[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.