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Title: The Story of Lutheran Missions

Author: Elsie Singmaster

Release Date: October 26, 2017 [EBook #55819]

Language: English

Character set encoding: UTF-8

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PORTRAIT OF A. H. FRANCKE

For many years there has been both a need and a call for a book on Lutheran missions, which could be used as a text book and also as a book of reference. Mrs. Lewars has met this need and answered this call with The Story of Lutheran Missions. It is fitting that this book should make its appearance in the Quadricentennial Year of the Reformation and that it should be the first book issued by the first Co-operative Literature Committee of the Woman’s Missionary Societies of the Lutheran Church, representing the General Synod, the General Council, and the United Synod in the South.

The courage and devotion of our self-sacrificing missionary pioneers has been little known even among Lutherans. Our hearts must be thrilled as we read of the superb courage and the unselfish devotion of the brave men and women who, surrounded by indifference were fired with unquenchable missionary zeal to carrying the Word to the ends of the earth.

“Through peril, toil and pain,” they blazed the way for Protestant missions. May this study of the Reformation of the sixteenth century and the subsequent efforts to carry the Word into all of the world help to unite our Lutheran forces in a determined missionary purpose to hasten the transformation of the twentieth century.

The author acknowledges her indebtedness to the many persons who have furnished data for The Story of Lutheran Missions, and to those who have read the manuscript. The authorities consulted have been chiefly The History of Protestant Missions by Gustav Warneck, D.D., The History of Christian Missions by C. H. Robinson, D.D., The History of Lutheran Missions by the Rev. Preston A. Laury, Geschichte der evangelischen Heidenmission by R. Gareis, The Lutheran Encyclopedia and the Encyclopedia of Missions, beside numerous magazine articles and reports. Only enough statistics have been included to indicate the size of each mission. With the book should be used such admirable books and pamphlets as Missionary Heroes of the Lutheran Church, Our First Decade in China, The United Norwegian Mission Field in China, Our Colored Mission, Our India Story, and the many interesting illustrated mission reports. Above all, maps should be constantly referred to.

If the study of The Story of Lutheran Missions gives to the reader, as its preparation has given to the author, a sense of the essential unity of the Lutheran Church and a renewed love for her and her history, it will achieve its purpose.

BARTHOLOMEW ZIEGENBALG.

CHRISTIAN FREDERICK SCHWARTZ.

• The Purpose of the Book.
• The Missionary Impulse.
• The Benefits of Missionary Study.
• The Plan of Salvation.
  • Salvation Intended for the Whole World.
  • Israel’s Conception of God’s Purpose.
  • The Jew as a Missionary.
    • The Septuagint.
  • The Roman Empire.
  • The Supreme Missionary.
  • The Sending of the Disciples.
    • Paul.
  • The Early Church.
    • Its Extent.
    • A Change in Method.
    • Early Missionaries.
  • The Church and State.
  • Boniface.
  • The Church of Germany.
  • Martin Luther.
    • “What must I do to be saved?”
    • An Answer Found.
    • A New Evangel.
    • A Pure and Living Stream.
    • The Bible Translated.
    • Luther and Missions.
• The Beginnings of Lutheran Missions.
  • In Europe and Asia.
  • In Africa.
  • In North America.
  • In South America.
    • Justinian von Welz.
      • His Appeal Ridiculed.
      • A Martyr.
      • A Hero.
    • The Spring at Hand.
      • Philip Spener.
      • A. H. Francke.
      • The School at Halle.
      • The First Missionary Hymn.

|Purpose of the Book.| It is the object of this book to give a general survey of the missionary labors of the Lutheran Church in all lands. A knowledge of the work of our own Church is of first importance, both that we may be well informed concerning those enterprises which we support and that we may through them become interested in the achievements of other churches.

This account of Lutheran missions cannot be exhaustive. Volumes have been written upon the history of many Lutheran missions. Many names which deserve record must be omitted and those heroes who have been selected for mention are no more devoted, no more noble than many others whose names are lost to human recollection.

|The Missionary Impulse.| Even if the specific commands of our Lord were lacking, we believe that every good Christian would find in his own heart a missionary impulse which could not be denied. There is no good news which we do not hasten to tell; the man who would withhold from his neighbors that which would benefit them is rightly condemned. Would it not be strange if we told all good news but the greatest? The Christian has found peace and life and hope in the Gospel, surely it is his duty and it should be his chief joy to tell the good news to others.

|The Benefits of Missionary Study.| The study of missions is a fascinating pursuit. Its subject matter is the noblest in the world--the history of the evangelizing and Christianizing of mankind. The characters are heroes and heroines. The effect of such study is not only inspiring but improving. The student will gain through diligent attention to the courses offered by mission boards a mass of general information which could be gained so easily in no other way. He will visit all the countries of the world; he will hear something of their history, their geography, their flora and fauna. He will see Eliot and Campanius preaching to the American Indians, he will see Hans Egede laboring among the Greenlanders, he will hear of the wise colonial policy of England, of the amazing devotion and great learning of the Germans, he will observe the daily life of the mission stations where the sick are healed, where lepers are cared for, where to everyone the Gospel is preached. The opening of windows into the wide world is not the least of the rewards for a study of missions.

Before beginning the actual history of Lutheran missions we will review briefly Christian missions before the establishment of the Protestant Church, so that the student may connect the present with the past.

|Salvation Intended for the Whole World.| Christ did not present to the Jews the first intimation of salvation for the whole world. Just as all spiritual truths which He elaborated and fulfilled were shadowed forth in the Old Testament, so was the missionary idea. Here we find the hidden seeds, the promises and prophecies which were to mature and to be fulfilled in the New Testament. God is revealed as the Creator of the whole world. It was all mankind which sinned in Adam, the mankind which God had made “of one blood”. Saint Paul makes clear to the Ephesians the fact that the Gentiles are “fellow heirs and fellow members of the body”. God said to Abraham that in him should “all the families of the earth be blessed.”

|Israel’s Conception of God’s Purpose.| Gradually in the nation of Israel there developed the idea of a new covenant of grace. With the growth of this it became more and more clear to Israel’s prophets and seers that Israel was the center of a great kingdom which God should gather from all nations. Many testimonies may be found to this new consciousness. “For the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.” “For from the rising of the sun even unto the going down of the same, my name shall be great among the Gentiles.” In the Prophet Jonah we have an Old Testament missionary, proud and unwilling, but a witness, nevertheless, to the fact that God’s mercy extended not alone to Israel but to all His works.

|The Jew as a Missionary.| Unconsciously to themselves the Jews were engaged in missionary work. Trained in seclusion, then carried into captivity or trading in all known quarters of the world, they continued to worship the living God. They worshipped Him in private and in public, their synagogues rising plain and austere among the impure temples of the heathen deities. Long-suffering, devout, faithful, they did God’s great task.

|The Septuagint.| About two hundred years before the birth of Christ the Jews accomplished an important missionary work. They were now no longer in Judea alone, but lived all over the Roman Empire. For this scattered host the rabbis translated the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek, the common speech. The translation is called the Septuagint because it was made by seventy men. Here is the first great spreading of the Living Word. The Septuagint was read not only by the Jews but by many learned Greeks, who, while they did not accept its teachings, yet admired its eloquence. One of the greatest factors in the success of the early Christian Church was this acquaintance of the Greeks with the Hebrew Scriptures.

|The Roman Empire.| For the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies the world was preparing in other ways. The Roman Empire was at the height of its power, its roads led everywhere, it had pushed back the boundaries of the world, it was adding to itself great barbarian nations, little dreaming that all its pride was to serve the will of the Hebrew’s God!

|The Supreme Missionary.| When the time was ripe, God sent His Son into the world, the Supreme Missionary. To convince a doubter of the divine authority for missions, one need go no farther than to point to Christ’s earthly life.

|The Disciples Sent Abroad.| Just as God had sent His Son into the world, so Christ sent abroad His disciples. Their appointment was made directly by Him. The command is positive. “All authority hath been given unto me in heaven and on earth. Go ye therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.” “Thus it is written, and thus it behooved Christ to suffer ... that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name among all nations beginning at Jerusalem.” “As my Father hath sent me, even so send I you.” “Ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you, and ye shall be witnesses unto me, both in Jerusalem and all Judea, and in Samaria and unto the uttermost parts of the earth.”

|The Record of Their Missionary Work.| We have in the Acts of the Apostles a record of the work of the first missionaries appointed by Christ. It describes the disciples gathered together waiting for the promise of the Father. It describes the pentecostal visitation with its mighty wind, its tongues of fire, its strange speech, Parthians and Medes and Elamites, Mesopotamians, Judeans and Cappadocians, Asians, Egyptians, Cretans and Arabians speaking each in his own tongue “the mighty works of God”. It tells the history of the Church, of its early work in Jerusalem, of its miracles and persecutions, of the death of its first martyr. It tells of the missionary work of Peter among the Jews, the beginning of work among the Gentiles. It tells of the conversion of one Saul, a Jew, who had been laying waste the new Church.

|Saint Paul.| In the crises of history, great characters seem to be almost a special creation. Such a man was Lincoln, such a man was Luther, such a man was the apostle Paul. Paul was a Jew of the straitest sect of the Pharisees who had kept the most minute provision of the law and who had felt that the law was unable to solve the problem of sin. He was acquainted also with the wisdom of the Greeks. To him it became clear after his conversion that in Christ lay the fulfillment of the Jewish law and the way of salvation for mankind.

To those outside the law Paul became the first missionary. Through his teaching Christianity was made a universal religion, by his personal work he evangelized a large part of Asia Minor and the chief cities of Greece. His accomplished task was but a small part of that which he planned. His longing eyes turned toward the West, toward the “utmost ramparts of the world”. When the sword of the executioner ended his life in Rome, only a small part of his dreams had been realized.

LOUIS HARMS.

HERMANNSBURG PARSONAGE.

|The Early Church.| Not only the apostles but the whole of the early Christian Church was filled with the missionary spirit. To that early period our eyes turn with longing desire to penetrate farther into the story of devotion, of passion for the things of Christ, of persecution, of martyrdom and of eventual triumph. To us glorious and pathetic relics remain in tradition, in a few written accounts and in inscriptions on tombs and funeral urns. In Thessalonica (now Saloniki), that city in which Paul and Barnabas were said to have “turned the world upside down,” were found two funeral urns of this period. Upon one was the inscription “No hope”; on the other, “Christ my life.” What a mighty hope had been born in the hearts of men!

|Its Extent.| It is impossible to know exactly the size and extent of the Christian Church at any of the early periods of its history. It is estimated by the conservative that at the end of the First Century there were in the Roman Empire two hundred thousand Christians, and at the end of the Second perhaps eight millions, which was about one fifteenth of the population. By the time of the Emperor Constantine, Christianity had become so vast in its extent and so tremendous in influence that he made it in 313 A.D. the State Church of the Empire.

|A Change in Method.| As we study the history of the Christian Church during the next centuries, we observe a new method of Christianizing. The apostles had built up small churches, had watched and nourished them, had chidden the backsliders, had permitted no sacrifice of the cardinal Christian principles. Now there were added to the Empire barbarian countries upon whose people the Christian religion was imposed, whether or not they were truly converted, whether or not, indeed, they were willing to receive it. There were not lacking, of course, many individual conversions, there were not lacking hundreds of Christians who labored with apostolic diligence and devotion and who doubtless deplored the growing union of their religion with the corrupt politics of a great empire.

|Early Missionaries.| Among the famous missionaries of this period were Gregory, the Illuminator, a missionary to the Armenians about the year 300; Ulfilas, who invented a Gothic alphabet so that he might translate the Scriptures into Gothic; Chrysostom, who founded in Constantinople a missionary institution, and Saint Patrick, who converted Ireland. From the secluded churches of Ireland and the Scottish Highlands there went forth to Iceland, to the Faroe Islands, and far into the barbarian sections of the Empire a new band, Columba, Aidan, Columbanus and Trudpert. From the young English Church went Wilfrid to Friesland, Willibrord to the neighborhood of Utrecht, and Boniface to Germany. Further to the east the Gospel was proclaimed under fearful difficulties. At one time it seemed that Christianity might become one of the religions of old China.

|Church and State.| Gradually the alliance of the Church and State came to its inevitable conclusion. The Church began to share the ambitions of the State. Christianity armed itself with the sword and strove to wrest from the Moslem the sepulcher of the Prince of Peace. A measure of the true spirit of the Nazarene remained in such as Raymond Lull, who protested against extending God’s kingdom by the sword and testified to his convictions by giving up his life. The great missionary societies of the Church, the Jesuit, the Dominican, the Capuchin, accepted in the main the Church’s theory of conquest, a theory made enormously advantageous by the discovery of new continents. The missionary enterprises of Spain and Portugal were marked by hideous oppression of those who would not accept the offered religion.

Upon the ministers of the Church the alliance with the State wrought its evil effect. The ambitions of a bishop of Rome led him in 442 to ask the weak Emperor that he be made the head of western Christendom. Henceforth the See of Rome grew more and more powerful. The Church lost entirely the democratic quality of its early life. Pope Gregory claimed toward the end of the Eleventh Century that he had power not only over the souls of men but over all rulers. The lives of great prelates grew evil, the administration of ecclesiastical affairs venal, the pure Gospel was obscured. A mistaken emphasis was put upon good works as a means of winning that forgiveness of sin which God had promised for Christ’s sake. Before the missionary stream could flow for the blessing and healing of mankind, a clear passage must be opened to its Source.

|Boniface.| Among the missionaries who had set out full of zeal from the English Church in the Eighth Century was Boniface, a man of extraordinary energy and power. Among the fields in which he worked was that of Thuringia in Germany. Here, among the dark forests, encouraged and supported by the Pope and by the ruler, Charles Martel, he preached the Gospel, converting thousands and binding them to Rome. With the Gospel he gave them a new sort of superstition, an idolatrous reverence for Rome and a deep awe of the sacred relics which he brought with him. He established monasteries, synods, schools, and required not only faith but knowledge of the forms of the Church, such as the Lord’s Prayer and the Creed. When an old man, he went to visit the country of Friesland which had rejected his early preaching and there with his companions was murdered.

|The Church of Germany.| His Church, however, continued. Closely bound to the great Roman See, it reproduced all the evils of that powerful organization. Here were the great celibate orders, here collections of relics, here a constant demand for money to build magnificent churches and to support an idle and ignorant priesthood. Here, especially, was a tremendous traffic in indulgences by which in exchange for money the sinner could secure not only release from penance on earth and pain in purgatory, but, to the minds of the ignorant, actual pardon for sin. The essential truths of Christ’s teaching were forgotten while men busied themselves with a thousand non-essentials and found no peace for their souls.

Now, as in other times of dire need God provided a man should point to the true way of salvation.

|Martin Luther.| In Germany, as well as in all other parts of the Church, there were many simple, devout Christians whose superstition was underlaid by a deep and childlike faith. To two such pious souls, Hans and Margaret Luther, there was born in 1483, seven hundred years after Boniface had died, a son, Martin. Hans Luther was a poor miner who had moved before Martin’s birth from Möhra to the village of Eisleben. For this son Hans and Margaret were ambitious. They wished him to possess first of all a good character and to that end trained him strictly. His mother taught him simple prayers and hymns and that God for Christ’s sake forgives sin. They wished in the second place that the lad should rise above their humble estate and for that reason sent him to school, first to Mansfield and Magdeburg, then to Eisenach.

|University Days.| When he was eighteen years old Martin entered the University of Erfurt. His father had become more prosperous and continued in his determination that the boy should have every possible opportunity.

Luther was popular among his mates. He won his bachelor’s then his master’s degree and began the study of the law for which his father intended him. Suddenly with crushing disappointment to that ambitious father and to the amazed disapproval of his friends, he abandoned together the study of the law and the world itself and entered a monastery.

|“What Must I Do to be Saved?”| It had not been his studies alone which had occupied the young man during his university course, but meditation upon the needs of his own despairing soul. We have every evidence that he led a pure and godly life, yet the weight of that sin to which all mankind is heir lay heavily upon him. To a man of his time there was but one way of escape--the monastery, in which he might work out his salvation. Vowed to celibacy, to poverty, to obedience, devoting himself to prayer and fasting, he might hope to be saved.

If “Brother Augustine,” as he was called, had any fault as a monk, he erred upon the side of too strict obedience. He followed all the rules of the order, he fasted, he scourged himself cruelly. But still he found no peace. God appeared to him an implacable judge, whose laws it was impossible to keep. He wearied his fellow-priests with confessions and inquiries, but his heart was not at rest.

|The Answer.| Finally, however, he found an answer to his question. Partly by the help of his superiors, chiefly by the aid of the Scriptures, which, contrary to the custom of the time, he studied diligently, he saw a new light. God was a kind Father who required only that his children should throw themselves in faith upon His grace, accepting Christ’s sacrifice for them. Good works were simply the natural expression of a soul already reconciled with God and could have in themselves no merit. If one simply believed, one was justified by his faith. That this doctrine was not that of the Church, Martin did not realize.

But he was soon to learn that his discovery was not acceptable to his superiors. There came into the neighborhood a monk, Tetzel by name, selling those indulgences which had become a menace to spiritual life. Against him and his traffic Luther protested, first in a sermon and then in a series of ninety-five theses which he nailed to the door of the Castle Church.

|A New Evangel.| The sale of indulgences began promptly to decline, and the money, intended partly for the building of St. Peter’s Church at Rome, ceased to flow into the treasury. The local clergy took alarm, the alarm reached to Rome. Threatened, cajoled, greatly disturbed, but steadfast, Luther clung to his conviction. “The Christian man who has true repentance has already received pardon from God altogether apart from an indulgence and does not need one; Christ demands true repentance from every one,” said Luther. At once came a stern reply. It was the Pope and not Luther who had the right to decide this and all other questions. Thus reproved, Luther began to investigate the claims of the Pope upon the lives and fortunes of men. Excommunicated, threatened, with the fate of the martyr Huss in store for him, but gathering courage each day, he persisted until he had separated essentials from non-essentials and, thrusting aside the judgments and traditions of men, had founded his theology upon the Word of God. Tearing out the weeds of false doctrine and false practice, he cleared the stream of the Gospel to its clear and living Spring.

|The Bible Translated.| Luther not only opened the stream, but provided for its continued freedom. To his German people he gave their Bible. His was not the first German translation, but it was the first which was at once readable and true to the original. With the most painstaking care and with the aid of his friends, Luther prepared his version, drawn from the original languages, true to the German idiom, a joy to laity and scholars alike.

|Luther and Missions.| The interest of Luther in missions has been the subject of much unnecessary discussion. There are fervent admirers who claim for him a missionary enthusiasm which he did not possess. There are others who deny for him all interest in this vital question. The truth lies midway.

Missionary enterprise was not one of the first activities of the new Church, nor was it to be expected that it should be. The turmoil and difficulties connected with the establishment of the evangelical religion occupied fully the minds of the reformers. Germany was practically an inland nation and a divided nation. It had no ships, no foreign possessions, no communication with the heathen world. There were not for the early Protestants as for the early Christians great Roman roads leading the imagination afar, there were no large cities where men of many nations touched elbows. The newly discovered lands were the possession of Catholic countries in whose domain the new Gospel, which was really the old Gospel, would have had no hearing.

Not only Luther but other reformers in other lands were concerned chiefly with the heathenized Church about them. For it they labored and prayed. The business of laying a sound foundation absorbed them. That the foundation was well laid, the missions of later centuries will show. In the words of Doctor Gustav Warneck: “The Reformation not only restored the true substance of missionary preaching by its earnest proclamation of the Gospel, but also brought back the whole work of missions to Apostolic lines.”

|The Beginnings.| There is always a difference of opinion about the actual beginnings of a great work. Modern missions offer no exception to this rule. General historians are unwilling to find any indication that even in the Seventeenth Century the Church of the Reformation felt an obligation to heathen nations. Lutheran historians, searching the matter more thoroughly and with a less prejudiced spirit, have discovered various individuals to whom missions were a matter of deep concern.

|In Europe and Asia.| As early as 1557, Primus Truber translated into the language of the Croats and Wends to the east of Germany the Gospel, Luther’s Catechism and a book of spiritual songs. In 1559, Gustavus Vasa, King of Sweden, and later Gustavus Adolphus, endeavored to bring into the Lutheran Church the Lapps, who, though nominally Roman Catholic, had been in reality heathen, but the effort was not successful. Denmark, which had acquired possessions in India, provided for a minister to the colony, whose chief concern should be the spiritual needs of the natives. The creditable undertaking was brought to naught by the wickedness of the appointed ministers. In 1658, Eric Bredal, a Norwegian bishop, began preaching to the Lapps. Some of his assistants were killed; he died and his work came to no earthly fruitage. But the missionary spirit was none the less clearly exhibited.

|In Africa.| In 1634 Peter Heiling of Lübeck journeyed to Abyssinia to try to rouse once more the churches of the East whose spiritual life had almost ceased. There, after translating the New Testament into Amharic, he died a martyr.

|In North America.| In 1638 the Swedes established “New Sweden” on the banks of the Delaware River in America. That there existed in their minds an interest in the spiritual welfare of the Indians surrounding them is recorded in one of the resolutions for the government of the colony. “The wild nations bordering upon all other sides, the Governor shall understand how to treat with all humanity and respect, that no violence or wrong be done to them ... but he shall rather, at every opportunity exert himself that the same wild people may gradually be instructed in the truths and worship of the Christian religion, and in other ways be brought to civilization and good government, and in this manner properly guided.” Among the Swedish Lutheran pastors who obeyed this injunction was John Campanius who translated in 1648 Luther’s Small Catechism into the language of the Virginia Indians, a work which antedated by thirteen years the publication of John Eliot’s translation of the New Testament for the Indians of Massachusetts. The work among the Indians lasted for over a hundred years.

|In South America. Justinian von Welz.| The most important name of the Seventeenth Century in our study of Lutheran missions is that of Justinian von Welz, a German nobleman. To him there came clearly the true vision of the indissoluble relation of living Christianity and Christian missions. In 1664 he issued two pamphlets, one bearing the title, “An invitation for a society of Jesus to promote Christianity and the conversion of heathendom,” the other “A Christian and true-hearted exhortation to all right-believing Christians of the Augsburg Confession respecting a special association by means of which, with God’s help, our evangelical religion might be extended.” In the latter pamphlet there were such questions as these: “Is it right that we evangelical Christians hold the Gospel for ourselves alone?” “Is it right that in all places we have so many theological students, and do not induce them to labor elsewhere in the garden of the Lord?” “Is it right that we evangelical Christians expend so much on all sorts of dress, delicacies in eating and drinking, etc., but have hitherto thought of no means for the spread of the Gospel?”

|His Appeal Ridiculed.| When this appeal was met with opposition and ridicule, von Welz issued a still stronger manifesto. He called upon the court preachers, the learned professors and others in authority to establish a missionary school where oriental languages, the lives of the early missionaries, geography and kindred missionary subjects might be studied. Alas! von Welz was considered now more fanatical and insane than before. When he suggested the sending out of artisans and laymen to tell the Gospel story, since the learned and influential leaders would not go, he was thought to be quite mad.

|A Martyr.| Forsaking his noble rank, this eager soul turned away from his own country to Holland, where he found a minister to ordain him as “an apostle to the Gentiles”. Arranging his affairs so that all his wealth might be applied to his great endeavor, he set sail as a missionary to Dutch Guiana in South America. There in a few months he found a lonely grave.

|A Hero.| In Justinian von Welz the Church of the Reformation possesses one of her worthiest and least known heroes. It was not until 1786, more than a century later, that the Baptist William Carey, considered the first standard bearer of modern missions, lifted up his admonishing voice. Of von Welz, Doctor Warneck, the greatest of all missionary historians, speaks thus: “The indubitable sincerity of his purposes, the noble enthusiasm of his heart, the sacrifice of his position, his fortune, his life for the yet unrecognized duty of the Church to missions, insure for him an abiding place of honor in missionary history.” To him another German missionary historian pays this tribute: “Sometimes in a mild December a snow drop lifts its head, yet is spring far away. Frost and snow will hold field and garden in chains for many months. But have patience. Only a little while and Spring will be here!”

|The Spring at Hand.| Von Welz’s labors and prayers were to bear fruit. His teaching sank into the hearts of some of those who read. In a period of dreary rationalism which followed there began to spring up the seeds which he had sowed. Missions became more and more a subject of discussion among learned men. Among those who gave the theories of von Welz his earnest attention was the German scientist Leibnitz who urged the sending of missionaries to China through Russia. When men began not only to think and to discuss but to pray, the Spring was really at hand.

|Philip Spener.| To two Lutherans above all other men the world owes the impulse to modern Protestant missions. If Philip Jacob Spener and August Herman Francke had not lived, the preaching of the pure Gospel to the heathen, already long delayed, would have had a still later Spring.

Philip Spener was born in 1635 and died in 1705. He was a man of deep piety and great learning. Occupying many important positions, among them that of court preacher at Dresden, he preached and taught constantly that pure living must be added to pure doctrine, urging that the “rigid and externalized” orthodoxy of the Church be transmuted into practical piety which should include Bible study and all sorts of Christian work. He held in his own house meetings for the study of the Bible and the exchanging of personal religious experiences. From the name of these meetings, collegia pietatis, the name of Pietists was given in ridicule to him and his followers.

Among the practical manifestations of a true Christian spirit which Spener urged was the sending of missionaries to the heathen. On the Feast of the Ascension he preached as follows:

“We are thus reminded that although every preacher is not bound to go everywhere and preach, since God has knit each of us to his congregation, yet the obligation rests on the whole Church to have care as to how the Gospel shall be preached in the whole world, and that to this end no diligence, labor, or cost be spared in behalf of the poor heathen and unbelievers. That almost no thought has been given to this, and that great potentates, as the earthly heads of the Church, do so very little therein, is not to be excused, but is evidence how little the honor of Christ and of humanity concerns us; yea, I fear that in that day unbelievers will cry for vengeance upon Christians who have been so utterly without care for their salvation.”

|A. H. Francke.| Most famous among the followers and admirers of Spener was August Herman Francke, who was born in 1663 and died in 1727. He showed as a child extraordinary powers of mind, being prepared to enter the university at the age of fourteen. In 1685 he graduated from the University of Leipsic after having studied there and at Erfurt and Kiel. In 1688 he spent two months with Spener at Dresden and became deeply impressed with pietistic theories. In 1691 he was appointed professor of Greek and Oriental languages in the University of Halle, then recently founded. Here he became pastor of a church in a neighboring village, an undertaking which was to have world-wide importance.

The villagers in this town of Glaucha were degraded, poor, untaught. Moved by their need, Francke opened a school for the children in one room. He had little money but he trusted God. In a short while it was necessary to add another room, then two. He next established a home for orphans, then he added homes for the destitute and fallen. As fast as his enterprises increased, so rapidly came the necessary support.

|The School at Halle.| It is not possible to tell here the amazing history of the Halle institutions which sheltered even before the death of Francke more than a thousand souls, much less of the enormous Inner Mission institutions in other parts of Germany which had here their inspiration. That activity of this remarkable man with which we are chiefly concerned is his missionary labors. In the words of Doctor Warneck: “He knew himself to be a debtor to both, Christians and non-Christians. In him there personified that connection of rescue work at home with missions to the heathen--a type of the fact that they who do the one do not leave the other undone. Home and foreign missions have from the beginning been sisters who work reciprocally into each other’s hands.”

JOHN EVANGELIST GOSSNER.

MEN’S BATHING GHAT AT PURULIA.

Francke’s institution became a training school for Christian workers. There was no specific instruction for such undertakings, but “in those that came in near contact with him he stirred a spirit of absolute devotion to divine service, such as he himself possessed in highest measure, and which made them ready to go wherever there was need of them.” There came into the school later, as a lad, the Moravian Zinzendorf, afterwards a zealous missionary, who describes thus the effect of the surroundings upon him: “The daily opportunity in Professor Francke’s house of hearing edifying tidings of the kingdom of Christ, of speaking with witnesses from all lands, of making acquaintance with missionaries, of seeing men who had been banished and imprisoned, as also the institutions then in their bloom, and the cheerfulness of the pious man himself in the work of the Lord ... mightily strengthened within me zeal for the things of the Lord.”

From Halle there went forth during the following century about sixty missionaries, among them Ziegenbalg, Fabricius, Jaenicke, Gericke and Schwartz, whose careers we shall study. Here also was trained Muhlenberg, the patriarch of the Lutheran Church in America, who intended first to go as a missionary to India. Here were published in 1710 the earliest missionary reports in a little periodical which was continued under different titles until 1880, one hundred and seventy years. Among those for whom the heart of Francke yearned were the Jews, in whose interest he founded the Institua Judiaca. From Halle there spread an influence not only through Germany but through the world which is difficult to estimate but almost impossible to exaggerate. By no means the least of the missionary activities which had there their inspiration was that of the Moravian Church, the most ardent in missionary work of all Churches.

The missionary influence did not have any means free course. The opposition shown to the theories of Justinian von Welz continued. Francke was considered no less of a fanatic. This contrary spirit may be shown by the expression of a deeply pious clergyman who concluded an Ascension sermon with the following couplet:

|The First Missionary Hymn.| But even in poetic form missionary activity was soon to find an expression. In Halle a Lutheran Karl Heinrich von Bogatsky wrote in 1750 the first Protestant missionary hymn.

Before this time, however, the first call for missionary workers had come to Halle from outside Germany.

Pioneers.

Methods.

German Societies

Scandinavian Societies

Finnish, Polish and other societies.

American Societies

|A Danish Colony.| In 1526, nine years after Luther had nailed his theses to the church door at Wittenberg, the King of Denmark accepted the Evangelical faith. Subsequently the Lutheran Church was made the State Church. About a hundred years later Denmark acquired by purchase an Indian fishing village, Tranquebar, on the east coast of southern India. There a Danish colony was established, there a Lutheran church called Zion Church was built, and thither two preachers were sent to minister to the Danes. Eighty years later the heart of a pious King, Frederick IV, became concerned for the spiritual welfare of the heathen in this colony. His court chaplain, Doctor Lütken, who was also deeply interested, set about securing men who would be willing to undertake the work. Failing to meet with a response in Denmark, he applied to friends in Berlin. They recommended a young German Bartholomew Ziegenbalg.

|The Son of a Pious Mother.| Young Ziegenbalg had been influenced, as most candidates for the ministry are influenced, by a pious mother. Both his mother and father had died so early that he could remember very little about them. One recollection, however, was clear in his mind. Dying, his mother had called her children to her bedside and had commended to them her Bible, with the words: “Dear children, I am leaving to you a treasure, a very great treasure.” Earnest and pious, anxious for communion with God, the young man, who was brought up by a sister, prepared himself for the ministry. He studied at Berlin and afterwards at Halle. There his poor health was a cause of deep discouragement, but Francke reminded him that though he might not be able to work in Germany he might seek a field in some foreign country with a more equable climate.

|Called to the Mission Field.| When his health failed, Ziegenbalg left Halle and took up the work of a private tutor. He continued his devotional studies, however, and held such meetings as Spener had begun. He formed a friendship at this time with Henry Plütschau, another Halle student. Together the two covenanted “never to seek anything but the glory of God, the spread of His kingdom and the salvation of mankind, and constantly to strive after personal holiness, no matter where they might be or what crosses they might have to bear.” In 1705, Ziegenbalg accepted a call to a congregation near Berlin. It was here that he was found by the inquiry of the Danish court chaplain Lütken. He accepted at once, declaring that if his going brought about the conversion of but one heathen he would consider it worth while. His friend Plütschau was anxious to go also, and, ordained by the Danish Church, the two sailed from Copenhagen on the ship “Sophia Hedwig” November 29, 1705, for Tranquebar.

|A Long Journey.| The journey round the Cape of Good Hope consumed seven months, during which time each of the young missionaries wrote a book. On July 9, 1706, they arrived at their destination. There, owing to a difficulty with the captain who had resented their admonitions, they could not land for two days. It was well that they did not know that he had been instructed by the trading company under which he sailed to hinder their work in all possible ways. Unwillingly received by the Danish governor, they settled in a little house near the city wall.

Beside the Danish of the traders, two languages were spoken in Tranquebar: the Portugese of the first foreign settlers and the native Tamil language. Leaving the easier task to his companion who was the older, Ziegenbalg set to work to learn the native tongue. His progress was rapid; in a year he had completed a translation of the Catechism and in a few months over a year had preached his first sermon. By this time he had baptized fourteen souls.

|Busy Days.| The record of his busy days seems almost incredible when we remember that he was a man of delicate health.

“After morning prayers I begin my work. From six to seven I explain Luther’s Catechism to the people in Tamil. From seven to eight I review the Tamil words and phrases which I have learned. From eight to twelve I read nothing but Tamil books, new to me, under the guidance of a teacher who must explain things to me with a writer present, who writes down all words and phrases which I have not had before. From twelve to one I eat, and have the Bible read to me while doing so. From one till two I rest for the heat is very oppressive then. From two to three I have a catechisation in my house. From three to five I again read Tamil books. From five to six we have our prayer-meeting. From six to seven we have a conference together about the day’s happenings. From seven to eight I have a Tamil writer read to me, as I dare not read much by lamplight. From eight to nine I eat, and while doing so have the Bible read to me. After that I examine the children and converse with them.”

When the two missionaries felt that it was necessary to build a church, each gave for that purpose half of the two hundred dollars which was his salary. The church was dedicated on August 4, 1707, and by the end of the year it had thirty-five members. Now Ziegenbalg began to work in the villages of the Danish possessions outside Tranquebar and established a school for the education of Christian children in the city.

STALL HIGH SCHOOL FOR GIRLS, GUNTUR, INDIA.

FACULTY OF WATTS MEMORIAL COLLEGE FOR MEN, GUNTUR.

|Early Trials.| The work was not without its hard trials. When the first financial help arrived, two years after the missionaries had landed, the drunken captain upset in the harbor the chest of treasure and it was lost. The work of the missionaries was opposed by the Danish chaplains and by the Roman Catholics. On account of his defense of a poor widow who had been cheated, Ziegenbalg was cast into prison for four months.

That the faith of these pioneers was unfailing may be shown by a prayer, written by one of them on the fly leaf of a mission church-book in 1707.

“O Thou exalted and majestic Savior, Lord Jesus Christ! Thou Redeemer of the whole human race! Thou who through Thy holy apostles hast everywhere, throughout the whole world, gathered a holy congregation out of all peoples for Thy possession, and hast defended and maintained the same even until now against all the might of hell, and moreover assurest Thy servants that Thou wilt uphold them even to the end of the world, and in the very last times wilt multiply them by calling many of the heathen to the faith! For such goodness may Thy name be eternally praised, especially also because Thou, through Thy unworthy servants in this place, dost communicate to Thy Holy Word among the heathen Thy blessing, and hast begun to deliver some souls out of destructive blindness, and to incorporate them with the communion of Thy holy Church. Behold, it is Thy Word, do Thou support it with divine power, so that by Thy power many thousand souls may be born to Thee in these mission stations, which bear the names of Jerusalem and Bethlehem, souls which afterwards may be admitted out of this earthly Jerusalem into Thy heavenly Jerusalem with everlasting and exultant joy. Do this, O Jesus, for the sake of Thy gracious promise and Thy holy merit. Amen.”

|Literary Work.| Ziegenbalg prepared an order of service and a hymnal and translated the New Testament into Tamil--the first translation of the New Testament into an East Indian tongue. An English missionary society, hearing of his labors, sent him a printing press. By 1712 he had composed or had translated thirty-eight books or pamphlets. Among his original works was an account of the native religions. The value of this treatise has become more appreciated as men have realized the importance of a thorough knowledge of those religious principles which unchristianized peoples already possess. To such knowledge was due much of Saint Paul’s success among the Greeks.

|Travels.| Ziegenbalg travelled as far as Madras. On this journey he talked with native rulers and British governors and preached to all who would hear about the only true God.

|Reinforcements.| In 1709 three missionaries were sent to his aid. Of the three John Ernst Gründler proved most able. When in 1711 it seemed best for one of the missionaries to return to Europe to present the needs of the mission, Plütschau was selected to go. There he accepted a pastorate. The testimony of Ziegenbalg to his faithful work accompanied him.

In 1714 Ziegenbalg visited Denmark, leaving the mission in charge of Gründler. Upon his return in 1716 he brought with him a plan for the regular government of the mission, the assurance of ample financial support and a helpmate, Maria Dorothea Saltzmann, who was the first woman ever sent to a foreign field.

|The New Jerusalem Church.| In February 1717, Ziegenbalg had the satisfaction of dedicating a large native church, the New Jerusalem Church, which is used to this day. He preached the sermon and the newly appointed governor laid the corner stone. He continued to establish village schools, he opened a seminary for the training of native preachers and he provided work by which the poorest of his converts could earn a living. Except for medical work his mission settlement included all the activities of the most complete missionary enterprises at the present time.

For two more years Ziegenbalg labored, growing meanwhile aware that his life was drawing to a close. The record of his service leads us to expect that when his death took place in February 1719 we should find him an old man. It is with a shock that we realize that he was only thirty-six. He was buried in the New Jerusalem Church.

|A Crowded Life.| The extraordinary accomplishment of Ziegenbalg has been far less well known than it deserves to be. Even if we do not take into account his frail health, the extent of his labors is little short of marvelous. His literary work alone would seem to have been enough to fill to the full the thirteen years of his missionary activity. In addition, he preached constantly; he made long journeys; he gave constant thought and effort to his schools; he looked after the poor; he established a theological seminary. From home came many criticisms. It was said that he made concessions to the caste system on the one hand; on the other he was criticised for not gathering in converts as rapidly as did the Roman Catholic missionaries who allowed their converts to keep all their old customs. He was reproached because he paid so much attention to the schools. The criticisms, however, which caused him anxiety and grief serve to-day but to call attention to his splendid common sense and excellent judgment, which later missionary experience has tested. The community of two hundred Christians which he left was not only converted--it was instructed and established in the faith.

|A Second Grave.| The death of Ziegenbalg left his friend, John Ernst Gründler, in charge of the mission. He had been a teacher at Halle and partook of the devotion of all connected with that great institution. For a short time he labored in Tranquebar alone. Soon after the arrival of three new missionaries he died and was buried in 1720 beside his beloved friend in the new church.

Of the three new missionaries, Benjamin Schultze assumed the management of the mission. He resembled Ziegenbalg in the variety of his talents. Like Ziegenbalg he felt the necessity for a careful instruction of the natives. He continued the work of translation, completing the Tamil Old Testament and translating a part of the Bible into Telugu and the whole into Hindustani. After doing faithful work, Schultze, being unwilling to accept the rulings of the mission which had sent him to India, entered the service of an English mission. After sixteen years in India he returned to Halle.

|The Mission Grows.| During the service of Schultze a mission station was established at Cuddalore in Madras. In 1733 the first native preacher who had been baptized by Ziegenbalg was ordained to the ministry. Schools were enlarged and another church was erected. Presently work was begun in Madura to the southeast of Tranquebar. By 1740, thirty-four years after Ziegenbalg had begun his work, the mission counted five thousand six hundred Christians.

In 1741 John Philip Fabricius arrived in India. He came from a godly family in Hesse and like Luther had given up the study of the law for the study of theology. For theology he had gone to Halle and there had heard the call of missions. On Good Friday in 1742 he preached his first Tamil sermon and on Christmas in that year he was assigned to the station established by Schultze in Madras where he remained till his death in 1791. Like his predecessors he became a thorough student in the native tongues.

|A Scholar.| He revised the translations of Ziegenbalg and Schultze in a form which remains unchanged to this day. To his translations the adjective “golden” has been applied. He translated also many hymns for the use of his congregation.

Together with a childlike simplicity and amiability Fabricius possessed great courage. He shared the hardships and dangers of his people during the “Thirty Years’ War in South India”, defending his congregation upon one occasion at the risk of his life.

Another Fabricius whose name should be recorded was that of Sebastian, the brother of John Philip, who was for many years the missionary secretary in Halle and the devoted friend of all missionaries.

Christian William Gericke, “a great and gifted man”, arrived in India in 1767, coming like his predecessors from Halle. His first field of labor was Cuddalore where he preached until war made necessary the abandonment of the mission. Gericke remained throughout the conflict, still preaching and exhorting and supporting his children in the faith. He saw his converts suffering cruelly and was compelled to watch the soldiers changing his church into a powder magazine.

In Madras whither he was invited he took over the work of Fabricius, who was now old and infirm. From there he was able to visit occasionally the scattered members of his Cuddalore flock.

|An Evangelist.| The number of his converts amounted in a short time to three thousand. It was said that whole villages followed him when he conducted mission tours, which were likened to triumphal processions. In some villages temples were stripped of their idols and converted into houses of worship. When he approached a village the entire population frequently awaited him. It is related that the heathen never came to their temples as they came to this man of God. Worn out, he died in 1803 at the age of sixty-one.

|Another Pious Mother.| As in the case of Bartholomew Ziegenbalg so in the case of Christian Frederick Schwartz, the impulse to the Christian ministry came from a godly mother. She died when the lad was but five years old, but she had made her husband promise that her boy should be prepared for the ministry.

Like Ziegenbalg and Luther and many other religious heroes, Schwartz suffered in his youth from the weight of sin and the fear of God’s judgment. Like them also he came, after study of God’s Word and earnest prayer, to rest his soul upon the almighty promises. At Halle he met Benjamin Schultze who called upon him to aid in his revision of the Tamil Bible. Urged by his teachers to consider a call to the mission field, he felt himself at first to be unworthy. Finally, however, he agreed to go. When he informed his father of his intention he met with dismay and refusal. The elder Schwartz had three children, of these one son had just died, a daughter was about to be married and now the third proposed to go to distant India! Finally the father was won over and, giving his son his blessing, charged him to win many souls for Christ. How many times in missionary history has this drama of unwillingness, persuasion and final yielding been enacted!

|A Father’s Sacrifice.| May all fathers and mothers who give their children to the great cause have reason for gratitude as did the elder Schwartz!

In January, 1750, Schwartz and two companions sailed, only to return on account of fearful storms. In March they set out once more and reached Tranquebar at the end of July.

|A Diligent Student.| The first work assigned to the young man was the teaching of the children in the schools. He longed to go into the wilderness of heathendom outside the city and there do pioneer work, and in preparation for the day when he should be allowed to go, he applied himself to a study of the people, their language and their religion. As a result of his thorough comprehension of their nature and their needs he was to have a deep and lasting influence upon them. For twelve years he worked in Tranquebar and the outlying villages.

In 1755, by the persuasion of the wife of a German officer, Schwartz and his companions were allowed to pay a short visit to Tanjore, the city which was the seat of the native government and which had hitherto been closed to missionaries.

HOSPITAL FOR WOMEN AND CHILDREN, GUNTUR.

|Opening Doors.| In 1762 they went on a similar visit to a little company of native Christians who had settled in Trichinopoli, for which England and France had contended for many years. The city was a center for idolatrous worship and contained great temples to the elephant god Genesa, to Siva and to Vishnu. Here also there was a popular Mohammedan shrine. Well might the visitors feel that all the evil of heathendom was gathered to greet them.

At that time the English had control of the city and to the joy of the visitors they besought them to stay, promising that they would build them a church. It was decided that Schwartz should remain.

|A True Lutheran.| In making this change an important question had to be solved by Schwartz. In order to take up the work which seemed offered by Providence, he would have to sever connection with the Danish Lutheran society whose missionary he had hitherto been and become a missionary of the Church of England. In the end he decided that he would accept English support but he stipulated that he would remain a true Lutheran, preaching the doctrines of his own faith. He was the first of many efficient German Lutherans who laid the foundations for the work of other churches, and who thus furnished an example of true brotherliness which has often been forgotten or overlooked.

|At Trichinopoli.| Schwartz had always been diligent, but now it seemed that his labors became superhuman. He had prayed for opportunity--here was unlimited opportunity! He had studied diligently--here were men of many tongues to whom he might preach. With true wisdom he began his work. With the methods of the Apostles as his model he trained the best of his converts to become missionaries to their own people. Each morning he sent them out, two by two, and each evening he listened to an account of their work. He added Hindustani and Persian to the languages which he already knew so that he might reach the Mohammedans and the court, and studied to improve his broken English so that he might preach to the English soldiers at the garrison. His ministrations to them after a serious explosion and a battle brought him gifts from the government and the soldiers. Presently he built at the foot of the mighty rock upon which stood a heathen temple a Christian church.

|At Tanjore.| Schwartz was now fifty-two years old. He had accomplished large tasks, yet the chief labors of his life were still before him. He learned to his amazement that the spirit at Tanjore had changed and he was urged to return, not for a short visit as before but to remain. The new Rajah of Tanjore sought his advice about the settlement of certain political differences, and finding a divine call in this summons, Schwartz left his work at Trichinopoli in the hands of others and took up his abode in Tanjore in a house presented by the rajah. Here, supported by the rajah, who, however, could not bring himself quite to the point of becoming a Christian, Schwartz lived for twelve years.

Here the English garrison was transformed as the garrison at Trichinopoli had been. Two churches were founded, one for the European residents, the other for native Christians. School houses were built in which English and Tamil were taught and where the Christian religion was openly proclaimed. These schools became the models for the great school system of the English government. A tribe of professional robbers forsook their evil lives as the result of Schwartz’s preaching, sent their children to the schools and settled down to the cultivation of the soil and to silk culture. With the city as a center Schwartz travelled in all directions encouraging, advising, aiding. He established a congregation at Tinnevelli, to the south, of which we shall hear later.

|The Missionary Statesman.| In the history of India Schwartz is described as the missionary statesman. Such without any will of his own, but on account of circumstances and his remarkable character, he became. Foreseeing war with a neighboring ruler in which Tanjore was likely to be besieged, he stored away quantities of rice upon which the people fed and which saved multitudes from death. When the rajah grew old the governor of the Madras presidency made Schwartz the head of a commission which was to rule in his stead, and when the rajah died he himself made Schwartz regent during the minority of his son. Schwartz tried to avoid this heavy responsibility, until the rajah’s brother proved cruel and incapable of governing. Then the mission house became the capitol of the province and for two years the “king-priest” reigned. After the heir had come to the throne, he consulted Schwartz on all important questions.

The character of this missionary hero is beautifully described by his biographer, Dr. Charles E. Hay.^[1]

“In undertaking all the secular duties thus imposed upon him, the missionary was never lost in the statesman. He still gathered his children and catechumens about him daily, preached whenever a little company of people could be assembled and superintended the labors of the increasing number of missionaries sent by various European societies to India. These all recognized him as their real leader, and it was universally felt that the first preparatory step for successful missionary labor in southern India was to catch the inspiration and receive the counsel of the untitled missionary bishop at Tanjore. Around his residence building after building was erected--chapels, schoolhouses, seminaries, missionary homes, etc.--all set in a beautiful garden, filled with rare tropical plants. What a refuge for the wearied and perhaps discouraged catechist! What a scene of beauty and peace to allure the steps of the hopeless devotee of a heartless idolatry! But the center of attraction for all alike was the radiant countenance of the grand old man upon whom his seventy years rested never so lightly--never too tired to entertain the humblest visitor, always ready to help by word or deed in any perplexity.”

|Illness and Death.| In October, 1797, the old man fell ill. Thinking that his end was at hand he sent for the young rajah whose guardian he had been and urged him once more to hear the heavenly invitation. Would that we could record that this young man answered, like so many of his humble subjects, “I believe”! Improving somewhat, Schwartz summoned his pupils once more and went on with his work. The end came at last in February, 1798. With his grieving mission family gathered about him, he fell asleep, his last words being, “Into Thy hands I commend my spirit. Thou has redeemed me, Thou faithful God.”

|A Noble Tribute.| Claiming him for their own, those for whom he had labored provided for his burial. The rajah who followed the bier as chief mourner built a handsome monument on which he is represented as kissing the hand of his dying friend. The East India Company placed a memorial in the church at Madras with the inscription, “Sacred to the Memory of Christian Frederick Schwartz whose life was one continued effort to imitate the example of his blessed Master. He, during a period of fifty years, ‘went about doing good.’ In him religion appeared not with a gloomy aspect or forbidding mien, but with a graceful form and placid dignity. Beloved and honored by Europeans, he was, if possible, held in still deeper reverence by the natives of this country of every degree and sect. The poor and injured looked up to him as an unfailing friend and advocate. The great and powerful concurred in yielding him the highest homage ever paid in this quarter of the globe to European virtue.”

Thus died this godly man. To those whose aim is heavenly peace we commend such a life as his. To those whose ambition includes a desire for earthly honor we commend him also. The young rajah added to his handsome memorial another tribute composed by him and engraved on the stone which covers his body.

|Work for Another Church.| Aiding and succeeding Christian Frederick Schwartz in the English mission was his adopted son, the Rev. J. B. Kohlhoff, who arrived at Tranquebar in 1737 and worked among the Tamils for fifty-three years. His son, John Caspar, was ordained by Schwartz. Together Schwartz and the two Kohlhoffs worked in India for an aggregate period of one hundred and fifty-six years. Still another Lutheran in the English service was W. T. Ringeltaube, who was trained at Halle. Upon the foundation which he laid the London Missionary Society has built nobly and has now after a hundred years a Christian community of seventy thousand.

|A Period of Neglect.| It is estimated that at the end of the Eighteenth Century the Danish-Halle mission in India numbered fifteen thousand Christians. Then a period of rationalism in Europe brought about indifference and neglect of the mission fields. From England came the first wave of mounting missionary zeal and into English hands passed a large part of the work of the Danish-Halle missionaries. While we acknowledge that they have continued the work with zeal and with marked success, yet we cannot but regret that so much that was ours, so much that was won by the devotion of Ziegenbalg and Schwartz, no longer bears the Lutheran name.

|Another Steadfast Lutheran.| In the service of the English mission was Karl Ewald Rhenius, a German Lutheran who was sent soon after the opening of the new century to that field which had passed partly from Danish-Halle to English hands. He went first to Tranquebar and thence to Madras, where for five years he preached and studied. At the end of this time he was transferred to Palmacotta, the chief city of the Tinnevelli district. Here he began an original work, the founding of Christian villages. As soon as sufficient natives were converted, land was bought and they were settled upon it so that they might be removed from former associations and temptations. Presently a native organization was formed the object of which was the aid of new Christian settlements.

In 1832 Mr. Rhenius withdrew from service as a missionary of the English society, the chief ground of difficulty being the demand of the society that he be ordained by the English Church, and for four years he conducted an independent mission. In character and capacity for work Rhenius was not unlike Christian Frederick Schwartz. Beside a great amount of translating he had time to prepare a valuable essay on the “Principles of Translating the Holy Scriptures”. He is notable also as one of the earliest missionaries to take a decided stand against the observance of caste.

The appeal of Rhenius for his independent Lutheran mission in India was one of the influences in the first missionary activity of the American Lutheran Church. Upon his death his followers returned to the English Mission. In Tinnevelli where Christian Frederick Schwartz laid the foundation and Rhenius helped to build upon it, there are now over one hundred thousand Christians belonging to the Church of England.

|In the Far North.| It was in 1704 that the Danish King Frederick IV. turned his thoughts to the Christianizing of his East India possessions. Soon after this time his attention was drawn to a need nearer at hand. Among the Lapps who lived in the arctic lands to the north there was great destitution, both spiritual and material. Here idolatry and sacrifices to the evil spirits were common and the official transferral of the country from the Roman to the Evangelical Church had had no effect, since both before and after the natives were at heart heathen. Those who were most devout in spirit had worshipped both the heathen and the Christian gods, feeling that thus were they safe.

A commission was appointed by the King of Denmark-Norway in 1714 to inquire into the state of these northern people. To Finland was sent in 1716 Thomas von Westen, who had himself presented vividly the misery of these poor Esquimaux. Among them he found Isak Olsen, a devoted school master who had been engaged for fourteen years in missionary work, and who now offered his services for von Westen’s undertaking.

Concerning this Isak Olsen, it is related in Stockfleth’s Diary (Dagbog) that he had labored “with apostolic fervor and faithfulness; in poverty and self-denial; in perils at sea, and in perils on land. The Finns hated him because he discovered their idolatry and their places of sacrifice; almost as a pauper, and frequently half clothed, he travelled about among them. When, as it frequently happened, he was compelled to journey across the mountains, they gave him the most refractory reindeer, in order that he might perish on the journey. By all kinds of maltreatment, they sought to shorten his life, and to weary him out. In this purpose, however, they were not successful; for God was with Isak, and labored with him, so that his toil prospered.” He not only instructed the Finns in Christianity, but he taught a number of Finnish youths to write, an art which very few Norsemen had acquired at that time. In 1716, von Westen took him to Throndhjem, Norway, where he translated the Catechism and the Athanasian Creed into the language of the Lapps.

Travelling from place to place, von Westen won the affection of the benighted people whom he loved. He exposed before them the foolishness of the sorcerers, built churches, educated the children and sent young men to Throndhjem to prepare themselves to be ministers to their people. The hardships of three missionary journeys undertaken and carried out in a few years so wore upon him that he was added at the age of forty-five to those who have gone to their reward.

To Swedish Lapland went Per Fjellström (died 1764) who did not only valuable missionary work himself, but who laid the foundation for all future work by his translations of the New Testament, the Catechism and many of the Psalms. Through him and his associates the whole of Swedish Lapland heard the pure Gospel.

In 1739, a royal directorate was appointed to guide and supervise the Church and school system of Swedish Lapland. It designated Per Holmbom and Per Högström, as missionaries to that district. Högström, who died in 1784, is the best known of Per Fjellström’s associates. He gained great renown among the Lapps. He has described his mission labors among them, and his Question Book in the Lapp language, is a catechetical work of merit.

To the west of the Scandinavian countries lies Iceland, which needed no missionaries. Visiting Europe in the Sixteenth Century, Icelanders carried back to their country the story of the Reformation. They introduced at once the Danish Lutheran liturgy and translated and printed the Bible. After some opposition, the work of the Reformation became complete.

|A Zealous Soul.| Beyond Iceland lies Greenland with its snowy fields, its great glaciers, its long dark night and its bitter cold. In the Ninth Century a colony of Norwegians settled there, but in the course of time perished from cold or starvation or by the hand of enemies. Their fate was unknown and they were forgotten when Hans Egede, a Lutheran pastor at Vaagen in Norway, read of their settlement and became possessed of a desire to preach to them that Gospel which had proved so great a blessing to his own land. In 1710 he wrote to the King and to several bishops urging that he be allowed to go as a missionary to these distant folk.

The King was in sympathy with his desire, but not so his people. The plan was thought to be impractical, if not insane. Egede’s own family bitterly opposed him.

But Egede was at once gentle and persistent. Supported by the devotion of his wife he continued to urge his cause. He visited the King, but the interview had a contrary result from that which he hoped. The King asked those who opposed the project to send in the reasons for their objection to the court, and so promptly and fully did they respond that Egede became an object of even greater derision.

|The Ship “Hope”.| Finally Egede persuaded a few men to subscribe two hundred dollars apiece; he gave from his scanty store six hundred, and all together ten thousand dollars was gathered. In a vessel which he called “The Hope” he set out May, 1721, accompanied by his wife and little children and some colonists, in all about forty souls. After a perilous voyage partly among masses of ice floating in a stormy sea they landed in Greenland in July. The situation which they met was uncomfortable and depressing. “As many as twenty natives occupied one tent, their bodies unwashed, their hair uncombed and both their persons and their clothing dripping with rancid oil. The tents were filled and surrounded with seal flesh in all stages of decomposition and the only scavengers were the dogs. Few had any thought beyond the routine of their daily life. No article that could be carried off was safe within their reach, and lying was open and shameless. Skillful in derision and mimicry, and despising men, who, so they said, spent their time in looking at a paper or scratching it with a feather, they did not study gentle modes of giving expression to their feelings. They wanted nothing but plenty of seals, and as for the fire of hell, that would be a pleasant contrast to their terrible cold. When the missionary asked them to deal truly with God, they asked when he had seen Him last.

“The cold as winter drew near was terrific. The eiderdown pillows stiffened with frost, the hoarfrost extended to the mouth of the stove and alcohol froze upon the table. The sun was invisible for two months. There was no change in the dreary night.”^[2]

|The Reward of Faith.| The devotion of Egede to these degraded people was not shared by the colonists and traders who had come with him. When the expected ship failed to appear in the spring they announced that they would return. They had already begun to tear down the buildings preparatory to their departure when the faith of Egede was rewarded. A ship arrived and with it the welcome news that the mission would be supported.

During the summer, Egede, in his exploration of the various bays which indent the coast, discovered the ruins of one of the settlements which he had read about and which had seemed to beckon him to Greenland. There were only ruins remaining, but it seemed to this devoted soul that he could hear the echoes of Norwegian hymns and Norwegian prayers. The next year in a journey along the coast he found many other ruins, among them those of a church fifty by twenty feet with walls six feet thick. Nearby in the churchyard rested the bones of pastor and people.

|A Devoted Wife.| Preaching, translating, trying to establish better methods of agriculture, now receiving aid from home, now apparently forgotten, Egede labored for fifteen years. Beside the heavenly assurance of ultimate victory his chief solace was the devotion of his wife. “She was confined to the monotony of their humble home, while he was called here and there by the duties of his office; but though its comforts were very scanty, she saw the ships from Norway come and go, and heard tidings from her native land without any desire to desert her work. Amid all his troubles her husband ever found her face serene and her spirit rejoicing in God. His greatest trial was the want of success in his work. Though many pretended to believe, he could find little change in heart or life, for those who affected to hear the Word with joy, among their own people still spoke of his instructions and prayers with derision.”^[3]

Presently a fort was established to protect the colony and the island from other nations, but the presence of armed men drove the islanders farther away. After the death of Frederick IV., the colonists were commanded to return to Denmark. Egede declined to go. In 1733 hope was once more kindled by the announcement that trade would be renewed and the mission be supported.

|A Sad Heart.| But greater misfortunes were at hand. A fearful epidemic of smallpox ravaged the country. “In their despair some stabbed themselves, others plunged into the sea. In one hut an only son died and the father enticed his wife’s sister in and murdered her, as having bewitched his son and so caused his death. In this great trial Egede and his son went everywhere, nursing the sick, comforting the bereaved and burying the dead. Often they found only empty houses and unburied corpses. On one island they found only one girl with her three little brothers. After burying the rest of the people, the father lay down in the grave he had prepared for himself and his infant child, both sick with the plague and bade the girl cover them with skins and stones to protect their bodies from wild beasts. Egede sent the survivors to the colony, lodged as many as his house would hold and nursed them with care. Many were touched by such kindness, and one who had often mocked the good man, said to him now, ‘You have done for us more than we do for our own people; you have buried our dead and have told us of a better life.’” Finally the missionary’s wife fell also a victim to the plague. Dying she blessed him and his work.

In 1736, broken in health, Egede returned to Denmark, invited by the King. There by pen and tongue he continued to work for Greenland until his death.

|The Church of Greenland.| Upon the foundation laid by Egede missionaries of a closely-related Church built a noble superstructure. Appealing to the heart rather than to the intellect, the heroic Moravians won the country for Christ. Soon spring dawned in that wintry land. When a Moravian missionary dwelt upon the love of God and the agony of Christ, an Esquimaux stepped forward asking eagerly, “How was that? Tell me that again, for I also would be saved.”

The mission to Greenland offers not only records of noble devotion and sacrifice but a touching and remarkable conclusion. In 1899 the Moravians handed back to the Danish Lutheran Church the work which the Lutherans had begun. The missionary task was complete; with no selfish desire to hold for themselves in ease what they had won in great difficulty, the Moravians turned their labors into other fields among the many which they have so diligently harvested. The Lutheran Church which has sent so many laborers into other mission fields has here had a brotherly return.

|A Malady.| The latter part of the Eighteenth Century offers a less happy missionary spectacle than the earlier part. Upon religious life, not only in Lutheran countries but in other Protestant countries fell the blight of indifference and of rationalism. When men do not believe the doctrines of the Scriptures, when a future life becomes a matter of doubt and personal salvation the subject of amusement, they cease to feel an obligation to those who are less favorably situated, and the carrying of the Gospel message becomes a useless or worse than useless undertaking.

HOSPITAL FOR WOMEN AND CHILDREN, RAJAHMUNDRY.

This malady of unbelief affected the Church, however, for only a short time. By the beginning of the Nineteenth Century men were already returning to the hope which they had rejected. With the return came once more that sense of obligation to the heathen world which had been so clearly seen by von Welz, Francke, Ziegenbalg and Schwartz.

|A Missionary School.| The new light shone out in the opening year of the new century. Then John Jaenicke, who was called “Father” Jaenicke, established in Berlin a missionary school, the first Protestant institution whose object was primarily the direct training of missionaries. For many years Jaenicke had been the only believing preacher of the Gospel in Berlin. In spite of a disease which threatened constantly a fatal hemorrhage, he labored with a humorous disregard of his physical disability--and lived to be eighty years old! His church in Berlin was composed partly of Bohemians, and to these he preached in the morning in Bohemian, his native tongue. In the afternoon he preached in German and on Monday evening he gave a powerful review of his Sunday sermons, dwelling constantly on two cardinal points, human sin and divine grace, and crying earnestly to his people. “You are sinners, you need a Savior, here in the Scriptures Christ offers Himself to you!”

Visiting the sick, giving alms to the needy, comforting the desolate, and alas! constantly laughed at and mocked, this godly man pursued the course which he had set for himself. As in the case of Francke, so in the case of Jaenicke an abounding charity concerned itself not only with those at hand but with those afar off. From his missionary school, he sent out in twenty-seven years about eighty missionaries. Before his death the beauty of his character and the softening heart of his country enabled men to see him as he was.

The Jaenicke school exists no more as such, but in the impulse given to missions and in a successor, the Berlin Missionary Society, it still lives.

|A Method of Work.| For those who are acquainted only with the missionary methods of the American Lutheran Church, in which missionary work is done officially by the various branches of the Church, it is necessary to explain briefly the different procedure of Germany and other foreign countries. Where the Lutheran Church is the State Church, it cares officially only for those within the State. All other varieties of Christian work are carried on by societies which have been organized either by groups of zealous men and women or else by a single person. The circumstances connected with the foundation and the history of these organizations are often intensely interesting. It is to be regretted that we can give only a short space to each one.

|A Century of Service.| No missionary society has had a more interesting beginning than the Basel Society. There was encamped on one side of the Swiss city of Basel in 1815 a Hungarian army, on the other side a Russian army. Destruction seemed certain, and when it was averted the pious folk determined in gratitude to establish a mission seminary to train preachers for the heathen. While this undertaking is partly Reformed, its intimate connection with the Lutheran Church makes it proper for us to include its work in a history of Lutheran missions. Many of its directors and a large proportion of its workers have been Lutherans and a great deal of its support has come from Lutheran sources.

At first the men trained in the Basel school went into the employ of English missionary societies, but in 1822, after eighty-eight missionaries had served the English Church Missionary Society alone, the society sent its men to its own fields. Between 1815 and 1882 the society trained eleven hundred and twelve candidates.

The Basel society has certain distinct and peculiar characteristics. It combines with its evangelical work industrial work which is managed by a missionary trading society. It was the first of the German societies to combine medical with evangelical work. It trains surgeons, farmers, weavers, shoemakers, bakers, workers in wood and iron, tailors, printers and mechanics as well as teachers and ministers.

In 1915, surrounded once more by cannon, but still in peace, the Basel society celebrated its centennial, in rejoicing yet in sadness. It has now stations in India, China and Africa. Its last accessible report gave its income in 1913 as $586,000.

|Royal Approval.| By 1823 the attitude of the Church toward missions had so changed and improved that ten distinguished men, theologians, jurists and officials of the government issued “An Appeal for Charitable Contributions in aid of Evangelical Missions”. The organization which they formed received the royal sanction and was called the Berlin Society. In 1834 the first missionaries were sent to South Africa. At present the society works in Africa and China. Its last income was $291,000.

|Another Large Society.| As in the case of the Basel Society, so in the case of the Rhenish Society there are two elements, Lutheran and Reformed, who work together in all its enterprises. Its school and headquarters are in Barmen, Westphalia; its first missionaries were sent to South Africa in 1829. Its fields lie in Africa, the Dutch East Indies and China. Its income was in 1913 $328,000.

In the north of Germany is located the North German or Bremen Society whose workers are trained at Basel and whose field is West Africa where it has offered an amazing sacrifice. Its income was in 1913, $71,000.

|An “Aristocrat Among Missions”.| The Leipsic Society, which was organized in 1836, received its strongest impress from its director Doctor Karl Graul, a thoroughly trained theologian and a devoted supporter of missions. He endeavored to make this society the center of the missionary work of the whole Lutheran Church. He not only organized, advised and managed from the home base but spent four years in India. The society works in India and Africa. On account of the thoroughness and solidity of its work it has been called “the aristocrat among missions”. Its income was in 1913, $179,000.

|The First Missionary Ship.| The Hermannsburg Mission was begun in 1849. Its genius was Louis Harms, the pastor of the Lutheran church in the village of Hermannsburg. Though he was brought up under rationalistic influences he remained true to the principles of the Gospel. He believed that missionary work could be best accomplished by the sending out of colonies of missionaries who should be a source of support and encouragement to one another and who should furnish to the natives an example of Christian behavior in all the walks of life. His enthusiasm imparted itself to his congregation which was willing to make any sacrifice in order that his plans might be carried out. His first missionary party numbered twenty, twelve missionaries and eight colonists who sailed on the ship “Candace” for East Africa. Beside its African field the Hermannsburg Society has stations in India and Persia. Its income in 1913 was $139,000.

|The Work of One Man.| Like the Hermannsburg Mission, the Gossner Mission owes its existence to the faith and piety of a single man. This remarkable person, John Evangelist Gossner, was originally a Roman Catholic priest who was banished from Bavaria because his preaching and his writing tended constantly away from orthodox Romanism. Persecuted, he declared his intention of entering the Lutheran Church, and was put through a severe examination. Proving that he held the pure faith, he was ordained about 1827. He was subsequently pastor of large congregations, among them that of which “Father” Jaenicke had been pastor. His labors knew almost no limit and included home missions, foreign missions, religious correspondence, writing and works of mercy of all kinds. That activity with which we are most concerned is the mission in India which he established on certain independent principles. He believed, for instance, that missionaries should work with their hands and thus provide for their maintenance as did the Apostle Paul. In ten years he sent out to various missionary societies eighty missionaries. In 1844 he established a mission of his own among the Kols in India. To-day the Gossner mission concentrates its efforts chiefly upon its India station. Its income was in 1913 $184,000.

|Three Promising Societies.| Forty years had now passed since Father Jaenicke founded his missionary school and the new life of missions began. For about twenty years no societies were formed. Since that time there have been many new undertakings. Among them is the Breklum or Schleswig-Holstein Society which was founded in 1877 by a devoted Pastor Jensen. Its fields are India and Africa and its income was in 1913 $67,000. The Neukirchen Society was founded in 1882 in the Rhine province, by Ludwig Doll, who vowed during a severe illness that if he were restored he would give his life to missions. This society labors in Africa and Java and had in 1913 an income of $30,000. Most important among the remaining Lutheran societies are that of Neuendettelsau which works in Kaiser Wilhelmsland in New Guinea, and also in Australia, the Hanover Society with stations in South Africa, and the Bielefeld Society in East Africa.

|German Missionary Scholarship.| Before leaving this brief introduction to the missionary labors of Germany, we must allude to the fine service paid by various Germans in the field of missionary literature. The Germans were the originators of the scientific study of missions. They have given to missions its greatest historian, Doctor Gustav Warneck, who for many years occupied at the University of Halle the only academic chair in Christendom then devoted to the teaching and study of missions, and who prepared monumental volumes discussing his beloved theme. To his study and to that of other German scholars the Lutheran Church owes much of that sobriety and thoroughness with which its mission work has been done.

|In Denmark.| Though the pioneer Lutheran missionaries, Ziegenbalg and Plütschau, were sent to India by Denmark, missionary activity languished in Scandinavia for many years. The Danish Missionary Society, organized in 1821, sent missionaries to the Greenland mission and a few to the work of the Basel society in Africa. In 1862 it established missions of its own in India and Northern China. In 1913 its income was $125,000.

|In Norway.| The Norwegian Missionary Society was founded in 1842 in Stavanger and consists at the present time of about nine hundred societies. It works among the Zulus in South Africa, in Madagascar, and also in China. In 1913 its income was $234,000. The Norwegian Church Mission was organized by Bishop Schreuder in 1873. Its field is in South Africa. The Norwegian Lutheran China Mission, organized in 1890, has an income of $62,000.

|In Sweden.| In Sweden there are various Lutheran missionary organizations. The most important are the Swedish National Society, which works in East Africa and Central India, and has an income of $120,000, and the Swedish Church Mission whose fields are in South Africa and East India and which has an income of $88,000. Among the smaller societies are the Swedish Mission in China, the Swedish Mongol Mission, and the Jerusalem Association.

CENTRAL GIRLS SCHOOL, RAJAHMUNDRY.

|A Brave Girl.| One of the interesting characters in the history of Scandinavian missions was a young Finnish girl, Maria Mathsdotter, by name, who, through the preaching of the missionaries had come to understand the need of her people for the Gospel. She learned Swedish so that she might speak to the King and thereupon in 1864 set out to walk two hundred miles to Stockholm. When a few days later she started back, she carried with her enough money to build a children’s home to which Finnish children could go for Christian and some industrial instruction. As a result there are to-day a number of such homes in Finland.

|Two Friends.| Among the most popular missionary societies in Denmark and Norway is the Home Mission to the Santals, established in 1867 by a Dane, Hans Peter Börresen and a Norwegian Lars Olsen Skrefsrud. Lars Skrefsrud was the son of pious Christian parents, but led a life of such waywardness that he was finally confined in prison. During his term of two years he was thoroughly converted and determined to devote his life when he should be free to mission work. As soon as he was released he offered himself to the Norwegian mission in Africa, but the committee concluded that a man just out of prison was not a safe agent. He then applied to Father Gossner, who accepted him for work in India. In the training school he became acquainted with Börresen, and so close was their friendship that when they were placed in different stations they separated from the Gossner mission to found the Home Mission to the Santals, which is supported by Danish and Norwegian Lutherans in all parts of the world.

Not the least valuable of Lutheran missionary enterprises is that of little Finland, which after contributing to the missionary work of other nations, established in 1859 on the occasion of the seven hundredth anniversary of the conversion of Finland to Christianity the Finnish Lutheran Missionary Society with headquarters at Helsingfors. In 1867 the society began its own mission in South Africa, and later in Japan. Its income was in 1913 $72,000. The Finnish Lutheran Gospel Society works in China.

The Lutherans of Poland divide their contributions among various German Lutheran societies, among them the Leipsic and Gossner societies.

The Lutherans of Friesland, a province of Holland, contribute to the work of the Bremen or North German Society.

In the Netherlands there are small Lutheran organizations which aid in the work of the German missionaries in the Dutch East Indies.

The missionary work of the American Lutheran Church is accomplished both by the various large bodies and by organizations within the synods whose sole purpose is missionary work. From the Norwegians and Danes in America, contributions are sent to the missionary societies of the fatherland, such as the Home Mission to the Santals. There are nine American Norwegian organizations--the United Church, the Norwegian Synod, the Hauge’s Synod, the Norwegian Free Church, the Brethren Synod, the Elling Synod, the Santal Committee, the Zion Society and the Intersynodical Orient Mission--which in 1915 contributed $235,000, an average of sixty-nine cents per member. The General Synod contributed in the same year $117,000, an average of thirty-three cents. The General Council contributed $119,000, an average of twenty-four cents. The United Synod in the South^[4] contributed $20,000, an average of forty cents per member. The Synodical Conference contributed $56,000, an average of six cents per member. Not included in the above figures is the work of the Synodical Conference for the American negro which amounted in 1910-12 to $66,000. The Joint Synod of Ohio contributed $16,800, an average of eleven cents per member. The Danish Society contributed $7,825, an average of fifty-five cents per member. The Iowa Synod contributed $16,000. It is estimated that the average yearly per capita contribution of American Lutherans to missions is twenty-three cents. The fields of American Lutheranism include Africa, Madagascar, China, India, Japan, the East Indies and South America.

It has been impossible in this brief account to give a separate place to the work of women’s or other auxiliary societies, which have contributed so largely to the work of missions. The actual financial additions brought by these societies may be easily computed, but not the interest which they have roused, the information which they have disseminated, the prayers which they have offered. May they long continue their generous work!

Many persons and some churches hold the opinion that missionary work can be done in a haphazard fashion, each man following what he believes to be the divine direction within him. Devoted men who counted their lives as nothing so that they might serve Christ have gone to preach to the Hindu without understanding his language or being able to speak it and have counted with ill-founded joy thousands of converts who had in reality not comprehended a word of the message. The coast of Africa has within its soil the bodies of many missionaries who alone, unsupported by home supplies, unfitted for their task, have laid down their lives in a glorious but useless endeavor.

Enterprises of this sort have not been a part of missionary work in the Lutheran Church, which believes that the foundation of the Indian or African Church must be laid surely and substantially, no matter how slowly, that adult baptism cannot take place without understanding, that only those may share the communion of Christ’s Church who know His Gospel, and that with the precious message to the soul there should go also the uplifting of the body so that it may become a worthy vessel.

The Land.

The German Societies.

The Scandinavian Societies.

The American Societies.

Conclusion.

|The Land.| The pen seems to falter before the task of describing India, with its varied landscapes, its dense population, its fascinating history, its great learning, its dark ignorance. Its area is one million eight hundred thousand square miles, which is seven times that of the German Empire and fifteen times that of the British Isles. From north to south it measures about one thousand nine hundred miles and the distance across the upper part of its great triangle is about the same. In the north the high wall of the Himalaya Mountains separates it from the rest of Asia; below lies the broad valley of the Ganges River; still farther to the south a high table-land. There are all varieties of temperature, climate and landscape.

|The People.| Even more varied than the temperature and the landscape is the population, which numbers about three hundred and twenty millions or about one fifth of the population of the globe. The people are divided chiefly into two large groups, the Aryans who live for the most part in the north and who have continued the ancient Indian civilization, and the Dravidians in the south who in development belong among the “nature peoples.” In addition there are about sixty-five million Mohammedans, of many races and nations, whose religion is a uniting bond. The Indians speak in all one hundred and forty-seven languages and dialects.

|The Religions.| The chief religion of India is thus described by Doctor Warneck. “Two hundred and eight millions have been won by Brahmanical Hinduism, which combines the most varied forms from the sublimest philosophy to the coarsest idolatry, profound speculations and the wildest fantasies, even childish absurdities, moral truths and immoral myths in wonderful mixture.” The Indian believes in so many gods that it is difficult for him to conceive of one God. Next to Brahmanism in number of adherents comes Mohammedanism and below it the demon worship of the mountain tribes.

|The Caste System.| In addition to the many perpendicular divisions of the people into religious sects, there are the horizontal divisions of caste. This strange institution from which emancipation is almost impossible is an immeasurable hindrance to Christian missions. We have been taught that there are four castes, (1) priests, (2) warriors, (3) merchants and sudra, including peasants, artisans and servants, and (4) outcastes. But these are only general divisions. In South India there are said to be nineteen thousand caste divisions. Every trade becomes a caste, and even the Christian Church is regarded as a caste.

CHAPEL OF LEPER ASYLUM, KODUR, INDIA. (JOINT SYNOD OF OHIO)

INMATES OF LEPER ASYLUM.

|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.”

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.

|The English in India.| About the year 1000 a Mohammedan conqueror entered India from Afghanistan and gradually all India was brought under Moslem control. There was continual strife, however, between the Moslems and the original Hindus who, here and there, were able to rise against the galling rule of their conquerors. Early in the Seventeenth Century the English came to India first as humble merchants, then as rulers. When in 1857 the India mutiny, fomented by dispossessed native princes, shook the power of the great East India Company, the English government took the place of the company and India became British territory.

To-day the fourteen provinces, in which are six hundred and seventy-five native states, are British soil. Whatever we may think the right or wrong of the power by which Great Britain has seized and held her vast possessions, we can feel only admiration for her colonial administration. She has come to feel toward India a sense of duty; she has governed justly; she has established good order and peace. She has taken care of the sick, has educated the young and has fed the starving in time of famine. She has, best of all, made it possible for the Christian Church to do its great work.

|The Contrasts of India.| The contrasts of India are described by a writer in the Missionary Witness. “This is a land of blazing light, and yet, withal, the land of densest darkness. There is wonderful beauty with repulsive ugliness. A land of plenty, full of penury. Ultra cleanliness and unmentionable filthiness. There is kindness to all creatures, combined with hardest cruelty. All life held sacred in a land of murders. A people of mild speech given to violent language. Proud of learning and sunken in ignorance. Seekers for merit, resigned to fate. Unbelieving and full of cruelty. Belief in one god co-existent with the worship of 330,000,000 deities. Intensely religious, yet destitute of piety. Altogether, India is lost humanity gone to seed; a diseased degenerate herb become a noxious weed. At least this is the condition of her society.”

|The Word “heathen”.| It is characteristic of the wider charity and also the wider knowledge of our time, that we speak of unchristianized nations as “non-Christians” rather than as “heathen,” a term which, especially in India, has given offense. The exchange of terms is one greatly to be desired, since it removes a cause of offense and also makes clearer than ever the power of the Gospel to enlighten and to bless. For the darkness and misery of India there is one hope of change--that she may cease to be “non-Christian”.

To India Lutherans were, as we have seen, the first of the Protestant Churches to carry the Gospel. Since the landing of Ziegenbalg and Plütschau in Tranquebar, eighty-six years before the Baptist Carey went to Bengal, Lutherans have been preaching and teaching according to the command of their Master.

|The Use of Maps.| We shall consider first of all the German missionary societies and their labors. Before beginning the study of any particular field the reader should refer to the brief account of the origin and history of these societies in Chapter II. He should also refer constantly to the map, marking, if possible, on a map of his own the position of each foreign field. Thus he will add not only accuracy but interest to his missionary study.

|A Gift for Missions.| The Basel Society, which is, it should be remembered, not wholly Lutheran in organization, support, or workers, had already established missions in other places when, in 1834, it received a gift of $10,000 from the Prince of Schönberg with the stipulation that it should start a mission in a new place. The spot selected was the Malabar district on the west coast of India on the opposite side of the peninsula from Tranquebar and thither three missionaries were promptly sent.

|Hard Hearts in a Fertile Land.| The country which they had selected was beautiful and fertile, but the hearts of the inhabitants were hard soil. A proverb expressed their carelessness and indifference: “What can man do? Idleness is good, sleep is better, death is best of all.” In the mission field six different languages were spoken, and thus long study and much literary work were required before permanent results could be hoped for.

Establishing their first station at Telicheri the missionaries worked out into the surrounding country. As soon as possible they began to preach, to establish schools and to translate the Bible into the native tongues.

|An Experiment.| Not the least of their difficulties was the lack of tried missionary principles. One worker was convinced that the only way to impress the heathen was to live their life with them. Persuading other new missionaries to his way of thinking, he left the mission buildings and established himself with thirty Hindu boys in a little hut. The floor served for chairs and table and the missionary ate with his pupils three times a day their meal of rice. An illness brought him to his senses and he returned to a sane way of living.

With such devotion and diligence did the Basel missionaries labor that when one of the earliest workers was married eight years after the establishment of the mission one hundred and twenty Christians came to the wedding. Spreading northward into the Bombay Presidency the mission had established by 1913 twenty-six stations with sixty missionaries and not less than twenty thousand Christians.

|A Christian Settlement.| One of the chief stations is at Mangalore. Outside the town is Balmatta Hill round the base of which lies a Christian village. Here live the missionaries and their wives, here are schools, here a theological seminary for the training of native workers. Near by is an almshouse; in this building weavers ply their trade; yonder there is a printing establishment; here are stores, a bakery, a carpenter shop. Crowning all, there stands on the hill top the Church of Peace.

|Shall Missionaries Provide Work for Converts?| The famous industrial work of the Basel Society is actively promoted. Here idle hands are trained to work, here those who have been makers of wine are given an occupation better suited to a Christian profession, here the very poor are able to earn their livings. There is a difference of opinion about the value of industrial work in connection with missions, some students believing that the spiritual work is hampered and confused by this connection with commercial life and that undesirable and unfaithful converts are attracted by the prospect of having work to do. This danger, however, the Basel Mission seems to have avoided. An unprejudiced observer writes: “Even those who for these reasons believe that only necessity will justify the starting of mission industries, have to admit that this Basel work has made a real contribution to economic progress and to the dignifying of labor as worthy of a Christian.” It is interesting to note that in the Basel weaving shop at Mangalore was first made khaki cloth, which now covers so many million soldiers.

The most famous of the Basel missionaries in India was Doctor Gundert, who labored for more than twenty years, then returning to the Fatherland assumed the work left by Doctor Barth, another Lutheran director of the Basel Society. His remaining years were filled with labor for the cause which he loved, writing, speaking and editing missionary journals. His wife, Julia, was the first woman missionary sent out by the Basel Society.

|A Stirring Charge.| The Gossner Mission was founded in 1844 when Pastor Gossner sent four missionaries to India with the instructions, “Believe, hope, love, pray, burn, waken the dead! Hold fast by prayer! Wrestle like Jacob! Up, up my brethren! The Lord is coming and to everyone he will say, ‘Where hast thou left the souls of these heathen?’”

Arriving at Calcutta the first group of missionaries endeavored to establish a colony but were not successful. They saw among the coolies on the city streets, many men of a distinct type and discovered that they were Kols. Among these people, once of a better standing, but now degraded and oppressed, the Gossner missionaries determined to set to work.

|Discourage-ment.| 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.”

|Reward.| Presently four natives were baptized, others came to inquire, and a church was built. When it was begun there were sixty members of the congregation; when it was completed there were three hundred. So thoroughly was the work of evangelization done, so well grounded were these degraded people in the faith, that in 1857 at the time of the great mutiny when the natives of India rose against the English the nine hundred adherents of the Gossner mission refused to give up that faith to which they had been baptized. Here is an extraordinary episode in missionary history. In 1845 the deepest degradation, misery and superstition, which included the worship of idols and demons and even the recollection of the sacrifice of living beings--in 1857 the most exalted Christian faith and courage.

From now on the mission prospered and its converts multiplied. Presently work was begun among the Hindus and Mohammedans in the Ganges Valley with a station at Ghazipur.

A visitor to Ranchi has written down some of his impressions of the chief station of the Gossner mission.

|Impressions of a Mission Station.| “In Ranchi I could have spent a month with the greatest delight, there is so much to see and to hear. There is a Christian hostel here on the mission premises, which seems to be a great power for good. It is a large square courtyard with open rooms all around, in which any Christians are allowed to put up who may be in 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’.”

|Purulia.| One of the chief enterprises of the Gossner Mission is its famous leper asylum at Purulia. The asylum was founded by Missionary Uffman in 1888, the immediate occasion being the driving of a number of poor lepers from their miserable huts. The missionary offered them a refuge in his compound and there relieved them as much as possible. From this small beginning has grown the largest and finest institution of its kind in India. There is a model village on a tract of fifty acres of evergreen woods, with sixty spacious houses, offices, dispensaries, a hospital, prayer rooms and a lofty Lutheran church. Four-fifths of the inhabitants are Christians. The medical treatment is that prescribed by the latest investigations of scientific men who have discovered the blessed fact that the prevention of leprosy for the children of lepers is possible and inexpensive.

|Hope in the Midst of Misery.| A visitor describes thus a Christmas celebration. “The lepers came marching out singing hymns and playing instruments. Some limp slowly, some blind ones are led 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.”

|A Costly Sacrifice.| The founder, Missionary Uffman, paid a costly sacrifice of devotion to the cause which he loved in the death of his oldest daughter from leprosy. Among the workers for the lepers was the Rev. F. P. Hahn, who gave forty-two years of labor in the mission, dying in 1910. He had been awarded, as have been other Lutheran missionaries, the Kaiser-i-Hind golden medal, which the British government bestows only upon those who have rendered distinguished service in humanitarian causes.

The reports of the Gossner Society for 1913 recorded fifty German missionaries and seventy-one thousand Christians. The Gossner mission is the largest of the Lutheran enterprises in India.

|The Command of God Unheeded.| The Danish-Halle mission among the Tamils in Tranquebar had been founded by Ziegenbalg and Plütschau as we have seen. Then during a period of unbelief at home, this noble mission declined. It was no wonder that the command of God was forgotten when a writer upon ecclesiastical affairs could express himself thus: “The Church of Christ is not suited to such nations as the East Indians, the Greenlanders, the Laplanders, and the Esquimaux. These people belong to the race of apes and it is useless to preach the Gospel to them until they become men.”

|A Decline.| At the time of the one-hundredth anniversary of the founding of the mission, Madras, Cuddalore, Tanjore and Trichinopoli had been allowed to pass into the hands of English missionaries, smaller stations had ceased to be occupied at all, and the Danish-Halle Society was limited to work at Tranquebar and Poriear. In 1825 a royal command put an end officially to the mission.

In 1837 there died the last Danish-Halle missionary, Kemerer by name, who bewailed upon his death-bed the sad condition which he left. But the church which he loved was not to remain without witnesses. The Leipsic Society, whose origin we have described above, sent to Tranquebar in 1840 John Henry Charles Cordes, who was a son-in-law of Kemerer.

|A Single Witness.| Alone, Cordes set to work. Feeling the need of native helpers he began once more a training school for them at Poriear. When in 1845 England bought Tranquebar he saved the mission to the Lutheran Church. At first the circumstances under which Cordes labored were disheartening in the extreme. Then two missionaries, Ochs and Schwartz arrived. A third station at Majaweram, begun and given up by the English, was incorporated.

|A Delicate Question.| In 1846 several hundred Tamils from Madras turned from the mission of the Church of England into the mission of the Leipsic Society on account of caste difficulties. One of the most delicate questions which must be met by missionary policy in India is that of caste. It has been the policy of most churches to decline to recognize that which is so contrary to the spirit of the Christian religion. The policy of the Leipsic missionaries has been to ignore the question, trusting to the purifying and uplifting effect of the Gospel eventually to solve the problem.

|Old Citadels Retaken.| Gradually under Missionary Cordes and his successors some of the old work of the Danish-Halle Mission was resumed and new stations were established. Work was begun once more in Madras, where Schultze had labored. Cumbaconam, where Christian Frederick Schwartz had preached, where ten thousand heathen priests were supported by the populace, where heathen temple touched heathen temple, heard again the Gospel, preached now by another Schwartz. In Sidabarum where the natives declared: “Christians may not live here; the God Siva will not endure it,” the Leipsic missionaries won seven hundred converts.

For more than thirty years Cordes worked in India and until his death in 1892, fifty years after he had been ordained as a missionary, he busied himself with missionary affairs.

|Brotherly Support.| The Leipsic Society is famous for the thoroughness and solidity of its work. Its last report gives twenty-four main stations which lie chiefly in the districts of Trichinopoli, Tanjore, Coimbatore and Madura. It has also small missions in Rangoon, Penang and Colombo for the sake of the Tamil Christians who have emigrated to these places. In the southern part of its territory it is aided by the Swedish Church Mission. Together the Leipsic Mission and the Swedish Church Mission have fifty-eight missionaries at work. There is a Christian community of twenty-two thousand and there are fourteen thousand pupils in the schools.

The following description given by a young Leipsic missionary in 1890 indicates at the same time the enormous task before the Church and the courage with which the scattered workers are endeavoring to solve it.

|A Great Festival.| “On the evening of November 5th we went by rail together to Majaweram, in order to celebrate Brother Meyner’s wedding. This fell just in the time of the great Bathing Festival to which as many as fifty to sixty thousand assemble. On the chief day we went to the bathing-place, and looked at the matter a little more closely. There was a tumultuous throng; hardly to be penetrated. We were the only white faces among all these dusky multitudes. The best place for viewing the whole affair appeared to be the flat roof of the idol temple. We climbed up to it by a ladder, without any opposition. From here we could overlook the human masses; they stood close packed together, some bathing, some chatting, etc. We saw also how they were carrying about different idols, which were adorned with gold, silver and precious stones. All were greeted by the crowd with uplifted hands and loud acclaims. In view of this our hearts might well sink, as we beheld heathenism yet subsisting in its full, unbroken might. If we did not know that God’s truth gains the victory, we should despair of the possibility that India will ever be converted. 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.

ALL INDIA LUTHERAN CONFERENCE IN 1914. DELEGATES FROM EIGHT MISSIONS.

|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.

|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.

|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.

|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:

|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:

Ah! how lovely is Denmark!”

The contributions of Norway to India are given to the Home Mission to the Santals.

|Help in Time of Famine.| The Evangelical National Missionary Society of Sweden works among the Gonds in the Central provinces of India. Beginning in 1877 it has now extended its work to include all natives in its vicinity. It has fifty-three Swedish workers. The most important station is Chindwara, where the senior missionary lives and where there are training schools and two large orphanages founded during the terrible famines of 1896 to 1900. Other institutions established during that trying period are industrial schools for men and women which are now self-supporting. There is also a hospital and very active Zenana work.

|A Missionary Family.| The Church of Sweden Mission in India was begun in 1855 when two Swedish missionaries went into the service of the Leipsic mission in Tamil land. In 1869 they were joined by Dr. C. J. Sandgren, who is still alive and at work surrounded by five of his children as fellow workers. In 1901 several stations of the Leipsic mission were handed over to the independent control of the Swedes and since then the mission has grown rapidly. Madura is the central station and at Tirupater there is a fine 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.

|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.

|The First Missionary Undertaking.| The missionary consciousness of the new church found its first expression is an unsuccessful effort to evangelize the American Indian. In Georgia a little was accomplished by the pious Salzburgers, but the withdrawal of the Indians from the neighborhood of white settlements and the growing and natural distrust which they felt for the whites soon put an end to missionary work among them.

|A Missionary Institute Discussed.| At the first meeting in 1820 of the General Synod, to which belonged the Synods of Pennsylvania, New York, North Carolina, the Joint Synod of Ohio, and the Synods of Maryland and Virginia, the founding of a missionary institute like those of the Fatherland was suggested and discussed. Before this time congregations had contributed individually to the work of foreign missions through the American Board, an inter-denominational society.

|The First Missionary Society.| At the meeting of the West Pennsylvania Synod in Mechanicsburg in 1836 there was formed at the recommendation of the General Synod a Central Missionary Society whose object was “to send the Gospel of the Son of God to the destitute portions of the Lutheran Church in the United States of America by means of missions; to assist for a season such congregations as are not able to support the Gospel; and, ultimately to co-operate in sending it to the heathen world.” Later the name of the society was changed to “The Foreign Missionary Society of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the United States of America.”

A MALAGASY WITCH DOCTOR.

NATIVE LUTHERAN MINISTERS IN MADAGASCAR.

|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.

|The First American Lutheran Missionary.| In April, 1842, a hundred years after the arrival of Muhlenberg in America, Mr. Heyer became the first fruit of his missionary hopes. Heyer was of German birth and had come to America when he was fourteen years old. From 1817 till 1841 he had been a home missionary, laboring in difficult and widely divided fields in Pennsylvania and Maryland, Indiana and Kentucky, Illinois and Missouri. Travelling from settlement to settlement often amid the greatest hardships, he had established churches and Sunday schools.

|No Longer a Young Man.| When he accepted the call to India, he was almost fifty years old. A younger man might well have hesitated to meet the dangers of the sea, the menace of a foreign climate, the loneliness of exile. But Heyer knew neither fear nor hesitation. That he realized that dangers existed is shown by his own words: “I feel calm and cheerful, having taken this step after serious and prayerful consideration, and the approbation of the churches has encouraged me thus far. But I am aware that ere long, amidst a tribe of men whose language will be strange to me, I shall behold those smiles only in remembrance, and hear the voice of encouragement only in dying whispers across the ocean, and then nothing but the grace of God, nothing but a thorough conviction of being in the path of duty, nothing but the approving smile of Heaven can keep me from despondency.”

|Eager to Begin.| It was thought best that Mr. Heyer should begin his work in the Telugu country north of Madras. It was the beginning of the hot season when he arrived and he was advised to remain in Madras and commence the study of the language. But his impatient spirit would not let him rest. In spite of the intense heat, he travelled to Nellore and thence to Guntur, where, invited and welcomed by a godly Englishman, Henry Stokes, who was collector of the district and who had earnestly wished for a missionary, he made an end of his long journey. On the first Sunday of August 1842, he held a service with the aid of an interpreter. |Reinforce-ments.| At once, according to the sound method of the Lutheran missionary, he set about the establishing of schools. He began a school for beggars and another for a scarcely less despised class--Hindu girls. This was the first Hindu girls’ school. Within the first year he was able to report three adult baptisms. In two years two missionaries came to his aid, a German, the Rev. L. P. Valett who came to start a mission of the North German Society at Rajahmundry and the Rev. Walter Gunn, who was sent out by the General Synod.

|A Visit Home.| In 1846 failing health compelled Father Heyer, as he is affectionately called, to return to America. Two years later he returned to Guntur, the visitation among the churches of the home land having been denied him. During the two years, however, he had studied medicine, in Baltimore, receiving his degree at the age of fifty-four.

|“Oh Grave, Where is thy Victory.”| In India he discovered that in his absence little new work had been accomplished on account of the feeble health of Mr. Gunn. Now, however, began a period of rapid advance. Father Heyer made missionary journeys into the Palnad district, and soon, encouraged by many conversions, he built in Gurzala, its chief town, a mission house, the money for which was furnished by Collector Stokes. Heyer’s courage is shown by an incident of his life in Gurzala. The climate of this section is deadly, and on reaching there Heyer had his grave and coffin prepared so that his body might be buried and not burned. But he did not contract the fever and when he left the field he burned the coffin and repeated at the grave the words of Saint Paul, “O grave, where is thy victory?”

In 1850 the mission station of the North German or Bremen Society at Rajahmundry was taken over.

|Back to the Home Mission Field.| In 1857 Father Heyer returned once more to America, not to rest but to devote twelve years to home mission work in the distant fields of Minnesota. In the meantime discord arose at home. The disruption brought about in all elements and institutions of American society by the Civil War had its sad effect upon the Church. Support and missionaries for the foreign work failed, and the Rajahmundry station was about to pass from the hands of its founders into those of the Church Missionary Society of England. Father Heyer was in Germany at the time, but hearing of the danger threatening his beloved work, he set sail for America, and appeared suddenly at the meeting of the Pennsylvania Ministerium at Reading to plead that the mission be retained. He would go to India at once, he said, and in August 1869 he turned his face for the third time across the sea. He remained in Rajahmundry a little over a year. Then handing over his work to a successor, the Rev. H. C. Schmidt, he returned to America where he died in November 1873.

|To India Once More.| Of him his biographer, the Rev. Dr. L. B. Wolf says: “He needs no eulogy. His work at home and abroad makes him the most cosmopolitan character of his time. He had a world-vision, and his soul was restless unless it was in touch with the whole world. He saw what few in his day were able to see, that the Church stands for one supreme work which must be performed in the whole world and for all men. He will live in his Church when men of his day of much larger influence and more commanding place shall have been forgotten, all because he permitted no bounds to be set to the sphere of his work, except those which he recognized as set by his Savior and Lord.”

|Other Laborers.| Beside Father Heyer there labored in the early days of the Lutheran mission the Rev. Walter Gunn, who died after seven years of devoted service; the Rev. Christian William Grönning, a missionary of the North German Society, who entered the service of the American Lutheran Church when Rajahmundry was transferred; the Rev. A. F. Heise, who was compelled by ill health to resign after eleven years of work; the Rev. W. E. Snyder, who died in 1859; the Rev. W. I. Cutter, who was compelled to return on account of the health of his wife after a short term; and the Rev. A. Long, who died of smallpox after eight years of faithful service.

|The Field Divided.| In 1869 the mission field in India was permanently divided, the Gunter station and the surrounding district becoming the charge of the General Synod, the Rajahmundry station becoming the charge of the General Council of which the Ministerium of Pennsylvania was now a part. Between the two missions there have been always the most cordial and helpful of relations. In spirit they have been one.

|At Work Alone.| We shall consider first the work of the General Synod. At the time of the division of the mission field the Rev. E. Unangst was the only representative of the American Lutheran Church in India. For three years he had had no helper. He had seen since his arrival in 1858 seven missionaries die or depart; nevertheless his heart did not fail. For thirty-seven years he labored almost without interruption and happily participated not only in the sowing but in the reaping of the harvest.

|A Civil War Veteran.| The Rev. Dr. J. H. Harpster, a veteran of the Civil War, served his first term as a missionary from 1872 till 1876. Returning for a second term in 1893 he was nine years later allowed by the General Synod to assume temporary charge of the Rajahmundry mission, then passing through a period of confusion. In the service of the Rajahmundry mission he continued until his death. To him his fellow workers paid this tribute: “As a missionary he was indefatigable, as a preacher eloquent and inspiring. He labored in season and out to inculcate self-support. Altogether this was a man to love.” His work at Rajahmundry accomplished all that had been most hopefully expected, for in place of the discord and disorganization which he found he left peace and order and the promise of a great future.

|Almost Fifty Years of Service.| In 1873 the Rev. Dr. L. L. Uhl was sent to Guntur, and there (in 1917) he is still laboring, vigorous, optimistic and in the words which Dr. Harpster applied to his own mental condition, “immensely content.” Laborers younger than he have fallen, a few have become discouraged, but Dr. Uhl is still at work.

|The Children’s Missionary.| In 1872, when a farewell meeting was held in Harrisburg for Dr. Uhl, there was in his audience Adam D. Rowe, who determined then to devote himself to missionary 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.

|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.

MAIN STATION AT MUHLENBERG, LIBERIA, AFRICA.

|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.

|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:

|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.”

The Land.

The German Societies.

(West Coast)

(South Africa)

(East Africa)

Germans at Work for Other Societies.

Scandinavian Societies.

Finnish Lutheran Missionary Society.

Norwegian Missionary Society in Madagascar.

American Societies.

|The Land.| The continent of Africa has been likened to a great ear which waits upon the word of the rest of the world. It is enormous in extent, its area being nearly twelve million square miles. If a line should be run east and west a little north of the Equator, the northern section would enclose all North America, the southern section all Europe. The coast line is low, and the country near the coast unhealthy; the interior is high, composed of vast table lands and mountain ranges. The Congo River, which is said to be thirty times the size of the Mississippi, rushes to the sea over gigantic waterfalls and through deep-cut channels which are almost unfathomable. Besides the Congo there are three other large rivers, the Niger, flowing toward the west, the Nile, toward the north, the Zambesi toward the east.

|The People.| It is estimated that the native population of Africa numbers about one hundred and seventy-five millions. Among this vast throng there is the widest diversity of character, religion and speech. Beside the negroes there are millions of Arabs, Copts, Berbers and Moors. One of the better tribes of negroes, the Kondes of Central Africa, is described by a Lutheran 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.

|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!”

|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.

|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:

|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.

GIRLS OF EMMA V. DAY SCHOOL, MUHLENBERG, AFRICA.

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. |Mohammed-anism 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.

|Africa Under European Flags.| Except for a few almost negligible sections the continent is under European flags. France owns a colony twenty times the size of France itself; Great Britain a colony as large as the United States, which extends almost without interruption from the coast to Cairo, a distance of six thousand miles; Germany, a colony one and one-half times as large as the German Empire in Europe; Belgium, a territory equal to that of Germany; and Portugal, Spain and Italy a twelfth of the continent between them.

|The Picture Not All Dark.| But the picture is not all dark. The mention of Africa recalls to our minds the names of Livingstone, of Robert Moffatt, of David A. Day. The Christian world has in Africa its records of shame, it has also its records of glory. It has at Kimberly the deep shafts of diamond mines, symbol of the pride and lust of man’s heart; it has nearby the graves of many pious German Lutherans. Lingering along the western shore there must be still the cries of the afflicted, the wailing of mothers torn from their children, of husbands beaten from their wives! Yet here are the graves of the children of David A. Day. Into the distant interior penetrated the slave raiders, torturing, driving the inhabitants from their villages, binding them with chains, marking their course with blood; yet here is buried the heart of Livingstone. Whether or not we heed the call, we are bound to Africa by an unbreakable bond.

|The First African Missionary a Lutheran.| It is a satisfaction and an inspiration to know in the searching of heart which should be ours that our own church has heeded the Ethiopian call. If it is true that “when the history of the great African States of the future comes to be written, the arrival of the first missionary will be the first historical event”, then will the Lutheran Church have its Peter Heiling (Chapter I) to record as the first of the Protestants to concern himself directly with the spiritual welfare of the Africans. Would that there were no such gap as that which exists between his going to Abyssinia in 1634 and that of the next Lutheran missionaries!

For purposes of Lutheran missionary study, we shall divide Africa into three sections: first, the West Coast; secondly, South Africa; thirdly, East Africa. As in the case of India we shall consider first the work of the German, then the work of the Scandinavian, then the work of the American Lutherans.

|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.

|“The Door-Keeper of the Gold Coast.”| Among the most devoted heroes of this mission, was Andrew Riis, a Lutheran. At one time when three or four missionaries had died and persecution had dimmed somewhat the lamp of faith, he was advised to return to Europe. But he would listen to no such advice. Sending back the message, “I will remain”, he went farther into the interior. Presently there arrived two other missionaries and with them the young woman to whom Riis was engaged. When the two newly arrived missionaries died, Riis was left once more, the only “door-keeper” on the Gold Coast. Now he sailed for Europe, not to give up the mission but to rouse the home churches to its support. Successful in this effort, he returned to the field and the mission began anew, now quickly to become prosperous.

The changed conditions in this dark land are described in a German missionary journal.

|A City Transformed.| “In June, 1869, the missionary Ramseyer, of the Basel Missionary Society, was dragged as a prisoner into Abetifi, then a city of Ashantee, with his wife and child. They spent three days in a miserable hut, with their feet in chains. Human sacrifices were then common in Abetifi, which was under the tyrannical rule of the Ashantee chieftains. To-day, in the same streets, under the same shady trees, instead of the bloody executioner going his rounds, a Christian congregation gathers together every Sunday. Christian hymns, such as, “Who will be Christ’s Soldier?” ring joyfully through the streets. The people come out of their houses, the chieftain is invited; he comes with his suite and listens to the joyful tidings of salvation. And it is not vain; many have become the disciples of Jesus. Many even dare to tell their fellow-countrymen in the streets what joy and peace they have found in Him.”

In 1896 the Basel mission opened its eleventh station at Kumassi. It has twenty-four thousand three hundred church members with a school roll of nearly eight thousand pupils. There are thirty-six missionaries and forty-three other Europeans who direct the industrial and commercial work. The mission extends from Ashanti beyond the Volta River.

|The Beauty of Nature and the Depredation of Mankind.| The Basel mission has also a flourishing work in the German colony of Kamerun, among the Bantu negroes. The beauty of the land in which they work and the human misery are described by one of the missionaries. “It is a beautiful wild country which often reminds us of Switzerland; on all sides we see chains of mountains separated by deep valleys, roaring torrents, foaming waterfalls, and forests of palm trees reaching to the highest summits. How many times our hearts have leaped for joy at the glory of the scene! And, on the other hand, what a sorrow it is to see humanity fallen so low! The inhabitants of this paradise live in a real hell, always in unspeakable dread of evil spirits and of death. The dying often quit this world with cries of terror. The different tribes fight constantly with one another. Their 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.

CENTRAL CHINA LUTHERAN THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, SHEKOW, HUPEH, CHINA.

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.

|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.

|The Missionary Press.| The first German society to work in South Africa was the Rhenish which, like the Basel Society, is not wholly Lutheran. This society in 1829 established stations first in Nama Land, then in Herero Land, then in Ovambo Land. Here we have another record of opposition, of native wars, of indifference. The mission station lies almost entirely in the German colony. It has in all fifty-two missionaries. The number of Christians is now more than twenty-six thousand. Here also, the Germans have translated and taught with the greatest care. The press is constantly used to bind together the scattered Christians in the sparsely settled districts, two monthly religious papers, one in the Nama, the other in the Herero language, being published.

|A Labor Not in Vain.| Says Doctor Warneck: “It has been a laborious work of patience that the missionaries have done in these great countries, industrially so poor,--a work made difficult by the great inconstancy of the Hottentots and the strong opposition of the Herero, as well as by the entanglements of war,--and more than once in Herero Land the workers were on a point of withdrawing. But German fidelity at last carried the day. Now the whole of the great region from the Orange River to beyond Walfisch Bay, far into the interior of Great Nama Land and Herero Land and even up to Ovambo Land is covered with a network of stations. All the points that could be occupied have been made mission stations and the whole population has been brought under the educative and civilizing influence of Christianity.”

The Rhenish Society has also a mission in the southern part of Cape Colony. Its first station was at Stellenbosch, near Cape Town, established in 1829.

The society has now in all a membership of twenty-one thousand four hundred Christians. A number of its churches are financially independent. Here as everywhere there are discouraging backslidings into the old sins of drunkenness and impurity, but even so the light has shone and will shine with increasing brightness.

|The Discovery of Diamonds.| The Berlin Missionary Society began work in South Africa in 1834, first among the Koranna people between the Orange and Vaal Rivers, and later, in 1838, in Cape Colony itself, its first station being at Peniel. At first few foreigners penetrated into this district between the Orange and the Vaal, but in 1870 when diamonds were discovered, Cape Colony, in spite of the protests of the Orange Free State to which it had belonged, annexed it. At once thousands of adventurers poured in, both black and white. In 1860 the missionaries went north into the Transvaal.

The Berlin Mission is the largest in South Africa. Its last report names fifty-eight stations and one thousand sub-stations. The Christian community, which numbers sixty thousand is organized in five 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.

|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.

|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.

|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.

|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.

|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.”

ADMINISTRATION BUILDING AND CLASS ROOMS, KYUSHU GAKUIN, KUMAMOTO, JAPAN.

PASTOR’S RESIDENCE, CHAPEL, AND STUDENT DORMITORY, TOKYO.
AMERICAN MISSIONARIES, NATIVE PASTORS AND WORKERS WITH WIVES AND CHILDREN.

|A Slave Market.| Following his inclination, he offered himself for missionary work and was sent by the Church Missionary Society of England, which used Basel missionaries in the work, to its Abyssinian Mission. Leaving England in 1837, he reached Alexandria and started up the Nile. At Cairo he had his first glimpse of Africa’s great curse, the traffic in human beings. He visited the slave markets and there saw the wretched creatures men, women and children, lying fainting under the burning sun, to be examined like cattle by purchasers. Like Abraham Lincoln on his journey down the Mississippi, Krapf vowed eternal hatred for the hideous institution of human slavery.

|The First Repulse.| Journeying to Adoa in the highlands of Abyssinia, Krapf joined other missionaries trained at Basel and employed by the Church Missionary Society, Blumhardt and Isenberg by name, but they were soon driven away by the ruling prince. Thus repulsed, Krapf determined to go to Shoa in the south of Abyssinia, and, accompanied by Isenberg, he arrived there after a severe illness in June, 1859. There, when Isenberg had returned to Egypt, Krapf worked for several years alone.

|Once More the Door Closed.| In 1842, he left Shoa to meet his future wife, Rosina Dietrich, in Egypt and to help on their way two new brethren who had arrived on the coast. Travelling on foot, ill, fatigued and several times set upon by robbers, he reached the coast where he expected to find the two missionaries, only to learn that they had been there and had gone back to Egypt. When he with his bride returned to Shoa they found that its ruler, like the ruler of Adoa, had closed the kingdom against him.

|The First Sacrifice.| The need of the Gallas, a nation to the south to whom no Gospel messenger had been sent, had lain heavily upon the heart of Krapf and now, driven from Shoa, he tried to reach them, but found it impossible. Thereupon he determined to do what he could by circulating the Scriptures. Joining himself to a caravan, he started for the interior, with him his young wife, whose newborn baby was in the course of a few weeks buried in the desert.

|“Cast Down But Not Destroyed.”| Alas, even this long journey and these trials were in vain, for once more was Krapf forbidden to proceed with his work. The brave man, disheartened, but not completely cast down, wrote home: “Abyssinia will not soon again enjoy the time of grace she has so shamefully slighted.... It is a consolation to us and to dear friends of the mission to know that over eight thousand copies of the Scriptures have found their way into Abyssinia. These will not all be lost or remain without a blessing. Faith speaks thus: Though every mission should disappear in a day and leave no trace behind, I would still cleave to mission work with all my prayers, my labors, my gifts, with my body and soul; for there is the command of the Lord Jesus Christ, and where that is there is also His promise and His final victory.”

|A Christian Grave in East Africa.| Krapf now determined to attempt to gain a footing on the coast, in order from there to reach the Gallas, whose language he had learned. With this object in view, he sailed, with his wife, in an Arab vessel from Aden in November, 1843. Strong headwinds and a heavy sea compelled them to return to Aden. In spite of their exertions, the water gained upon them in their leaky boat, and on reaching the entrance to the harbor the land wind drove back the vessel toward the open ocean. Half an hour after they were taken from the vessel it sank. Eight days later Krapf sailed again, and after four or five weeks’ journey arrived at Mombasa. Scarcely, however, had he begun to work at Mombasa when he was called to pass through another sorrow, in the loss of his wife. In prospect of death she prayed for relatives, for the mission, for East Africa, and for the Sultan, that God would incline his heart to promote the eternal welfare of his subjects. The next day she appeared much better, but the day following much worse, while her husband himself was so weakened by fever as to be obliged to leave the care of her almost entirely to others. The next day she breathed her last, and on the following morning--Sunday--they buried her, according to her wish, on the mainland in the territory of the Wanika, her newborn daughter by her side. Krapf, even amid all these trials, wrote in a letter to the secretary of the missionary society: “Tell the committee that in East Africa there is the lonely grave of one member of the mission connected with your society. This is an indication that you have begun the conflict in this part of the world; and since the conquests of the Church are won over the graves of many of its members, you may be all the more assured that the time has come when you are called to work for the conversion of Africa. Think not of the victims who in this glorious warfare may suffer or fall; only press forward until East and West Africa are united in Christ.”

|Two Friends.| In 1846 he had the joy of welcoming a fellow laborer, a Lutheran, Johann Rebmann. The two men were exactly opposite in nature. Krapf, restless and energetic, entertained far-reaching plans, and even saw in imagination a chain of missions stretching from Mombasa to the Niger, and thus connecting east and west Africa; Rebmann, on the contrary, believed in settling in one place and staying there. Nevertheless, the two men worked in harmony. When they finished the building of a house in a village not far from the sea-coast, Krapf felt that the first step toward the dark interior had been taken.

After twelve years of labor, Krapf visited Europe. When he returned to Africa he took with him two missionaries and three mechanics, an undertaking which was not altogether happy. But in the midst of discouragement he took heart.

|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.”

|A Heroic Life Ended.| Returning to Europe, Krapf continued to work and to pray for missions until, in November, 1881, he was found dead, kneeling in the attitude of prayer.

|The Missionary as Explorer.| The names of Krapf and Rebmann are associated not only in heroic missionary labors but in important linguistic work and most valuable geographic discoveries. When they declared that there existed in the center of Africa snow-capped mountains and an inland sea, they were laughed at, but as a result exploring expeditions were sent out to discover that what the missionaries claimed was true. The American poet Bayard Taylor, struck by the marvelous variety of temperature and verdure upon Mt. Kilimanjaro, whose base was surrounded by tropical forests and whose summit was wrapped in snow, celebrated it in verse.

|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.

|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.

|A Lutheran in Jerusalem.| Another German Lutheran who has been employed by other societies was Samuel Gobat, who was born in Berne, Switzerland, in 1799. When he was nineteen years old he entered the Basel Missionary Institute. After he had thoroughly prepared himself there and in Paris in the Arabic, Ethiopic and Amharic languages, he offered himself to the Church missionary Society of England and was sent to begin in 1826 a mission in Abyssinia. Before he sailed for his mission field he received Lutheran ordination. For three years he traveled extensively in proclaiming the Gospel both to the priests who ministered to the sadly degenerate Abyssinian Church and to the people, then he was compelled to leave on account of ill health. He continued his missionary activity by superintending the translating of the Bible into Arabic at the Church Mission in Malta; in 1845 he was made Vice President of the Protestant College at Malta. Subsequently he was appointed Bishop of Jerusalem, his election to this important position being preceded by his entrance into the English Church. He died in Jerusalem in 1879, “notable for his piety, vigor, tact and good judgment.”

In 1844 the Norwegian Missionary Society sent Hans Schreuder as a missionary to Zululand. Here at Umpumulo he and thirty companions started a mission. After twenty-five years’ constant and faithful work, the number of Christians was two hundred and forty-five. To-day there are five thousand seven hundred church members divided among thirteen stations. The training school carries its students carefully through a nine months’ course in the Gospels, the Catechism and Church history, besides providing exercise in preaching and instruction concerning the care of souls. The pupils go out two by two on Sundays to preach in heathen kraals. Their instructor says of them, “For diligence, attention and Christian walk, I can give them the highest praise. It has been a delight to work among them, for they seem to grasp more and more the central teaching of Christianity.”

In 1873 Hans Schreuder, the pioneer, left the service of the society to establish the Norwegian Church Mission, which now has four stations and two thousand Christians. Schreuder was the father of Norwegian missions. His appeal, “A Few Words to the Church of Norway,” in 1842, aroused the country to a sense of its missionary obligation.

|Co-operation.| The Swedish State Church established in 1876 a mission in South Africa among the Zulus, selecting this spot because of its nearness to the Norwegian mission from which the Swedes expected advice and co-operation. In this expectation they were not disappointed. In sympathy and collaboration with them are also the neighboring Berlin missionaries. A common hymn book, prayer book and catechism are used. The native pastors of the three missions are trained by the Swedes, the teachers by the Norwegian and the evangelists by the Germans.

Oscarberg is the oldest station. The Zulu war and the Boer war both caused great loss and suffering to the mission. The work was extended in 1902 to South Rhodesia. In all its stations the mission has about six thousand native Christians.

In Abyssinia and extending into British East Africa is the mission of the Swedish National Society. To this field the society was directed by Louis Harms in 1865. Its people, whom the missionary-explorer Krapf longed to reach, are Gallas, a vigorous and superior African race, one of the few who have not been influenced by Mohammedanism. Like Krapf, the Swedes hoped to have access to these people through the Abyssinian Church. To their hopes was put a cruel period by the murder of one of their missionaries. In 1881 a second effort was made to reach them. Prince Menelik of Shoa promised free passage and also Negus of Abyssinia, but both broke their word. Finally slaves who were carried from the Galla country were trained by the persistent missionaries and sent back. Among them, Onesimus Nesib, who was baptized in 1872, has translated the whole Bible into the Galla language and has written various Christian books and a large dictionary.

The Eritrea station of the Swedish National Society is in the Italian colony of that name on the Red Sea. Here the missionary press, printing in seven languages, is busily at work. To the natives of these parts the missionaries have given their first written language. Boarding schools, day schools and a hospital are among the mission enterprises.

A German missionary who visited Finland in 1867 roused among the Lutherans there an interest in Africa. As a result the Finnish Lutheran Missionary Society established a mission among the Ovambo people, near the great mission of the Rhenish Society. For thirteen years their missionaries labored without a single convert. Then the rulers ceased to oppose mission work and the mission began to succeed. In nine stations are two thousand eight hundred Christians.

After long instruction the King of Ovamboland was baptized in 1912 and dying shortly after gave testimony to his faith upon his death-bed. Subsequently his successor was publicly baptized together with fifty-six of his subjects.

|Planting.| The French island of Madagascar lies to the southeast of the continent of Africa and has a Malay population of about four hundred thousand. Work was begun in 1818 by English missionaries with the approval of King Radama, who acknowledged the suzerainty of England. Interrupted for some months by the death of most of the pioneer party, the mission was recommenced in the year 1820, in the capital city, Antananarivo, in the interior highland, and was carried on with much success until the year 1835, when the persecuting queen, Ranavalona I, began severe measures against Christianity, and all the missionaries were compelled to leave the island. But during that period of fifteen years of steady labor, the native language was reduced to a written form, the whole Bible was translated into the Malagasy tongue, a school system was established in the central province of Imerina, many thousands of children were instructed, and two small churches were formed. About two hundred Malagasy were believed to have become sincere Christians, while several thousands of young people had received instruction in the elementary facts and truths of Christianity. That was the period of planting in Madagascar.

|Persecution.| The second period in the history of Malagasy Christianity was that of persecution which continued for twenty-six years (1835-61). During this time persistent efforts were made to root out the hated foreign religion. But the number of the “praying people” steadily increased, and although about two hundred of them were put to death in various ways, the Christians multiplied tenfold during that terrible time of trial.

The truly Christian death of these martyrs is described in a native account. “Then they prayed, ‘O Lord, receive our spirits, for Thy love to us hath caused this to come to us; and lay not this sin to their charge.’ Thus prayed they as long as they had any life and then they died--softly, gently; and there was at the time a rainbow in the heavens, which seemed to touch the place of the burning.”

|Harvest.| In 1862 mission work was re-established, and then began the third period in the religious history of the country, emphatically that of progress. From that date until the present time Christianity has steadily grown in influence.

A great outward impetus was given to the spread of Christianity in the early part of 1869 by the baptism of the queen, Ranavalona II, and her Prime Minister, and the subsequent destruction of the idols of the central provinces, and still more by the personal influence of the sovereign in favor of the Christian religion.^[7]

|A Model Mission.| Among the societies which entered Madagascar at this period was the Norwegian Missionary Society which settled in the province of Betsileo in 1867. With admirable administration at home, and in spite of serious difficulty with an opposition mission established by the Jesuits, they have accomplished a task which is universally praised by missionary historians. They have at work, besides many Norwegian and some American missionaries, ninety-six native pastors and over nine hundred catechists. There are two medical missions and a leper asylum, schools and printing offices. It is reckoned that among the one hundred and thirty thousand Christians in the Island, eighty-four thousand are Lutherans.

Among the great names of the mission are those of Dahle, who established a Seminary for native workers, and Doctor Borchgrevink, a medical missionary.

The Norwegians in America, always closely connected with the Church of the Fatherland, sent their missionary contributions at first through the fatherland societies, the Norwegian Missionary Society and the Norwegian Church (Schreuder’s) Mission. To Schreuder’s Mission the Norwegian Synod (American) still contributes, having sent in 1915 about $10,000.

FIRST GRADUATING CLASS FROM KINDERGARTEN AT OGI, JAPAN.

GROUP OF THEOLOGICAL STUDENTS, KUMAMOTO.

In the work in Madagascar American Norwegians have a large and important part. In 1892 the Norwegian Missionary Society assigned to the United Norwegian Lutheran Church (American) the southern part of the island. In 1897 this field was divided once more, the Norwegian Lutheran Free Church (American) taking the western section. Together these two societies have a territory covering about thirty thousand square miles, with a population of almost four hundred thousand. The United Church contributed in 1915, $42,000 for its work and the Norwegian Free Church almost $17,000. Together they have a Christian community of about twenty-six hundred.

To the work of the Leipsic Society in East Africa the American Lutheran Synod of Iowa contributes and to the work of the Hermannsburg society, the Joint Synod of Ohio.

The Synod of South Carolina, now a part of the United Synod in the South may be said to have been the first Lutheran body in America to send a missionary to Africa. This was Boston Drayton, a colored member of the English Lutheran Church of Charleston, who sailed in 1845. Of him or of his work, little more is known.

|An African Republic.| The Republic of Liberia was established in 1821 “to be reserved forever for the settlement of American freed slaves.” The little republic contains about fifty thousand of the descendants of these early settlers and about two million aborigines, who are divided into eight tribes. Among them fetish worship, superstition, polygamy, tendency to constant strife, and other characteristic African faults abound. In this republic the mission of The General Synod was founded by the Rev. Morris Officer in 1860. Mr. Officer had served for a year and a half as a missionary of the American Board, but his heart longed for a mission of his own Church, and his diary shows his deep satisfaction when he was authorized to begin. He describes the making of roads, the planting of banana and coffee trees, sweet potatoes and flowers. He tells of the first children in the school, forty boys and girls captured from a slave ship. When he decided upon a site for the mission he knelt down among his native helpers and prayed for God’s blessing upon the new endeavor.

In a year and a half Mr. Officer was compelled to return on account of ill health. In the meantime reinforcements had arrived and the sad and stirring history of this little mission had begun, a history which might be celebrated, in the words of a writer for the Missionary Review, in some spirited poem like “The Charge of the Light Brigade at Balaklava.” Of eighteen missionaries sent out during the first thirty-six years, six died within two years after reaching the field, while eight returned within three years with greatly shattered health.

|An Ideal Missionary.| In contrast to this shadow we have the history of Doctor David A. Day, who lived and labored for twenty-three years in this dangerous country. A man of strong body and fine mind, Doctor Day was an ideal missionary. Possessing deep faith with which to meet serious problems, and a keen sense of humor with which to meet smaller difficulties, he labored until he was worn out. Returning to America when he dared linger no longer, he died almost in sight of the home land, his wife, whose devotion was no less than his, having died two years before. Mrs. Day was made of the same heroic stuff as her husband. As the end of her life approached she urged her husband to remain in Africa where he was so much needed rather than join her, great as was her desire to see him. How many noble missionary wives have made similar sacrifice!

The great regard in which Doctor Day was held, as well as the impressionable and affectionate nature of the people among whom he worked, is shown in an incident recorded in his biography. When the news came from America that Mrs. Day was dead, the little children of the mission gathered a bunch of white lilies which they put into the hands of one of their number who carried them into the room, where, stunned and grief-stricken, Doctor Day bent under the first shock of his bereavement. Silently laying the flowers before him, the little girl kissed his feet and as silently withdrew. Surely missionary work has its earthly as well as its heavenly reward.

To-day the Muhlenberg mission has fifteen men and women at work. It counts its native Christians at three hundred. A valuable and interesting expansion of the work is the employing of Doctor Westerman, a distinguished German philologist, to prepare grammars and dictionaries of the native languages, which, to prepare for greater growth, the missionaries must learn. Like all of Africa this mission begs for more workers, more money, more interest, more prayers.

Here closes the record of our work in Africa. It has given many examples of faith and courage to missionary history, it has added many names, John Ludwig Krapf, Rosina Krapf, Schreuder, Day, to the roster of Africa’s apostles. But in the words of Frederic Perry Noble, Africa’s chief missionary historian, “Lutheranism is yet in its attitude toward missions a sleeping giant.” Since Mr. Noble gave expression to this opinion, Lutheranism has made a beginning in African mission work. Still, however, she is not yet aroused. As in India, so in Africa, German missions and missionaries have suffered cruelly in the present war. May the true spirit of Christ so influence His Church henceforth that missionary and not military warfare may fill the pages of history.

China.

Early Missions.

Karl Frederick Gützlaff

Societies

German

Scandinavian

American

Japan.

The Land and the People

Societies

American

East Indies

Societies

Australia Neuendettelsau

New Guinea Neuendettelsau, Rhenish

The Near East

The Jews

|The Land.| China is the most ancient of the great empires of the world. It comprises more than four million square miles and is divided into eighteen provinces. Among the various annexed countries are Tartary, Mongolia and Manchuria. There is a wide variety of scenery and climate, there are mountains of great elevation and there is an enormous and fertile river plain, which lies on the lower courses of the Huang Ho and Yang-tse-Kiang Rivers and which supports a larger population than any other region of the globe of equal size.

A Danish Lutheran missionary describes thus the features of the Chinese landscape:

“The soil of the valley is clothed with light green or yellow rice-fields, through which the water course winds like a glittering silver ribbon; along the stream, or on either side of the valley, wave the delicate leafy crowns of the bamboo reeds, bowing to the slightest breeze. If we look up to the mountain-sides on either hand, these are covered below with mulberry groves, cotton plantations, and trim tea-grounds, which are often disposed in artificial terraces, which sometimes also bear corn. Higher up, as far as the mountain will consent to be ‘clothed’, grow woods, among whose foliage the light leaves of the camphor-tree, the reddish leaves of the tallow-tree, and the dark green leaves of the arbor vitae occupy a conspicuous place; but there are also found cedars and cypresses. Where the wood sinks into shrubbery, it frequently consists of azaleas and similar plants, which we grow in green-houses or in windows fronting the south, and which in the flowering time afford a spectacle of dazzling beauty. There are also found groves of roses or jessamines. On the whole, there are many very beautiful landscapes in China. Nor are there wanting wild mountain regions of an Alpine character. Deserts there are none; but, on the other hand, there are dreary and melancholy marshes, and the coasts are often flat and tiresome.

“While plant life is thus richly developed in China, the opposite is true of animal life. There is certainly no region on earth where it plays so slight a part and is so scantily represented as here. The greedy and reckless children of men have consumed or expelled the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air.”

LUTHERAN CHURCH IN BORNEO.

LUTHERAN CHURCH IN JAVA.

|The People.| The people, numbering about four hundred million, live chiefly in large towns and in dense settlements along the rivers. Millions live on the rivers in houseboats. The Chinese are industrious and thrifty and at the same time ignorant and exceedingly unprogressive. Only a small class is educated, and education, like all else that is Chinese, has hitherto looked to the past for its subject matter. It consists of the fixing in mind of the ancient classical writings and the acquiring of the ancient, classical style. To the foreigner the language offers obstacles which are almost insurmountable. There are only four hundred different words, but these are so modified by inflections and by the tone of the voice that their variations are legion. One of the early missionaries said that in order to acquire the Chinese language one must have a “body of brass, lungs of steel, a head of oak, the eyes of eagles, the heart of an apostle, the memory of an angel and the life of Methuselah”. The written language is even more difficult to learn than the spoken language and both present the greatest difficulty to the missionary in that they contain no such words as sin, holiness, regeneration, spirit, God, which are so essential a part of the Christian vocabulary.

|Religion.| Three religions are firmly established, Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism. These are not clearly differentiated, by any means, but the individual frequently selects from each the elements which please him. Doctor Warneck describes this strange eclectic religion as follows: “All of them reverence Confucius, regulate their life--to a certain extent--according to his precepts, and are devoted to ancestor worship; all have recourse, especially in sickness and need, to the magic arts and superstitious hocus pocus of the Taoists and almost all commend their souls at death to the Buddhist priests, have masses read for the soul and make use of the Buddhist burial ceremonial. The polite man says to the man of different belief, and the enlightened man who no longer believes anything repeats it: ‘The three doctrines come to the same thing in the end’.”

There are in China also about thirty million Mohammedans.

|Character.| The Chinese character is as difficult to impress as the Chinese language is hard to learn. Since the Chinese worships that which is old, the stranger and foreigner seems to him indeed a “devil”; since he is self-righteous, he does not consider himself an object for missionary effort. It was at first laughable to him that missionaries should come to his land with so foolish a purpose. In scores of cases he punished the effrontery of their undertaking with death.

Nevertheless upon his hardened and indifferent heart there has been wrought a wonderful work. To Christian nations he has learned to look not only for a better educational system but with increasing eagerness for a better religion. Recently an edict was passed declaring Confucianism to be still the State religion, but at the same time thousands were thronging to hear the speakers in a nation-wide Christian campaign.

|China no Longer a Closed Land.| Until the middle of the Nineteenth Century China was closed to foreigners. In 1842, at the end of the infamous Opium War by which England forced the opium trade upon unwilling China, five ports were opened, Shanghai, Ningpo, Foochow, Amoy and Canton, and the Island of Hongkong was ceded to England. In these ports missionaries went at once to work. In 1850 the Taiping Rebellion seemed to promise for a while not only sweeping reforms but the possible acceptance of the religion of the foreigners, but it degenerated into a barbarous and cruel rebellion which was eventually subdued by “Chinese” Gordon at the head of the Imperial troops.

In 1856 there was another Opium War in which France joined. At its close nine more ports were opened. In 1860 there was a third war and finally twenty-four ports were opened. Now missionaries were allowed free course through the Empire, but they had become more than ever in the eyes of the people “foreign devils”.

|The Boxer Uprising.| In 1900, by which time it was estimated that in spite of fearful opposition there were two hundred and fifteen thousand Christians, came the Boxer uprising. Disapproving of the progressive policies of the young Emperor alarmed by the threatening advance of Germany, Russia, England and France, the Chinese determined upon a wholesale slaughter, not only of missionaries and other foreigners, but of native Christians as well. With indescribable barbarity thousands were slain, among them one hundred and thirty-four missionaries, fifty-two children of missionaries and sixteen thousand native Christians.

The effect upon Christian missions was extraordinary. As though the rain of blood and fire had been a refreshing shower, the harvest sprang up. Truly the blood of martyrs was once more the seed of the Church. Within ten years after the uprising the number of Christians had more than doubled.

|The First Missionaries.| The first Christian mission to the Chinese was that of the heroic Nestorians in the Seventh Century of which little but a traditional account remains. Roman Catholic missions record the names of many heroes, but on account of the hardness of the heart of the people and also on account of the lack of wisdom of the missionaries, no permanent missions were established.

Before the treaty ports were opened in 1842, the English missionary Morrison visited the country secretly and began Protestant missions by translating the whole Bible into Chinese. Equal in devotion and diligence and with a peculiar interest for us was another missionary, Karl Frederick Gützlaff, a Lutheran whose ardent appeal for China helped to quicken the missionary spirit in the American Lutheran Church and also inspired David Livingstone to give his life to missions.

|A Letter to the King.| Gützlaff was born of humble folk in Pyritz in Pomerania in 1803. When he was twelve years old he was apprenticed to a saddler, but he had other intentions for his life, and wrote in poetical form his desire to become a famous man. This poem the lad addressed to no less a person than the King of Prussia, through whom he was sent first to Halle to school and afterwards to the institute of Jaenicke at Berlin. In 1826 he went as a missionary of the Netherlands Society to Java. After several years of labor, he determined to penetrate into closed and inhospitable China. When the Netherlands Society declined to give him permission, he left their service in 1831 and became an interpreter on a coast vessel.

|Appeals for Help.| Meanwhile during his service in Java, Gützlaff had learned the Chinese language, the most difficult of the many tongues which his extraordinary gift for language enabled him to master. Now in the many journeys which he made up and down the coast, he began to preach and to distribute thousands of tracts of his own translating. He wrote to England and America earnest appeals that workers be sent to share in his labors. Presently he was made an interpreter in the English consular service, in which position he had wide opportunity for Christian work. At the end of the Opium War he gave valuable service by his knowledge of the country and the people. Tradition records that at this time among China’s vast population there were six Christians.

Though five ports had been opened by the treaty of Nanking, foreigners were not allowed to go far beyond them. To meet this difficulty, Gützlaff began the training of bands of native workers who should carry the Gospel to the most distant of the eighteen provinces. He continued to preach and to call upon the home lands for aid. In 1849 he visited Europe. Travelling rapidly, he flew “like an angel” through most of the European countries, preaching, pleading and endeavoring to form societies, which should divide vast China into missionary provinces. Among the few who heard and answered his plea was, as we have seen, David Livingstone.

|A Cruel Disappoint-ment.| In 1850 Gützlaff returned to China. The bands of native workers which he had trained with such enthusiasm had not lived up to his high hopes but had basely betrayed him. Before he could do much toward repairing the damage which they had wrought, he died at the age of forty-eight. He was buried in Hong Kong and over his body was erected a mighty stone bearing in English the inscription, “An Apostle”, and in German, “The Apostle to the Chinese”.

|Author and Translator.| The literary labors of Gützlaff were enormous, especially when we consider that he was constantly occupied with other affairs as missionary and interpreter. He translated the Bible into Siamese; he aided the Englishman Robert Morrison in his translation of the Bible into Chinese; he published a monthly magazine in Chinese and wrote in Chinese various books on useful subjects. Among his English and German works were a “Journal of Three Voyages along the Coast of China in 1831, 1832 and 1833,” “A Sketch of Chinese History, Ancient and Modern”, “China Opened” and “The Life of Taow-Kwang.”

As remarkable as Gützlaff’s talent and industry was his enthusiasm. Where his work did not succeed, failure was brought about not by any lack in himself but in those of whom he expected larger things than they could accomplish.

A missionary historian describes a memorial to Gützlaff, which seems singularly appropriate to his life of devotion.

|A Memorial.| “We were passing through the Straits of Formosa at midnight when we saw suddenly before us on China’s wild coast a towering lighthouse. At the same moment a loud cry came over the water, ‘Gützlaff!’ We asked who was summoned and they answered that the lighthouse was named for the missionary Gützlaff, and thus by the use of his name instead of the accustomed ‘Beware’, was his memory recalled.”

It is proper to include here as elsewhere the histories of those German societies, which, though they are not wholly Lutheran, yet employ and are supported by many Lutherans. The three Lutheran or partly Lutheran organizations which have missions in China are the Basel, the Berlin and the Rhenish societies.

In response to the appeal of Gützlaff, the Basel Society sent to China in 1847 two missionaries, Lechler and Hamberg. Greeted with joy by Gützlaff, they set about learning the Chinese language and began at once to preach with the aid of interpreters. Their work was begun in the southwestern part of Canton, the most southern of China’s eighteen provinces. So well did they labor that by 1855 they had one hundred and seventy-five Christians. Gradually a thoroughly organized mission was established with the characteristic Basel features of industrial work and careful education. In 1897 the mission celebrated its fiftieth anniversary, together with the fiftieth anniversary of the work of Missionary Lechler, the latter a rare and notable occasion in the history of missions.

|Fifty Years of Service.| To-day the Basel Society works in two districts, one in the highlands, the other in the lowlands of Canton. It has a staff of forty-seven missionaries, who are divided among seventeen main stations, and one hundred and ninety-seven out-stations.

In addition to its foreign forces it has at work two hundred and twenty natives. Its communicant members are seven thousand, the total number of its Christians eleven thousand.

With the Basel missionaries there went to China in 1847 two missionaries from the Rhenish Society, Genahr and Kuster. They established themselves in the province of Canton and nearer Hong Kong than Lechler and Hamberg. The mission has had during the seventy-five years of its existence many difficulties, but, though it has never grown to be very large, it has accomplished a fine work.

|A Missionary Sermon.| One of the first of its misfortunes was the death of Missionary Genahr, who contracted cholera from a Christian who had been cast out by his employers. The earnest spirit of this pious man may be read in a little missionary sermon from his pen concerning those easy-going Christians who think that it lies entirely within their own good pleasure whether they will do anything for work abroad. “In the Book of Judges, fifth chapter, twenty-third verse, we find: ‘Curse ye Meroz, said the angel of the Lord, curse ye bitterly the inhabitants thereof; because they came not to the help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord against the mighty.’ In an old book we find the following questions and answers upon this verse:

“‘Who was commanded to curse Meroz?’ Answer: ‘The angel of the Lord.’

“‘What had Meroz done?’ ‘Nothing.’

“‘How? why, then is Meroz cursed?’ ‘Because she has done nothing.’

“‘What should Meroz have done?’ ‘Come to the help of the Lord.’

“‘Could not the Lord, then, have succeeded without Meroz?’ ‘The Lord did succeed without Meroz.’

“‘Then has the Lord met with a loss thereby?’ ‘No, but Meroz has.’

“‘Is Meroz, then, to be cursed therefor?’ ‘Yes, and that bitterly.’

“‘Is it right that a man should be cursed for having done nothing?’ ‘Yes, when he should have done something.’

“‘Who says that?’ ‘The angel of the Lord; and the Lord Himself says (Luke 12:47); “He that knew his Lord’s will and did it not, shall be beaten with many stripes.”’”

|Danger and Loss.| In 1871 two of the stations of the Rhenish Society were destroyed by a fanatic mob who accused the missionaries of desiring to poison all those who were not Christians. Again in 1898, stations were destroyed by robbers and rebels. Fortunately the Boxer uprising in 1900 left the property of this mission almost untouched and the missionaries returning after it was safe, were able to begin almost where they had left off.

At Tungkum the society has a large hospital, whose superintendent had in 1899 twenty thousand consultations. The latest reports gave two thousand five hundred church members divided among seven stations, at which there are twenty-three missionaries. In 1873 the Rhenish Society took over what remained of Gützlaff’s mission.

|A Missionary Scholar.| Among the missionaries of the Rhenish Society was Doctor Ernest Faber, a scholar of immense learning, who, after being in the service of the Society for eight years joined the General Protestant Missionary Society. He is especially famous for his translations of the Chinese classics and it was said of him that he spoke a better Chinese than the natives themselves.

|A Chinese Saint Paul.| The Berlin Society has two separate fields of labor in China. The first is in the Province of Canton, near the missions of the Basel and Rhenish societies. The mission has its record of loss and persecution during the native uprisings and also its stories of victory. In its early history the station at Thamschui was the scene of a cruel attack. The mob was led by a young man blowing a trumpet and calling to his followers to exterminate the foreign devils, who meanwhile fled from house roof to house roof and finally escaped. Subsequently this young man was converted and became a powerful evangelist who like Saint Paul endeavored with all his power to build up that which he had hitherto torn down.

|In Time of Famine.| The second station of the Berlin Society is in the Province of Shantung. In consequence of the assistance given during the famine in 1889, when over $200,000 was distributed and over one hundred thousand lives saved, many became interested in Christianity as the religion which inspires deeds of kindness and mercy; and during 1890 it is said that over a thousand persons were baptized whose attention was drawn to the religion of Christ by the fact that the missionaries were so prominent in securing this aid and distributing it. In this work and its reward the Berlin Society had a part.

The following letter from a missionary of the Berlin Society describes vividly a Chinese city and gives an account of the work of the Christian evangelist.

|A Chinese City.| “We hired a bearer and proceeded through the endless confusion of the narrow, dirty streets of Canton, through the evil smells of a many-thousand-year-old decaying culture, on past all the innumerable shops and idol temples, halls of justice and idol altars, past all the numberless human forms, poor and rich, well and sick, vested with silk or covered with rags, painted with vermilion or consumed with leprosy, which flood the lanes of the giant city of Southern China, out through the great iron Northern gate, through several streets of the suburbs, past scattered huts--and now the great alluvial plain of the Northstream delta stretches before our eyes. A pure air breathes over the land and encompasses us after we have escaped the exhalations which rest, suffocating and heavy, upon the city of a million souls.

|In the Mountains.| “In the schools and on the crossways, where the passing wayfarers were resting in the tea-huts, we sought opportunities to preach the Word of God. Often we found them, often we waited in vain. Many a guest listened an instant, then silently took up his bundle and went on his way. There was nothing in the proclamation of the Word that engaged the man’s interest. Companies of heathen hungry for salvation, and hanging upon the lips of the missionary, were not to be found in the mountains; such, we may well say, are not to be found anywhere in China. The Lord alone knows where a seed-corn of eternity sinks into a human heart. The man takes it with him; often it sinks out of reach or is choked by the thorns and briers of heathenism, yet often, after the lapse of years, it shoots up again into the light. At one tea-hut, which was covered with the leaves of the fern palm, there gathered around us a great company of women. They were burdened with stones out of the neighboring quarry, at the same time carrying their infants on their hips. They laid off their loads and listened, and some asked very intelligent questions, ‘Sir, if we are not to worship idols, how shall we pray to the heavenly Father?’ A heathen, sitting near, disturbed us by his unseemly witticisms. The language is rich in such equivocal turns. People do not understand the reference, and are taken in by the seeming harmlessness of the phrase. The helper explained to me the more usual of them. They open a view into the hideous depths of heathenism.”

This description was written many years ago. To-day the missionary historian rejoices to record that there are companies of Chinese hungry for the news of salvation. In many instances the largest auditoriums in great cities have proved too small for the throngs which pressed to attend evangelistic meetings.

The Berlin Society has a staff of thirty-six missionaries in fifteen main stations. Its baptized Christians number about ten thousand.

The contribution of German Lutherans to mission work in China is not to be reckoned altogether by figures. Here as elsewhere the Germans have thoroughly studied the native languages, and have devoted much time to the writing of grammars and dictionaries and the making of translations so that the foundation might be well laid. Their labors have been a benefit to other missionary societies as well as to their own.

The Danish Lutherans have a mission in Manchuria which was begun in 1895. Two stations are in the south and one at Harbin. There are forty-two men and women at work and the number of baptized Christians is nearly one thousand.

The missionaries appointed at the opening of the work in China visited on their way the United States and roused interest in many churches of the United Danish Evangelical Lutheran Synod, which now aids in the China work of the Fatherland Society.

The Norwegian Missionary Society has six stations in the Hunan Province, in which there are fifteen hundred church members and one thousand catechumens.

The Norwegian Lutheran China Mission works in Northern Hupeh with twenty-nine missionaries and has won about eight hundred and fifty Christians.

The Swedish Mission in China, founded in 1887, labors in connection with the China Inland Mission, a large and successful inter-denominational mission, which has more than twenty thousand communicants. To this work other Swedish societies contribute.

|A Pioneer.| The founding of the Swedish Mission in China was due to the influence of a visit from Lars Skrefsrud, one of the founders of the Home Mission to the Santals in India. His burning enthusiasm for the cause of missions influenced Erik Folke to become in 1887 a pioneer in China. He studied the Chinese language in the school of the China Inland Mission and then arranged for the founding of an independent Swedish Mission, which should, however, work in connection with the China Inland Mission. Mr. Folke’s fearful experiences during the Boxer uprising so affected his health that it was necessary that he should return to Sweden where he serves as president of the Home Committee.

The field of this Swedish Mission is composed of the parts of the Provinces of Shensi, Shansi and Honan, which meet at the turn of the Yellow River from south to east. It numbers almost as many inhabitants as Sweden. Among the mission institutions are opium refuges where those afflicted with the opium habit may go for treatment.

|The Swedish Martyrs.| There is a small Swedish Lutheran Mission in Mongolia, begun in 1899 with three missionaries, its station being at Hallang Osso, eighty-five miles north of Kalgan. This mission suffered greatly during the Boxer uprising, its three missionaries being killed. It seemed for a long time that labor in this district was worse than useless, but a few faithful workers have persisted. Now the three missionaries who are on the field believe that the harvest will shortly be gathered.

The Swedish missions have laid many sacrifices upon the altar of the cause which they love. The total number of Swedes murdered in the Boxer uprising was about forty, one-third of the whole number of the westerners who were killed. A number of these were Lutherans. If the blood of its martyrs is the seed of the Church, there opens for Sweden a great future in China.

The Lutheran Gospel Association of Finland carries on a mission in Northern Hupeh with sixteen missionaries in four stations.

|A Generous People.| The Danish Lutherans support, as we have seen, the mission of their fatherland.

Five American Norwegian Lutheran bodies have missions in China, to which they contributed in 1915, about $118,000.

The United Norwegian Lutheran Church is at work in the south central portion of the Province of Honan, where it took over in 1904 several stations of an independent society. It has now six stations and forty-nine missionaries. The Christians number about fifteen hundred. Among the stations are Sinyang, where there are training schools for native workers and Kioshan where the mission hospital is situated.

Hauge’s Norwegian Lutheran Synod began its work in China in 1891. The main station is Fan Cheng and the territory lies partly in the Honan and partly in the Hupeh Province. The field of this mission covers six thousand square miles and has a population of between three and four millions. The working force includes twenty-one missionaries, two of them medical missionaries, and ninety-eight native helpers. The Christians number twenty-six hundred.

The Norwegian Synod has had a mission in Honan since 1912. Here ten missionaries are at work in three stations.

The Norwegian Free Church has been at work in Honan since 1915. There are six missionaries at work in a section the population of which numbers two million.

The Norwegian Lutheran Brethren Society established its mission in Honan in 1900. There are fourteen missionaries at work.

|Another Large Field.| The Augustana Synod^[8] has had since 1905 a mission in the Honan province and now has fourteen men and five women at work there. The field is in the form of a triangle with one corner at Hsu-Cheo, one at Nan-Yang-Fu and the third at Honan-Fu. Its area is about ten thousand square miles, a little less than the State of Minnesota, with a population ten times as large, that is, about three million. The province of Honan was one of the last to submit to the invasion of the missionary and the first missionaries of the Augustana Synod suffered during their search for a mission field from the feeling against the foreigner. Their experience is vividly described by their first missionary, the Rev. Edwins.^[9]

|A Perilous Journey.| “To our knowledge no danger threatened us at any time except on the second day of our journey. Then it happened that we were attacked at a country village where two of the common Chinese open-air theatres had attracted a concourse of about two thousand idle spectators. Through the village street, which was crowded to the utmost, our clumsy mule carts had to make their way. On seeing that we were foreigners many in the crowd began to yell out a kind of unearthly war-whoop. Our drivers were somewhat uneasy and desired to move on as fast as the dense crowd would make way. The two-wheeled cart swayed from side to side on the uneven road. A basket of Chinese steamed bread was upset by a slight collision with one of our carts. The vendor, a young boy, screamed loudly as his little loaves rolled on the ground and were snatched up by the thievish bystanders. This episode increased the commotion. Little by little, however, our carts plowed their way through the dense mass of surging humanity, and we were soon on the point of leaving the crowd behind us, but then the mob followed us hooting and yelling and hurling at us and our mules and vehicles whatever missiles were at hand. Some of our little company received heavy blows. The mules pulling the foremost cart stopped and for a moment it seemed that we must be surrounded, but fortunately our drivers succeeded in getting the animals started again and by rapid driving we managed to outdistance the howling mob.”

Provided with a military escort, travelling by another route and aided by the workers of the China Inland Mission, the Americans selected their field. To-day thirty-two missionaries are preaching and teaching. Two hospitals and a school for the blind have been established. In 1915 the Synod contributed $40,000 to this work.

|Co-operation a Reality.| Recently all the Lutheran Missions in Central China united in a co-operative plan of educational work, which it is expected will result in economy and efficiency. A union theological seminary was established at Shekow in Hupeh Province near Hankow and a union college, a union publishing house, and a union periodical are under consideration. In the words of a Lutheran missionary historian: “Co-operation is not only a watchword but an established reality in the Lutheran missions of China; and thus the foreign missions of our American Lutheran Church excel the home churches in wisdom and working efficiency.”

|The Heart of China.| The opportunities of the Lutheran Church in Central China are set forth in Our First Decade in China. “It will appear in looking at the map of China and noting the important position that the Lutheran Church holds geographically, that God has meant her to be a dominating force in new China. He has entrusted to her the very heart of China. The Lutheran Church occupies in the central provinces territory equal to all of Illinois and Iowa and half of Wisconsin, or as large as the whole of New England plus New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware and half of Maryland. In this territory she is ministering to a population of fifty million souls.”

|The Work of a Century.| A hundred years have passed since Robert Morrison, the English missionary, baptized his first convert and recorded in his diary. “At a spring of water issuing from the foot of a lofty hill, by the seaside, away from human observation, I baptized him in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost.... May he be the first fruits of a great harvest.” To-day there are in China over five thousand foreign missionaries, seventeen thousand native workers and two hundred and thirty-five thousand communicant members of the Protestant Church. Of these about ten per cent. are Lutherans.

|The Land.| Japan proper consists of four large islands, Yezo, Hondo, Shikoku and Kyushu and about three thousand smaller islands. In the northern part the climate is severe, in the southern part semi-tropical. From north to south through the center of the large islands runs a long line of volcanic mountains whose highest peaks are still active. From this high ridge the land slopes gradually to either shore. Only about one-tenth can be cultivated, an area which is equal to about one-tenth of the State of California. From this soil about fifty-three million persons draw their sustenance.

|The Religion.| Like the Chinese, the Japanese selects his religion from among three great religions, Shintoism, Buddhism and Confucianism. Like the Chinese he frequently thinks it well to mix the three. If he is a Confucianist, he is thoroughly trained in the rules which govern man’s relation to the State and to his fellow man; if he is a Buddhist, he learns self-control and self discipline in order that he may at the last become absorbed into a vague impersonal deity; if he is a Shintoist he worships the rulers and his ancestors.

|The Japanese a Lover of Beauty and a Fatalist.| The Japanese is intensely patriotic and invariably civil and courteous. His love of beauty finds expression in almost every detail of his life, his practical ability needs no further proof than the adaptation of the nation’s millions to its circumscribed area. His life is happy; but the volcanic eruptions, numerous earthquakes, dreadful tidal waves which bring to his lips a patient smile and a fatalistic word “No help for it” must stir in the depths of his human heart other feelings, however unexpressed of terror and dismay. To him, so far lifted above many other non-Christians but lacking the chief thing, the Christian’s God offers peace for terror and assurance for dismay.

There is but one European Lutheran Society in Japan, the Lutheran Gospel Association of Finland, which has six men and three women in its field northwest of Tokyo, where it began to work in 1902.

|“Kyushu Gakuin.”| The mission of the United Synod in the South was begun in 1892. It has met with the difficulties and obstacles common to all young enterprises and is now well-established. Its chief stations are in Saga, a city of thirty-five thousand, in Kumamoto, a city of sixty-five thousand and in Fukuoka, which, together with its twin city Hakata has a population of eighty thousand. The island of Kyushu upon which these cities lie is densely populated, and there is an average of only one Protestant Christian to over one thousand of the people. In the city of Kumamoto is located the educational institution of the United Synod and the only Lutheran educational institution in Japan, called Kyushu Gakuin, which consists of a middle school and a theological department for the training of native workers. Here almost six hundred boys and young men are being educated, who are but a small part of those who would gladly come if there were larger accommodations. The work among the little children in Sunday schools and kindergartens meets with hearty support at home, a work whose joys it is easy to comprehend. The United Synod has at work four missionary families and two single women. Its baptized membership is over six hundred.

|Candidates for Chris-tian Work.| The second American Lutheran body to enter Japan was the Danish Synod which established itself in 1898 in the same neighborhood, its chief station being at Kurume. At Kurume it has a baptized membership of one hundred and forty four. From this congregation ten young men have during the last few years offered themselves for training in Christian work. The Danes send to the school at Kumamoto a resident professor, the Rev. J. M. T. Winther, who is a highly efficient teacher.

|A Student Dormitory.| The last of the American Lutherans to establish a mission in Japan was the General Council, which in 1908 began work in Tokyo, the chief city of the Empire. It has now a second station at Nagoya. Besides its preaching and educational work the mission conducts a dormitory for students who come to Tokyo to attend the university. It is hoped by means of Christian influence and by the Christian services which these young men are required to attend to win many. There are two missionary families in residence and a baptized membership of twenty-eight. The General Council maintains a professor in the school at Kumamoto and contributes at present a third of the running expenses of the school.

One of the many happy features of Lutheran work in Japan is the friendly co-operation of the three American Boards. It is the intention of them and their missionaries to build up a single, united Japanese Church. Freely aiding one another, all lending their services to the building up of the school in Kumamoto, they are directed by a common conference and their financial matters are managed by a single treasurer.

|The Christian Church in Japan.| In the words of a missionary of the United Synod in the South, “Every indication points to the ultimate success of the Church in Japan. Only lethargy and unbelief can rob her of the victory.... The leaven of Christ’s Gospel has been working in Japanese society for half a century, and under its influence the whole lump is gradually undergoing a subtle change. There are higher ideals of social and civic righteousness; different conceptions of responsibility toward the weak; a growing consciousness of sin, which never existed before; dissatisfaction with present religious and moral conditions; an impelling desire to progress along the lines of the highest material and spiritual development of the west.... A learned professor in the Imperial University, himself a non-Christian, has said: ‘Buddhism can never again control the thought of Japan; Christianity will rule the life of New Japan.’”

|Where Every Prospect Pleases.| Southeast of India lies a group of large islands known by the name of East Indies. These are colonial possessions of Holland. Their population numbering thirty-eight million is divided among various tribes of the Malay race whose character is as varied as that of the different tribes of Africa. The land is rich and its products many, among them sugar-cane, coffee, rice, spices and all varieties of tropical fruits. Many sections are covered with forests of valuable timber.

There are Lutheran missionaries on the islands of Borneo, Sumatra, Nias, Java and on the group to the west of Sumatra, which are called the Batoe Islands.

|Borneo.| On the fertile and beautiful Island of Borneo the Rhenish Society^[10] has had its missionaries for eighty years. Beginning along the southeast coast, the missionaries pushed gradually into the interior by way of the rivers. The Dyaks among whom they labored were the fiercest of savages and “head hunters.” Finally eight stations were established and the future appeared bright, when in 1859 during a rebellion of the Malays against their Dutch rulers, the Dyaks became involved. In the struggle which ensued, all the inland stations were destroyed and seven of the missionaries were murdered. In a few years the work was recommenced. To-day there are eighteen missionaries and the native church numbers about three thousand five hundred.

|Sumatra--A Great Achieve-ment.| For more than fifty years, since 1861, the Rhenish Society has conducted a mission in the island of Sumatra. The larger part of the population is Mohammedan, but in the interior there are tribes who still retain their primitive religion. Among these tribes are the Bataks, who have a speech and written characters of their own. Once cannibals, they had been before the advent of the Rhenish Missionary Society the object of evangelizing work which had failed. In spite of constant danger the early missionaries continued faithful. The annals of missions have scarcely anywhere a greater victory to record. There is now a well organized church partly self-supporting. Thirty Batak native preachers have been ordained and work is carried on at forty-one main stations and five hundred out-stations. Twenty-seven thousand five hundred Batak children are being educated in five hundred schools. There is a training school for native preachers, a hospital, a leper asylum and a large industrial school. The Christian community numbers about one hundred and fifty thousand.

|The Work of Deaconesses.| During the last twenty years the Rhenish Society has sent out deaconesses to take special charge of the work among women. They manage the girls’ schools, teach and give Bible lessons to married and unmarried women and try in every way to further the development of their own sex.

Not only have the Rhenish missionaries won a large harvest from among the Bataks, but they are winning also many converts from among the Mohammedans, a much more difficult task.

The effect of the Christian religion is described in a letter from a Rhenish missionary in Sumatra.

|A Land Transformed.| “What a difference between now and thirteen years ago! Then everything was unsafe; no one dared to go half an hour’s distance from his village; war, robbery, piracy and slavery reigned everywhere. Now there is a free, active Christian life, and churches full of attentive hearers. The faith of our young Christians is seen in their deeds. They have renounced idolatrous customs; they visit the sick, and pray with them; they go to their enemies and make conciliation with them. This has often made a powerful impression on the heathen, because they saw that the Christians could do what was impossible to heathen--they could forgive injuries. Many heathen have been so overcome by this conduct of the Christians that they came to us and said: ‘The Lord Jesus has conquered.’”

The failure of Mohammedanism to meet the deep need of the human soul is shown in another letter from a Rhenish missionary in the same field.

|In the Last Hour.| “Here I must make mention of the faithful Asenath, whom on the last day of the old year we committed to the bosom of the earth. After an illness patiently endured for two years she felt her end approaching. As the last provision for her way she wished yet once more to enjoy the Holy Supper. I administered it to her in her roomy house before a large assemblage. As I was about to give her the bread she said, ‘Let me first pray.’ And now the woman, who for weeks had not been able to sit upright, straightened herself up, and prayed for fully ten minutes, as if she would fain pray away every earthly care out of her heart. I have seldom heard a woman pray in such wise. Thereupon she received the sacred elements. The next day I found with her a Mohammedan chieftain, who on taking leave wished her health and long life. ‘What say you?’ she replied, ‘after that I have no further longing. My wish is now to go to heaven, to my Lord. Death has no longer any terrors for me.’ Astonished, the Mohammedan replied: ‘Such language is strange to us. We shrink and cower before death, and therefore use every means possible to recover and live long.’

|The Beams of a Living Hope.| “Even so I think of our James, whose only son died. When at the funeral I pressed his hand, with some words of comfort, he said: ‘Only do not suppose that I murmur and complain. All that God does to me, is good and wholesome for me. I shall hereafter find my son again in life eternal.’ So vanish little by little the comfortless wailings of heathenism; the beams of a living hope penetrate the pangs and the terrors of death, as the beams of the sun the clouds of the night. And, as the hopelessness of heathenism is disappearing, so is also its implacability. When Christians contend, and at the Communion I say to them: ‘Give each other your hands’, often they say: ‘Nature is against it; but how can I withstand the graciousness of my Saviour?’ Such words are not seldom heard. And am I not well entitled to hope, that they, as a great gift of my God, warrant a confident hope in the final and glorious victory of the Prince of Life, and of his great and righteous cause?”

|Nias.| On the Island of Nias and in some of the lesser islands, the Rhenish missionaries have been at work since 1865. Here there are about a quarter of a million inhabitants who are racially related to the Bataks. Persisting through many years with but a few baptisms, the missionaries were finally rewarded. There are now thirteen stations with eighteen thousand Christians. The number of inquiries is greatest in those portions of the island where heathenism is the least broken, and the whole island seems to be open to the Gospel.

The Rhenish missionaries have in all in Malaysia Christian communities whose total inhabitants number one hundred and sixty-five thousand, of whom seventy-five thousand are church members. It is a rule of the Rhenish society to exercise the greatest care in baptizing converts so that only those shall be accepted who are worthy and who understand the step which they are taking.

|Java.| The beautiful Island of Java to the Southeast of Sumatra has been called Holland’s treasure house. Though the island has been under Christian control for three centuries the results of mission work do not make a very large showing. The largest of the Protestant Christian societies at work is the German Neukirchen Mission which has eleven principal stations, with twenty-nine workers. Java is inhabited chiefly by Mohammedans who have here a university and who have issued the Koran in the Javanese language. These Mohammedans are more willing to listen to the Gospel teaching than those in many other parts of the world.

|The Batoe Islands.| On the Batoe Islands south of Nias, a Dutch Lutheran Missionary Society has a station with two missionaries and five hundred Christians.

|The Destruction of the Native Australians.| Originally the continent of Australia was occupied by Papuans, who have been gradually exterminated or driven into reservations. The history of the Australian native affords a record of injustice and almost incredible cruelty. The first foreign settlers were a band of criminals quartered there by England; then as the richness of the country became known, there arrived other settlers who with almost unthinkable barbarity dispossessed and murdered the natives, shooting them down like beasts, poisoning them in crowds, so that to-day the great expanse of Australia has within it not more than fifty-five thousand Papuans.

This little remnant is cared for by the government and to it go missionaries of various denominations, among them those of the Neuendettelsau Mission which has two stations, one at Elim-Hope in Queensland and another at Bethesda in South Australia. The Australian Immanuel Synod which is composed of Germans living in Australia has a station at New Hermannsburg in South Australia.

|Success Amid Danger.| In 1886 the Neuendettelsau Society began to work in New Guinea. There in Kaiser Wilhelm’s Land, which is a German protectorate, it has four stations. The climate is dangerous, the language difficult to learn, and the various tribes at enmity with one another. Nevertheless the first fruits have been gathered, so that in 1909, three thousand six hundred Christians were reported. Thirty-five missionaries are on the field.

To the work of this mission the Lutheran Synod of Iowa contributes.

In Kaiser Wilhelm’s Land there is also a mission of the Rhenish Society, which has three stations round Astrolabe Bay.

|An Untilled Field.| “The Mohammedan world, which extends over the whole of North Africa, part of southeast Europe, and from Arabia and Asia Minor, through Persia as far as China and the Dutch East Indies, and which numbers one hundred and ninety-six million five thousand adherents, is still almost entirely closed against the Gospel. This is true not only where there is Mohammedan rule, and where conversion to Christianity is by direction of the Koran punished with death, but also in the Christian colonial dominions of British and Dutch India. Missions to Mohammedans are carried on by societies and individuals, but considerable congregations have nowhere yet been formed from the confessors of Islam with the single exception of those in Java and Sumatra.... Besides Mohammedan fanaticism, a special hindrance which has to be reckoned with is the unfortunate connection of religion with politics. Not only are the Mohammedan governments inspired with the greatest distrust towards evangelical missionaries, as if they were the instigators of sedition, but missions are also impeded by the political jealousy of the Christian powers.”

Thus wrote Doctor Warneck, the great Lutheran historian of missions in 1902! He went on to speak of the policies of Russia, England and Germany, which jealously forbade the touching of Turkey. The good man is no longer living--what would be his emotions if he could look in 1917 upon the Near East and the confusion which political jealousy has wrought!

OFFICERS AND TEACHERS OF LUTHERAN SUNDAY SCHOOL, NEW AMSTERDAM, BRITISH GUIANA.

ITUNI SCHOOL IN SCHOOL ROOM WHICH IS ALSO THE CHURCH.

SOME INDIAN MEMBERS OF ITUNI CONGREGATION.

The Lutheran Church has made but little effort either to revive the ancient Christian churches of the East, or to convert the Mohammedans. The most ambitious plans were those of the Basel Society whose leader, Christian Frederic Spittler, dreamed of an apostolic road from Jerusalem to Gondar in Abyssinia. The early work of the Basel Society in Russia and Persia was ended by imperial command.

|A Lutheran Orphanage.| Among the various German missionary enterprises in Palestine which draw a large part of their support from Lutheran sources, is the Syrian Orphanage outside Jerusalem, which for sixty-six years has been training children in useful trades. Here carpentry, joinery, printing, tailoring, shoe-making, blacksmithing and brick-making are taught. Its founder was Pastor Schneller, at whose death it was continued by his son. Now more than two hundred boys are enrolled, many of whom are confirmed in the Lutheran Church. A few years ago a school for the blind was added which received both boys and girls, who are taught basket-weaving, chair and brush-making.

Another German enterprise which is partly Lutheran is the German Orient Mission founded in 1895. From its printing press at Philipopolis it has issued translations of the New Testament and other religious literature into Turkish. Two Turks who were converted were compelled to take refuge in Germany.

The German Jerusalem Union has been at work since 1852. Its chief care is for the German churches in Palestine, but it conducts also mission work in the old Christian Arab population.

The German Jerusalem Association was founded in 1889 for the benefit of the German Evangelical congregation in Jerusalem. This is in no sense a missionary enterprise, but the fact that it is supported and authorized by the German government gives importance to all the German Lutheran work in Palestine. In 1898 the German Emperor and Empress were present at the dedication of the Church of the Redeemer, supported by this organization. This church building stands within the walls of the city not far from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

|The Work of Deaconesses.| Schools and hospitals at Jerusalem, Beirut, Constantinople and Cairo are supported and conducted by the Kaiserswerth Deaconesses, who for sixty years have labored in the East. The last report gave one hundred and twenty-eight as the number actively engaged.

The Danish Lutherans have small stations in Syria, Asia Minor and Arabia.

The Church of Sweden conducts a hospital in Bethlehem.

The only direct work by American Lutherans for the Near East is done through the small Intersynodical Orient Mission Society of the American Norwegians, Swedes and Germans, whose field is Kurdistan. The Joint Synod of Ohio supports a missionary in Persia, a vast and uncultivated field, where there is one missionary to two hundred and twenty-one thousand of the population. There has also been another Lutheran Society at work, the Syro-Chaldean.

|A Lutheran Scholar.| It is doubtful whether all other enterprises for the conversion of the Jews have equalled in bulk or importance the work of a Lutheran, Dr. Franz Delitzsch, one of the most celebrated scholars of his time, who was born in 1813, and who died in Leipsic in 1890. His greatest devotion was given to mission work for the Jews, and for them he translated the New Testament into Hebrew. The first chapters appeared in 1838; by 1888 eighty thousand copies had been published. Though to millions of Jews the languages of the countries in which they sojourned had become familiar, yet to them religion and religious instruction could be given in no other tongue than the sacred Hebrew to which they were accustomed.

Doctor Delitzsch’s translation was not the first which had been made, but like Luther’s translation of the Bible into German it far surpassed in accuracy and literary value all that had gone before.

On account of his close friendship with the fathers of the Missouri Lutherans in this country, Doctor Delitzsch’s name is a familiar one to a large part of the American Church.

Beside his translation of the New Testament he contributed many other works to Hebrew literature, tracts upon various subjects, commentaries, and a monthly journal.

South America

Porto Rico

The American Indian

Alaska

The American Negro

Conclusion.

|The Land.| To a large proportion of the Americans who are interested in missions Asia and Africa are better known than the great continent of South America which lies so much nearer. Of the physical features of South America it is necessary to speak in superlative terms. Here is the largest river in the world, the Amazon, with thirty thousand miles of navigable waterway, here are the densest forests, here is the greatest mountain range. The continent is five thousand miles long and at its broadest point, three thousand miles wide. Its long coast line offers splendid harbors; its interior table lands abundant minerals and metals and a fertile soil.

For many centuries the Indian held South America for his own. Unmolested from without, troubled only by quarrels with his neighbors, he lived and died for the most in slothful ignorance.

|The First Immigrants.| This quiet was interrupted when the Spaniards and Portuguese took possession of the country by right of conquest. Once opened to the world, the continent became the destination of thousands of settlers, not only from Spain and Portugal but from other European nations, many of whom built up large fortunes. The relation between them and the natives is described by R. J. Hunt. “Some of the early colonists were of a friendly disposition, and treated the natives kindly, much in the same way as they did their horses or their dogs; others, with a high sense of honor, were just and considerate to the aboriginees; a fair percentage of them, especially those in the wild, remote districts, freely mingled with the natives and married one or more of their women; but the great majority looked upon the natives with suspicion and distrust if not with abhorrence.

|The Opening of the Country.| “With the influx of immigrants and the natural increase of the descendants of the pioneers came the growth of trade, the extension of agricultural pursuits, and the opening of mines. There came simultaneously the desire for independence and the consequent rise of republics with a demand for progress and a clear determination of territorial bounds. Railways were opened in various directions, the great rivers were supplied with steamers, trade was increased, companies were formed and numerous interests started. For scientific and commercial purposes expeditions up the great waterways and across the trackless plains were organized and carried out with varying success; but even to-day there remain vast regions unknown and unexplored except by the red Indians.”^[11]

LUTHERAN CHAPEL, MONACILLO, PORTO RICO, WITH TWO MISSIONARIES AND TWO
NATIVE WORKERS.

PORTO RICAN HUT WITH MISS MELLANDER AND THREE MEMBERS OF CHURCH AT PALO SECO.

|The Darkness of South America.| In spite of the fact that its ten political divisions are republics, and that it has produced men of distinguished rank as scientists and scholars, South America is on the whole a land of dense ignorance, not only among the Indian population but among the mixed or pure descendants of the European settlers. In spiritual things the ignorance is tenfold increased. Of the hundreds of tribes of Indians, many have never heard the Gospel, and to only ten millions of the population has it been presented in any intelligible form. Rome, which has claimed South America for its own has done little to raise the natives from their degraded condition or to enlighten their darkness, and has opposed most bitterly the spread of the pure Gospel among them. The priests declare that the Protestant Bible is an immoral book which will do great harm to him who reads, and make every effort to destroy all the copies which they can find. Nor do they offer their own version. Doctor Robert Speer is reported to have said that visiting seventy of the largest cathedrals in South America, he could find but one Bible, and that a Protestant version, about to be burned. Of the religious condition, Doctor Warneck says, “The Catholicism is of a kind that, according to even Catholic testimonies, is more heathen than Christian. There are many crosses but no word of the Cross; many saints, but no followers of Christ.”

Against the domination of the Catholic Church the most intelligent of the population have rebelled and men especially have ceased to believe in the priests or their teaching. May they upon leaving the old find true guides into new and better things!

|The Population.| The latest statistics give the following as population of South America:

Since South America offers vast resources in a sparsely settled country, its population will unquestionably increase rapidly by immigration.

|The Roman Catholic Church in South America.| Recent activity on the part of the Protestants in the interest of the nominal Christians of South America has roused much opposition among Roman Catholics. Among Protestants themselves the question has been debated with an earnest desire to see the right and wrong of this problem. To this question Dr. Robert Speer has given the following reasons for his belief that such mission work is legitimate and necessary. (1) The moral condition of South America warrants and demands the presence of the force of evangelical religion in a country where from one-fourth to one-half of the births are illegitimate and where male chastity is unknown. (2) The Protestant missionary enterprise with its stimulus to education and its appeal to the rational nature of man is required by the intellectual needs of South America. (3) Protestant missions are justified in order to give the Bible to South America. (4) Protestant missions are justified by the character of the Roman Catholic priesthood. (5) The Roman Church has not given the people Christianity. It offers them a dead man, not a living Saviour. (6) The Catholic Church has steadily lost ground; the priests are reviled and derided; religion is abandoned by men to priests and women. (7) Protestant missions may inspire and compel self-cleansing in the South American Catholic Church. (8) Only the Protestant religion, free from superstition, reformed, Scriptural, apostolic, can meet the needs of South America.

The missionary occupation of South America has been small; indeed no country has so low a percentage of missionaries. It is said that in any of the ten countries a missionary could have a city and a dozen of towns for his parish. In some of the countries he could have one or two provinces without touching any other evangelical worker.

As Lutheran missionaries in the person of Ziegenbalg and Plütschau were the first to enter India; as Peter Heiling, a Lutheran, was the first to enter Africa, so the Lutheran missionary Justinian von Welz, of whose stirring appeal to the Church we have told in Chapter I, entered South America, where in Surinam he died in 1668. It gives us at least some small comfort to realize that of all the South American countries Surinam is to-day the most thoroughly evangelized, even though it is the Moravian and not the Lutheran Church which has done the work. After the time of Justinian von Welz we search in vain for Lutheran missions in South America for many years.

|German Lutherans in South America.| Among the emigrants to South America have been large numbers of Germans. For these the Church at home has cared so that there are many well-established Lutheran congregations. Here and there these congregations have undertaken a little missionary work among the natives, but there has been no organized effort for their evangelization as in the case of Africa and Asia.

|North American Lutherans in South America.| American Lutherans have one mission in South America, that of the General Synod in New Amsterdam in British Guiana, a colony with a population of about three hundred thousand of which about four thousand are Europeans, the remainder East Indians, negroes and native Indians. In 1743 Dutch and German Lutherans founded here a Lutheran church which continued for a hundred years. Then, the congregation having fallen away, service was discontinued. The property consisted of a beautiful old church, a church house and parsonage, a good deal of valuable land and an endowment of twenty thousand dollars. In 1878 the church was again opened and the Rev. John R. Mittelholzer became its pastor, and the congregation united with the General Synod.

The Missouri Synod has eighty-three congregations among the Germans in Brazil and Argentina, a theological seminary and many schools. Some of its pastors work among the Portugese speaking natives.

Of various recent plans for Lutheran work in South America it is still too soon to speak.

The appeal of South America to the Lutheran Church is thus expressed by those who have studied the subject.

“Among the population of South America German and Scandinavian Lutherans are present in larger proportion than the members of any other Protestant denomination.

|Has the Lutheran Church an Opportunity in South America? |

“In Montevideo, Uruguay, there is a colony of five hundred German families. In Bolivia, there are also many of our people. In Chile there are eighty thousand Germans. They are numerous in Bogota and Barronquilla, Colombia, and in Guatemala, where Roman priests are prosecuted and Protestant ministers welcomed by those in authority. In Brazil, which is 220,000 square miles larger than the entire United States, the Statesman’s Year Book declares that there are one million Germans, besides many Scandinavians. In Paraguay, President Schierer is a German, and there are at least two hundred thousand of our people. In fact, there is not a State or island of this vast domain where our people are not found as sheep without a shepherd. They occupy prominent and influential positions in government, and are dominant in the business world. Once interested, they would furnish the means and the men to care for our own, and extend the work among the intellectuals, the peons, the Indians, and the negroes of Latin America. Our Lutheran Church has the largest opportunity, consequently the greatest obligation, of all the Protestant Churches in these southern lands.”

In Porto Rico, where many of the conditions of South America are repeated on a much smaller scale, nine Protestant churches are at work. Since the island is under the control of the United States, missions have no political opposition to meet. Here, as in South America, the natives have many crosses but no true cross, many saints but few true believers in Christ. A missionary relates a discussion between two members of the native church, one of whom worshiped the Virgin who was supposed to dwell at Lourdes, another a Virgin who dwelt at some other shrine. Of Christ they knew nothing.

Here the General Council has had a mission since 1899. It has in all nine congregations and twelve stations with more than five hundred communicant members. Among its stations are Catano, San Juan and Bayamon where it owns fine church properties and has excellent parochial schools. In Catano there is a kindergarten in connection with the parochial school to which Miss May Mellander has given years of devoted service. In Catano the missionaries instruct native teachers.

The experience of the General Council in Porto Rico has been that of all workers in Latin America. They have discovered that the Roman Catholic Church has lost its hold on the people and that thousands are longing for a better way.

The American Indian was so called, as we know, from the fact that the discoverers of this continent supposed they had reached the eastern coast of India. Indians belong to one race, though they call themselves by many different tribal names. How large their number was before the advent of the white man it is impossible to tell; now, greatly diminished by wars among themselves, by oppression, by diseases brought from abroad and especially by the white man’s brandy, they number about three hundred thousand. Of these the majority live in reservations appointed to them by the government of the United States whose later policy has been to care for them with such thoroughness that for most of them independent development is difficult. It is reckoned that among the three hundred thousand about ninety-two thousand are Christians. These are reliable, sober and settled. Almost none of the Indians educated in the Christian schools return to the habits of their forefathers.

The work of the Lutheran Church among the Indians began, as we have seen, in the Swedish settlement along the Delaware River. In Georgia the work of the Salzburgers was closed by the removal of the Indians, an almost inevitable consummation in the days when the Indians were constantly shifting in flight or by compulsion from place to place. The Rev. J. C. Hartwig, one of the pioneer ministers of the American Lutheran Church who died in 1796 left his property, amounting to about seventeen thousand dollars for the establishing of a training school (Hartwick Seminary) for ministers and missionaries. He had in mind especially missionaries who should work among the American Indians. The school was established and when application was made to the government to begin work among the Indians of Otsego County, New York, President Washington answered that a special act of Congress would be required before permission could be given.

Among the unconverted Indians the Lutheran Church is at work in various places to-day.

The Norwegian Synod has had a mission among the Winnebago Indians in Wisconsin since 1885. For its support they contributed in 1915, $6,000. Here also Elling’s Synod of the Norwegian Church has a mission.

In Arizona the Missouri Synod has a mission.

In Arizona the Wisconsin Synod has four mission stations--at Globe, a town of about eight thousand inhabitants, at Peridot on the San Carlos Indian Reservation, at East Fork, and at Cibecue. The community at East Fork has been recently visited with serious epidemics, but the twenty-five children in the Lutheran school all survived and were able to return. The village of Cibecue lies far from the railroad and the Indians there have not been affected by the vices of civilization. Here it was not possible during the last year to receive all the children who came.

The Danish Synod has been at work in Oklahoma since 1892. It contributed in 1915, $2,500 to this mission.

Alaska is the name given to the northwestern corner of North America which was bought by the United States from Russia in 1867. Its area is about five hundred and ninety thousand square miles and is equal to that of all the northern States east of the Mississippi with the addition of Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee. The population in 1890 was sixty-three thousand, of whom twenty-five thousand were Indians and Esquimaux. The natives are superstitious and devoted to the worship of departed spirits. Though the North of Alaska is uninhabitable, the South has a temperate Summer.

Here the Norwegian Synod began missionary work in 1894 at Port Clarence. The mission was begun in buildings furnished by the United States government, which had suggested the undertaking. The first missionary, the Rev. T. L. Brevig, not only served the colony of Norwegians and Lapps, but went promptly to work among the native Esquimaux.

The Synod of Wisconsin has four or five ordained ministers in Alaska.

The American Negro offers to the American Christian Church one of its most pressing responsibilities. Brought to this country against his will, held for many years in slavery in which independent development was out of the question, then by political necessity given in addition to his freedom the right to help govern the country in which he had been a slave, he has furnished for himself and for the white race a problem like no other problem in the world.

Before the Civil War the Christianization of the negro was carried on by pious individuals, many of them slave-holders and by various churches. There were in 1860 before the outbreak of the war about half a million negro Christians, belonging chiefly to the Baptist and Methodist churches. This number has increased until to-day a conservative estimate would fix the number of Christian negroes at seven and a half million.

Another motive than the desire to win the negro for the kingdom of God has entered into much of the philanthropic work undertaken by the white race. This is the realization of the menace to the State from so large an uneducated, uncivilized and alien race within it.

That the negro is capable of profiting by education and capable of becoming a valuable citizen is proved in many ways, not the least remarkable of which is his progress in religious matters. It is said that no other people give a larger percentage of their earnings to religious work. Over eight per cent of the total wealth of the negro church is vested in its church properties. Late reports mention four large publishing houses which issue only negro church literature. All the important negro churches now maintain home and foreign missionary departments, which contribute over $50,000 a year to foreign missions, over $100,000 to home missions, employ two hundred missionaries and give aid to three hundred and fifty needy churches.

The conditions which make it imperative that the American should raise his negro associate are expressed by Booker Washington. “When I was a boy I was the champion fighter of my town. I used to love to hold the boys down in the ditch and hear them yell. When I grew older, I found that I could not hold another boy down in the ditch without staying there with him. Nor can any race hold another down in the ditch without staying down in the ditch with it. Those white Christians who fear the rise of the negro to intellectual and material independence may put their fear aside if they give him with education the Christian religion.”

The early Lutheran pastors in America showed a practical interest in the spiritual welfare of the negroes. In 1704, the Rev. Justus Falckner baptized the daughter of negroes who were members of the first Lutheran congregation in New York. The beautiful prayer which he made upon this occasion has been recorded.

“Lord, merciful God, Thou who regardeth not the persons of men, but, in every nation, he that feareth Thee and doeth right is accepted before Thee; clothe this child with the white garment of innocence and righteousness, and let it so remain, through Jesus Christ, the Redeemer and Saviour of all men.”

The Rev. Dr. John Bachman, pastor of St. John’s Lutheran Church, Charleston, South Carolina, had many negroes in his congregation. He sent to Gettysburg Seminary, Daniel Payne, a colored man who afterwards became a bishop of the African Methodist Church.

The Lutheran Church is represented in work for negroes by the Synodical Conference, which is composed of the synods of Missouri, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan and Nebraska, and various smaller bodies. It resolved in 1877 to take up work among the negroes, its first missionary being the Rev. J. F. Doescher, who began his activity at a missionary gathering at New Wells, Missouri. Travelling through Arkansas, Tennessee, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana, he preached wherever he could find opportunity, in cities and villages and also on large plantations. His work was continued by other missionaries and by the Lutheran churches near by. In 1914 there were forty-six preaching places served by forty-nine laborers, thirty-one of whom are colored. The total membership of baptized Christians was two thousand four hundred and thirty four.

As early as possible in the history of this work it was determined to educate young men to be preachers and teachers and young women to be teachers in the colored mission. The first promising boys were sent to Springfield, Illinois, to be trained. In 1903, Immanuel College, the first colored Lutheran college was established in Greensboro, North Carolina. Beginning in a school house, the college is now at home in a large stone building which was dedicated in 1907. In New Orleans the Mission supports Luther College. To both of these institutions women are admitted. The six women graduates from the Teacher’s Course of Luther College and the eight women graduates from the Teacher’s Course of Immanuel College have given the mission valuable service as teachers.

In the thirty-five years of its history the Synodical Conference has raised $525,000 for the work of the colored mission. About $30,000 of this sum has been raised by the colored churches themselves. The annual expenses of the mission work are now about $30,000 per year. To its funds the Norwegian Synod contributes.

The Joint Synod of Ohio became interested in the work for negroes in 1890, when the first colored pastor was received into its membership and a committee was appointed to take charge of the work. Until 1911 the undertaking was limited to one small congregation in Baltimore, then an advance was made in the establishing of a mission school and the securing of candidates for the ministry. In 1915 activity was extended into the heart of the South and work was begun in Jackson, Mississippi. A desirable church property has been secured and a parochial school is conducted. In 1916 a school was established in Prattville, Alabama. In all there are about one hundred confirmed members, two hundred children in three parochial schools, one superintendent, one colored pastor and three teachers.

A study of Lutheran or other missions would be a vain and useless undertaking if it did not leave the student with his eyes upon the future instead of upon the past, if it did not in the light of what others have done show him his own duty toward the millions still untouched. As a work of individuals, Christian missions may truly be said to be a magnificent accomplishment; as a work of great denominational bodies of Christians the result is small. The adding of figure to figure may seem to produce enormous totals. As we have added the seventy thousand Christians of the Gossner mission in India, the twenty thousand of the Basel mission, the fifty thousand of the American Lutheran mission and others until we had a total of two hundred and sixteen thousand Indian Lutheran Christians, we have said to ourselves that the work was well begun. When the total number of Protestant Christians in India has been estimated at three million five hundred thousand we have felt a thrill of pride. But India has a population of three hundred million! Truly our beginning is small! In Africa the Protestant Christians number about one million seven hundred thousand; and the population one hundred and eighty million; in South America the Protestant Christians number two hundred thousand and the population eighty million! China, Japan, the vast Mohammedan East--to what a task does a study of missions open our eyes!

For this task our study should give us determination and courage. Though the results have seemed small, they have been, in comparison to the number of workers, enormous. We observe a thickly settled section of India, a few men and women,--preachers, a medical missionary, a few nurses,--around them in seventy years fifty thousand Christians! Were our Lutheran Church really to awake, how rapidly and yet how thoroughly could the work be done! Those who have gone before us have opened the doors, ours is the opportunity to enter. It is estimated that in India one of every four inquirers for truth is knocking at the door of a Lutheran mission. Africa lies open to whoever will possess her, in China our standard bearers have claimed a great territory; South America is ours by right of first possession. This opportunity is not one which may be seized or rejected; thus clearly presented it becomes a responsibility.

Another promise for the future is the material aid which the Church will receive from those whom she has converted and trained. In her fields in China, in India, in South Africa, a native Church is being slowly moulded. The Christian courage in the Boxer uprising proves that China can stand fast. Likewise did the great mutiny show the devotion of thousands of Indian Lutherans to the Christian religion. Wherever there are converts there are candidates for Christian service. A story told by Rev. C. F. Kuder of the Rajahmundry mission is rich in suggestion for us all.

“Four hundred Lutherans were assembled in one of our annual conferences in India. Missionary Eckardt, who is the Livingstone of our Mission, was speaking. He has gone farther inland than any of his predecessors had gone. His district embraces three hundred thousand people, who have no hope of hearing the Gospel unless he brings it to them.

IMMANUEL COLORED LUTHERAN COLLEGE, GREENSBORO, NORTH CAROLINA.

BETHANY INDIAN MISSION BAND, WITTENBERG, WISCONSIN. (NORWEGIAN SYNOD)

“He stood up that day at the conference, and said that up in the hills, where there were a number of Christians, but more heathen, a hill had been given him by a heathen, on condition that a church would be built on it. He said that it would be a center for all the Christians in that locality, and a constant call to the heathen to come to the living God. The difficulty was: how to get the money to build the church? He did not want to ask the Christians in America for it; so he asked whether our Christians in India would not help him?

“The conference listened with interest and sympathy. The hill-country had for years been its home mission field. After much casting about for some satisfactory method, the suggestion was made that all the Christians be asked to practice self-denial from Ash Wednesday to Palm Sunday, bringing their free-will offerings to the service on Palm Sunday.

“When the proposition was announced to the Rajahmundry congregation, the interested faces, quickened eyes, and, in some cases, the tucking of heads to one side, all bespoke approval and willingness to help.

“And what did the members do? They cut off a little here and a little there; true, only a little, for if it had been much, there would not have been anything left for themselves. More than a little would have been all.

“There were women who were widows in the congregation, whose income was about five cents a day. With that they had to provide food, clothing and, in some cases, shelter. Of course, it goes without saying that living in India is very cheap, but it goes equally well without saying that such widows do not live on broiled pigeons, peacocks’ tongues, and other delicacies. The truth is, that they must practice self-denial, not only in Lent, but throughout the year. They rarely are able to have enough to eat to satisfy hunger fully. It is estimated that over sixty million people in India go to bed hungry every night.

“But what did they do? In the evenings, when they measured out their rice, they would say to themselves: ‘I must help to build that little church up in the hills, so that the women up there may learn to know my Redeemer. I could eat all this rice, but if I can live with so much, I can also live on a few mouthfuls less. I’ll give up a little rice cheerfully, so they may have that meat which perisheth not.’

“Then they would take out a pinch of the raw rice and put it aside in a bowl for safe-keeping. This they did until Palm Sunday. Then they measured the rice saved and brought its value to the Lord.

“No, it was not much--probably, in most cases, not more than ten cents--but it was given of their necessity--taken out of their mouths.

“In the boys’ school were some one hundred and sixty boys, from about nine to fifteen years of age. Money? They had so little they scarcely knew the color of it; but deep down in their hearts was an earnest desire. They, too, felt they must help to build the little church on the hills!

“One evening, a day or two before Ash Wednesday, the manager heard many voices at the door of the teacher who had charge of the boarding department. There was an interested consultation, and then he heard the boys troop back to their rooms with many little shouts of gratulation and glee, and many a “bagunnadi” (it is good).

“The next morning the teacher came to the manager with a queer smile.

“What were the boys up to last night?’ queried the latter.

“‘They asked for permission to go without their supper once a week, on condition that the money saved be given them for the little church up in the hills,’ was the reply.

“‘What did you say to them?’

“‘I said they might, if you consented.’

“‘Oh,” said the manager, ‘I think it will not hurt them. Let them try it; but we must keep a watch on them that they do not get sick.’

“‘Yes,’ replied the teacher, ‘but they were not satisfied with that. They worked out how much it would make, and this morning they came back to request that they be allowed to go without supper twice a week!’

“The manager, catching their enthusiasm, said, ‘Let them try it.’

“Growing boys have hearty appetites, and it was not easy for those lads to go to sleep supperless every Tuesday and Thursday evening during those weeks, but there was never a murmur.

“Palm Sunday came. No one ever saw brighter-eyed boys than those who walked to church that morning from our school. When the offerings were received, they put a solid lump of silver coins on the plate. It contained twenty-five rupees--eight dollars and thirty-three cents.

“The girls in their school had been securing an offering in a similar way, and they brought only thirty cents less.

“That day there was laid on the plate a total offering of ninety dollars!

“This is the Telugu Lutheran definition of self-denial.”

If the devotion of the Church at home even distantly approached such devotion as this how quickly might the work be accomplished!

The world is still overshadowed by the apparently impenetrable cloud of a great war. The condition of hundreds of mission stations is a matter for serious anxiety. When the war closes it is likely that there will be new boundaries, British colonies now German colonies, or German colonies now British colonies. Each change of this kind will bring into existence new complications for missionary policy to meet. The Christian Church will need faith and courage to take up a task so sadly interrupted and marred.

It is certain, on the other hand, that the Church will have access to new mission fields. Such has been the single gleam of brightness through many war clouds in the past.

For the Church of Christ the war has a lesson which must be learned. There is but one cure for war--the evangelization of the world. May all the Christian world by missionary effort prevent the repetition of so terrible a catastrophe! May especially our own Church come daily into a clearer realization of her mission! As the time of Christ and his apostles was a time of seed-sowing, so was the time of the Reformation. By Martin Luther the world was shown once more the Way of Salvation. By Martin Luther the Holy Bible, the infallible guide, was put once more into the hands of mankind, so that true religion and true liberty might be forever preserved. Let us look well to our ways that after the seed-sowing may come the harvest.

• Transcriber’s Notes:
  • Missing or obscured punctuation was corrected.
  • Typographical errors were silently corrected.
  • Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent when a predominant form was found in this book; otherwise it was not changed.

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