GERMAN BAPTISTS.
BY WALTER RAUSCHENBUSCH.
A Weak Beginning—Persecutions—Firm Faith—Rapid Growth—A Trio of
Leaders—Theological Schools—Publishing House—Hopeful Outlook.
THE American traveler in Germany has to seek for the Baptist churches,
if he is to find them. His Baedeker has no star to point them out, and
their commanding spires will not arrest his eye as he strolls through
the streets. The church at Hamburg is the only one that is notable as
a piece of architecture; and its arches, though the delight of lovers
of the Gothic, are the despair of preachers. Many of the churches still
worship in halls, and some of these halls are none too prominent. The
writer of this sketch remembers looking for the Baptist church in a
large city of Southern Germany. He followed his clew into a narrow
street, then through an overhanging archway into a still narrower
court, up two flights of stairs to a door from which his knock drew no
voice nor sound of an answer. The Baptist church at Leipzig has its
place of worship in one of the suburbs, about three miles from the
centre of the city, and away from the bulk of the membership. How many
of those who have studied there know that there is a Baptist church in
Leipzig? Of course our Baptist Brethren do not choose obscurity and
inconvenience from any predilection for them, but from due deference to
the ever-present question of rent. Ground is high, and Baptist money
scarce.
However, many of the churches have gradually worked their way to the
possession of chapels of their own. But even these present no very
churchly appearance. The ground has to be utilized carefully. Dwelling
apartments have to be built over, or under, or in front of, or back
of, the auditorium of the church, sufficient at least to house the
pastor, and often sufficient to bring an income that will carry the
interest on the debt. But the work is growing. Better accommodations
are being secured. Even now there are chapels seating over a thousand
people. Several churches in the large cities, for instance, at Berlin
and Königsberg, have two church buildings, without, however, on that
account dividing the church organization.
The “statistics” for 1889 reports 106 churches with 20,416 members in
Germany proper, and 123 churches with 23,976 members in the entire
“Bund,” which includes the churches in Austria, Switzerland, Holland,
Roumania and South Africa, all of which are organically connected with
the German Baptist Mission and off-shoots from it. Fortysix churches
in Russia with 12,448 members, and 21 churches in Denmark with 2,711
members, which formerly belonged to the German “Bund,” have recently
formed organizations of their own. It is wonderful to think that such
a growth has been attained within so short a time. It was only in 1834
that the first seven believers were baptised in the Elbe by Professor
Barnas Sears. Twenty-five years later, they had grown to a thousand
times seven.
The first twenty-five years were full of privations and persecutions.
The reader will understand that in Germany the maintenance and
regulation of religion is considered one of the duties of the State,
and a disturbance of religious order was punishable by law, just as
a disturbance of social order would be with us. It seemed outrageous
and detrimental to the interests of society that artisans and
laborers should assume to teach and preach, and even to administer
the ordinances. Existing laws were applied to them, or new laws were
framed to meet their case. As late as 1852, a law was enacted in the
principality of Bückeburg, a small state in northern Germany, providing
that any emissary of the Baptists found within the boundaries of
the principality should be imprisoned for four weeks, and that the
punishment should be doubled on a repetition of the offense. Any one
attending the meetings was to be imprisoned for four weeks; any one
conducting them, for eight weeks; any one baptising, or administering
the Lord’s Supper, for six months. One of the old veterans of those
days has counted up that he was imprisoned thirty-three times, and in
nineteen different jails. Nor were the jails very pleasant places to
be in. But sometimes they turned even the prisons into places of joy
and prayer. There is just a smack of holy malice in the story of one
brother who tells how six of them were imprisoned together for holding
a Baptist meeting. As soon as they were lodged in jail, they used the
government’s own house and the government’s chairs to hold a glorious
Baptist protracted meeting that lasted for four weeks.
Still these imprisonments are pleasanter to tell about than to go
through. They told on the health of the brethren. Their property was
seized to pay fines. Their wives and little ones were left unprotected.
Their earnings ceased during the imprisonment, and when they came
out of prison they often found their occupation gone. But the men
bred by those times were strong in the Lord, nothing daunted by the
adversary, conscious that they were the soldiers of God, called,
like Gideon, to do battle with a handful, but with the Lord on their
side. Three men stand out as a kind of trio of leaders during those
early years, Oncken, Lehmann, and Köbner. Mr. Oncken was thirty-four
years of age when he shared in that baptism by night in the Elbe. God
had taken him out of the rationalistic religion of his own country
when he was nineteen years old, and had sent him to England. He was
converted there, and returned a few years later as a missionary of the
British Continental Society. He labored most faithfully for some years
before he became a Baptist. He understood the Scriptural doctrine of
baptism several years before he had the opportunity to follow Christ
in baptism. After that time, he pushed the work with great executive
ability and intense earnestness. He was a leader of men. He did great
service to his brethren by his knowledge of English, which enabled
him to represent the cause in Great Britain and also in the United
States, and to gain for it the financial and moral support of England
and America which has been so helpful to the work. In 1879 he was
paralyzed, and spent the last years of his life in forced retirement
in Zürich. The active brain had become feeble. The only thing which
rekindled the old fire in the dying embers was prayer and the words
of the Bible. He entertained his visitors by reciting, with evident
spiritual enjoyment, a verse from some familiar hymn, and a few moments
afterward he would repeat it over again, forgetting what he had just
said. He died at the age of eighty-four, and was buried with all honors
at Hamburg, on the eighth of January, 1884. His name will remain the
great name in the early history of the Baptists of Germany.
Another of the men just mentioned was G. W. Lehmann, born in 1799, an
engraver and etcher by trade, and a missionary by divine vocation. He
was one of the first six baptised by Oncken, in Berlin, in 1837. He
believed in a special manner in the power of the union of believers.
He organized; he drew the churches together in associations; he
constituted himself a link between them by ceaseless itinerant
missionary labor. He died at Berlin in 1882. The writer met him there
shortly before his death. His powers, also, had been broken by age. But
his face was of rare sweetness, and his prayers, though broken and full
of repetitions, still had the unction of former days.
The third of this noble triumvirate was Julius Köbner, born in 1807 in
Denmark. He was a Jew by birth. His father was a Chief Rabbi, and saw
to it that his son was instructed in all the learning of the law. But
the young man heard the message of the crucified Messiah and believed.
He was baptised in 1830, and rendered valuable service to the cause,
both in Denmark and Germany. He was not a man of action so much as
of thought and feeling. There was a mystic glow of love and devotion
in all he said. His poetic talent was of a very high order. He has
greatly enriched Baptist hymnology. His chief work is a volume entitled
“Das Lied von Gott,” describing God’s creative and redemptive work.
It contains passages of great power, and has been highly commended by
such literary authorities as Karl Gerok. His last years were spent at
Elberfeld and Berlin. He had a little daughter born to him in old age.
It was very touching to see the old man with the sweet oriental face
looking down at the little maid by his side as they took their walks
together, each anxious to lead and care for the other. He, too, has
now passed away. So has Claus Peters, who was a kind of bishop in all
the region of Schleswig; so have Bues and Cramme. Others of the first
generation are now old. A new generation is growing up to solve new
problems. There are many strong men among them, so many that it might
be invidious to single out any for special mention. Those American
travelers who have sought out the German pastors in the places where
they stayed, have felt that they were amply rewarded by the contact
with these faithful men of God.
The men of the older generation were called directly from their trade
to the ministry of the Word. They were taught in the school of life,
and instructed by adversity. Attempts were made years ago to train the
preachers. They were gathered by Oncken, or Köbner, or Berneike, for
a few months of teaching. In 1880, a permanent school was established
with seven pupils, and the late Reverend Moritz Geissler as professor.
The school now has twenty-six students, two instructors in the secular
branches, and two professors, J. G. Lehmann, a son of the older
Lehmann, and J. G. Fetzer, of Rochester Seminary. The school has a four
years’ course, and an occasional partial course of one year for older
men. The students were for a long time housed in very insufficient
quarters near the Hamburg church; but, in 1888, a handsome building
was erected in Horn, a suburb of Hamburg, and the school is now well
equipped and sure to influence the future of the German Baptists.
The other great institution for the furtherance of the work is the
publishing house. The dissemination of Christian literature has, from
the first, been one of the chief aims of our brethren. At first, Mr.
Oncken obtained grants of Bibles and books from other societies; but
the need of having a publishing house under his own control soon became
apparent, and the first tract was published in 1834. Through its
connection with American and British tract and Bible societies, the
society has been able to do an extensive work. The number of Bibles and
Testaments sold during 1887 was 35,586 copies. Over three million pages
of tracts were issued during the same year. A number of periodicals
also issued from the press of the society. Sunday-school lesson papers
are published. There is a paper called “Wort und Werk” for the young
men, and another called “Tabea” for the young women. The most important
paper is the “Wahrheitszeuge,” the regular organ of the denomination,
which has recently become a weekly, and has a circulation of over five
thousand copies. Since 1878, the business has been managed by Reverend
Philip Bickel, D. D., formerly editor of the “Sendbote” at Cleveland,
Ohio. He has, by the most painstaking work, diminished the indebtedness
of the business, and steadily increased the scope of its work. The
colporteurs and volunteer workers of the German Baptist churches
constitute an agency for the dissemination of Christian literature
which, for cheapness and effectiveness, is scarcely equalled anywhere.
The work is bound to grow. It is opposed by the conservatism and
prejudice of the people, of the strength of which no one can have a
conception who has not put his shoulder against it and tried to budge
it. The government, at least in the larger states, has taken a far
more tolerant attitude; but complete religious liberty does not exist
in Germany, nor will it exist until the State Churches have been
disestablished, and the German nation has stripped from its limbs
the last shackles of political absolutism and caste prerogative. Our
churches are increasing in number in spite of the constant drain of
emigration which takes from them their most prosperous and wide-awake
members. But, aside from the actual gain of converts, our churches
are doing the work of leavening thought by their literature, by their
demonstration of the power of Christian fellowship as presented in
a church of believers, and by the very general and extensive system
of lay evangelization. In 1889, 190 churches reported 1409 stations
where the Word is preached at regular intervals. Our churches are the
conductors of the evangelical thought and church methods of England and
America. They have been pioneers of Sunday-school work in Germany, and
they are bound to influence its entire religious future.