: Early Trials.] The work was not without its hard trials. When
the first financial help arrived, two years after the missionaries had
landed, 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 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.”
[Sidenote: 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.
[Sidenote: 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.
[Sidenote: 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.
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.
[Sidenote: 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.
[Sidenote: 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 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.
[Sidenote: 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 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.
[Sidenote: 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.
[Sidenote: 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.
[Sidenote: 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 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.
[Sidenote: 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 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!
[Sidenote: 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.
[Sidenote: 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.
[Illustration: HOSPITAL FOR WOMEN AND CHILDREN, GUNTUR.]
[Sidenote: 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 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.
[Sidenote: 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.
[Sidenote: 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. 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.
[Sidenote: 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 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.
[Sidenote: 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.
The character of this missionary hero is beautifully described by his
biographer, Dr. Charles E. Hay.[1]
Footnote 1:
_In Missionary Heroes of the Lutheran Church._ Philadelphia: Lutheran
Publication Society.
“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.”
[Sidenote: 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 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.”
[Sidenote: 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.”
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.
“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.”
[Sidenote: 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.
[Sidenote: 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.
[Sidenote: 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.
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.
[Sidenote: 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 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 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.
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.
[Sidenote: 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 and fully did they respond that Egede
became an object of even greater derision.
[Sidenote: 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.
“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.”[2]
Footnote 2:
Hans Egede: the Rev. Thomas Laurie, _Missionary Review of the World_,
December, 1889.
[Sidenote: 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.
[Sidenote: A Devoted Wife.] Preaching, translating, trying to establish
better methods of agriculture, now receiving aid from home, now
apparently forgotten, 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.”[3]
Footnote 3:
_Ibid._
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.
[Sidenote: 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 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.
[Sidenote: 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 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.
[Sidenote: 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.
[Illustration: HOSPITAL FOR WOMEN AND CHILDREN, RAJAHMUNDRY.]
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 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.
[Sidenote: 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 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.
METHODS.
[Sidenote: 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.
GERMAN SOCIETIES.
[Sidenote: 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 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.
[Sidenote: 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.
[Sidenote: 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.
[Sidenote: 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 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.
[Sidenote: 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.
[Sidenote: 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 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.
[Sidenote: 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 _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.
[Sidenote: 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.
SCANDINAVIAN SOCIETIES.
[Sidenote: In Denmark.] Though the pioneer Lutheran missionaries,
Ziegenbalg and Plütschau, were sent to India by Denmark, missionary
activity languished 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.
[Sidenote: 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.
[Sidenote: 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_.
[Illustration: CENTRAL GIRLS SCHOOL, RAJAHMUNDRY.]
[Sidenote: 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
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.
[Sidenote: 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.
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.
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 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[4] 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.
Footnote 4:
Contributions not reported through the regular treasurer bring the
per capita contribution to fifty-three cents.
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 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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER III.
The Lutheran Church in India
THE LAND.
The people
The religions
The Caste System
The moral condition
The English in India
The contrasts of India
The word “heathen”
THE GERMAN SOCIETIES.
Basel
Gossner
Leipsic
Hermannsburg
Breklum or Schleswig-Holstein
THE SCANDINAVIAN SOCIETIES.
Home Mission to the Santals
Danish Evangelical Lutheran Missionary Society
Evangelical National Missionary Society of Sweden
The Church of Sweden Mission
THE AMERICAN SOCIETIES.
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.
CONCLUSION.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER III.
THE LUTHERAN CHURCH IN INDIA
[Sidenote: 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.
[Sidenote: 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 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.
[Sidenote: 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.
[Sidenote: 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
becomes a caste, and even the Christian Church is regarded as a caste.
[Illustration: CHAPEL OF LEPER ASYLUM, KODUR, INDIA. (JOINT SYNOD OF
OHIO)]
[Illustration: INMATES OF LEPER ASYLUM.]
[Sidenote: The Moral Condition of India.] [5]“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.”
Footnote 5:
_Encyclopedia of Missions_: “India”.
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 the temple system. India still
requires help from without and from above.
[Sidenote: 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.
[Sidenote: 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 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.”
[Sidenote: 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.
GERMAN SOCIETIES.
[Sidenote: 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.
[Sidenote: 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.
[Sidenote: 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.
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.
[Sidenote: 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.
[Sidenote: 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 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.
[Sidenote: 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 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.
[Sidenote: 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.
[Sidenote: Discouragement.] 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.”
[Sidenote: 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.
[Sidenote: 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 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.
“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’.”
[Sidenote: 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.
[Sidenote: 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 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.”
[Sidenote: 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.
[Sidenote: 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.”
[Sidenote: 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 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.
[Sidenote: 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.
[Sidenote: 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 effect of the Gospel
eventually to solve the problem.
[Sidenote: 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.
[Sidenote: 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 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.
[Sidenote: 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. 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.
[Illustration: ALL INDIA LUTHERAN CONFERENCE IN 1914. DELEGATES FROM
EIGHT MISSIONS.]
[Sidenote: 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 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.
[Sidenote: 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 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.
[Sidenote: 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, as might have
been expected from their characteristic liberality.
SCANDINAVIAN SOCIETIES.
[Sidenote: 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 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:
[Sidenote: 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 seeing
all this; how living it all becomes on the receipt of such letters.
Involuntarily we exclaim:
‘The Pentecostal feast does nature keep
In robes of flowery magnificence.’
Ah! how lovely is Denmark!”
The contributions of Norway to India are given to the Home Mission to
the Santals.
[Sidenote: 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.
[Sidenote: 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 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.
AMERICAN SOCIETIES.
[Sidenote: 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. 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.
[Sidenote: 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.
[Sidenote: 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 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.
[Sidenote: 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.”
[Illustration: A MALAGASY WITCH DOCTOR.]
[Illustration: NATIVE LUTHERAN MINISTERS IN MADAGASCAR.]
[Sidenote: 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 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.
[Sidenote: 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.
[Sidenote: 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 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.”
[Sidenote: 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. [Sidenote: Reinforcements.] 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.
[Sidenote: A Visit Home.] In 1846 failing health compelled Father Heyer,
as he is affectionately called, to return to America. Two years later he
returned 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.
[Sidenote: “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.
[Sidenote: 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 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.
[Sidenote: 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.”
[Sidenote: 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.
[Sidenote: 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.
[Sidenote: 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 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.
[Sidenote: 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.
[Sidenote: 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.
[Sidenote: 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 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 blessed and unceasingly does it call like all other
missionary enterprises for more workers, larger sums of money, and more
fervent prayers.
[Sidenote: 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.
[Illustration: MAIN STATION AT MUHLENBERG, LIBERIA, AFRICA.]
[Sidenote: 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 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.
[Sidenote: 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 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, 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:
[Sidenote: 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 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 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, 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.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER IV.
The Lutheran Church in Africa
THE LAND.
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
THE GERMAN SOCIETIES.
(_West Coast_)
Basel
Gossner
North German or Bremen
(_South Africa_)
Rhenish
Berlin
Hermannsburg
Hanover
(_East Africa_)
John Ludwig Krapf and Johann Rebmann the Founders
Bielefeld
Berlin
Leipsic
Breklum or Schleswig-Holstein
Neukirchen
GERMANS AT WORK FOR OTHER SOCIETIES.
SCANDINAVIAN SOCIETIES.
Norwegian Missionary Society
Norwegian Church Mission (Schreuder)
Swedish State Church
Swedish National Society
FINNISH LUTHERAN MISSIONARY SOCIETY.
NORWEGIAN MISSIONARY SOCIETY IN MADAGASCAR.
AMERICAN SOCIETIES.
Norwegian Synod
United Norwegian Church
Norwegian Free Church
General Synod
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER IV.
THE LUTHERAN CHURCH IN AFRICA
[Sidenote: 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.
[Sidenote: 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 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 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.
[Sidenote: 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!”
[Sidenote: 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, 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.
[Sidenote: 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.
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:
[Sidenote: 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.
[Illustration: GIRLS OF EMMA V. DAY SCHOOL, MUHLENBERG, AFRICA.]
[Illustration: CARRYING WATER AND SEWING IN GARDEN.]
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. [Sidenote:
Mohammedanism 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.
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 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.
[Sidenote: 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.
[Sidenote: 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 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.
[Sidenote: 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.
THE GERMAN SOCIETIES
THE WEST COAST.
[Sidenote: 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.
[Sidenote: “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.
[Sidenote: 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. 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.
[Sidenote: 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 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.
[Illustration: CENTRAL CHINA LUTHERAN THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, SHEKOW,
HUPEH, CHINA.]
[Illustration: CHAPEL AND MISSION HOMES, CHIKUNGSHAN, CHINA. (UNITED
NORWEGIAN)]
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.
SOUTH AFRICA.
[Sidenote: 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, our interest
in the sadly complicated situation becomes keen.
[Sidenote: 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.
[Sidenote: 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
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.
[Sidenote: 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 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 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.
[Sidenote: 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.
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.
[Sidenote: 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.
[Sidenote: 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.
EAST AFRICA.
[Sidenote: 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 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.
[Sidenote: A Call to Service.] [6]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.”
Footnote 6:
The account of John Ludwig Krapf is taken largely from the Rev. F.
Wilkinson, _Missionary Review of the World_, November, 1892.
[Illustration: ADMINISTRATION BUILDING AND CLASS ROOMS, KYUSHU GAKUIN,
KUMAMOTO, JAPAN.]
[Illustration: PASTOR’S RESIDENCE, CHAPEL, AND STUDENT DORMITORY, TOKYO.
AMERICAN MISSIONARIES, NATIVE PASTORS AND WORKERS WITH WIVES AND
CHILDREN.]
[Sidenote: 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.
[Sidenote: 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.
[Sidenote: 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 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.
[Sidenote: 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.
[Sidenote: “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
Christ, and where that is there is also His promise and His final
victory.”
[Sidenote: 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 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.”
[Sidenote: 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.
[Sidenote: 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 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.”
[Sidenote: 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.
[Sidenote: 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.
“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.”
[Sidenote: 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 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.
[Sidenote: 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. 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 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.
[Sidenote: 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 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.”
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 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.
[Sidenote: 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 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.
NORWEGIANS IN MADAGASCAR.
[Sidenote: 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.
[Sidenote: 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 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.”
[Sidenote: 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.[7]
Footnote 7:
The material for this account was gathered from the _Missionary
Review of the World_--Article by James Sibree--June 1895.
[Sidenote: 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
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.
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.
[Illustration: FIRST GRADUATING CLASS FROM KINDERGARTEN AT OGI, JAPAN.]
[Illustration: GROUP OF THEOLOGICAL STUDENTS, KUMAMOTO.]
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_ (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.
[Sidenote: 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 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.
[Sidenote: 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, 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.
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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER V.
The Lutheran Church in China, Japan and Elsewhere
CHINA.
The Land
The People
Religion
Character
History
Early Missions.
Karl Frederick Gützlaff
Societies
_German_
Basel
Rhenish
Berlin
_Scandinavian_
Danish
Norwegian Missionary Society
Norwegian Lutheran China Mission
Swedish Mission in China
Swedish Lutheran Mission in Mongolia
Lutheran Gospel Association of Finland
_American_
_United Norwegian Lutheran Church
Hauge’s Norwegian Lutheran Synod
Norwegian Synod
Norwegian Free Church
Norwegian Brethren_
JAPAN.
The Land and the People
Societies
_American_
Lutheran Gospel Association of Finland
United Synod in the South
General Council
Danish American
EAST INDIES
Societies
Rhenish in Sumatra, Borneo, Nias, etc.
Neukirchen in Java
Dutch in Batoe Islands
AUSTRALIA Neuendettelsau
NEW GUINEA Neuendettelsau, Rhenish
THE NEAR EAST
THE JEWS
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER V.
THE LUTHERAN CHURCH IN CHINA, JAPAN AND ELSEWHERE
CHINA.
[Sidenote: 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 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.”
[Illustration: LUTHERAN CHURCH IN BORNEO.]
[Illustration: LUTHERAN CHURCH IN JAVA.]
[Sidenote: 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 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.
[Sidenote: 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 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.
[Sidenote: 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.
[Sidenote: 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 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”.
[Sidenote: 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.
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.
[Sidenote: 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.
[Sidenote: 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 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.
[Sidenote: 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 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.
[Sidenote: A Cruel Disappointment.] 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”.
[Sidenote: 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.”
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.
[Sidenote: 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.”
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 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.
[Sidenote: 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.
[Sidenote: 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 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.”’”
[Sidenote: 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.
[Sidenote: 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.
[Sidenote: 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.
[Sidenote: 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.
[Sidenote: 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.
[Sidenote: 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; 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 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.
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.
[Sidenote: 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 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.
[Sidenote: 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 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.
AMERICAN SOCIETIES.
[Sidenote: 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 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.
[Sidenote: Another Large Field.] The _Augustana Synod_[8] 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.[9]
Footnote 8:
A part of the General Council.
Footnote 9:
This account is taken from _Our First Decade in China_, published by
the China Board of the Augustana Synod.
[Sidenote: 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 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.
[Sidenote: 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.”
[Sidenote: 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 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.”
[Sidenote: 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.
JAPAN.
[Sidenote: 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 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.
[Sidenote: 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.
[Sidenote: 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 God offers
peace for terror and assurance for dismay.
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.
AMERICAN SOCIETIES.
[Sidenote: “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 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.
[Sidenote: 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.
[Sidenote: 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 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.
[Sidenote: 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.’”
THE EAST INDIES.
[Sidenote: 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.
[Sidenote: Borneo.] On the fertile and beautiful Island of Borneo the
_Rhenish Society_[10] 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.
Footnote 10:
It should be remembered that the Rhenish Society is largely but not
entirely Lutheran.
[Sidenote: 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.
[Sidenote: 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.
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.
[Sidenote: 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.
[Sidenote: 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 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.’
[Sidenote: 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, 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?”
[Sidenote: 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.
[Sidenote: Java.] The beautiful Island of Java to the Southeast of
Sumatra has been called Holland’s treasure house. Though the island has
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.
[Sidenote: 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.
AUSTRALIA.
[Sidenote: 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.
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.
NEW GUINEA.
[Sidenote: 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.
LUTHERANS IN THE NEAR EAST.
[Sidenote: 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 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!
[Illustration: OFFICERS AND TEACHERS OF LUTHERAN SUNDAY SCHOOL, NEW
AMSTERDAM, BRITISH GUIANA.]
[Illustration: ITUNI SCHOOL IN SCHOOL ROOM WHICH IS ALSO THE CHURCH.]
[Illustration: SOME INDIAN MEMBERS OF ITUNI CONGREGATION.]
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 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.
[Sidenote: 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 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.
[Sidenote: 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.
[Sidenote: 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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER VI.
Lutheran Foreign Missions on Western Continent
SOUTH AMERICA
PORTO RICO
THE AMERICAN INDIAN
ALASKA
THE AMERICAN NEGRO
CONCLUSION.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER VI.
LUTHERAN FOREIGN MISSIONS ON THE WESTERN CONTINENT
SOUTH AMERICA.
[Sidenote: 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.
[Sidenote: 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 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.
[Sidenote: 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.”[11]
Footnote 11:
_Missionary Review of the World_, July 1911.
[Illustration: LUTHERAN CHAPEL, MONACILLO, PORTO RICO, WITH TWO
MISSIONARIES AND TWO NATIVE WORKERS.]
[Illustration: PORTO RICAN HUT WITH MISS MELLANDER AND THREE MEMBERS OF
CHURCH AT PALO SECO.]
[Sidenote: 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 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!
[Sidenote: The Population.] The latest statistics give the following as
population of South America:
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 300,000
Chinese
----------
A total of 80,000,000
Since South America offers vast resources in a sparsely settled country,
its population will unquestionably increase rapidly by immigration.
[Sidenote: 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 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 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.
[Sidenote: 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.
[Sidenote: 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 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.
[Sidenote: 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 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.”
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 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.
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 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.
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.
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 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.
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 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
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 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.
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.
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 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 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.
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.
[Illustration: IMMANUEL COLORED LUTHERAN COLLEGE, GREENSBORO, NORTH
CAROLINA.]
[Illustration: BETHANY INDIAN MISSION BAND, WITTENBERG, WISCONSIN.
(NORWEGIAN SYNOD)]
“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 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, 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 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 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
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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
● Transcriber’s Notes:
○ Missing or obscured punctuation was corrected.
○ Typographical errors were silently corrected.
○ Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent when a
predominant form was found in this book; otherwise it was not
changed.
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