CHAPTER III.

THE LUTHERAN CHURCH IN INDIA

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

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

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

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

[Sidenote: The Moral Condition of India.] [5]“The moral condition of the people should be described as one of apathy or even deadness rather than as one of violent and malignant opposition to virtue. Their lives are destitute of stimulus and incentive. Their religion furnishes no motive for the present and incites no aspiration for the future. The thought of bettering their own condition or of doing aught to benefit another’s is foreign to their minds. The Oriental doctrine of fate is ever present to quench all upward endeavor. It is their destiny to be what and as they are, and who are they to contend with destiny? Their chief faults are licentiousness and lack of truthfulness. Intemperance is not usually a vice of the Hindu people, though in recent years the introduction of cheap foreign liquors, and the course of the government in licensing drinking-places, has stimulated the use of intoxicating liquor among all classes. The disposition of the people is mild, and crimes are no more common among them than among the people of other races.”

Footnote 5:

_Encyclopedia of Missions_: “India”.

Of the evils of child marriage and the wrongs of widowhood we need take no space to tell. To him who does not believe in missions, who holds that for India its native religions are best, its own thought sufficient, it is only necessary to point to the two million wives under ten years of age or to the evils of the temple system. India still requires help from without and from above.

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

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

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

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

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

GERMAN SOCIETIES.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Sidenote: Discouragement.] Selecting the capital of the local government, Ranchi, for their headquarters they named the spot where they settled Bethesda. For five years they worked without gaining a single convert. Utterly discouraged they asked for permission to seek another field. To this request Pastor Gossner answered as follows: “Whether the Kols will be converted or not is the same to you. If they will not accept the Word they must hear it to their condemnation. Your duty is to pray and preach to them. We at home will also pray more earnestly.”

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

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

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

[Sidenote: Impressions of a Mission Station.] “In Ranchi I could have spent a month with the greatest delight, there is so much to see and to hear. There is a Christian hostel here on the mission premises, which seems to be a great power for good. It is a large square courtyard with open rooms all around, in which any Christians are allowed to put up who may be in from the district on business; they get their firewood free, and the only condition of admittance is that they attend morning and evening worship. Occasionally heathen people stop there too. The idea is a capital one, as it keeps the missionaries in touch with their native converts in a way which otherwise it would be very difficult to accomplish. We visited the printing press and the boys’ and girls’ schools. I was particularly struck by the bright little girls, who answered so intelligently when I questioned them, and whose part-singing was beautiful. The Kols are naturally musical, their ear being, as a rule, very good. The girls sang softly and sweetly; some of them even sang alone for me. They were being taught by a native who seemed to have a great deal of musical talent; he had just picked up a new thing himself--by ear, I suppose--and was putting it to notes for his girls.

“I was greatly struck by the practical work being done by these German missionaries. The children were being taught in an elementary and practical manner suitable to their village life. For instance, the girls were given a sum; one stated it on the blackboard, another worked it out in her head and gave the answer, and then both had a pair of scales and weights with some sand, and before the others they weighed out the amount which, according to the sum, they were entitled to. In the same practical way the girls were taught cooking and other things which would be useful to them as the wives of country villagers.

“I was taken to see the theological seminary and boys’ boarding school, and the fine church, where about eight hundred of the native congregation meet every Sunday for the worship of the true God; and yet we are told that missions are a failure!

“One very striking thing in the seminary was the singing class; I was amazed at the splendid way in which they rendered selections from Handel’s ‘Messiah’.”

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

[Sidenote: Hope in the Midst of Misery.] A visitor describes thus a Christmas celebration. “The lepers came marching out singing hymns and playing instruments. Some limp slowly, some blind ones are led by their comrades, some are carried. At last all are seated in the sunshine. There were knitted garments, mufflers, scrapbooks, toys, something for everybody, and how grateful they were! But when we saw the disfigured hands held out for the gifts, or little leper girls caressing their new dolls, our hearts were deeply touched, and we could hear those leper boys making music with their new instruments almost through the whole night.

“Hear this grateful letter from a leper saint. ‘Lady, Peace! your love-heart is so great that it reached this leper village--reached this very place. I being Guoi Aing, have received from you a bed’s wadded quilt. In coldest weather, covered at night, my body will have warmth, will have gladness. Alas, the wideness of the world prevents us seeing each other face to face, but wait until the last day, when with the Lord we meet together in heaven’s clouds--then what else can I utter but a whole-hearted mouthful of thanks? You will want to know what my body is like--there is no wellness in it. No feet, no hands, no sight, no feeling; outside body greatly distressed, but inside heart is greatest peace, for the inside heart has hopes. What hopes? Hopes of everlasting blessedness, because of God’s love and because of the Savior’s grace. These words are from Guoi Aing’s mouth. The honorable pencil-person is Dian Sister.’

“Beyond question this work at Purulia is one of the most successful concrete results of Christian missions that the world can show.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Sidenote: A Great Festival.] “On the evening of November 5th we went by rail together to Majaweram, in order to celebrate Brother Meyner’s wedding. This fell just in the time of the great Bathing Festival to which as many as fifty to sixty thousand assemble. On the chief day we went to the bathing-place, and looked at the matter a little more closely. There was a tumultuous throng; hardly to be penetrated. We were the only white faces among all these dusky multitudes. The best place for viewing the whole affair appeared to be the flat roof of the idol temple. We climbed up to it by a ladder, without any opposition. From here we could overlook the human masses; they stood close packed together, some bathing, some chatting, etc. We saw also how they were carrying about different idols, which were adorned with gold, silver and precious stones. All were greeted by the crowd with uplifted hands and loud acclaims. In view of this our hearts might well sink, as we beheld heathenism yet subsisting in its full, unbroken might. If we did not know that God’s truth gains the victory, we should despair of the possibility that India will ever be converted. It is an almost impregnable citadel of Satan, and the individual mission stations are like oases in the waste, and the individual missionary is as a drop in the ocean. For instance, in each of such cities as Sidabarum, Cuddalore, Cumbaconam, etc., of forty or fifty thousand inhabitants, there is only a single missionary! What can a single man effect over against such masses? Even yet it is only a siege from without--we have not yet made our way into the interior of the fortress. Nevertheless we will not therefore despond, but with fresh courage attack the task in the name of the Lord--you at home with prayer and gifts, we in the land itself by preaching the Gospel to the poor, blinded people, and attracting such as are willing to let themselves be saved. We know that the Lord by little can accomplish much. But Thou, O Lord Jesus, accept our poor, weak will, our slender strength, take also the offer of our youth, and fashion us into men, and into instruments of Thy mercy! Do Thou Thyself fulfill Thy work in power and bring hither to Thy flock them that are scattered abroad in the world, so that Thou canst soon appear in Thy glory and conduct us out of the conflict and strife of time into Thy kingdom of peace! Amen.”

A quarter of a century has changed greatly the situation in India. The siege has advanced nobly and many fortresses have been taken.

[Sidenote: Another Brave Record.] The station of the _Hermannsburg Society_ in India is in the southern part of Telugu land in the Presidency of Madras and the district of Nellore. This mission has a history of bitter opposition from the natives and cruel sufferings from cholera, but its workers have bravely persisted, longing for a larger force. After fifty years of work they write hopefully: “Our work in the Telugu mission is a blessed one. The plot is small, but it will be a great harvest field. Our preaching meets with great opposition, but opposition is better than a dull indifference. Had we but the means to offer salvation to the pariahs they would come in throngs.”

After fifty years the mission reports a staff of fifteen missionaries in twenty stations and a Christian community of more than three thousand. A leper asylum is one of its enterprises.

[Sidenote: A Promising Field.] The last of the German missionary societies to establish itself in India is the _Breklum_ or _Schleswig-Holstein Society_. It had been recommended to work in the Bastar land, but the king refused to allow the missionaries to stay and they went therefore to Salur in 1883. Though the mission is still young, it provides for all varieties of missionary work, its schools are first-class, it has established a training school for native workers and a leper asylum and deaconesses are in charge of Zenana work.

The Breklum Mission lies partly in high land where the temperature is that of Europe. Here in the hills the various popular religious cults of India had not penetrated; the inhabitants were demon worshipers. Among them the Gospel has been received. To the missionaries it seems that dawn is at hand; in the words of one, “there is throughout the land a rustling as though rain is coming.”

In 1913 the mission reported twenty-seven German missionaries and sixteen thousand five hundred converts.

[Sidenote: Work Interrupted.] It is with a sad heart that the lover of missions contemplates the condition of German missions in India to-day. Instead of the longed-for and expected harvest there is blight and desolation; instead of plenteous rain there is drought. These Germans, pious, diligent and successful, find drawn across the history of their work a deeper rift than that which was drawn by the mutiny of ’57. Removed from their missions and either held as prisoners of war or returned to Germany, they watch with distress as the labor of years is disastrously halted. The Basel mission which is partly manned by Swiss, is not so seriously affected as the Leipsic, the Hermannsburg, the Gossner and the Schleswig-Holstein or Breklum missions, which are deprived of their workers and deprived of support.

Lutherans in other lands are doing all that they can to care for these enterprises. The Leipsic Mission will be looked after by the Lutheran Church of Sweden; the Schleswig-Holstein or Breklum Mission by the General Council; the Hermannsburg Mission by the Joint Synod of Ohio, and the Gossner Mission by the General Synod. In this cause the American Norwegian and Danish bodies have offered their services, as might have been expected from their characteristic liberality.

SCANDINAVIAN SOCIETIES.

[Sidenote: A Trans-formation in Fifty Years.] The _Home Mission to the Santals_, founded, as we have learned in Chapter II by Hans Peter Börresen and Lars Skrefsrud was so called because the founders wished it to have the nature of a “home” from which all sorts of improving influences should flow. The Santals are akin to the Kols of the Gossner mission. Terribly oppressed, especially by Hindu money lenders, they rose in 1860 in a bloody rebellion which called public attention to their misery. In 1867 the two ardent Scandinavians set to work among them, and in a short time saw the harvest beginning to ripen. The chief station is at Ebenezer and round about are many smaller and independent stations. Good schools and a mission press from which a monthly paper, “The Friend of the Santal”, is issued, are among the means for education. The thirteen thousand five hundred Christians are so well trained that a great part of the mission work is conducted by them. In Assam the mission provides for its converts who have gone thither to work on the tea plantations.

The mission is supported, as we shall see, not only by the Scandinavians of Europe, but by those of America.

The _Danish Evangelical Lutheran Missionary Society_ has since 1862 stations in Pattambakam in South Arcot. It has twenty-seven men and women at work and a Christian community of over seventeen hundred.

The terrible heat of Southern India is one of the conditions which make especially heroic the service of the Scandinavians who are accustomed to an almost arctic climate. In 1886 a Danish missionary wrote to his friends at home with no expectation that his letter would ever be printed:

[Sidenote: Heroic Service.] “Though only May, it is now ninety-six degrees in the house night and day. Our little son, four years old, will often throw himself despairingly on the floor, exclaiming, ‘O mother, this country is too warm, too warm; can’t we go into the great ship again and sail home to Denmark?’ In the morning we find no application of our Danish hymn, ‘Renewed in strength by nightly rest’. The power of the hot, scorching wind is the same day and night. Yet we are thankful for general health. But we cannot help thinking how, when nature is the most withering upon us, she is opening into her fullest loveliness in Denmark. This very day letters were received from home, and all spoke of the Spring, of the beeches that were ready to leaf, of wood anemones and violets, of gardens filled with Easter lilies, crocuses, hyacinths, and all the other delicate and gracious flowers which are now covering the Danish land. Nor did the letters merely speak of them; for in one there were violets, in another tender beech leaves. We are fresh from seeing all this; how living it all becomes on the receipt of such letters. Involuntarily we exclaim:

‘The Pentecostal feast does nature keep In robes of flowery magnificence.’

Ah! how lovely is Denmark!”

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

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

[Sidenote: A Missionary Family.] The _Church of Sweden Mission_ in India was begun in 1855 when two Swedish missionaries went into the service of the Leipsic mission in Tamil land. In 1869 they were joined by Dr. C. J. Sandgren, who is still alive and at work surrounded by five of his children as fellow workers. In 1901 several stations of the Leipsic mission were handed over to the independent control of the Swedes and since then the mission has grown rapidly. Madura is the central station and at Tirupater there is a fine hospital. The mission has profited greatly by the mass movements toward Christianity which have taken place in recent years in South India, in which whole villages have asked for baptism, a condition which brings new missionary problems.

It is to this mission that there has passed during the war the work of the Leipsic Society.

AMERICAN SOCIETIES.

[Sidenote: The Patriarch of the American Lutheran Church.] Among the heroes of the American Lutheran Church is _Henry Melchior Muhlenberg_ who was born in Germany in 1711 and died in America in 1787. He was educated at the University of Göttingen from which he went to Halle to teach in the Orphanage and to prepare himself for missionary work in India. Instead he accepted a call to become the pastor of the scattered congregations of Lutherans in Pennsylvania. When he arrived in 1742 he found the people without church buildings or schools and at the mercy of imposters who claimed to be clergymen. At once he began to preach and to organize. Travelling from New York to Georgia, doing pastoral work, forming constitutions for churches and for the first American Synod, he filled forty-five years to the brim with valuable work. Of him Doctor Henry E. Jacobs says: “Depth of religious conviction, extraordinary inwardness of character, apostolic zeal for the spiritual welfare of individuals, absorbing devotion to his calling and all its details, were among his most marked characteristics. These were combined with an intuitive penetration and extended width of view, a statesman-like grasp of every situation in which he was placed, an almost prophetic foresight, coolness and discrimination of judgment, and peculiar gifts for organization and discrimination.”

Under the ministrations of Doctor Muhlenberg the Lutheran Church in America was firmly established. That his heart turned longingly to the first field of labor which he had selected, we know from his own records. In giving an account of the Third Convention of the Ministerium of Pennsylvania, he said that when the delegates gathered for an evening meeting at his house he told them of the Mission among the Malabars and among the Jews. Doubtless he was consoled by the hope that there might go from his American Church those who would do what he had wished to do.

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

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

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

[Sidenote: Two Appeals.] There had come meanwhile to the Lutheran Church in America two appeals from the foreign field, one from Missionary Rhenius in India whose career we have described in Chapter II, the other from Gützlaff in China, whom we shall study in Chapter V. It was decided in answer to the appeal of Rhenius that _John Christian Frederick Heyer_ should go to India as the first missionary of the General Synod. When it appeared probable that difficulties would arise on account of the connection with the inter-denominational American Board under whose direction Heyer was to go, he resigned, and in 1841 was sent by the Pennsylvania Synod which had withdrawn from the General Synod after the first meeting. The death of Rhenius and the return of his followers to the English mission made it possible for the Americans to select a wholly new field.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Sidenote: Other Laborers.] Beside Father Heyer there labored in the early days of the Lutheran mission the _Rev. Walter Gunn_, who died after seven years of devoted service; the _Rev. Christian William Grönning_, a missionary of the North German Society, who entered the service of the American Lutheran Church when Rajahmundry was transferred; the _Rev. A. F. Heise_, who was compelled by ill health to resign after eleven years of work; the _Rev. W. E. Snyder_, who died in 1859; the _Rev. W. I. Cutter_, who was compelled to return on account of the health of his wife after a short term; and the _Rev. A. Long_, who died of smallpox after eight years of faithful service.

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

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

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

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

[Sidenote: The Children’s Missionary.] In 1872, when a farewell meeting was held in Harrisburg for Dr. Uhl, there was in his audience _Adam D. Rowe_, who determined then to devote himself to missionary work. Conceiving the plan of collecting from the children of the Church the means for his support, he sailed for India. Worn out by his active labors, he died in 1882. Similarly there fell while at work, the _Rev. John Nichols_ and the _Rev. Samuel Kinsinger_.

A missionary who has been spared for many years of service is _Dr. Anna S. Kugler_, who went to India in 1883. Beginning in a humble way by caring for a few afflicted women, Dr. Kugler has stimulated and directed the founding of a large and finely equipped woman’s hospital. Capable, enthusiastic and deeply consecrated, she has been rewarded for years of unceasing labor by the realization of many of her hopes. The importance of Christian medical work is illustrated by an experience of Dr. Kugler. A neighboring rajah, various members of whose family had been cured in the hospital, expressed his gratitude not only by a large gift, but also by the making of a metrical translation of the Gospels into Telugu.

To-day the Guntur Mission has in its service thirty-nine missionaries and twelve Anglo-Indian assistants. In addition it has eight hundred and sixty-one native workers, who include Bible women, colporteurs and catechists. It has a baptized native membership of about fifty thousand. It possesses twenty-one church buildings and school buildings, one hundred and ninety-six schoolhouses and prayer houses, two hospitals, three dispensaries and two college and high school buildings. Its college is the only Lutheran college in India. Its last biennium has been extraordinarily blessed and unceasingly does it call like all other missionary enterprises for more workers, larger sums of money, and more fervent prayers.

[Sidenote: A Man of Practical Ability.] The record of the Mission of the _General Council_ is a brave one. When Father Heyer returned to Rajahmundry after his appeal to the Ministerium of Pennsylvania that the station be not given over to the Church of England, he was followed in a few months by the _Rev. F. J. Becker_, who had scarcely more than begun his preparation for active service when he died. In a few months his successor, the _Rev. H. C. Schmidt_, arrived, and subsequently the _Rev. Iver K. Poulsen_. For a short time, until the final return of Father Heyer to America, there were three missionaries on the field. Beside his fine service as a preacher and teacher, Doctor Schmidt is especially remembered for his wise care of the property of the mission. He is the third of a trio of workers in the Rajahmundry mission who have stood in the eyes of their Church above their fellow men, the others being Father Heyer and Doctor Harpster. At the time of Doctor Schmidt’s retirement, Doctor Harpster became the director of the mission. Of him we have given above a brief account.

[Sidenote: A Sad Toll.] The Rev. Poulsen withdrew in 1888 after seventeen years of active service in the Rajahmundry mission, and, coming to the United States, died at the age of sixty-seven in the active pastorate. Within a few years two promising young men, _A. B. Carlson_ and _H. G. B. Artman_, both trained in the Philadelphia Theological Seminary, arrived, took up the work which so urgently needed them and in a short time died. Two others, the _Rev. Franklin S. Dietrich_ and the _Rev. William Grönning_ also laid down their lives, the former after seven, the latter after four years of service. Grönning, a son of C. W. Grönning, was a brilliant scholar, an eloquent preacher and a trained musician. His parentage and his early training had bred in him a deep love for missions and his loss was irreparable.

Not the least heavy of the blows which the mission suffered was the death of the _Rev. F. W. Weiskotten_, who was sent to India to inspect and report on the affairs of the mission. Accompanying his daughter to the field, he died on the homeward journey and was buried at sea off the coast of France in December 1900.

To-day the Rajahmundry mission reports over twenty-four thousand members, about thirteen thousand of whom are communicants. Its missionaries number eighteen and the total number of all its workers is about five hundred and fifty. It owns valuable property and conducts a widely useful medical work.

The first money which was given toward the Rajahmundry hospital was contributed by the children in the surgical ward of the German Hospital in Philadelphia.

[Sidenote: A Touching Story.] The first medical missionary, Doctor Lydia Woerner, describes in an incident of her day’s work the misery of India and its great hope.

“Early one bright sunshiny morning, during the monsoon season, I came through a side street in our town, passing a long, high, gray wall. Above the wall I saw palm, banana, mangoe and tamarind trees, which almost hid the roofs of several houses.

“As I looked I noticed a little green door in the wall. When I asked my helpers about the place, they all knew it by the little green door, which they told me was always locked on the inside. It had several small holes through which the secluded women peeped without being seen. Our Bible woman had tried many times to gain entrance, but was told by voices from behind the little green door that her presence would pollute the place. One of the helpers suggested that we pray to God to open that little green door for us.

“A few nights later, during a terrific storm and a pouring rain, two native officials came with an urgent call to take me to the house of another official. I did not know him nor where he lived, but they told me his wife had been suffering intensely for several days, so my helper and I picked up the emergency bag and started off with them. On the way we were told that every native midwife available had tried to relieve the patient, but had failed. Large offerings had been made to the gods in their favorite temple. Even the river goddess had been implored to give help, by sacrifices thrown into her waters. As a last resort, they had come to seek help from the missionary doctor.

“We were drenched and stiff, as we crawled out of the oxcart. It was very dark. The streets were flooded, but a flash of lightning revealed to us that we were in front of the little green door--and _it was open_. Outside, under umbrellas and blankets, were groups of men--friends of the husband--who had come to sympathize with him because his wife was giving him so much trouble. The sympathy was all for the husband. Probably, after all the trouble his wife was making, she would give him only a girl child! Inside was bedlam! A crowd of women were shrieking and crying. Little fires had been placed in pots all over the veranda. Smoking censers were swinging at windows and doorways, to prevent the evil spirits from entering the house.

“The husband came to meet me with a lantern. He was much distressed, and besought me in beautiful English to grant him help in his great calamity. This was his third wife. The gods were against him. He had no _child_--only three daughters! Not one word of anxiety or sympathy did he have for his suffering wife.

“I saw her lying on an old cot, with a coarse bamboo mat and gunny bag for bedding. She was a beautiful young Brahman girl. The cot was on the outside veranda, exposed to wind and rain. The patient had already been partially prepared for death. She was covered with burns and bruises, and was very weak, but she looked at me with her beautiful eyes, and implored me not to treat her as cruelly as the others had done. It was a weird scene, with the flickering little lamps, the beautiful ill-treated patient, and the curious faces of the women peering at us out of the darkness.

“Under great protest the relatives finally allowed the patient to be moved into a small veranda room. By and by things calmed down, and the people left for their homes. All was quiet, and the patient’s confidence and strength revived. At dawn we left a smiling young mother holding her newborn son in her arms, and a father proud and happy, because now he had a _child_, an heir to his large estate.

“The little green door opened to let us out. A little child had opened it, and never since that night has it been closed to us or to the Gospel message.”

The General Council conducts a mission in the City of Rangoon in Burma. The native catechist, who has been in charge of the work for three years, writes that he has won thirty souls for his Lord. He says further:

[Sidenote: The Letter of a Native Worker.] “Though the year has been a black one, full of trials, temptations, accidents and poisonous fevers and break of work on account of the present war, such as the world has never witnessed, yet God has brought us through safe and given us the victory. And when the time shall come for the strife and toil, the tumults and wars, the tears and groans of creation to end forever, then shall come the jubilee, the grand coronation song shall be sung by the resurrected redeemed hosts of the Lord, saying, ‘Thou art worthy to take the book and to open the seals thereof; for Thou wast slain and hast redeemed us to God by Thy blood out of every kindred and tongue and people and nation; and hast made us unto our God kings and priests; and we shall reign on the earth.’”

In 1894 the _Missouri Lutheran Synod_ began work in India in the Salem district of the Madras Presidency, their first station being at Krishnagiri. There the pioneer missionary the _Rev. Th. Naether_ labored until his death in 1904. In 1907 the work was extended to Travancore. The mission has eleven chief stations and fourteen missionaries.

The women’s societies of this synod are very active, their contribution including not only money but large shipments of garments for the children in the mission schools. The medical work of the mission, the retreat for missionaries in the hills, and the school for missionaries’ children are supported entirely by the women’s societies.

_The Joint Synod of Ohio_ which had taken over before the war the Kodur and Puttur stations of the Hermannsburg mission has now agreed to support the entire mission.

The _Lutheran Synod of Iowa_ sends contributions to the work of the Leipsic Society.

The Danes and Norwegians in America support the Home Mission to the Santals. The Swedes are a part of the General Council and help to support her mission.

We owe to the Rev. George Drach the closing words of our Indian story.

“To-day there are no less than twelve different missions in various parts of India, supported and controlled by societies and boards of the Lutheran Church in Europe and America, numbering according to the census of 1911, a native Christian constituency of nearly two hundred and fifty thousand. To emphasize their unity in faith and to consult concerning the best method of mission work, as well as to plan for closer co-operation, delegates were sent by the various Lutheran missions to an All India Lutheran Conference at Rajahmundry, held December 31, 1911 to January 4, 1912. This was the second conference of this character, the first having been held at Guntur four years ago.

All told, eighty European and American and twelve Indian delegates came together at Rajahmundry in order to advance by the fostering of Christian fellowship among Lutheran brethren and by practically helpful deliberation, the cause of Christ in India. They represented the Leipsic, Missouri, Swedish and Danish missions of the Tamil country, the Hermannsburg, Breklum, American General Council and American General Synod Missions of the Telugu country, and the Gossner Mission of the North. The delegates came from the South of India where the breezes have not yet spent all the spicy fragrance of which, softly blowing, they robbed Ceylon’s isle; they came from the sun-scorched plains of Central India, where great rivers roll seaward in tepid sluggishness; they came from the far north where the vast, snowy reaches of the Himalayas abruptly bound the view. It was a joy to see them, young men still in the newness of the first years of missionary service, perhaps still studying the vernacular of their fields of work; men in the prime of life who had tested their strength upon the tasks God gave them to perform amid surrounding heathendom, and who had become wise in counsel and strong in achievement; older men whose whitening hair confirmed the story, told by their battle-worn faces, of decades of service against the forces of Satan, and who yet burned at heart with the zeal of young warriors. Moreover, there was not a department of woman’s work in missions that had not its goodly complement of women present at the conference.... Could any other Church, besides the Lutheran, have gathered together in one body such a unique, diversified yet united conference of Indian missionaries and Christians?... The conference marked an epoch in the work of Lutheran missions in India, which, united, strong and zealous, will not be content until they occupy advanced ground in the movement of the army of the Lord Jesus Christ.”