J^*y^4}j'-;'^f' ■ Protestant Missions \m Q^ ^ c:?^?%<^/^-^ / 2- / . /^, j,f tU« i'heolojjfa/ ^ ^^ PRINCETON, N. J. ^% Purchased by the Hamill Missionary Fund. BV 2035 .T56 1903 Thompson, Augustus Charles,j 1812-1901. Protestant missions O /-^^^^a^t- PROTESTANT MISSIONS PROTESTANT MISSIONS THEIR RISE AND EARLY PROGRESS V' /^. ^'r., i y A. C. THOMPSON, D. D. AUTHOR OF "MORAVIAN MISSIONS," ETC., ETC. STUDENT VOLUNTEER MOVEMENT FOR FOREIGN MISSIONS. 1903. -•_/«• Copyright by A. C. THOMPSON. 1894. THE CAXTON PRESS NEW YORK PREFACE The experience of the Educational Department of the Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions indicates that student study classes greatly appreciate those courses in which Ufe is made prominent, either that of the races or of the missionaries themselves, with the great mission fields as their background. Missionary history, in order to be acceptable to such classes, needs to be linked to great lives and to needy peoples. It is because the author of this vol- ume has so well succeeded in sketching sahent facts in the annals of Protestant missions and in connecting them with heroic names that it has been chosen for use as a text-book. Yet for the reason that so much history is compressed within such brief limits, it should be used with other missionary literature at hand in order to fill in the sketch with color and additional life. An old work found in many libraries, W. Brown's "History of the Propagation of Christianity among the Heathen since the Reformation," is the best available auxiliary for this purpose. Early colonial history also furnishes excellent supplementary material for those chapters having to do with Indian missions in America. As this volume was originally published in 1894, a few changes, mainly of dates and statistics, have been made in order to make it correspond Avith facts at the beginning of the twentieth century. CONTENTS I. Period of the Reformation. Pages 3-21. Limited Views — Sixteenth Century — Unfavorable Conditions, Political and Financial — No Aggressive Sentiment — Mis- taken Eschatology — First Movements — Colony in Brazil — Work in Lapland — New Sweden — Movements Spas- modic and Individual — Peter Heyling — Von Welz. II. Early Dutch Missions. Pages 22-38. The Netherlands — Opportunity for Missions — Evangelism in Mind — Missionary College — Various Localities — Eastern Archipelago — India — Surinam — Defects of Those Mis- sions — Limited Term of Service — Vernaculars Not Mas- tered — Superficial Instruction — Secular Inducements — Present Dutch East Indies — Dutch Missionary Societies — Other Missionary Societies — Growth of Mohammedanism. III. Early English Movements. Pages 39-58. Preliminary — The Reformation in England — Individual Move- ments — Alleine, Oxenbridge, Lake, Hyde, Cromwell, Boyle — New England Colonies Missionary — Secular Elements — Divine Design — Colonial Evangelism — Pilgrim and Puritan — The Indians — The Apostle Eliot — In England — Pastorate at Roxbury — The Language — His Incentives. IV. John Eliot. Pages 59-81. His Methods — Initial Proceedings — Civilization Developing — Literary Labors, Works Original and Translated — Trans- lation of the Bible — Comparative Embarrassments — A VI CONTENTS. Peerless Achievement — His Successes — Undoubted Con- versions — Church Organization Delayed — Fruits of Labor — Trials and Disappointments, Personal, Relating to In- dians, Hostilities, Decadence — Resume' — Results Per- petuated. v. Among Indians. Pages 83-116. In Massachusetts, Southeastern Section — Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket — The Mayhews — Co-laborers and Succes- sors — Results — Barnstable County — Plymouth — Massa- chusetts Colony — Berkshire County, John Sergeant — Jonathan Edwards — Other Laborers — General Consider- ations — In Rhode Island — Roger "Williams — Church at Westerly — In Connecticut, Early Attempts — Eleazer Wheelock — Samson Occom — In New York and Other Colonies — Conclusion. VI. David Brainerd. Pages 117-147. Brainerd's Influence — Religious Experience — Spiritual Strug- gles — Christian Outset — College Career — Religious Ex- ercises — Forgiving Spirit — Sense of Sin — Aspirations after Holiness — Supreme Motive — Temperament — No Exaggeration — Missionary Life — Preliminary — At Kaun- aumeek — No Wavering — Among Delawares, At Forks of the Delaware — On the Susquehannah — At Crossweek- sung — Impediments, In Traveling — 111 Health — Indian Character — Unfriendly Whites — The Language — Devot- edness — Success — Revival Experiences — The Work Genu- ine — Numerical Results — Attestations — Methods — Evan- gelical Truth — Prevailing Prayer — Last Days. VII. Danish Missions- Pages 148-174.1 Denmark and the Anglo-Saxons — Frederick IV — Origin of the Movement — First Missionaries — The Period — The Field — Early Experiences — Initial Labors — Disappoint- ments — Maltreatment — Reenforcements — Ziegenbalg's Ar- dor — Visits Europe — Literary Labors — Early Death. CONTENTS. Vli VIII. Christian Frederick Schwartz Pages 175-202. Germany, 1750 — C. F. Schwartz — Outset — The Mission — Schwartz as Missionary — Trichinopoly Rock — Schwartz as Diplomatist — Caste — Schwartz's Celibacy — Devoted- ness — Unworldly — Longevity — Last Days. IX. Critique upon the Mission. Pages 203-333. Relations Vague — Decline — Decay Lamentable — Superfici- ality — Caste — Native Pastorate — Education — Subordi- nate Pursuits — Political Disorder — Persecution — Diver- sities — State Relations — Nominal Christians — Direct Results — Reflex Results — Resident Europeans. X. Hans Eoede. Pages 283-260. Arctic Regions — Hans Egede — Providential Leadings — Per- sistence — Encouragement Tardy — Greenland — Discour- agements — Perseverance — Results — Mistaken Theory — Egede Returns — Heroism — Arctic Disasters — Genuine Nobility — Usefulness. XI. Moravian MissioNsi Pages 261-2S9. John Hubs — Discipline — Moravian Antecedence — Zinzendorf — The Epoch — Motive Power — Christian Loyalty — Small, Great — Herrnhut, 1732 — Coincidences — First Mis- sionaries — No Romanticism — Fidelity — August 21 — Fields and Forces — Burial Places — The Lesson. Appendix. Pages 291-310. PROTESTANT MISSIONS THEIR RISE AND EARLY PROGRESS I PERIOD OF THE REFORMATION On a Chinese map of the world, two feet by three and a half, the Celestial Empire occupies nearly the whole surface. In the left hand upper corner Europe and views Africa appear as small islands. Such exaggerated local conceptions are by no means an Oriental peculiarity. The same may be noticed in every land, every neighborhood, and connected with every interest. Where, however, national or sectional vanity is in some measure corrected by geographical knowledge it often indemnifies itself by an overestimate of local excellencies. We are reminded of another instance of Eastern hyperbole. Ormuz, a barren rock in the Persian Gulf once of some little importance, occasioned the proverb, " The world is a ring, and Ormuz is the gem which it contains." In the religious and the chitrchly world a habit of excessive self- valuation often appears. Denominational opti- mism is nearly universal. Superiority of creed, culture, character, or worship is a claim which, 4 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. with varying degrees of obtrusiveness, shows it- self on every side. Something of this may be seen in missionary movements. The periodicals and the platforms of different societies exhibit not unfrequently a certain amount of positive self- glorification, or the same is shown negatively by an ignorance or an ignoring of all others. The prevailing representation is that modern missions took their rise near the close of the last century. Even on an occasion so nearly ecumen- ical as that of the London Missionary Conference in 1888, individual limitation of historical range was frequently manifest. Indeed the gathering, great and valuable as it was, proceeded upon the basis of " a century," " the century," of missions reckoned from 1788 — a date having no special evangelistic significance, and as inappropriate as to reckon longitude eastward from nowhere, as- suming that there is no terrestrial area west from GreenAvich. Prevailing misapprehension, which often appears still in missionary literature, needs to be corrected and the remoter genesis of this enterprise examined. As there were reformers before the Reformation, so there were missions long before the present evangelistic era. An adequate study on that line may serve to culti- vate in a self-complacent generation the wisdom of modesty. Protestant missions, it will be noticed, are an- nounced as now in hand. Tlie very term Protes- PERIOD OF THE REFORMATION. 5 tant takes us at once to the sixteenth century Reformation. The genetic method of treats ment — now happily becoming the more usual method — which recognizes the law of continuity in affairs human and divine, may seem to demand that we begin at „^?° ° .* ® ° Reformation, the opening of the Christian era. That, however, would lead us through one belt of the entire wide field of church history down to modern times. But if in the course of the last eighteen hundred years there is any period at which a new order of things authorizes one to take a new and independent start in contem- plating evangelistic aggressiveness is it not the great upheaval of the sixteenth century? For Christendom it was much the same as one of the vast geological convulsions in the crust of our globe. Here at the very outset arises the question, Why were not foreign missions undertaken imme- diately upon that great overturning? rry\ • i. i" i. ii 1 T^u PoHtical and ihe reason is not lar to nnd. ihere „. . , Financial. were conditions exceedingly unfavor- able to such movements. Political, social, and financial affairs seemed to forbid anything of the kind. Christendom had become an ecclesiastical empire, the state was nearly everywhere absorbed in the church, and wealth was largely in the hands of the priesthood. The Head of the Holy Roman Empire, for example, received not a foot 6 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. of territory in Germany or Italy with his imperial diadem. Maximilian affirmed that the pope had a hundred times as much revenue even from Ger- many as himself. The peasantry was everywhere in a deplorable condition. The knighthood had to a large extent degenerated into banditti. Religion was widely reduced to a round of externalities ; it was paganized. The abominable system of in- dulgences had become prevalent. Monks, like a swarm of harpies, preyed upon the people. The clergy, exempt from criminal law, was widely cor- rupt. Having sole authority to solemnize mar- riage, holding the keys of the unseen world, an unscrupulous priesthood had ample opportunities to enrich itself; wills were probated only in ec- clesiastical courts. Hades itself being annexed to the papal dominions, what fear of God or man could be expected to restrain a debased hierarchy? Religion became a synonym for extortion and social corruption. Not simply delinquencies, but debaucheries and atrocities prevailed. No won- der that an emperor of Austria — the compara- tively respectable Maximilian — on learning the treachery of Leo X exclaimed : " This pope, like the rest, is in my judgment a scoundrel. Hence- forth I can say that in all my life no pope has kept his word or faith with me. I hope, if God be willing, this one shall be the last of them." Even the vacillating Erasmus, who never had the courage of his convictions, wrote : " All sense of PERIOD OF THE REFORMATION. 7 shame has vanished from human affairs. I see that the very height of tyranny has been reached. The pope and kings count the people not as men but as cattle in the market." Only those who had the courage of their ignorance could maintain willing fealty to such a system. If ever reform and revolution were needed on earth, was it not then? Papal Christendom had become as truly a missionary field as the unevangelized world is today. To reenthrone Christ instrumentally at the head of a spiritual Church was enough for men of the sixteenth century to accomplish. It was a struggle of life or death in which they were engaged. No thanks to Rome that Luther, Calvin, and Knox, instead of meeting the same fate as Savonarola, Ridley, and Cranmer, were permitted to die in their beds. With some show of reason might it be said there were neither men nor means for carrying on evangelism out- side of the nominally Christian world. The so- cial disturbances, insurrections, and wars that arose kept attention riveted upon more imme- diate surroundings. It should be borne in mind, also, that the very idea of a foreign promulgation of such degener- ate Christianity as then dominated Europe had become faint. The mighty spasm of the Crusades was not even military evangelism ; their futility and folly were conspicuous. For three hundred years the Roman. Catholic Church had nearly 8 PEOTESTANT MISSIONS. ceased to be aggressive. Resistance to Moham- medans with force of arms appeared to be de- manded on the Continent by the instinct of self-preservation. Emancipation of society from the papal thraldom under which it had long been held could not be expected to bring with No it immediate breadth and symmetry Aggressive of religious thought and enterprise. Sentiment. ^ yictim escaping from the folds of a boa-constrictor is presumably not in the condition of a vigorous athlete. Great moral ideas and forces destined to affect remote regions are always of slow growth. Is an earthquake a favorable opportunity for measurements of lati- tude and longitude ? There was yet another reason — an inadequate apprehension of the predicted future of Christ's kingdom on earth. Reference is not now made to the literalistic fanaticism of Anabaptists, nor to clearly defined millenarianism, which, if based upon sober though mistaken interpretation of prophecy, may be no impediment, may even be an incentive to universal evangelism. Reference is had rather to a want of duly expanded views concerning the predicted scope of our Lord's spiritual dominion here below. The Reformers somewhat generally appeared not to take in the thought that there is a divine purpose and an imperative duty concerning the spread of Chris- tianity widely, most widely, beyond all limits PERIOD OF THE EEFOEMATION. 9 hitherto attained. Their eschatology lacked such clear and settled consistency as imparts calmness and persistent energy in toiling for a remote end. It was colored by that haste of opinions and impatience of expectation which always mark critical epochs and times of excitement. Ex- traordinary events, whether plagues, conflagra- tions, or persecutions, have often stimulated a belief that the second advent of Christ in bodily presence and vis- ^'^taken , Eschatology. ible reign on earth was near at hand, or else that the final judgment impended. It was assumed by Luther, for instance, that gospel promulgation had already reached its limits, and his eschatology neither suggested nor hardly admitted of foreign evangelism. He declared, "Another hundred years and all will be over." ' Not quite a decade, however, had gone by after the death of Luther when a missionary movement began. In the year 1555 Henry II of France sent out a colony to Brazil — a country which had been discovered only half a century before (1500). The noble Huguenot, Gaspard de Coligni, strongly favored the measure, hoping that a retreat might thus be found for his per- ' Gustav Warneck : Abrlss einer Gesckichte der protestantischen Missionen. Leipzig, 1882 and 1883. Translated by Dr. Thomas Smith: Outline of the History of Protestant Missions. Edinburgh, 1884. Pp. 11-22 ; 193-194. 10 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. secuted Protestant brethren. That year (1555) witnessed the abdication of Charles V in favor of his son, Philip II, and Protestants in any kingdom might well have forebodings. The colonial enterprise referred to was headed by the Chevalier de Villegagnon, an admiral in the French navy, who on arriving at Rio de Jan- eiro wrote back to Coligni for reenforcements, and wrote also to John Calvin, with whom he had been acquainted at the University of Paris, asking for divines from Geneva o ony in ^-^^ should plant Christianity in that part of South America.' Ac- cordingly the next year (1556) fourteen men, two of them clergymen, started from Geneva, and in passing through France to the place of embarkation, Harfleur, were joined by about three hundred more. Three ships, furnished by the government, conveyed the company to Rio de Janeiro, where they experienced severe hardships. Little could be effected in the way of evangel- izing the natives, and yet a few conversions were reported. Villegagnon, apostatizing from the Protestant faith, proved a base traitor and as relentless a persecutor as any French cardinal could wish. That was contemporaneous with the martyrdom of Ridley and Latimer, the persecu- tion by Bloody Mary being in full tide. In less than a year some of the company in Brazil ' Note 1. PERIOD OF THE REFORMATION. 11 embarked for Europe. A few of them escaped early by boat to the land they had just left, three of whom were, by firders from the infamous Villegagnon, thrown into the sea as heretics and drowned. One, named John Boles, a man of learning, escaped from the clutches of Ville- gagnon, but was arrested at the instance of Jes- uits, confined in prison for eight years, and then, by order of the Portuguese governor, executed as a warning to his countrymen if any of them were still in concealment. The story of hard- ships, starvation included, experienced by those who embarked for Europe during their five months' voyage in an unseaworthy vessel have few parallels in maritime history. Such were the character and speedy close of the first missionary adventure undertaken while /^ the Reformation was yet in progress. It proved tragically abortive. Foreign evangelism was not, however, its mainspring. It was a colonial enter- prise, inspired primarily and principally by the V'v'-^-y^ desire of escaping persecution at home ; yet there '^ . / entered into it a true missionary element, which showed that the claims of Christ's kingdom were not forgotten. The result of the experiment in South America seems to us now all the more sadly humiliating when we call to mind the simultaneous vaunted successes of Xavier in the East. The Apostle to the Indies, so called, had already rung his bell 12 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. in the streets of Goa (1542) ; had labored among the pearl-fishers of Ceylon ; had baptized thou- sands in Travancore; had visited Malacca and Japan ; and near the coast of China, whither he was bound, had closed his truly remarkable yet generally overrated career (1552). While it is the rise and early progress of mis- sions that we are to consider, it will not be amiss just to glance now and then at later movements which have local or other relations. As regards Brazil, not till within the last century has Protestantism effected a lodgment in that coun- try, recently an empire, now a repujblic, and the youngest on the face of the earth. Its area is nearly equal to that of Europe, and among its population, numbering about fourteen millions, var- ious bodies, including Methodist, Episcopal, Pres- byterian, Baptist, in the United States, as well as "four societies or more in England — have estab- lished missions. The American Bible Society has aided the good work. One of the American so- cieties operating there has gathered a goodly number of churches, and no Villegagnon can now banish evangelical Christians. The second Protestant missionary movement In of the sixteenth century originated Lapland. [yi the year 1559, four years after the foregoing ; and we now turn from tropical America to an arctic region of Scandinavia. Sweden has the honor of its origin — in which PERIOD OF THE EEFOKMATION. 13 country Christianity first found lodgment about the year 1000, and was favored, as you recollect, by Olaf, its first king. You recall the labors at that period of Siegfried, the earnest English missionary. The Protestant Reformation had the patronage of Gustavus Vasa, cautious, yet bold when needful, and as resolutely vigorous as bold. When in the twelfth century Sweden subdued Finland compulsory conversion took place, and the Christianity of the conquering people was not, as may well be imagined, of the highest type. The old heathenism had its strongholds still. But slight impression had been made upon it in Lapland at the north — now no longer a geographical unit — a region chiefly within the arctic circle, and where in our day is found the most northern town of continental Europe. A re- gion where the sun does not rise in winter and where a night of three months reigns ; a region largely of dreary swamps ; a region nearly desti- tute at that time of hamlets — the sparse popula- tion being nojnadic in their habits — was not a promising field for evangelistic effort, Arctic seas furnish only lower forms of animal life, and the tribes bordering upon those seas all round the northern land-circuit of our globe be- long to the lower grades of civilization. But they belong to the human race — to those for whom Christ died and to whom it is his order 14 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. that the gospel be sent. King Gustavus felt in some measure the obligation, and sent a mission- ary thither. He also sent a proclamation order- ing the people to assemble at a given time with a view to pay their annual tax and to receive religious instruction. But neither the Swedish language nor the royal mandate was an appropri- ate medium of evangelization. Little could be ex- pected or was then effected. Yet the movement indicated the presence of an operative Scriptural idea. When in the next century Gustavus Adol- phus, an earnest Protestant and the most illus- trious monarch Sweden has ever had, interested himself in the work more was accomplished. Dur- ing his reign the first book in the language of the Lapps was printed (1619) at Stockholm, and amidst his campaign in Germany he was still mindful of that people. The eighteenth century likewise witnessed a cer- tain amount of Swedish enthusiasm, temporarily at least, in behalf of Laplanders. The national Diet passed a resolution that the entire Sacred Scrip- tures should be translated into Lapponese. Within the present century the British and Foreign Bible Society has offered generous aid toward the sup- ply especially of New Testaments in that lan- guage. Yet to this day the Christianity of the Lapps is of a low type^ While no great amount of vital piety, a great amount of intemperance may be witnessed. As with fruit trees in Lap- PERIOD OF THE REFORMATION. 15 land, which are stunted and bear little or no fruit, so with the churches. The year 1637 was the date of a Swedish set- tlement on the east bank of the river Delaware in our country. This settlement bore the name of New Sweden. The en- _ , Sweden, terprise, undertaken by a sturdy ag- ricultural people, received encouragement from Oxenstiern, one of the greatest of statesmen, ranking with Coligni of France, in the foregoing century. From the mother country clergymen came to minister to the colonists, and also en- gaged to some extent in work among neighboring Indians. Campanius began Christian endeavor in behalf of the Delawares even earlier than John Eliot commenced his labors near Boston. Cam- panius preached in the vernacular, and translated Luther's catechism, as well as other elementary productions. The colony, however, adhered to the crown of Sweden only for a score of years. There was conflict with the Dutch of New Am- sterdam, now New York. Two forts, Casimir and Christina, had been erected, but an expedition under Governor Stuyvesant captured them and took the officers and principal inhabitants prison- ers. Mission work ceased, and the colonists, be- coming at length absorbed in the surrounding community, lost their native language. A few sporadic and individual movements also occurred. The case of Peter Hey ling, the 16 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. first German Protestant missionary, was unique, not only as that of a solitary standard bearer, but as involved in a certain amount of romance. Born at Liibeck in 1608, he went when twenty years of age (1628) to Paris for a four years' course of study. The Thirty Years' War, which so devastated Germany (1618-1648), destroying half her population and entailing serfdom upon her peasantry, was then in progress, „ ,. and it was the era of fierce ortho- Heyhng. doxy but of religious decline in the Lutheran Church. Young Heyling, however, had imbibed evangelical views and spirit from the writings of Luther, Arndt, Tauler, and Thomas h, Kempis. At Paris he appears to have been in some measure on terms of intimacy with Gro- tius, then Dutch ambassador at the French court. More noteworthy was his association with other like-minded evangfelical German students in Paris. / Heyling became convinced that foreign mission- 1 ary service was obligatory, and the same year , that Jesuits were expelled from Abyssinia (1632) he, though not aware of this fact, started for that country. Stopping at Malta he studied the Arabic, then visited Alexandria, Cairo, and Jeru- salem. He formed the acquaintance of Coptic monks at their monasteries in Egypt, and ap- pears to have been everywhere faithful to his evangelical convictions and not wholly without success in promoting spiritual interests. At PERIOD OP THE REFORMATION. 17 length, in 1634, he had opportunity to accompany the new Abiina on his way to Abyssinia, where Hey ling met with a favorable reception, and be- sides other labors translated the New Testament into Amharic as then spoken, thus performing a service similar to what Frumentius did twelve hundred years before. In the career of Heyling there are points of resemblance to that of Henry Martyn, and one is that he died on his way back to Europe.' It is a coincidence not unworthy of notice that just two hundred years after Heyling started (1632) for Abyssinia two representatives of the Church Missionary Society, one of them after- wards Bishop Gobat, started (1832) for the same country. Others, Isenberg and Krapf, followed (1837); and the St. Chrischona Institution, near^ 7* /' » Basle, has also sent out several men. But at ^^^^ r'^^^^yV--', present time there are no Protestant missionaries . -x-^.^. <■.",/ in that Switzerland of Africa — a fact due largely to Roman Catholic intrigue. Would tliat some ^^^^ Ethiopian treasurer might now receive the bap- ■"' tism of the Spirit and go on his way of home evangelism rejoicing ! Among individuals in the seventeenth century deeply moved on the subject of . . '' Von Welz. missions Justinian Von Welz stands -'^::3»-' conspicuous. He was a baron belonging to an ancient and honorable Austrian family, and born ' Note 2. 18 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. December 12, 1621. That year witnessed a total suppression of Protestantism in Bohemia, followed by a fearful persecution of malcontents, and the father of Welz removed to Saxony. It was not strange that the first publication, in his twentieth year, of young Welz, who had been well edu- cated, should be an able treatise on tyranny.' He became profoundly impressed with the obligation of Christians to send the gospel to Mohammedans and the heathen, and beginning in 1661. he issued successive appeals to the German nobility, uni- versity professors, and the clergy, setting forth vigorously the claims of the unevangelized. Nor was he a mere unpractical declaimer. He depos- ited twelve thousand German dollars toward the establishment of a seminary for the education of missionary candidates, and advocated the estab- lishment of a missionary department or college in all Protestant universities, each to have three professors — one of Oriental languages, one of evangelistic methods, and one of ecclesiastical history and geography. His appeals were more especially to those holding the Augsburg Confes- sion, and he put questions plain and pertinent like these : " Is it right to keep the gospel to ourselves? Is it right that students of theology should be confined to home parishes ? Is it right ' Tractatus de tyrannide. Lugduni Batavorum. 1641. In 1643 a second edition appeared, with the title De Tyrannorum ingenio et arcanis artibus Liber. Lugduni Batavorum. PERIOD OF THE REFORMATION. 19 for Christians to spend so much on clothing, eating, and drinking, and to take no thought to spread the gospel?" A few Lutheran pastors and university professors expressed approbation of the , object urged by Welz, but interest enough to form (^a missionary society could not be evoked. Super- intendent Ursinus, of Regensburg — not Zacharias Ursinus, who was of the preceding century — wrote against the proposed movement and grossly abused the baron. Tlie attitude of Ursinus and his qualification for judging a man inflamed with the missionary spirit may be learned from what he says of the Greenlanders, Lapps, Tartars, and Japanese, " The holy things of God are not to be cast before such dogs and swine ! " It is doubtful if a sheet let down from heaven, with all manner of four-footed beasts, would have convinced him, as it did Peter, that such Gen- tiles are entitled to have the gospel. Welz could obtain the publication of his works only in Holland. True there was a tinge of enthusiasm in this man. The absence of all effective sympathy for the undertaking proposed and indifference to plain Christian duty stirred a measure of indignation on his part. Some degree of acerbity and impa- f tience mingled unwisely with his animadversions, but a fanatic he was not. His motives were un- impeachable, his perseverance laudable, and at length, having resigned titles of honor, he went 20 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. out to Surinam, the Dutch colony which has been spoken of, as a missionary to the heathen, where he soon died, in the year 1668. In the Lutheran Church that was a period of lifeless orthodoxy and of fierce polemics. To the worldliness and torpidity of that church must be charged mediately the heated spirit and almost heartbreak of this self-sacrificing man. Reason- able response to his clarion summons would prob- ably have saved him to a noble service in the ichurch and for the church and have proved an /unmeasured benediction to Germany. He was the Count Zinzendorf of that period, in advance of his age, and without Zinzendorf's favoring opportunity for usefulness. Most meager, then, were the missionary move- , ments and results of Protestantism in the six- teenth century. Indeed, as now commonly un- j derstood, missions, denoting evangelism among a J foreign people the main aim, hardly existed. A migration abroad for political and personal rea- sons is not missionary^ while Christian endeavor in behalf of one's fellow citizens or one's sub- jects is liome missionary. Still, the new reli- gious life that was awakened at the Reformation had a germ destined to expand and bear fruit as time went on. In all human affairs movements comparatively ill-advised, badly administered, and abortive usu- ally precede and help to prepare for those more PERIOD OP THE REFORMATION. 21 Wisely planned and which give more assurance of success. Not only so, but beneficent enterprises usually have an inconspicuous origin. There is an old proverb, "The streams which turn the mill clappers of the world often rise in solitary places." II EARLY DUTCH MISSIONS The Protestant movements of the sixteenth and early part of the seventeenth centuries, col- lective and individual, though feeble and well- nigh fruitless, revealed germinant thoughts. The blade was then scarcely above ground ; in the eighteenth century the ear was to be seen ; the full corn in the ear did not show itself before the era in which we now live. Advancing from the sixteenth to the seven- teenth century we observe an evolution from a precursory period into a period pre- ^ liminary to formal missionary organ- ization. Here Holland first attracts our attention. The enterprising spirit of the Dutch was at once a prophecy and a pledge that the Protestant Reformation would find lodgment in the Netherlands. Nowhere else, however, in Europe were its advent and progress met by heavier persecution or more higli-handed tyranny. No one whose nerves are not firm, and Avho has not self-control sufficient to curb an indignation EARLY DUTCH MISSIONS. 23 that might cause rupture of the heart, should read the history of Holland at that period. The Emperor Charles V, after sanctioning many a hol- ocaust of Protestants, resigned the sovereignty of the Netherlands and other hereditary possessions (1555) in favor of his son, Philip II. His dying injunction to this worthy successor reads, " Deal to all heretics the extremest rigor of the law, without respect of persons and without regard to any favoring pleas." Never was an atrocious order carried out with more truculent persist- ency. Philip, by nature cold and cruel, schooled himself systematically in deception, yet was punc- tiliously bigoted in observing outward religious formalities. Destitute of principle, he was domi- nated by the notion that royalty is irresponsible, that deceit is the soul of diplomacy, and, before all, that no faith is to be kept with heretics.} Nothing more clearly reveals his character than some of his orders and utterances. (^" All who reject Rome," he wrote, " are heretics. Enforce the edicts against all sectaries, without any dis- tinction or mercy, if they be merely spotted with Luther's errors." ' This sullen and relentless despot had no diffi- culty in finding sympathetic agencies — a pope ready with dispensations for perjury, a cardinal steeped in the ethics of Jesuitism, and a general- issimo unmatched in diabolism save by the prince of darkness. Duke Alva is to be mentioned only 24 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. with bated breath, his doings recorded only in lurid lines shading off harmoniously with the pit of outer darkness. His sentiments at one with those of his master in Spain, he could write con- genially to Catherine de' Medici, in whose soul , was hatched the Saint Bartholomew massacre. After the destruction of Naardin he could write to Philip, " The army cut the throats of all ; not ' a mother's son was left alive." His last act be- fore leaving Netherlands was to roast over a slow fire a Protestant gentleman of Ghent. On the ' journey back to Spain he boasted that in a five years' administration eighteen thousand and six / hundred citizens had been done to death by the j headsman ; but in that boast no account was taken ' of the thousands upon thousands of both sexes , and all ages, victims of battle, siege, famine, and \ massacre. The tools of Alva and his successors in office were of the same school of religious and political malignity. ( Protestants were looked upon simply as so much prey, and their possessions as law- ful booty^ Women were buried alive merely for reading the Bible. Men were sacrificed with no charge of overt offense, but only for their thoughts. Throngs of ancient heathens could shout Ad hones (" To the lions ") with the Christians ; but it was reserved for Christian Spaniards to shout Ad patibulum (" To the gallows ") with men whose only crime was lack of faith in a heathen- EARLY DUTCH MISSIONS. 25 ized Christianity. It was not only in war time that brutality and butchery were rife, but in the leisure of peace. Tens of thousands of refugees betook themselves to other countries ; trade and manufactures were at times nearly suspended ; dikes were down ; cattle were swept away ; dwell- ings — whole cities, indeed — were burned to the ground. Jehovah of hosts interposed. Never since Is- rael's great lawgiver and general had there been raised up for the deliverance of a harried people a /^ man more self-poised, more sagacious as a states- ^^-^ . J' man, more self-sacrificing as a patriot, more trust- ful in the God of justice, than William the Silent. Once only in the long struggle against desperate odds did he lose heart. It became a question whether the inhabitants should not flee the land, open all the sluices, and let the sea once more have sway, washing a soil so plentifully stained with innocent blood. But William dismissed the thought ; he continued to plan wisely and to act with energy. Out of such materials as remained after the Spanish Inquisition and the armies of Spain had done their work he founded the Dutch Republic. To his immortal honor be it recorded, he was the^^ *^ first of modern rulers in Europe to proclaim and^^. c^^ act upon the principle of religious toleration, and!\. , /"^/^^ . that, too, in spite of provocation to retaliate such Wvi IS no European ruler ever had. Philip set a pricQ 26 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. upon his head, and he fell (1584) by the hand of a Catholic assassin. Not till 1690 did the seven provinces succeed in finally expelling the Spaniards, and not till nineteen years later (1609) did they secure recog- nition of their independence of Roman Catholic archdukes. It is a decisive proof of recuperative energy and signal enterprise that tliey should so soon after the wild butchery and robbery to which they had been subjected begin to compete with Spain and Portugal for the lucrative trade of the East, and should secure a permanent foothold in Opportunity J^^'^ (1595), an island larger than for Portugal. Before long a Dutch East Missions. iiitlia Company is chartered (1602), having powers and a history not unlike that of England, which was incorporated two or three years before (December 31, 1599). A little later still (1607) conquests began. The Moluccas were subdued and the Portuguese rule in Ceylon was terminated. Just one hundred years after the Portuguese began to secure possessions in the Orient (1509) the States General of Holland ap- pointed (1609) a governor general of their new acquisitions in the same quarter. Before very many years Spanish and Portuguese possessions and trade in the East were to a large extent captured by the Dutch. It might be expected that a people who had carried to its successful issue a long struggle with EARLY DUTCH MISSIONS. 27 the autocrat of half the civilized world — a people whose martyrs could go to the stake singing Te Deum laudamus, whose very country was cre- ated by the Reformation, would bethink them- selves early of religious duty to those far away as well as to those living behind their native dikes. There is evidence that evangelization was in the thoughts of Protestant Hollanders from the very outset of their commercial enterprises. Let- ters patent granted to the East India Company, like those of the English colonies in the same century, show that at least a subsidiary and os- tensible object was to make known ., , 1 .1 1 Evaneelism the gospel among heathen peoples. -^. , The want of men duly qualified and ready for pastoral, chaplain, and missionary serv- ice gave rise at the opening of this period to efforts for supplying the deficiency-. The direct- ors of the company just named showed (1616) that they had in mind a college for that purpose. Two years later appeared a stirring appeal ' on the duty of sending the gospel to India. It was dedicated to Prince Maurice, and urged motives similar to what have since been pleaded by Eng- lish Christians regarding possessions on both sides of the Ganges. The author, Justus Heurnius, was then a student of theology, who afterwards became himself a missionary and who reminds us of our Gordon Hall. Nor was this the only ' Admonitio de lec/atione evangelica ad Indos capissenda. 28 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. work of the kind at that early day. Sebastian Dankaerts, a preacher in Amboyna, the most im- portant island of the Molucca group, wrote ably in behalf of the cause. His book, printed (1621) with the approbation of the faculty at Leyden, was dedicated to the States General. The same year, and it was one year after the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, the sjniod of South Holland took action relating to mission work in the East. Some friends of the cause entertained the thought of having natives sent to Holland for education ; some proposed a training school, besides other schools, in the East. The directors of the East India Company sought counsel from the faculty at Leyden in relation to a seminary or college for educating laborers who should go out to their foreign possessions.' Such a thought Missionary • ^ J^ xi.- i -, J. was in advance ot anything known at the time elsewhere on the Conti- nent or in England. A plan embracing twenty specifications was drawn up by Anthony Walseus, one of the professors, who became the principal of the college or seminary. He drafted twenty- two well-considered regulations relating to do- mestic habits and to the studies of the young men. In the seminary Latin was to be the sole language of social intercourse. He gave instruc- tion regarding methods of reaching the heathen and of training converts. Seminarium Indicum. EARLY DUTCH MISSIONS. 29 ( It is a noteworthy coincidence tliat the same year (1622) which witnessed the founding of tliis institute was signalized also by the establishment at Rome ' of the Catholic Propaganda, consisting of thirteen cardinals, two priests, and a monk, having for its object foreign missions and the conversion of heretics; but the Catholic college for training missionaries dates five years later (1627). The celebrated Propaganda remains to this day an efficient institution for systematic proselytism, while the seminary at Leyden lasted only ten years and graduated only twelve alumni,^ The chief object of nearly all ministers who went to the Netherlands East Indies was, it should be stated, the religious welfare of Dutch resi- dents, yet the heathen and Roman Catholics were also in mind. A good deal was done, from time to time, toward supplying native converts of dif- ferent nationalities with the Word of God. It deserves notice that at this period Grotius wrote (1627) his celebrated work on The Truth of Chris- tianity 3 expressly for the aid of missionaries. In the East Indies missionary work was car- ried on at numerous points. Among the earlier ordained men who went from Holland to the East must be reckoned some able and evangel- ' By the bull fnscrutabili diuinre providentia arcano. ' Dr. J. A. Grothe in Misstonszeitschrift. Band IX. 1882. S. 16-26; 85-92. * JJe Veritale Reliyionis Christianas. 30 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. ical ministers. Numerous conversions were re- ported.' Thus within a year or two (1621) after the founding of Batavia as the capital of Netherlands East Indies man}'- thou- Vanous qc^^^^ baptisms were said to have Ltocalities. taken place. In 1627 the first Dutch minister, George Candidius, appeared at a place called Fort Zeeland, on Formosa, " the beautiful island," off the coast of China. Robert Junius, who was sent out (1631) by the governor of the United Provinces, mastered tlie language of that island, and it is stated that in the course of twelve years five thousand nine hundred heathens were brought to Christ by him. So many were, at least, baptized. He gathered twenty-three Eastern congregations and provided pastors Archipelago. „ ^, ^ tj . • 3 .■ • , for them. He trained native assist- ants. At one time there were eight stationed preachers, and by 1645 word was sent, " The peo- ple of Formosa are no longer heathen."' ^ But in 1661 the famous Chinese pirate, Coxinga, in- vaded the island, slaughtered many of the con- verts, and for nearly two hundred years Formosa was again given up to heathenisiiji^ The Dutch secured a foothold on the southern peninsula of India, and in 1636 there was at ' Brown, William : History of Missions. Third edition. 1864. Vol. I, pp. 10-30. R. Grundemann : Die evangelische Mission in Indischen Archipel. Burkhardt, 1880. "" Note 3. EARLY DUTCH MISSIONS. 31 Pulicat, twenty miles north from Madras, a con- gregation of Protestant Christians, the first any- where in the eastern portion of tliat continent. Portuguese sway on Ceylon having given way to that of Netherlands, Hornhonius, the pioneer Dutch minister on that island, ar- rived 1642. In the progress of con- ' quest and civil administration multitudes of al- leged conversions took place. Only five years later (1647) the Dutch introduced Christianity into Amboyna. Forty years after that (1686) one minister at the capital had, if a statement is to be credited, baptized something like thirty thousand converts. Further details of this seven- teenth century work in the Orient are not needed to show that territorially it was wide and numer- ically considered it was fruitful.' An endeavor in South America also deserves notice. Possessions were acquired (1624) by Neth- erlands in Guiana — then a part of Brazil, now Surinam — and there was a Dutch West India Company as well (1621). That company, even more than the one operating in the East Indies, had regard to the evangelizing of native tribes. This was due in large measure to the decidedly religious character of John Maurice, of Nassau, who, as governor general, with twelve ships, ar- rived at Pernambuco in January, 1637. In mil- ' Note 4. i: S2 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. itary command and in civil administration he exhibited much wisdom and efficiency. Like William the Silent he aimed at religious tolera- tion. Portuguese Catholics and Jews had occa- sion to trust and respect him. He introduced Protestant preachers ; he established schools ; he encouraged useful trans- lations into the native vernacular. Niggardli- ness, misnamed economy, on the part of the com- pany's directors obliged Maurice to resign his office (1644). The colony began at once to de- cline, and at length, in 1667, was surrendered to the Portuguese. This Protestant endeavor, though by no means so disastrous as that far- ther south in Brazil a century before, left no permanent fruits.' Returning now to the work as carried on in the East Indies, we must look at certain of its features, and we shall be compelled to acknowl- edge that no small discount must be made. The regulation terra of service for minis- Brief Service. ^ . ters going out irom the mother coun- try was only five years, which implied a very different attitude of mind and degree of interest in the field from what would have been were the enlistment for life.^ ' Prof. Theo. Christlieb in Missionszeitschri/l. Band VII. 1880. S. 564-574, and authorities there cited. ' Note 5. EARLY DUTCH MISSIONS. 3^ Comparatively few of the ministers acquired sufficient knowledge of native languages to com- municate freely with those who Vernaculars used them. Without such mastery not Mastered, of a vernacular preachers can have small reason- able hope of usefulness. A more serious criticism relates to the insuffi- cient conditions required for baptism, and the gen- eral superficiality of religious instruction. Like a frequent Roman Catholic usage, it was a singu- lar and inexcusable defect to demand so little knowledge of the great truths of our holy reli- gion and no evidence of a heart-acceptance of the same preparatory to an ordinance which sealed the subject as a Christian professor. Evidfince of spiritual conversion not being required, only a religious veneering could be ex- pected, and to a wide extent not even , "^'^'^ *?'* ^ AT- Instruction, so much was put on. A duplicate life might too generally be seen — that of nominal Christianity and one of real heathenism, just as Julian the Apostate would pray to Christ by day and to some Roman divinity by night. Indis- criminate baptism is a bane instead of a blessing — is a mockery of "the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost." But the most censurable feature of Dutch ad- ministrative proceedings in the East was the polit- ical bounty put upon a profession of Christianity. The Portuguese predecessors of the Dutch had, by 84 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. presenting unworthy motives, secured multitudes of adherents, and Oriental aptitude for hypoc- risy had thus received special culture at Western hands. There was all the more readiness for an- other religious somersault when worldly interest made that a politic maneuver. Baptism being a condition of employment, of promotion, and even of protection under law by new masters, Cath- olics and heathens alike were only too ready to qualify in this cheap way for secular advantages. Thousands upon thousands needed no persuasion beyond obvious social and pecuniary ecu ar perquisites to renounce Brahmanism, Inducements. . Buddhism, or Romanism. When at a later day certain Netherlands possessions were captured by the English, and Protestantism no longer held out attractions of lucre or honor, open relapse was a most natural result. When the vanquishers retired their religion vanished, and no martyrdom for Christ's sake, as in Madagascar, could be looked for. Where no change of moral character takes place change of name costs nothing to conscience and is only a matter of loss or gain. Let evangelism become a department of civil gov- ernment ' and Christ's spiritual kingdom will make little progress. Of that kingdom the Dutch in their mission work entertained inadequate views, and nowhere is theological deficiency, unconcern, or error so mischievous as on missionary ground. ' Note 6. EARLY DUTCH MISSIONS. 35 It will be a pardonable digression if we glance at present operations. That island group, the Dutch East Indies, of which we now speak — forming a bridge from the Continent to Australia, and through which midway passes the equator — is the largest archipelago in the world. Its col- lective area equals nearly one third of continental Europe, and at the ^ ... '- ' East Indies. present time has a population of be- tween twenty and thirty millions — a larger num-. ber than Great Britain — and next to India is the most valuable foreign possession belonging to any country. The Dutch are now the most in- fluential power there, and their possessions, an empire in extent, unlike India, yield income to the national exchequer. After a long, dreary period of mechanical and external Christianity in the East and of religious decline in the home country, a revived mission- ary spirit began to show itself in Holland about a century since. This stood connected with the evangelistic uprising in England. The celebrated Vanderkemp, who soon after entered the service of the London Missionary Society (1798), was active in the formation (1797) of the Netherlands Missionary Society, which has carried on work in Java, Amboyna, and Celebes and reports (1899) 1,722 communicants, and adherents in much, larger numbers (10,836). Half a contury went by before any other missionary move- 36 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. ment took place. As the Rhine comes down tur- bid from the south, so from the same quarter a stream of rationalistic influences has left muddy deposits in Holland. The administration of the forenamed society having fallen into the hands of unevangelical men, the Dutch Missionary So- ciety was founded (1858) by men of a different type of belief and action. Their chief work has been among the Sundanese, of Western Java, who number four millions and are Mohammed- ans. Evangelism among Mohammedans every- where encounters special obstacles, „ . . yet since the commencement of oper- Societies. '' _ ^ ations some measure of success has been realized there, and the Bible has been given to the people in their own tongue. A year later (1859) another organization, the Dutch Reformed Missionary Society, was founded at Amsterdam. Its distinctive principle is that churches, not so- cieties, should conduct such work. Its chief field is in Central Java. There are yet other societies in Holland — about a dozen all told — with be- tween fifty and a hundred missionaries scattered over the archipelago. In the Celebes a flourish- ing operation has been carried on ; numerous adherents have been gained.' ' J. C. Neurdenberg : Geschiedenis tegenover Kritick. Rotterdam, 1864. R. Grundemann : Johann Friedrich Riedel, ein Lebensbild aus der Minahassa auf Celebes. Giitersloh, 1873. EARLY DUTCH MISSIONS. 37 Dutch evangelism in the East has been con- ducted during the present century upon sounder principles than in the seventeenth century, yet there appears still to be too great readiness to administer baptism." The Rhenish Missionary Society, also, having begun in 1836, carries on work in two or three islands of that widespread group. Nor is it wholly out of place to add here that the Amer- ican Board established a mission at Batavia as long ago as 1836. Special embarrassments were met with, and after a dozen years the undertak- ing was relinquished (1849). The same board contemplated also a mis- „ . . ^ , , Societies. sion in Sumatra, an island twice as large as Holland itself; but the two pioneers, Lyman and Munson, were killed by the Battas (1834), and with that sad event the enterprise terminated.^ The Presbyterian Church of Eng- land began work in Formosa 1865, and seven years from that time the Presbyterian Church of Canada opened work on the island. Regarding the Netherlands East Indies, certain circumstances not yet alluded to are sadly sug- gestive. Prior to the Dutch possessions in this ' Brown, William : History of Christian Missions. Third edi- tion. In three volumes. London, 1864. Vol. I, pp. 514-519. ^ Thompson, William : Memoirs of the Rev. Samuel Munson and the Rev. Henry Lyman. New York, 1839. The Martyr of Sumatra: a Memoir of Henry Lyman. New York, 1856. 38 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. Eastern Archipelago Mohammedanism had ob- tained but little hold comparatively. Wherever Islam at the present time encounters heathenism it gains proselytes, and this is especially true ^ -^ where natives are more immediately under Dutch ^rule. Government officials have a train of infe- Growth of ^'^*^^ officers, as clerks, interpreters, Moham- policemen, and tradesmen, and the medanism. Malay is the language of common intercourse, but nearly all who learn the Malay become Mohammedans. Thus under a European Christian power Mohammedanism is making more progress than anywhere else on the face of the earth. Government neutrality, as it is called, regard- ing religion operates often, as in British India, adversely to the interests of Christianity." Hol- \ land has not yet fulfilled the evident providen- "tial purpose for which she was brought into con- nection with numerous unevangelized peoples. She has enriched herself without communicating largely the riches of the kingdom. ' Dr. Schreiber in Proceedings of the General Conference on For- eit/n Missions, held in London, 1878. London, 1879. Pp. 1.37-141. Also, A. Schreiber : Die Kirche und die Mission in Niederlandisch Indien. Leyden, 1883. Ill EAELY ENGLISH MOVEMENTS We have seen that in the line of foreign evan- gelization little could reasonably be expected during the sixteenth century Reformation. We have seen that perfidy and bit_ter disappointment awaited the first Protestant mission. We have seen that superficial Roman Catholic conquests in heathen lands might be followed in some in- stances by Protestant methods scarcely less su- perficial ; that it matters little who presents the mercenary motives of office and emolument as a bonus on church membership ; such conversioja^^ , J^ \ can be depended upon as spurious. Virtual coer- " cion by the Dutch in their East India possessions — the penalty of imprisonment or the whipping post for participating in heathen rites — was a school of hypocrisy and aversion to Christianity. A great mistake teaches a great lesson. The seventeenth century and the first half of the eighteenth were, in spiritual and evangelis- tic conditions, the Dark Ages of Protestantism. Yet there were gleams of light — foregleams of 40 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. the brighter day that has since dawned. What seemed to be isolated and exceptional tokens of expansive religious life were, after all, proof of continuous vitality, sometimes manifestly increas- ing in volume and then apparently Preliminary. r^. , , ebbing. Ihe stream, however, was perennial though feeble, like the Orange River of South Africa, which in a part of its course loses by evaporation more than is gained by a few affluents, but which at length makes its con- tribution to the great sea. We now resume incipient missionary move- ments in the seventeenth century, and particu- larly those from Great Britain. Our own polit- ical and social condition and the very blood in our veins have intimate concern in the country and the period to which thought now turns. Protestant evangelism this side of the Atlantic was the earliest undertaken or fostered by the English, and is to be contemplated in connec- tion with events anterior to the colonial period. In England the great convulsion of the six- teenth century began otherwise than on the Con- tinent; it began as revolution rather than ref- ormation. The realm had been ecclesiastically governed by Rome ; but there now came a polit- ical revolt from Rome, not the triumph of a party, but the exploit of a nation. It was due less to a revival of religious truth than to an exigency of the state. At first the needs of the EARLY ENGLISH MOVEMENTS. 41 Church had not so much to do with it as the future of the throne. Henry the Eighth cared little for doctrine and less for liberty so he might make sure of the succession to his own family. General freedom of thought and religious tolera- tion were nearly as foreign to the king's purpose then as they had been in any former reign. Re- ligious supremacy was simply transferred from the Vatican to the royal palace of England ; her- esy was still a penal offense ; and thus things continued substantially all through Tudor and Stuart domination. Along with the Reformation gradual yet partial spread of Prot- in estantism came a contest with mo- England, narchical and ecclesiastical prerogative. Arbi- trary proceedings, for the most part, characterized monarchy, while tyrannical intolerance charac- terized high churchism. James the First, that compound of pedantry, arrogance, and meanness, gave utterance to the prevailing sentiment of a long line of crowned heads, most of whom had a more prudent tongue, though a mind no less domineering than his. " It is presumption," said he, "and high contempt in a subject to dispute 'what a king may do, or say that a king cannot do this or that." But such exuberant insolence was destined to rough abatement. Exaction, perfidy, profligacy, were to encounter deserved rebuke. The scaffold gave significant warning when it brought the next reign to a close. Oli- 42 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. ver Cromwell did not hesitate to say that, meet- ing a king in battle, he would shoot him as soon as any man. At the opening of his second Par- liament he announced a sentiment than which none more just was ever listened to by legisla- tors : " The mind is the man. If that be kept pure, a man signifies somewhat ; if not, I would fain see what difference there is 'twixt him and a beast." For a century the struggle went on ; slowly the spirit which was to effect freedom of speech and of the press at last became vigorous. Fines, imprisonments, mutilation, and burning helped on the movement toward securing a rep- resentative government — a government not for the few but for the many. Pilgrim and Puritan found no sanction in God's Word for kingly ju- risdiction over men's thoughts and beliefs, and so left the mother country, which had become an intensely cruel stepmother. For more than a century England has now at last had sovereigns who were moderately capable of learning lessons from their people. As on the continent of Europe, so in Great Britain there were, only more numerous, single schemes during the seventeenth century, which for the most part proved transient and ineffec- tual. ^They show, however, that evangelistic duty was gaining place in the thoughts of Christian people. Even in the previous centur}^ such thoughts were not wholly wanting. Hakluyt re- EARLY ENGLISH MOVEMENTS. 43 lates that on board one of Frobislier's fifteen ships, with which that enterprising navigator sailed (1578) in search of a northwest passage to India, was a minister by the name of Wolfall, who had it in charge not . " *^' ^ ' ° Movements. only to act as chaplain of the fleet, but also to remain for a time in Greenland and attempt the conversion of natives there. But the expedition was a failure, and missionary work out of the question. As time rolled on civil and ecclesiastical op- pression set good men to thinking of the unevan- gelized, who were in a condition yet more deplor- able than their own. Joseph Alleine, author of a book widely read, An Alarm to the Unconverted^ was an earnestly pious man, and, after being ejected from his living at Taunton by the Bar- tholomew Act, made up his mind to proceed to China or some other heathen country where he might preach the gospel, which was forbidden him to do in England ; but he did not carrj'^ out the resolution. The Rev. John Oxenbridge, ejected by the same forenamed act of intolerance, went with missionary purposes to Surinam, South America, and thence to the island of Barbadoes. He afterwards came to Boston, where he pub- lished a small book entitled A Proposition of Propagating the Gospel hy Christian Colonies in the Continent of Guiana. He died in Boston, 1674. A good deal of interest began to be felt 44 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. in the North American tribes, and, for instance, Dr. Lake, Bishop of Bath and Wells, declared that nothing but old age kept him from going out as a missionary. The learned Dr. Thomas Hyde, professor of Arabic at Oxford, and after- wards professor of Hebrew, proposed (1677) that Christ Church, Oxford, should be used as a train- ing college for missionary candidates. Oliver Cromwell at an earlier date had a scheme for changing old Chelsea College into a sort of Downing Street center of council and of training evangelists for the Indies, East and *^*'^ii West, for Turkey and Scandinavia, as well as for labor among Roman Catholics. His project was a noble one — the world to be divided into four great mission prov- inces, and the bureau of propagandism to have four secretaries paid by the state. The course of political events cut short the scheme. A large number of pastors — about seventy — English and Scottish, sent up a petition to Parlia- ment in 1644, that encouragement be given to missionaries who should go out to America and the West Indies. To the high honor of Crom- well and the Long Parliament, an ordinance was passed (1649) creating the " Corporation for the Propagation of the Gospel in New England" — the first Protestant missionary body in Great Britain. But the man who during the seventeenth cen- tury stands out most conspicuously in England EARLY ENGLISH MOVEMENTS. 45 for effective efforts to promote foreign evangeli- f zation is Sir Robert Boyle ' — an ornament of his country and his age, a man who could afford to decline a peerage repeatedly offered him, one of the founders of the Royal Society, born the same year that Lord Bacon died (1626), eminent for his religious character and his beneficence. He amply rewarded Dr. Edward Pocock for rendering into Arabic the work of Grotius, De Veritate Christiance Meligionis, which, as mentioned in a former lecture, was written with reference to aiding missionaries in the East. Sir Robert assumed the entire ex- pense of printing that work, and then took pains to have it circulated in countries where the Ara- bic is spoken. One department of his labors in diffusing Sacred Scriptures was the publishing at his own expense of the four Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles in Malay. The printing was executed (1677) in Roman character at Oxford under the superintendence of Dr. Hyde, whose name has just been mentioned. Boyle's last will and testament devoted five thousand four hundred pounds to the propagation of Chris- tianity among unevangelized and unenlightened peoples — the largest Protestant bequest for such a purpose which, up to the date of his death, (1691) had ever been made. Not long after that event Dean Prideaux, a friend of Boyle and au- ' Not Peter Boyle, according to Braur, Beitrage. 1835. S. 57. 46 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. thor of a well-known work, The Connexion of the History of the Old and New Testaments^ addressed (1695) written proposals to Dr. Tennison, Arch- bishop of Canterbury, for the promulgation of Christianity in the East Indies. While no very marked known results may have followed from any of the forenamed plans and endeavors, they showed that our Saviour's last command was pressing more and more upon the attention of thoughtful Christian men. In the New England colonies there was from the first a missionary element. Early emigration to our shores proceeded more largely than any other similar movement from religious considera- jtions, and among those was the evangelizing of native tribes. Political and social ecu ar reasons for the movement were, in- Elements. ' deed, abundant. Papal exactions and persecutions had given place to others little less intolerable. Unity of creed and uniformity of worship were still stringently enforced. Even under Elizabeth worship according to rubric or imprisonment for life was the alternative. "I will have," said the despicable James I, at the Hampton Court Conference, where a calm con- sideration of most weighty and most reasonable measures might have been expected, " I will have one doctrine, one discipline, one religion in sub- stance and ceremony. Never speak more to that point, how far you are bound to obey." Down EARLY ENGLISH MOVEMENTS. 47 went the coarse, insolent Bancroft upon his knees. "Your Majesty speaks by the special assistance of God's Spirit," said he ; "I protest my heart melteth for joy that Almighty God, of his singular mercy, has given us such a king as since Christ's time has not been." In his gushing sycophancy the bishop forgot Nero, of the first century, also Philip II, who had been in his grave only a quar- ter of a century. What man with a spark of manliness in him, to say nothing of conscience, would not prefer a wilderness and a neighbor- hood of savages to a country where royal procla- mations had the force of law, where no right of independent opinion or utterance could be toler- ated, where no privilege of separate worship was conceded, where the professed Church of Christ countenanced such a son of Belial as Archbishop Laud, and civil government sanctioned such a demon as Jeffreys? The island had no clergy- men of greater worth than the hundreds who were driven from pulpit and living by the rigors of coercive conformity. For a Nonconformist to remain in England meant ruin to him. "Infa- mous " is the appropriate running title for many chapters in the history of Tudor and Stuart dynasties. But He who permitted the first ten persecu- tions under Roman emperors, permitted ten dec- ades of scathing intolerance under British rule ; and far-reaching, beneficent results were in the 48 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. divine mind. But for a tyranny that made Eng- land intolerable to the choicest of her citizens, North America might have been a Spanish or a French domain, and might have been Catholic, as is South America. There now appears to have been in the purpose of Heaven the Divine . » . , ,. . „ Design. planting of mighty evangelistic forces between the two great oceans. Al- ready there have arisen in the United States more than fifty (52) foreign missionary societies, not including sundry independent movements, which now have in their own various fields over four thousand (4,159) American laborers and over six- teen thousand (16,632) native assistants. Their mission churches number over four thousand (4,113), and their communicants, four hundred and fifty-one thousand seven hundred and eighty- nine. Their schools, six thousand eight hun- dred in number, embrace about two hundred and sixty-six thousand (266,026) pupils. Native contributions for evangelical work amount to an annual sum of about six hundred and twenty-eight thousand dollars ($627,687), while the home re- ceipts of those societies are nearly five million of dollars ($4,839,703) per annum. These items collectively are about one-fifth of the totals in the EARLY ENGLISH MOVEMENTS. 49 foreign missionary work of all Protestant Chris- tendom at the present date. After about twenty years from the landing on Plymouth Rock immigration from Old England to New England pretty much ceased for a time. During that score of years probably not more than a tenth as many men, women, and children arrived as the present number of communicants in our foreign mission churches just named. We now turn to some details in the genesis and progress of this gratifying development. One noteworthy feature of many modern enterprises of discovery, colonization, and commerce has been an alleged purpose to communicate Christianity to heathen and Moham- .., ,. •' Evangelism. medan countries. Sheer adventure and sheer greed of gold have alike assumed this religious disguise. The plea has served to give an air of dignity to movements that were purely secular, and to secure for them an amount of patronage and popularity which would have been wanting but for this suborning of conscience. Portuguese explorers of the western coast of Africa and of the East Indies, in erecting crosses on newly discovered lands, not only thought to set up proof of the extension of their national domain, but at the same time beguiled themselves with the idea that they were thus extending the earthly dominion of the King of kings. Colum- bus, true indeed to one noble purpose, was yet a 60 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. man of hallucinations. While intensely eager to find gold and pearls, he cajoled himself with the dream of rescuing Jerusalem from infidels; and with the pretense of Christianizing savages he exported them into slavery. He and his asso- ciates and his successors put forth the same pre- text while subjecting Lucayans and other in- habitants of the new world to an exterminating slavery in their own lands. On the part of early Dutch establishments in the Orient there was, indeed, less of self-imposition and more of honest religious purpose; yet the Netherlands East India and West India Companies were from the first supremely intent on the profits of commerce. Far more deeply and consistently honest in their evangelistic professions were the great body of early immigrants to New England. It would indeed be a stretch of charity to suppose that the Jameses were particularly thoughtful about the conversion of Indians, and it would be the height of absurdity to attribute any such serious thought to the Charleses. But charters submit- ted for their signatures were prepared by men and for men, some of whom were swayed by reli- gious motives. For example, the instrument which Charles I granted to the Massachusetts Colony ^">Ti^n 1628, provided that the people from England "may be so religiously, peaceably, and civilly governed as their good life and orderly conver- sation may win and incite the natives of the EARLY ENGLISH MOVEMENTS. 61 country to the knowledge and obedience of the only true God and Saviour of mankind and the Christian faith, which in our royal intention and the adventurers' free profession is the principal end of the plantation." The company that was organized under this charter speak of the propa- gation of the gospel as " the thing they do profess above all to be their aim in settling this planta- tion." Higginson, who went to Salem, declared, ■ "We go to practice the positive part of church reformation and propagate the gospel in Amer- vica." So, too, the Pilgrims, while in Holland and when weighing the matter of emigration to America, avowed distinctly a desire not only to enlarge the dominions of the English state, but the Church of Christ also, if the Lord had a peo- ple among the natives whither he would bring them. The original seal of the Massachusetts Colony embodied the foreign missionary idea, as if that were distinctive in their enterprise. It represented an Indian uttering the Macedonian cry, " Come ovei; and help us." Mention has been made of a corporation cre- ated by the Long Parliament (1649) for the propagation of the gospel in New England. It was at the same time directed that notice thereof be given from pulpits and that collections in aid of the object be taken up. The army made con- tributions. No other foreign missionary move- ment ever came so near being national in its 52 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. character. After the Restoration a new charter was granted, and Sir Robert Boyle continued for thirty years at the head of the corporation. The foregoing notices, miscellaneous and not in- timately connected with one another, yet serve to show that during the seventeenth century there were minds in the Church of Eng- Pilgrim and i j j • • i p „ . land, and an increasing number ot Puritan. ' o such, to which the evangelization of heathen tribes was not wholly foreign, and that among Dissenters it ripened into an acknowledged duty and a pronounced purpose. Among none of them, nor among other Protestants of the period elsewhere, was that more distinctly the case than on the part of early Pilgrim and Puritan colonists in New England. Indians attracted the attention of colonists at once upon their arrival. Within the limits of the New England plantations there were about twenty tribes of aboriginal inhabitants, allied, however, in language, manners, and religion. It . is estimated that they numbered fifty thousand, of whom not far from twelve thousand were in the neighborhood of the two colonies along the coast of Massachu- setts — "the veriest ruins of mankind on the face of the earth," " desolate outcasts," " infinitely barbarous ; " so, at least, the fathers pronounced them. They were devoid of delicacy in regard to food and many other things. Sentiment calls EARLY ENGLISH MOVEMENTS. 53 the Indian " a child of nature," but surely he has an unwise mother. They were often at war with one another, were revengeful, exceedingly averse to labor — putting all drudgery upon the women, who were sometimes more cruel than the men. Gambling was their chief amusement, and in that they were desperate. They had no poetry, no songs, no instrument of music. Their language, abounding in consonants, was devoid of euphony, as many of the geographical terms now in use by us sufficiently show. It belongs to the agglu- tinative family, and has words of great length, fifteen syllables not being a peculiarity. Here is one with forty-three letters — kummogkodonattoot- tummooetiteaongannunnonash — and all it means is simply "our question." The structural fea- tures render it very difficult of acquisition by an Englishman. In the line of Christian labor among Indians the man most widely known, the representative missionary of the seventeenth century, was John Eliot. He was born in the year 1604, at Wid- ford,' County of Hertford, about twenty-five miles north from London. At the University of Cam- bridge he distinguished himself in philology, tak- ing his A.B. at Jesus College, 1622.^ He served for a time as usher in the school of Rev. Thomas Hooker, so well known afterwards as one of the ' Note 7. ^ Note 8. 64 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. chief fathers of New England and pastor of the first church in the city of Hartford. Having been thoroughly converted, without which great spiritual change no man should think of entering Eliot ^^^ Christian ministry, Eliot made in preparation to become a preacher. England, g^j^ England was then no place for a minister of the gospel who could not in con- science conform to an unauthorized hierarchy, nor submit, more especially, to the outrageous proceedings of Archbishop Laud. Choice lay be- tween being whipped, branded, pilloried, having the nostrils slit and the ears mutilated, or ex- patriation. In the year 1631, and at the age of twenty-seven, Eliot arrived in Boston. In the absence of Wilson, pastor of the church there, he officiated as preacher till his removal the next year (October, 1632) to Roxbury, where for nearly sixty years he was pastor of the First Church. Biographical notices of Eliot as a missionary usually fail, either through misapprehension or careless omission, to bring duly to notice the fact of his standing in this intimate re- E lot s lation to a people who had engaged his services before he left England and, of course, before they followed him. He was never long absent from that people. During a considerable part of his fifty-nine years of offi- cial relation to them he had no colleague. He EARLY ENGLISH MOVEMENTS 55 served as both pastor and teacher. Personal la- bor among the Indians did not begin till fifteen years after his settlement at Roxbury. In his occasional absences from the pulpit neighboring ministers volunteered to supply his place. The Roxbury people paid his salary — sixty pounds sterling — and his missionary work was carried on not only with their knowledge, but, so far as appears, with their hearty approval. No evidence of dissatisfaction on their part has come down to us, and it was particularly creditable to them that they were ready to share with rude sons of the wilderness the time and strength of their own spiritual guide. Eliot wisely set himself to the task of master- ing the Indian language. It was done in the midst of parochial duties. But what a task it was ! To what auxiliaries could he turn ? No dic- tionary, grammar, analysis, vocabulary, or other help was at hand. He took into his ^, family an Indian, who served the Language, purpose not so much of teacher as of a mere mouthpiece ; and through the slow process of noting word by word as it fell from the lips of that untutored man, observing the sig- nifications and relative positions, Eliot effected an entrance into the strange vernacular. Once within that new domain, he found that on the score of analogies or of treasure it was as unlike those tongues previously known to him as this 66 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. country, then so rude, was unlike the well-culti- vated soil of Old England. From the Atlantic to the Pacific was an unbroken wilderness. To reach some of the Indian abodes visited by Eliot, though at short distances, required as much time as is now needed to reach the remotest parts of New England. In order to visit, for instance, the Nashaway Indians at Lancaster, Eliot was obliged to hire a native to break down the bushes before him and notch the trees that he might find his way to and fro. And how far advanced in local cultivation was Roxbury itself at the time its pastor gathered the first church of converted Indians ? The tract lying along what is now known as the beautiful street, Walnut Avenue, was called the Fox Holes, and a little farther on toward Grove Hall were the Bear Marsh and the Wolf Traps, and the town was still paying a bounty of ten shillings for every wolf's head. Earlier (1655) the bounty had been thirty shillings. Eliot, thoroughly imbued with the spirit of his office, appreciating chartered dec- larations and the possibilities of his position, set himself to a systematic preparation for the work. He proceeded with much deliberation and not without due consultation. "It is hard," he ob- served, " to look on the day of small things with patience enough." And what was it that moved him to his mis- sionary service ? What sustained him in the pro- EARLY ENGLISH MOVEMENTS. 57 longed endeavor ? Was it from a clarion call of the press or the platform? Were there great convocations to welcome and compliment him? Were his preaching excursions pleasant vacation jaunts? At the time he started on this under- taking there was not a Protestant missionary so- ciety on the face of the earth. From no quarter were pledges of pecun- . *^ ^ XT o ir Incentives. iary aid tendered. Interest in the spiritual welfare of wild aborigines was not all- pervading through the community. The town records of Roxbury during the first few years of its history make mention of sums paid for driv- ing away Indians from the neighborhood. Eliot's conjecture — one which was entertained by Bou- dinot in his Star in the West^ and by other writers before and since — that our Indian tribes are de- scended from the ten tribes of Israel, was a pleas- ing but not primary thought with him. Once more we inquire, What was_ the inspiring motive with Eliot ? Let him speak for himself : " God first put into my heart a compassion for their poor souls and a desire to teach them to know Christ and to bring them into his kingdom." ' This recognized father of American missions be- gan work at his own charges. Afterwards (1647) a gratuity of ten pounds was voted him by the Massachusetts court, and later he received a sal- ary from the society in England, first of twenty ■ Note 9. 68 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. pounds, which was increased to forty pounds and then to fifty pounds. The encouraging sympathy shown him afterwards did not greet him at first. Even opposition to some extent was encountered, IV JOHN ELIOT The chapter preceding this one was given to incipient missionary endeavors of our English ancestors in the seventeenth century, and we began a study of John Eliot and his labors. We resume that study today. We contemplate him in his volunteer, extra-parochial undertak- ing. It is the year 1646 and the month of October. He has mastered the native language well enough to speak to the In- dians intelligibly on divine things. '^ e o s. He has already conversed with some of them in a way that interests them to have a visit at their wigwams. With three English companions he goes out to Nonantum, four or five miles from his house. He conducts a service or con- ference that lasts three hours, the sermon being an hour and a quarter in length — the first Protestant sermon ever preached in a North American language. Prayer he offers in Eng- lish, not feeling as yet sufficiently at home in 60 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. the vernacular of the natives to employ that in public devotions. This, not unnaturally, sug- gests the thought, on the part of one Indian at least, that it was of no use to pray except in English, as the Being thus addressed would not tyovrr' lA^r^itinderstand the Indian tongue.'- Another visit •was called for and then another, and so on till the visits became habitual. The popular im- pression is that the climate of New England has become milder since the colonial period. However that may be, it is recorded that dur- ing the winter of 1646 there was no severe cold and that no snow fell in Boston and the vicinit}^ nor did any day appointed for visits to the Indians prove unfavorable.^ It was evident from the first, and increas- j ingly evident as time advanced, that truth took effect upon the native mind ; that there was a ' sense of guilt and a deepening felt need of I pardon, and thus preparation to accept the dis- / closures of grace through Jesus Christ. Ques- tions — some of them not easily answered — were asked by the Indians which showed that serious thought was aroused and that an effect- ive leaven had begun to work. Interest on the part of these Indians and others elsewhere was not, indeed, universal. Some of the sagamores and conjurers vehemently opposed our evan- V 'Note 10. ^ Ellis' History of Roxhury, p. 76. JOHN ELIOT. 61 gelist. '^ Philip, the Narraganset sachem, once treated Eliot with scorn, taking hold of his button and saying that he cared no more for the gospel than for that buttony But at Nonantum a desire for social improvement manifested itself. Better clothing and some implements of industry were called for ; chil- dren were presented for instruction ; the Sab- bath began to be recognized and observed; family worship was instituted. It appears that for a long time Eliot made fortnightly tours, preaching and catechising the children ; then he would alternate, holding a service one week in the cabin of Waban, a headman at Nonantum, and the next week in the cabin of Cutshamakin, a sachem at Neponset, Dorchester. His visits were extended to natives within the limits of what is now Worcester County and Plymouth County, Massachusetts, and to the northeastern corner of Connecticut. At length the Indians became desirous of better habitations, better organized social life, and something like a municipal government. Under Eliot's leadership they were provided with a place of settle- ^^' ^^^ *°" ^ , ^ ^ Developing, ment at Natick, eighteen miles from Boston — judiciously farther from English neighbors than Nonantum. , He drafted a con- stitution for them, based upon the Mosaic civil polity, and the community made progress in 62 PBOTESTANT IVnSSIONS. self-government, as evinced by wholesome legis- lation and a good degree of executive fidelitjy They began to till the ground ; they built houses instead of wigwams; they put up one building fifty feet long by twentj^-five in width, which was to be town property, designed for a school and a place of worship, while the upper room served for storage and a place for Eliot's bed. This settlement was on both sides of Charles River, over which they constructed a footbridge, eighty feet long and in the middle nine feet high. In starting such more compli- cated and extensive works, aid from an English carpenter was needed for a day or two ; but the natives showed aptitude, and their opera- tions were notable achievements for men re- cently so torpid and to whom labor had been so distasteful. These industries Eliot regarded as needful results and helpful accompaniments of the new religious life that was awakened. He did not see, as Carne remarks,' that they must be civilized ere they could be Christian- ized. The best kind of help to be encouraged everywhere on missionary ground is self-help. Of Eliot's published writings not missionary in their character I say nothing, except that they were not of eminent value. His pro- ductions that relate to the Indians deserve special notice. These consist of a primer and ^ Lives of Eminent Missionaries, I, p. 12. JOHN ELIOT. 63 a grammar auxiliary to acquiring the language. He also made contributions of Christian liter- ature to the native language, such as a cate- chism, or rather catechisms, and the Psalms of David in meter, ,' "ary Labors, besides a translation of two works by Thomas Shepard, of Cambridge, The Sincere Convert and The Sound Believer, Baxter's Call to the Unconverted, and The Practice of Piety (1686), written by Lewis Bayly,' a book which a century since (1792) had reached the seventy- first edition. But Eliot's great literary work was the translation of our sacred Scriptures — a truly missionary Bible — and a great work it was indeed, " which," he well remarks, " I look at as a sacred and holy work, and to be regarded with much fear and reverence." Viewed in the light of all the circumstances, it must be pronounced a unique, if not an un- paralleled, achievement. Eliot en- ^ V ^. . , -r, .1 Translation, tertained true Protestant ideas re- garding the authority and value of God's Word and the right of every people under heaven to have this richest of treasures in their own mother tongue and in their own hands. He knew, as we know, that the history of gospel propagation and of revived Christian life is, in ' Came credits the work mistakenly to Baxter. Lives, I, p. 45. 64 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. a marked degree, the history of Bible transla- tion and circnlation. V^Vhere has there ever been a spiritual movement, healthful and de- cided, that did not stand connected with efforts to give currency to the Word of God? (Withhold or withdraw that Word and true religion declines till it becomes extinct. The populous islands of Ja£an and extensive por- tions of South America were once nominally Christian, but the Holy Scriptures were not given to the people, and the light that seemed to be kindled went out. This inspired, this infallible, record of religious truth must be accessible, or no adeq^uately aggressive power, no self-perpetuating vitalit}-, will exist. Eliot appreciated the necessities of the case and set himself to the needful task. He was a man of prayer, and acted on his own maxim as thus laid down, "When we would accomplish any great things, the best policy is to work by an engine that the world knows nothing of." Think of the comparative difficulties which surrounded him. Glance for a moment at sim- ilar undertakings before this. Go back to a period anterior to Christ's coming. Examine the Septuagint, executed rassments. ^ ° ' by numerous colaborers at the re- quest of Ptolemy and under his royal patron- age; but it was the Old Testament alone and translated into the Greek, a language then JOHN ELIOT. 65 prevalent in the civilized world. Look at the twenty years' labor of Jerome, late in the fourth century of our era, with much-needed assistance, amidst his scholarly retirement at Bethlehem ; yet he rendered Holy Scripture ^ into the tongue then most widely diffused, and ' thus the Vulgate came into being. It was into his vernacular and with many auxiliaries that the venerable Bede, in the eighth century, translated a part of the Holy Scriptures. To Peter Waldo, Europe, at the close of the twelfth century, owed the earliest translation into a modern language of some portions of these sacred writings ; but Waldo was a man of wealth, who could command his time and with little effort render the Latin into his mother tongue, the French. When Luther finished his version — that, too, into the lan- guage his fathers and his countrymen spoke — he had Melanchthon, one of the ripest scholars of the age, to assist in its revision. At his side was Cruciger with Hebrew and Chaldee in hand, Bugenhagen or Pomeranius with the Vulgate, and Justus Jonas lending the aid of his acquaintance with rabbinic lore. Each gave his opinion on the passages examined, and Master George Borer kept the record J j But here is John Eliot, amidst primeval forests and all the privations and solicitudes of early colonial life, with parochial labors 66 PEOTESTANT MISSIONS. quite sufficient, slightly cheered by social aid, mastering the language of a barbarous people that did not possess a vestige of literature, even to the amount of an uncouth song.' Into that vehicle, not of thought so much as of sav- age wants, he transfuses the wealth of God's Word. Almost no assistance was at hand. The entire translation, says Cotton Mather, was executed with a single pen. It appeared only thirty-five years after the version of King James in English, the one now so widely read. The New Testament was published in Septem- ber, 1661, soon after the restoration of Charles the Second. The Old Testament followed in 1663. The corporation in England, which has been mentioned, sent from that country press and types and the needed materials for print- ing. Copies became at length very scarce, many having been burned or otherwise de- stroyed in the Indian wars. A second edition of the New Testament in 1680 and of the Old Testament in 1685 were printed at Cambridge. The work is at present extremely rare, and a perfect sample will command an extremely , ' It differed so much from other Indian tongues that this 'translation could not be useful to tribes outside of Massachu- setts. Hook, in liis Ecclesiastical Biography, IV, p. 564, makes mistake as follows, Eliot " translated the Bible into the language of the Six Nations." Steel, in Doing Good, p. 86, remarks, Eliot "translated the Scriptures into the Choctaw language." JOHN ELIOT. 67 high price — a thousand dollars and upwards. No man now living can read the book. Rare perseverance did Eliot exhibit. Dur- ing the first thousand years of our era the Bible was translated into onlj'- ten different languages, the rate being one for every cen- tury ; yet none of them, nor any one of the more than four hundred versions since made into different tongues, . eer ess ° Achievement, furnislies probably so much to ad- mire in the faith and industry of one man tri- umphing over difficulties. At present there are between forty and fifty versions in the vernac- ulars of America. What two hundred years ago must have been — what must now be — the holy satisfaction of John Eliot in the remem- brance of his devout studies and quickened graces while thus engaged, and knowing that he has been the instrument in God's provi- dence of presenting to aboriginal inhabitants of New England the first Bible ever printed on our continent, the first translation of that volume in this hemisphere since holy men of God began to speak as they were moved by the Holy Ghost — indeed, the first instance in which the entire Bible was ever given to a barbarous people as a means of their conver- sion! Columbus made known to the old world the greatest of geographical discoveries ; to the 68 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. new world Eliot gave the greatest of treasures possessed by the old. His preaching and trans- lations were blessed. Conversions took place. Indubitable tokens of religious sensibility and of changed habits appeared, a signal triumph of truth and grace over stolid men of the woods. Expressions like the following were employed in their prayers : " Take away, Lord, my stony heart ; " " Wash, Lord, my soul ; " " Lord, lead me when I die to heaven." Eliot states that these were not learned by rote, for he had never used them in his prayers at their meet- ings. Cotton Mather, speaking of a visit paid by him and others to one of the Conversions , v ci. • t j- v towns 01 " praymg Indians, so- called, observes : " To see and hear Indians opening their mouths and lifting up their hands and eyes in prayer to the living God, calling on him by his name Jehovah in the mediation of Jesus Christ, and this for a good while together ; to see and hear them ex- horting one another from the Word of God; to see and hear them confessing the name of Christ Jesus and their own sinfulness — sure this is more than usual ! And though they spoke in a language of which many of us un- derstood but little, yet we that were present that day saw and heard them perform the duties mentioned with such grave and sober countenances, with such comely reverence in JOHN ELIOT. G9 their gesture and their whole carriage, and with such plenty of tears trickling down the cheeks of some of them, as did argue to us that they spake with the holy fear of God, and it much affected our hearts." ' Eliot used great caution — a caution probably beyond what was called for — before organizing converts into a church. Six or eight years at least he had a class of catechumens who gave gratifying evidence of a change of heart, but it was not till 1660 that the first Indian church was constituted. Could there be a greater con- trast than between such thorough proceedings and the superficial evangelization and hasty baptisms of the Dutch in their seventeenth century operations among natives of the great Asiatic archipelago ? In order to form some suitable estimate of the results of Eliot's missionary labor it will be helpful if we take our station for a moment at the date of 1670, a little more than midway in his apostleship, when he has been thus en- gaged for a quarter of a century. The colonial settlements have as yet made no ver}" great ad- vance. In all New England only about fort}'" churches can be found. No town except Boston has more than one church. The first printing press is just being introduced into that place, and it will be fifty years before one sees a ' Mather's Mogilalia, Vol. I, p. 513. 70 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. market cart with vegetables driving into town. ' It is not easy to conceive how rudely primitive was the condition of this capital of New Eng- land, now embracing a population of about four hundred and fifty thousand. Writers, more especially European writers, seem to have no proper idea of the state of things at the be- ginning of tliat settlement. Miss Charlotte M. Yonge, for example, a well-known English author, in her sketch of Eliot, says, "They esu s o landed at Boston, then newly ris- Labor. . . . ing into a city over its harbor."' Boston was not incorporated as a city till nearly two centuries after that (1822). Wolves infested its neighborhood on the south.^ The first meeting house in Roxbury was a mere thatched building ; yet at the date which has been named (1670) there are one thousand and one hundred nominally Christian natives under the care of Eliot. In the church at Natick will be found between forty and fifty commu- nicants. Within the limits of the two col- onies, Massachusetts and Plymouth, six native churches have come into existence. There are seven old towns of "praying Indians," and more remotely in the Nipmuck country seven new " praying towns ; " while the proportion (/of natives who can read and write equals that ' Pioneers and Founders, p. 4. ''Note 11. A "tv^*-'^^ JOHN ELIOT. 71 "' /'of the Russian Empire today. Several Indians / had joined the church in Roxbury. The Indian churches were all well furnished with religious officers except the one at Natick, where, as Eliot reports, "In modesty they stood off, be- cause so long as I live they sa}^ there is no need." ■ No missionary to North American In- dians was ever more successful than he. The ^r venerable man lived to see twenty-four native Ij^. preachers raised up, some of them through his own instrumentalit}-. He had the sagacity to observe — what some modern missionaries seem slow to apprehend — "that God is wont ordina- rily to convert nations and peoples by some of their own countrymen, who are nearest to them and can best speak and most of all pity their brethren and countrymen." How stands the case now, after the lapse of two hundred j-ears? Our general government has come into rela- tions with scores, indeed hundreds, of tribes, and missionary societies have sent numerous laborers among them. Yet at this moment, on all of their extensive reservations, are there more ordained native men than Eliot could name two hundred years ago in Massachusetts alone? One sentence of his I commend to you as a pocket-piece — as a stimulating senti- ment for all days before you. It occurs at the ■ Letter to Increase Mather, August 22, 1673. 72 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. close of his Indian grammar,' " Prayer and pains, through faith in Christ Jesus, will do anything." Eliot was not, as before remarked, cheered by universal approbation, nor did he seek pe- cuniary returns to himself. His stipend was much the same as that of the Apostle Paul — obloquy and hardships.^ .From his own countrymen he sometimes encountered suspi- cion, censure, and varied unkind- Personal o U1 J 1 • r ^ . , ness. oome blamed him tor re- Tnals. ducing the trade in peltries by encouragement given to settled life and to agriculture instead of the chase. There were those in Old England as well as New England who impeached his motives and pronounced his work a failure, just as is now done by men skeptical regarding evangelistic operations among the heathen. But he endured hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. Listen to one of his memorandums : " It pleased God to exercise us with such tedious rain and bad ■ The Indian Grammar Begun ; or, An Essay to Bring the Indian Language into Rules. Cambridge, 1666. ' A letter written by Eliot in 1673 answered inquiries, one of which ran thus : "What encouragement is there as to outward matters for any of the natives of England or Scotland to under- take the work of the ministry among them by devoting himself wholly or mainly thereunto ? " Answer : " Nothing but poverty and hardships unsupportable in a constant way by our clothed and housed nations." JOHN ELIOT. 73 weather that we were extreme wet, insomuch that I was not dry from the third day of the week to the sixth, but so traveled, and at night pull off my boots, wring my stockings, and on with them again." Nor was he wholly exempt from danger among the Indians, especially when there were feuds between different tribes. In some in- stances the sachems and powwows, apprehensive lest their authority should be undermined by the new religion, would threaten him if he did not desist from his operations. But he replied: "I am about the work of the great God, and my God is with me, so that I neither fear you nor all the sachems in the country. I will go on. Do you touch me if you dare ! " His record might well be: "In journeyings oft; in perils of water ; in perils by the heathen ; in perils in the wilderness;" but exempt from one form of perils that Paul met with — those of the city, for there was no city on the con- tinent nearer than St. Augustine in Florida. The severest trial, however, was the reverses and partial deterioration experienced at the native settlements and by other Indians for whom he had labored. In spite of prohibitory laws, ardent spirits were sold to them by the whites; and intemperance proved, as it has ever since and everywhere proved among the aborigines, exceedingly demoralizing and de- 74 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. structive. Eliot's chief disappointment resulted from the war with Philip, the powerful Nar- raganset sachem. The towns of " praying Indians " were, to a great extent, broken up, for they fell under the suspicion of English settlers. Such alarm and exasperation reigned among the exposed colonists that our apostle could only with much difficulty secure a hear- ing for the claims of humanity and Christian brotherhood. The strong native instincts and tribal s^^mpathies of a few among those who had enjoyed the ben- efits of colonial philanthropy led them to join their savage countrymen in marauding expedi- tions.' Christian Indians, especially within the Massachusetts Colony, lost alike the confidence of their uncivilized fellows and of their white: neighbors. Some of the settlements, however, remained without exception friendly and loyal to their benefactors throughout those contests. ' It was not at all strange — though at this distance sad, indeed, to contemplate — that ter- ror should overpower all better feelings on the part of English settlers and lead to unchristian retaliation. One company of Indians, semi-civ- ' Among those who refused to join the Pequots when they sought to enlist him against the English was John Thomas, who was one of the earliest of the "praying Indians" and who joined the church when it was first gathered by Eliot. He died at Natick, 1727, aged 110 years. JOHN ELIOT. 75 ilized at least, was conducted to an island in Boston Harbor, bound together somewhat as Mohammedan slave-drivers now treat their cap- tives in Africa. Some, captured in war, were sold into West Indian slavery — a monstrous proceeding, yet it was only in accord with the sentiment and usage of the mother country. )At that very period men were transported from England to Barbadoes, and women to Jamaica, and sold there as slaves to the col- jonists for a longer or shorter time.' Two hundred and fifty of the Covenanters cap- tured at Bothwell Bridge were shipped as [slaves to Barbadoes.^ , Provocation was extreme. Indians once started upon the warpath, their ravages were widespread and merciless. No apology what- ever can be offered for them. Lands occupied by the early settlers were bought and on terms satisfactory to aboriginal claimants. Legislation in their behalf had been eminently humane and wise. Wrongs, so far as committed by white neighbors, were the work of such unthinking or unprincipled men as are never wanting in any community, young or old. The wild In- dians, distinguished from those reclaimed, did ' Dictionary of Sects, etc. By the Rer. John Henry Blunt, M.A., F.S.A. London, 1874. P. 465. ^ Scotland's Free Church. By George Buchanan Riley and John M. McCandlish, F.R.S.E. London, 1893. P. 175. 76 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. not appreciate the kindness generally felt and the justice shown them, nor did they appreci- ate the benefits of civilized life. Race hatred and race fear dominated the reckless sav- ages. There was no peace and no safety for the newcomers, especially in outlying dis- tricts. The farmer and the traveler were liable at any hour of the day to be shot by an enemy in ambush. Women and children at the door might be scalped or hurried into cap- tivity. In the two older and principal colonies there were less than ninety towns ; of these, at least ten were entirely destroyed and forty more were injured by fire. About two thirds of them had personal experience of the terrors incident to a frontier inadequately protected, and harassed by stealthy, unscrupulous ene- mies who were bent on exterminating all white settlements. Men of military age were literally decimated by murder or in battle, or as pris- oners undergoing tortures the very thought of which, even at this distance of time, makes us shudder. Only a few English families in the Massachusetts and Plymouth Colonies were not in mourning.' Whatever may be true of later treatment of Indian tribes within our national limits, and. whatever the responsibility of white encroachment for Indian hostilities, ' Palfrey's History of New England, III, p. 215. JOHN ELIOT. 77 neither equity nor sentiment can reasonably apologize for these earlier onsets of hostile natives. Our fathers aimed at self-preserva- tion; they had a right to do all that self-pres- ervation required, and as war goes they were justified in their proceedings. The after dis- tribution of captives into slavery is, indeed, to be most emphatically reprehended. Against that proceeding our apostle issued a public pro- test.' He declares, " Christ has said, ' Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. In the course of the same extended petition occurs the following : " When we came we de- clared to the world, and it is recorded — yea we are instructed by our letters patent from the king's majesty — that the endeavor of the Indians' conversion, not their extirpation, was one great end of our enterprise in coming to these ends of the earth." John Robinson's oft- quoted exclamation, " O, that you had converted some before you had killed any ! " was uncalled for. Dr. Warneck, candid and usually accu- rate, writes, " Although these emigrants ex- pressly proposed to themselves the extension of the kingdom of God among the heathen, yet Indian wars preceded by a long time In- * " To the Honorable the Governor and Council, sitting at Boston the loth of the sixth, 1675i the humble petition of John Eliot sboweth." 78 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. dian missions." ' Just the reverse of that is true. He was misled by Fritschel,^ who at times is neither candid nor accurate. From the disasters of that period the settle- ments of Christian Indians never recovered. . Removal and decay went on till now for a long time neither cabin nor wigwam has been seen anywhere on the field of Eliot's chief missionary toil. Visiting the village of South Natick, you will find one humble 13cc£i(lciicc* gravestone bearing the name of Tackawompbait,3 a teacher, at whose ordina- tion our Eliot assisted and whose interment took place in 1716. The rude block has been built into a wall that runs across his grave by the public roadside. Its position and treat- ment are an emblem of the race, prostrate or vanished. But " what then," inquires Dr. Geekie,* "what then remains of all this marvelous toil and industry?" We answer, what Augustine was to the Angles of Britain, John Eliot, a man far superior to him, became to Indians in New England. Rightly viewed he was one ' Outline of the History of Protestant Missions. Smith's trans- lation. P. 35. 2 Gesckichte der christlichen Missionen unter den Indianern Nordamerikas. 3 Note 12. * Christian Missions to Wrong Places, among Wrong Races, in Wrong Hands. By A. C. Geekie, D.D. London, 1871. P. 5. JOHN ELIOT. 79 of the few men of an age or of a country. Thougli acceptable as a preacher and pastor among his countrymen, he chose to forego, in large measure, the gratifications of popularity, to surrender the comparative comforts of ex- clusive home work, and for more than twoscore years to spend many a day — yes, and occasion- ally a night too ' — in toilsome efforts to win those men of the forest to Christ and to civil- ization. Not a whit was this apostle to the Indians behind the chiefest of modern apostles. From Roxbury round about unto Illyricum he fully preached the gospel, and scores oi dark-minded warriors be- came divinely enlightened. In the habitation of dragons where each lay there came to be grass, with reeds and rushes. The wilderness and solitary place were glad for him ; the desert rejoiced and blossomed as the rose. Cheerfulness, temperance, early rising, and hard work — for each of which Eliot was noted — favor longevity. At the age of eighty-six years, on the 20th of May, 1690, Eliot entered into rest, the last words which he uttered being, "Welcome joy!"^ Twenty years before that Baxter wrote him: "There is no man on earth whose work I think more honorable and comfortable than j^ours. The industry of the ' Note 13. " Note 14. 80 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. Jesuits and friars and their successes in Congo, Japan, China, etc., shame us all save you." After Eliot's decease Baxter, on his own death- bed, writes : " There was no man on earth whom I honored above him. I am now dying — I hope as lie did." The celebrated John Owen expressed much interest in the labors and cliaracter of Eliot. "All this vast labor," remarks Dr. Geekie once more, "has proved a work for one day, not for all time." Is it only of transient moment that hundreds of human beings, ig- norant, debased, yet bearing the stamp of immortalit}', have the good news of salva- tion brought to them, receive the truth in faith and love, and become heirs to an in- heritance incorruptible, undefiled, all glorious, and endless? And, further, was esu s ^j^g influence of Eliot and his Perpetuated. coadjutors circumscribed geograph- ically and to that age ? A refluent wave of missionary interest reached the mother country. His own writings and the writings of others made known there the nature and prospects of his work. English and Scottish societies for propagating the gospel in foreign parts sprang up, partly at least, as a result. By blessed contagion that interest spread, and in some measure Avas perpetuated. Good men in Holland, too, were moved by the good JOHN" ELIOT. 81 news. Increase Mather, writing (1687) to Leusden, professor of Hebrew in the University of Utrecht, states that Eliot, though eighty- three years old, still preached to the Indians as often as once in two months. The note- worthy rise of foreign missionary zeal within the last hundred years is an outgrowth, in no small measure, of what was done for the pagan people of Massachusetts by Eliot and his co- laborers and immediate successors. The Amer- ican Board of Commissioners for Foreign Mis- sions, which has sent out more than two thou- sand missionaries, is a century plant, whose seed was dropped by the apostle to the Indians among the hills of Natick. One reason why God so blessed our fathers was that they, the hostages of Providence, were true to Christ's commission and were teachers and leaders of a militant host in modern Protestant missions. The church that is not missionary in its spirit must repent or wane ; the pastor who is not should reform or resign. V AMONG INDIANS The last chapter was on John Eliot, the most eminent missionary of the seventeenth century. No further sketch of evangelistic labor in behalf of aborigines during the sev- enteenth century can be expected to have equal interest. It would not, however, be just to his contemporaries and successors, nor just to that period nor to the century fol- lowing, if we pass by certain other of the earlier endeavors to Christianize Indian tribes. But it miofht seem wearisome to listen to de- tails in this department which are not intrin- sically of high importance, and the interest in which is due largely to local associations. I propose, therefore, at this time not so much a lecture as a glance at some of the salient facts, indeed simply notes, which can easily be expanded at your option. Following a geographical order we will only outline the subject. Among Indians. 8S No family in colonial times or subsequently in the United States has such a noteworthy record in the line of missionary labor as that of the Mayhews on Martha's Vineyard. That island, called by the natives Nope^ twenty miles in length and three to nine miles in width, together with neighboring islands — Nan- tucket and the sixteen Elizabeth Islands — was secured from the agent of Lord Sterling by Thomas May- .. . o J J Massachusetts, hew, who had been a merchant in Southampton, England, and who came to New England before 1636. This grant was made in 1641. Those islands were under the jurisdiction of New York till 1692, when they were annexed to Massachusetts.. In 1642 Mayhew began a settlement at Edgartown, towards eighty miles southeast from Boston, and he became governor of the domain which had been ceded to him. He strongly attached the Indians to himself. After the death of his son Thomas — it be- ing impossible to obtain a stated minister for the Indians — he began himself, having ac- quired their language, to preach to them and to the English, his age being three- score and ten. It was a noteworthy sight to see a governor, and especially at such an age, walking sometimes nearly twenty miles through the woods to preach. 84 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. He induced the Gay Head Indians at the farther end of Martha's Vineyard to receive the gospel. Gay Head is a remarkable prom- ontory rising over a hundred and seventy feet above the sea at the southwest extremity of the island. In 1675, during King Philip's War, the Indians in that region, being twenty times more numerous than the English, would, in all probability, have exterminated their neighbors but for the influence of Governor Mayhew and of the gospel which they had been taught. Early New England history furnishes no otjier instance of such prolonged happy relations be- tween colonists and aborigines. In 1670, though fully fourscore years of age, he was asked to become pastor of the first native church, but declined the invitation. He lived to be ninety-two, laboring to the very last, and dying in 1681. Thomas Mayhew, the only son of Governor Thomas, was the first minister on Martlia's Vineyard. Accompanying his father, in 1642, he began labor there by preach- Five Mayhews. . , ,, n t^ t i i mg to the lew English who es- tablished a settlement ; but he became inter- ested in the surrounding natives, studied their language, and won their confidence. He might be seen in their smoky wigwams devoting a part of the night to rehearsing Scripture truths to them. Such was the attachment of the na- AMONG INDIANS. 85 tives to him that the mention of his name would for years afterwards call forth tears. When he left them to embark for England the place on the wayside where he took leave was for that generation remembered with sorrow. According to Indian usage a pile of stones marked the spot, which is still pointed out. Thus the scene at Miletus was reen- acted there. In 1643 Hiacoomes was recognized as the first convert. Mr. Mayhew began his public and volunteer work among the Indians three years later (1646), the same year that Eliot started out on his first formal preaching tour. He took up residence at Edgartown as pas- tor of the English settlement there, and also began efforts in behalf of neighboring Indians. Four years had hardly gone by when (1650) one hundred of those red men entered into a covenant that they would obey God, im- ploring mercy through Christ Jesus. In the course of his twelve years of earnest labor " many hundred men and women were added to the church," says Cotton Mather. Chiefly with a view to secure aid for them he sailed for England (November, 1657) ; but the vessel and all on board were lost at sea. With him perished one of his native preachers, who had graduated from Harvard College. Thomas Mayhew, a man of much promise — a man 86 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. who, indeed, had largely fulfilled his prom- ise — was removed at the age of thirty-six.' As before intimated the aged father took up the work of the son after his removal, and continued the same during the remainder of a life unusually prolonged. John Mayhew, a son of Thomas junior, was born 1652, and at the age of twenty-one be- came minister to the English colonists at Tis- bury, which adjoins Edgartown on Martha's Vineyard. About the same time he began to preach to the Indians. He taught alternately in their assemblies every week, receiving only five pounds per annum, till two years before his death, which occurred 1689, at the same age with his father, who at thirty-six slept be- neath the sea. Experience Mayhew, son of John and great- grandson of the first governor, was born Jan- uary 27, 1673. He spoke Indian from early childhood, and began at the same age as his father, twenty-one, to preach to the red men, and had the oversight of half a dozen assem- blies. He was employed by the Societ}'- for Propagating the Gospel in New England, and prepared a new version of the Psalms as well 'The Rev. Thomas Mayhew married his stepsister, the daughter of Mrs. Paine, a widow lady who became the second wife of tlie governor. AMONG INDIANS. 87 as of the Gospel of John (1709). In 1727 appeared his valuable book, entitled Indian Converts. Other writings were also published. His death took place November 29, 1758, at the age of eighty-five.' Zechariah Mayhew, son of Experience, re- ceived ordination at Martha's Vineyard De- cember 10, 1767. In the employ of the fore- named society he devoted his life to the Indians, and died March 6, 1806, aged eighty- nine.* Thus for five generations members of this family labored in behalf of the Indians (from 1646 to 1806), a period of one hundred and sixty years. The only parallel instance in missionary annals is that of the Moravian, Frederick Bonisch — who married Anna Stach, 1740 — and his descendants, who also during five generations continued in the good work for one hundred and forty years. The last one in that line died a few years since. One other Moravian family, by the name of Bach, performed missionary service in Greenland dur- ing one hundred and ten consecutive years. Others of the Mayhew family, besides the five who have been named, manifested an in- terest in the religious welfare of the aborig- ' Note 15. 2 Regarding his age authorities differ. 88 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. ines. One of them was Matthew, a son of Thomas junior, who, in 1681, succeeded his grandfather as governor and who also preached to the Indians. Longevity among the Maj'^hews will be no- ticed. Thomas, who heads the list, governor and patentee, attained to ninety-two ; Expe- rience, his great-grandson, to eighty-five ; and Zechariah, a son of Experience, to eighty-nine. The sixty-four years of Experience Mayhew's missionary service exceeds even the Moravian Zeisberger's term, which was sixty-two years, and exceeds that of any other American en- gaged in similar work.' Evangelistic success among the Indians of Martha's Vineyard was, on the whole, not less than anywhere else in the country. Whatever the cause, insular missions have generally been more successful than those upon the continents. This was begun a little earlier (1644 or 1645) than Eliot's work at Nonantum (1646), and after five or six years nearly two hundred men, women, and children professed the Christian religion^ and attended upon the religious instruction of Thomas Mayhew. ' The statement regarding Zeisberger, on page 305 of Mora- vian Missions, needs correction. ' Note 16. AMONG INDIANS. 89 A dozen years later (1662) there were two hundred and eighty-two, including eight pow- wows, who had embraced Christianity. At the death of John Mayhew (1689) there was a church of one hundred members, containing several well-instructed native teachers. In process of time the en- tire island became Christian, nominally at least, and adopted the usages of civilized life in the matter of husbandry and other concerns. The first of their churches was constituted in 1670 (August 22), John Eliot being present to assist. Thence onward order and discipline were fairly well maintained.' The original population continued to dimin- ish.^ In 1720 there were but eight hundred souls, distributed in six small villages, each of which was supplied with an Indian preacher.^ The name of the first convert, Hiacoomes, has been mentioned. After receiving instruc- tion from Mr. Mayhew he began to instruct his neighbors, somewhat privately and quietly, till at length Tawanquatuck, a prominent sa- chem, invited Mr. Mayhew and Hiacoomes to 'Note 17. * Cotton Mather estimates the number of adults on Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket at about three tliousand, wliich, like most of the early estimates of the original population of the country, was probably in excess of facts. 3 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc. I, 206. 90 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. preach to him and as many others as would attend. From that time this earliest of such converts in New England was recognized as a public religious teacher. He became the first native pastor of a church, and was for a time an object of hatred to the powwows, who threatened his life ; but he exhibited a true courage, resulting from faith in God. A haughty sagamore, Pahkehpunuasso by name, re- viled him for conforming to the English in things civil and religious. Hiacoomes replied that this was not to the disadvantage of the Indians, whereupon the sagamore dealt him a heavy blow in the face. The Christian man meekly replied, " I have one hand for injuries and another hand for God ; while I receive wrong with the one I lay the faster hold on God with the other." Hiacoomes lived to a great age. The life of Tawanquatuck was also threatened on account of his renouncing heathenism. The Mayhews, especially in the earlier pe- riod of their missionary work, appear to have been not less cautious than John Eliot in their estimates of Christian character. A long time elapsed before a separate Indian church was organized. Not only did Hiacoomes, the first pastor, maintain a consistent Christian and official walk, but other preachers also. Expe- rience Mayhew in his work entitled Indian AMONG INDIANS. 91 Converts^ a handsome volume of three hun- dred pages, printed in London, 1727, enumer- ates twenty-two "godly Indian ministers," whom he portrays. Then follow sketches of "twenty other good Indian men," "thirty religious In- dian women," and "twenty-two pious Indian young persons." These ninety-four narratives are followed by supplementary briefer notices of seventeen other Indian men and nine other Indian women. The sixscore converts thus singled out for particular mention are only such as seemed to be specially worthy of a published narrative. Mayhew was scrupulously accurate, and his reliability is attested by eleven ministers of Boston.' Other ministers of the gospel took part in this work among the red men. The Rev. John Cotton, known chiefly as a preacher at Plym- outh, labored at one time for about two years on behalf of the English at Martha's Vineyard, and, being Colaborers and acquainted with the language of the Indians, gave attention to them. That was during the life of the first Governor Mayhew (1665-1667). Rev. Josiah Torrey, pastor of the English Church at Tisbury, a contemporary of Experience Mayhew, cooper- ated with him. Having mastered their lan- ' Note 18, 92 PKOTESTANT MISSIONS. gviage, he preached or lectured to the In- dians for many years. The Rev. Samuel Wiswall, pastor of the church in Edgartown, studied the language of the Indians with a view to making him- self useful among them. The evangelistic efforts of English preach- ers and their converts were not confined to Martha's Vineyard. Cotton Mather testifies : "As in the apostolic times the church sent forth from among themselves for the conver- sion of the nations, so these Indians on Martha's Vineyard did, not only to the isl- and of Nantucket, being about one thousand five hundred adult persons, but likewise to the mainland." ' On Nantucket in 1694 there were three churches, one of them Baptist, and not a powwow remained. At the present time the Gay Head tribe on Martha's Vineyard, which numbers some- thing over one hundred and fifty, can hardly be called Indians, as there is not one of un- mixed blood among them. They are incorpo- rated as a town, and manage their own affairs as do people elsewhere. They have one school and a small Baptist church. Leaving Martha's Vineyard we cross Vine- ^ Magnolia, B. VI, Sec. 2, AMONG INDIANS. 93 yard Sound, five miles in width, to Cape Cod and enter Barnstable Count}^, the most eastern county in Massachusetts. Here we come to an Indian settlement, about sixty miles southeast from Boston, called Marshpee.' Rev. Joseph Bourne was ordained here in 1729, but re- signed in 1748. His predecessor was Simon Patmonet and his successor Solomon Bryant. In 1693 Marshpee Indians, to the number of two hundred and fourteen, were under the care of Rev. Rowland Cotton, the first minis- ter of Sandwich. The Rev. Gideon Hawley, who had labored among the Indians in New York and at Stockbridge, was in- stalled as pastor at Marshpee, 1758, ^^"""st^bi^ A • A ^^ f ^1 County. and remained there tor more than half a century, dying in 1807 at eighty years of age. In 1762 there were about seventy-five Indian families, which, however, did not aver- age four to a family. Till 1870 Marshpee con- tinued a reservation, but in that year was in- corporated as a town, and now has about three hundred inhabitants, none of whom are pure- blooded Indians. They have a public library and a Baptist church, which is supported partly from the Williams fund, which, in 1711, was left to Harvard College "for the blessed work of converting the Indians." ' Marshapee or Mashpee. The original Indian name was Mashippaug. 94 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. Eastham, an easterly town in Barnstable County, was one seat of the Indians, to whom Rev. Samuel Treat preached in their language for many years. Under him were four Indian teachers, one each for their sev- eral villages. In 1693 he wrote President Increase Mather that there were five hun- dred and five adult Indians in that place. They lived in four separate villages, for which he procured schoolmasters. Mr. Treat was ordained as the first minister of East- ham, 1672, and soon after began to study the vernacular of neighboring natives, to whom he devoted much time and among whom there were not a few converts.' We now return westward along the cape to Sandwich, which, in 1637, was purchased by Thomas Tupper, a man of property, to- gether with Richard Bourne. Tupper went there from Lynn ; he was not educated for the ministry, yet he preached to the Indians and gathered a church consisting of them. In 1693 he regarded one hundred and eighty Indians as true Christians. The name of another layman in that neigh- borhood should be mentioned — Josiah Cotton, a brother of Rowland Cotton just mentioned. He was a judge, but preached more or less ' Mather's Magnalia, B. VI, Sec. 3. AMONG INDIANS. 95 to the Indians at Manomet — now known as Monument, a part of Sandwich — and at other settlements under an engagement which con- tinued for nearly forty years. He was a graduate of Harvard College, 1698, and stud- ied divinity, but was never ordained. He composed a copious Indian and English vo- cabulary. We will follow the coast up to Plymouth, the oldest town in New England and thirty- seven miles southeast from Boston. This was the chief place of ministerial labor performed by John Cotton, son of the well- known John Cotton, of Boston. P^y°^«"th. His ordination took place here in 1669, and for about thirty years he preached also to congregations of Indians in the neighborhood, of whom about five hundred were under his care. He was a master of their language; and a revision of Eliot's Bible fell to him. His two sons, Josiah and Rowland, have already been mentioned. Returning now to Massachusetts Bay Col- on}^, we find among the contemporaries of John Eliot some who studied the language of the natives, and Massachusetts 1 . ' Colony. yet more who interested them- selves in their welfare. It is not necessary to mention again the name of Major Gen- eral Gookin, who was superintendent and 96 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. firm friend of the Indians ; who cooperated efficiently with Eliot ; the only magistrate who befriended the Christian Indians in the time of King Philip's War, for which he was abused and insulted. He died a poor man, March 19, 1687. One of his two sons who became ministers, Daniel, was a pastor at Sherborn, having at the same time some care of the Indians at Natick. Peter Thatcher, son of Rev. Thomas Thatcher, first minister of the Old South Church, Boston (ordained 1681), conducted a monthly lecture to the Indians. Rev. Grindall Rawson, a son of Secretary Edward Rawson, was ordained pastor of the church in Mendon about 1680, and preached to the Indians of that place in their own language Sunday evenings, though under great discouragements and not with great success. Samuel Danforth, minister at Taunton (1687- 1727) — the son of Samuel Danforth, a col- league of Eliot (1650-1674) — translated five sermons of Dr. Increase Mather into Indian, which were printed in 1698. He labored for the welfare of the Indians in his neighbor- hood, preaching to them in their vernacular on certain " lecture days." A manuscript In- dian dictionary of his, which has never been printed, is in the library of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston. AMONG INDIANS. 97 We next move westward, and to the pe- riod of more than a century and a half now gone by. John Sergeant/ who was four years a tutor in Yale College, after graduating there, 1729, visited Housatonic, an Indian village in Western Massachusetts, and preached to those living there. He had long been in the habit of praying God daily that he would send him to the heathen that he might turn them from darkness to light. When he first went to the place just named (173-i) the natives, called "River ^count''^ Indians," numbered less than fifty. "" ^' Most of the same tribe lived within the lim- its of New York among the Dutch, who had made no attempt to civilize or Christianize them. There were a few in the northwest corner of Connecticut. This was at that time the largest tribe neighboring to any English settlements in New England. The village first visited by Sergeant was in the town of Sheffield, and there was another village eighteen miles farther up the Housatonic River within the bounds of Stockbridge. Noth- ing less than a deep conviction of Christian duty could have reconciled him to exchange academic society and occupation for hardships ' Samuel Hopkins : Historical Memoirs Relating to the Housa- turmock Indians. Boston, N. E. 1750. 98 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. otherwise unwelcome. Two sons of prominent Indians accompanied Sergeant to New Haven, who instructed them there till his college en- gagement was closed. One great obstacle to his success among the Indians was the neighboring traders, chiefly Dutch, who found that their nefarious gains ;from the sale of rum were endangered, and who represented that the new religion was not a good one, and that it was the design of the English to enslave them. But Sergeant set himself resolutely to work and to prayer. The next year (1735) he received ordination, his excellency the governor of the colony and the commissioners of the missionary corporation be- ing present. His instruction of the children, as well as more formal ministrations, were at first through an interpreter; but he saw that a knowledge of the vernacular was indispensable, and so set himself earnestly to acquire it. After about three years he began to preach in that difficult tongue, and after two years more (1739) he had so far mastered it that the Indians were accustomed to say, " Our minister speaks our language better than we ourselves can do." ■ He translated prayers, portions of Scripture, and Dr. Watts' Catechism for Children. Dr. Watts sent the contribution of a few friends, ■ Note 19. AMONG INDIANS. 99 amounting to seventy pounds, to aid the mis- sion. In the course of his second year of labor (1736) a township of six miles square, within the limits of Stockbridge, was granted to the Indians by the General Provincial Court, and they began to remove there as a place of com- mon settlement. Previously they had moved about in small groups according as the seasons for fishing or the chase invited. A few white families settled at Stockbridge, partly for ben- efit to the natives, and Sergeant also estab- lished himself there. Mr. Timothy Woodbridge became his assistant and taught a school. Mr. Isaac Hollis, of London, nephew of Thomas Mol- lis, the benefactor of Harvard College, offered, through Dr. Coleman, of Boston, to support twelve scholars under the care of Sergeant from year to year.' On this Hollis foundation he received boys to his own house. Through the same channel Samuel Holden, Esq., of Lon- don, made a remittance of one hundred pounds for the benefit of the mission. So favorable were the representations of the work made in England that his royal highness the Prince of Wales headed a subscription (1745) in aid of ' The Rev. Isaac Hollis made remittance in behalf of In- dian boys: 1732, £100; 1736, £56; 1738, £343 ; 1740, £447 9s. After this later date £50 annually, and subsequently £120 each year. 100 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. the boarding school by giving twenty guineas ; the Duke of Cumberland followed with the same amount ; the Duke of Dorset, Lord Gower, and the Lord Chancellor giving each five guineas. Contributions towards the good work were made in Connecticut, especially at Lebanon ; and a gentleman in Hartford, Mr. Ellery, bequeathed a hundred and twenty pounds. The General Court of Massachusetts favored the mission, providing a ]3lace of worship and a schoolhouse (1738), and also incurring expense for the re- moval of inhabitants to the town which had been given, as before mentioned. Later, having a mixed congregation of Indians and English, Mr. Sergeant preached in both languages, two sermons in each, on the Lord's Day. During the period of his labor at Stockbridge he visited Indians elsewhere in Massachusetts and in Connecticut, besides a tour among those on the Susquehanna and Delaware Rivers, dis- tant more than two hundred miles from Stock- bridge. Sergeant died July 27, 1749, in the thirty-ninth year of his age. A daughter of his was the grandmother of the late President Mark Hopkins. When Sergeant began his work there were in the place of his first visit less than fifty In- dians; at the time of his death there were at Stockbridge over fifty-three families, numbering two hundred and eighteen souls, of whom one AMONG INDIANS. 101 hundred and twenty-nine were baptized; wliile of these, forty-two were communicants. The whole number baptized by him was one hundred and eighty-two. The attendance in Mr. Woodbridge's school averaged about forty. From intemperance, a prevailing and ruinous practice of the Indians, they were, for the most part, recovered. Their bark wigwams gave place to houses well built after the manner of white neighbors, of whom there were a dozen families at the time of Sergeant's decease. Dissensions among the English residents and other causes — the French war of 1744 and onward one of them — interfered with the success of Sergeant as minister and of Mr. Woodbridge as teacher. After the death of Mr. Sergeant about ninety Mohawk Indians came from the neio-hborhood of Albany to live at Stockbridge, especially in the winter of 1750-51. Meanwhile the Rev. Jonathan Edwards,' having been dismissed from the church in Northampton (June, 1750), received proposals from the ^Xlrds commissioners, residing in Boston, of the Society in London for Propagating the Gospel in New England and the Parts Adja- cent to become a missionary at Stockbridge. He was also invited by the church and congre- gation in that place to become their minister. This was early in the winter of 1751. Soon * Dwight's Life of Edwards, Chapters XXV-XXVIII. 102 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. after receiving these overtures, but before de- ciding upon them, he went to Stockbridge and remained there till early spring, preaching to the English inhabitants and, through an inter- preter, to the Indians. He accepted the two offers, and his formal installation took place the eighth of August that year. Edwards preached twice weekly to the whites, and once a week each to the Housatonics and the Mo- hawks. Thus, like Eliot, the Mayhews, Cot- ton, and other Massachusetts ministers who labored in behalf of the Indians, he had at the same time an English congregation in charge. During his six years' residence at Stockbridge Edwards wrote several elaborate theological treatises — The Freedom of the Will, G-od's Last End m Creation, The Nature of Virtue, and Original Sin. The circumstances and the period of his mis- sionary work were peculiarly unfavorable. Ve- hement dissensions existed among the white residents at Stockbridge. The disbursement of funds furnished by the colonial legislature, by the commissioners at Boston, and by individ- uals in England became a temptation, especially to one family, which arrayed itself persistently against Edwards. Owing to attendant unfaith- fulness and mismanagement, which he found it impossible to correct — which were much like what continues now to be witnessed on Indian AMONG INDIANS. 103 reservations — most of the Mohawks and some of the other Indians left the place in natural disgust. Hardly three years had passed before French and Indian hostilities began, and Stock- bridge, being a frontier settlement, was much exposed. Several persons were killed there as early as 1754, and great alarm prevailed. Evan- gelistic endeavors always suffer in war time. In 1757 Edwards was called — a son-in-law. Presi- dent Burr, having died — to take his place as president of New Jersey College at Princeton. No one in this class need be told that Presi- dent Jonathan Edwards had a son, Dr. Jonathan Edwards, who also became president of a col- lege — Union College, Schenectady, New York. This son, removing when six years of age with his father to Stockbridge, learned the Mohegan language at that place. The elder Edwards de- signed that this son should be a missionary among the aborigines, and hence sent him at ten years of age (1755), with the Rev. Gideon Hawley, to learn the language of the Oneidas near the head waters of the Susquehanna. He became president of the college above named (1799), and but two years later died at the age of fifty-six. Like his father, he was a tutor in the institution whence he had graduated; he had two pastorates; his term in the college presidency was brief — only two years; and his age was only two years greater than that of his 104 PEOTESTANT MISSIONS. father — fifty-six instead of fifty-four. Owing to these coincidences it is not strange that the two men should sometimes be mistaken for one another by ill-informed persons, especially in Europe. Rev. Stephen West, D.D., was ordained at Stockbridge in 1759, and among the many ad- mitted to the church during his ministry were twenty-two Indians. In 1775 he gave up the care of the Indians, and received his support as pastor wholly from the whites. - . John Sergeant, Jr., son of the Laborers. _ '=' ' first missionary at Stockbridge, ac- quired the Mohegan ' language in boyhood, and having studied divinity with Dr. West took charge of the Indians as their missionary. He labored there, preaching to them and teaching in an Indian school, for ten years ; but in 1785 this relict of aboriginalism was removed to land given them by the Oneidas in the State of New York — a tract the same in size (six miles square) as the Massachusetts court gave to the Indians at Stockbridge. The village built there bore the name of New Stockbridge. The well-known Mohegan preacher, Samson Occom, visited the place and a division occurred, one Indian church choosing him for pastor and the rest remaining with Mr. Sergeant. When Mr. Occom died (1792) a reunion of the churches Moheakunnuk (Mu-he-con-nuk). AMONG INDIANS. 105 was effected. In the years 1818 and 1822, respectively, these New Stockbridge Indians, separating into two bodies, removed to Indiana and Wisconsin. Mr. Sergeant, unable to ac- company either band, died (1824) at the age of seventy-seven. u-It is worthy of note that the English colo- nists within the limits of the present Common- wealth of Massachusetts entered upon the work of evangelizing aborigines more generally and continued therein more systematic- ally and with greater perseverance ^"^""^ °"- ■^ ^ . ^ siderations. than was done in any other New England State. In Vermont and New Hamp- shire there were comparatively few Indians. Those in ' Maine came chiefly under Roman Catholic influence. Of four prominent laymen who engaged in the religious instruction of these heathen neighbors the names have been mentioned. "Some of the Indians," says Cot- ton Mather, " quickly built for themselves good and large meeting houses after the English mode, in which, also after the English mode, they attended the things of the kingdom of heaven. And some of the English were helpful to them on this account, among whom I ought particularly to mention that learned, pious, and charitable gentleman, the worshipful Samuel Sewall, Esq., who at his own charge built a meeting house for one of the Indian congrega- 106 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. tions and gave those Indians cause to pray for him under that character — ' he loveth our na- tion, for he hath built us a synagogue.' " ' All circumstances considered — relative popu- lation and valuation, more especially the early condition of exiles making a home for them- selves in an unreclaimed wilderness — the mis- sionary spirit of our fathers not merely equaled but surpassed that of the present generation. We pass to Rhode Island. Roger Williams, so well known in the early history of Massachu- setts, was born in Wa.les (1599) five years ear- lier than John Eliot. He was converted at ten years of age, was graduated at Pem- „rZ^^^ broke College, Cambridge, and came Williams. . ^ ' » ' to this country the same year that the apostle to the Indians arrived (1631). He became the father of Rhode Island, or rather of the Providence Plantation (1636), the same year that Hooker and his associates reached Hartford, Connecticut. In 1654 he was chosen president of the colony in Rhode Island. While pastor previously at Plymouth he gained acquaintance with the sachems of the Wampanoags and Narragansets and learned their language. He continued a Avarm friend of the Indians and acquired great influence among them. In 1645 he was largely instru- mental in securing a treaty which, to all Magnolia, B. Ill (h). AMONG INDIANS. 107 appearance, prevented a war upon the New England colonies. Roger Williams was the first to publish a vocabulary of the Indian language. It was pre- pared during a voyage to England and entitled A Key to the Language of America (London, 1643), and consisted of thirty-two chapters, each containing a short list of words, dialogues in Indian and English, also a poem. With ref- erence to acquiring this vernacular he states: "God was pleased to give me a painful, patient spirit to lodge with them in their filthy, smoky holes, even while I lived at Plymouth and Salem, to gain their tongue." In the Key he states that many hundreds of times "he had preached to great numbers, to their great de- light and great convictions," "with all sorts of nations of them, from one end of the country to the other." Certain limitations to this are obvious. That Roger Williams was a man of intrepid- ity and that he was a power for good among the Indians admits of no doubt. Positive evidence of any marked Christian results are wanting. He established no schools and gath- ered no churches. Regarding organization and ordinances, his views would seem to have re- sembled those of the present English Plymouth Brethren. There is a tinge of boasting as well as of un scriptural sentiment in what he 108 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. says regarding the natives : ' "I could readily have brought the whole country to have ob- served one day in seven ; to have received a baptism or washing, though it were in rivers, as the first Christians and the Lord Jesus him- self did ; to have come to a stated church meeting, maintained priests and forms of prayer, and a whole form of antichristian worship." == Westerly, the southwestern town of Rhode Island, 3 was within the territory occupied by the Niantics. To those Indians the Society for Propagating the Gospel sent, in 1733, the Rev. Joseph Park " as a missionar}^ to the Indians and such English as would attend es er y. .^ Westerly." He does not appear to have been a converted man till some years later, when the awakening of 1740 began. His testimony regarding the spiritual state of that region is noteworthy : " Before this day of God's power there was not, as far as ever I learned, one house of prayer in the place, in two large towns containing some hundreds of families, nor any that professed the faith of God's own operation or the doctrine of grace. Now, when the Lord set up his sanctuary in ' In the tract, Christening Makes Not Christians. ^ Reuben A. Guild, LL.D., in the Home Mission Monthly, 1892, pp. 325-331. James D. Knowles : Memoir of Roger Williams. Boston, 1834. ^ Frederick Denison : Westerly and its Witnesses, 1G26-1876. Providence, 1878. Pp. 28-82. AMONG INDIANS. 109 the midst of us, those heads of families who had been the happy subjects of his grace im- mediately set up the worship of God in their houses."' Niantics shared in some measure with their white neighbors the blessings of that gra- cious visitation. A church was formed in 1750. Ninigret seems to have been gratified with the change in his tribe. The same society sent Mr. Bennet (1764) as a teacher. He met with encouragement, and the next year Thomas Ninigret, known as " King Tom " — who came to the throne, such as it was, in 1746 — petitioned the society to estab- lish free schools. His letter of request closes expressing the hope " that when time with us shall be no more; that when we and the chil- dren, over whom you have been such benefac- tors, shall leave the sun and stars, we shall rejoice in a far superior light." Rev. William Thompson "ministered to the Pequots at Mystic and Paweatuck" from 1657 to 1663 ; he received aid from the Society for Propagating the Gospel. The name of Samuel Niles is mentioned as an earnest "Indian ex- horter." The first Niantic ordained as minister of that church was James Simons ; the last of any note was Moses Stanton, ordained in 1823. The present meeting house, built of stone, was put up in 1860, but will not improbably yet become like the gravestone of Takawompait at 110 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. Natick, a mere monument of a vanished Niantic tribe. We next come to Connecticut. One of the earliest instances of preaching to the Indians in Connecticut was by John Eliot. He had occa- sion to come to the city of Hartford to attend a council.' After that he addressed the Podunks on the opposite side of the river. But they were ill-disposed toward the English and toward the gospel. Eliot also visited that _ ,. ^ part of the Nipmuck country sit- Connecticut. . uated in the northeastern part of the State, and a rock in the town of Wood- stock, not far from the residence of Henry C. Bowen, Esq., is pointed out on which the apos- tle to the Indians preached. It was in the years 1673 and 1674 that Eliot, accompanied by Gookin, traveled through this region intent upon making known the word of life. Abraham Pierson,=' who became the first min- ister in Branford, New Haven County, in 1644, graduated at the University of Cambridge, Eng- land, the year after Eliot and Roger Williams came to Massachusetts (1632). Having previ- ously acquired the native language on Long Island, he preached to the red men there and did the same in several plantations of the New Haven Colony during his twenty years' minis- ^ Encyclopcedia of Missions, I, 466. * Mather's Magnolia, B. Ill, Chap. 8. AMONG INDIANS. Ill try in Connecticut before removing to Newark, New Jersey. No marked success appears to have attended this department of his labor. Rev. James Fitch came to New England seven years later than Eliot and Roger Wil- liams (1638). He was the first pastor of a church in Saybrook, which was removed to Norwich in 1660, where his ministry continued many years. He acquainted himself with the language of the Mohegans in the neighborhood of Norwich, preached to them, and gave them a part of his own land as an inducement to adopt settled and civilized habits. He gathered a church of forty members ; but King Philip's War arrested the good work there as elsewhere. Jonathan Barber, employed by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in New Eng- land, labored among the Mohegans from 1733 to 1742. Moravians, too, were early on the ground. Christian Henry Ranch, a missionary, landed in New York, 1740, and proceeding to Duchess County began work among the 7 Moravians. Mohegans there. Phis was a year before David Brainerd commenced his labors at Kaunaumeek. Other Moravian laborers joined Ranch. Indians were drawn to them from the western part of Connecticut, especially from Kent, in Litchfield Count}'. The brethren vis- ited that place, as well as Sharon and Salis- 112 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. bury; also parts of New Haven and Fairfield Counties. These scattered remnants of Mo- hegans, Narragansets, and Wampanoags were known in those regions as Scatticokes. But hostile white legislation and trade drove the missionaries away, and many of the Christian Indians followed them to Pennsylvania; but missionaries continued to visit from time to time the Indians who remained behind. Rev. Eleazer Wheelock, D.D., of Lebanon, Con- necticut, established a school, being impressed by the condition of the Indians in that neighbor- hood, which had reference largely to civilizing and Christianizing them. He met with encouragement; but not being able to carry on and especially to enlarge the work at his own expense, he appealed to the public. In 1766 he sent the Rev. Mr. Whittaker, a minister of Norwich, and Samson Occom to Great Britain for the purpose of soliciting aid. In England they raised about seven thousand pounds. The society in Scotland issued a me- morial to the ministers of that country, and the result was about two thousand pounds, which remained in the hands of the society and on which interest accrued in years when no remittance was made. The funds in England were placed in the hands of a board of trust, of which the Earl of Dartmouth was the head. A house and two acres of land having been AMONG INDIANS. 113 given by Joshua Moor, a farmer, the institution took the name of " Moor's Charity School." The legishitures of Connecticut and Massachu- setts made grants in aid, and in 1762 Dr. Wheelock had more than twenty youths under his care. Unable to secure land enough in Leb- anon, a site was selected in New Hampshire, where the present town of Hanover stands. The school was transferred to that place and Dartmouth College founded, 1769. A charter for both institutions was afterwards obtained, but the funds for each were separately admin- istered.' A good deal of unsatisfactory corre- spondence ensued between Dr. Wheelock and his successors, on the one hand, and the society in Scotland on the other; also between the board of commissioners in Boston and the society. One chief occasion of interchange of letters was the circumstance that Indian youths, whose expenses were to be met, did not present them- selves at the college. Dr. Wheelock had charge of the school in Lebanon about thirty years, and the further charge of it, as well as of the college at Han- over, for nine years. He found, however, that Indian young men, though well educated, could not generally be depended on as educators of ' " Wheelock's School was incorporated as Dartmouth Col- lege : " Encyclopedia of Missions, I, p. 457. This misconception is often met with, but the two institutions were kept distinct. 114 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. their countrymen. Of forty such — the cele- brated Brant one of them — who had been under his care, one half returned to savage life. With the exception of Samson Occom, it does not appear that any Indians trained at Moor's School turned their education to good account in a marked degree. Samson Occom sought admission to the fore- named school, 1743, where, in the family of Dr. Wheelock, he remained four or five years. He was the first aboriginal preacher from the new world who visited Great Brit- ain. He had been ordained by the Suffolk Presbytery of Long Island (1759), and during the visit referred to he preached to thronged audiences between three and four hundred times in different parts of the king- dom. Before going to England he taught a school in New London (1748), but went thence to Montauk, on Long Island, where for a decade he taught among the Indians and preached to them in their own language. In 1786 he re- moved to Brothertown, or Brotherton, in the neighborhood of Utica, New York, and labored among the Indians who, after enjoying the minis- try of Sergeant and President Edwards, had been transplanted from Stockbridge, Massachusetts. A few Mohegans from Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Long Island removed to Brotherton near AMONG INDIANS. 115 the time that Occom went there. He died 1792, aged about seventy, and his funeral was attended by upwards of three hundred Indians. A sermon preached by him at the execution of Moses Paul, an Indian, in New Haven, was published, and he is credited with being the author of the impressive hymn: " Awaked by Sinai's awful sound." ' The story of other early evangelistic efforts in behalf of the six nations and in behalf of Indi- ans in the southern colonies would be wearisome. The character, habits, and environment of the aboriginal tribes were unfriendly to evangelistic approaches. The race was, in some , . , . Conclusion, respects, comparatively an imprac- ticable one. Indifference to neighboring superi- ority, aversion to industry, apathy alternating with thirst for war, appeared to doom them to self-destruction. As regards agriculture and other fundamental arts, not to mention refining arts, they were the antipodes of the busy Chi- nese and the quick-witted Japanese. Their sen- sibilities were the dullest ; they seldom wept or smiled ; they had no ennobling traditions. I The problem of Christianizing red men was S a more formidable one than our fathers at first } imagined. The early planters of New England \ engaged in the good work quite as promptly ' See Julian's Dictionary of Hymnology, p. 855. 116 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. as could reasonably have been expected, and in some notable instances their success was be- yond reasonable expectation. Taking a retrospective glance at the path thus far traversed, it will be recollected that apparent ignorance in regard to Protestant mis- sions prior to the nineteenth century, or an inex- cusable oversight regarding them, was avowed as one occasion for this series of studies. It is a common but unintelligent impression that interest and effort in the line of foreisrn evan- gelization had scarcely any place in New Eng- land, or in the country at large, or elsewhere in Protestant Christendom, till near the close of the last century. Consequently undue praise has been bestowed upon the onward movement which then took place. Noteworthy it was; not, however, on the score of priority and en- tire originality. It was an outcome of thoughts and influences which had long existed. One of the most northern sources of the River Jordan is a spring at Hasbeiya, which sends forth a stream sufficient at once to turn a mill wheel; but it is fed by rivulets under ground that trickle unseen from the heights and slopes of Anti-Lebanon. Similar is it usually with sa- cred streams that water and fertilize the earth. They start from points various, remote, and ele- vated, and that attract little attention till seen in a combined and effective flow, y , VI DAVID BRAINERD Influence that moves men heavenward meas- ures personal excellence. Religious character is the dwelling place of ultimate spiritual power. To be such as sweetly constrains others to holy living, reproducing similar traits and similar ac- tivities, renders any one worthy of study and of a portrait. To that class belongs David Brainerd. His brief career of labor was remarkable, but his religious character more remarkable. His spirit- ual life was the man. Self-denial was complete in him. Heroism of duty was his characteristic. When the learned Jerome laid down the Life of Hilarion he said, " Well, Hilarion shall be the champion that I will follow; his good life shall be my example and his good death my prec- edent." The biography of Brainerd has had similar marked influence upon the piety of numerous Christian men. Dr. Ryland, for ex- ample, an eminent English minister, was often heard to remark that Brainerd's Life ranked 118 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. with him next to the Bible. "When reading such lives as those of Brainerd and Doddridge," said Dr. Chalmers, "I have often stood amazed — I could almost say envious of their power to sus- tain a real and spiritual intercourse with heaven for large portions of a whole day." rainer s g^^ j^ jg particularly appropriate that we turn to the roll of mis- sionaries. Brainerd's life impressed and stim- ulated Carey.' Levi Parsons, the first Protes- tant missionary to enter Jerusalem (1820) with a view to engage in permanent work there, re- ceived impulse from Brainerd. He also fur- nished incitement to Marsden, whose labors in New South Wales and in behalf of New Zea- land are well known.^ Nor was Brainerd's stimulating influence lim- ited to such individuals in the first instance. Through them it has been transmitted to yet others. Henry Martyn^ was indebted not a lit- tle to David Brainerd ; and Professor Tholuck of Halle acknowledges religious indebtedness to Henry Martyn.'* Brainerd's influence, ex- tending to various quarters of the world, is still prolonged in many a consecrated life. But ^Memoir, by Eustace Carey. Chap. Ill, Sec. 1. Life, by George Smith, 449-50. 2 J. B. Marsden's Memoirs of Samuel Marsden, Cliap. I. ^Journal and Letters, I, 162, 444. * Note 20. DAVID BRAINERD. 119 Brainerd as a missionary can be understood only with the knowledge of him as a Christian. Haddam, in Connecticut, was the place, and April 20, 1718, the date, of his birth. His father, the Hon. Hezekiah Brainerd, was a man of some prominence in the colony, and his an- cestry on the maternal side was noteworthy for the number of its ministers. Sobriety and a religious turn of mind characterized his early years. Repeated awakenings and alarms, at- tended by much prayer and strenuous effort, were experienced, but were marred by a self-righteous element. Imag- o*^'" ^* inary dedication of himself to God, imaginary good frames, with tenderness and ear- nestness, at intervals marked his inner life. These prolonged and vigorous endeavors, how- ever, proceeded from an aim to earn the divine favor; they were regarded as meritorious and as qualifying for acceptance by Christ. Such striv- ing to make himself his own saviour of course did not succeed. The strictness of God's law, the demand for faith in Christ as a condition, the divine sovereignty as set forth in Romans xi, awakened latent enmity to God. Then at length he saw as in a mirror his real self — his rebellious self; saw that hideous self-conceit had been piling up religious efforts in order to make it too hard for God to cast him off. He was twenty-one years of age when this 120 PE0TE3TANT MISSIONS. decisive discovery took place. Thereupon en- sued the great spiritual change. He found that he was an utterly lost sinner ; that no doings of his own could lay God under obligation to bestow mercy. All things became new to him. "My soul rejoiced with joy unspeakable," he says, "to see such a God, such a glorious divine being, and I was inwardly * * pleased and satisfied that he should be God over all forever and ever. My soul was so captivated and delighted with the excellency, loveliness, greatness, and other perfections of God that I was even swallowed up in him — at least to that degree that I had no thought (as I remember) at first about my own salvation and scarce reflected that there was such a creature as myself." "At this time the way of salvation opened to me with such infinite wisdom, suitableness, and excellency that I wondered I should ever think of any other way of salvation." That year (1739) he entered Yale College. While there a revival of religion occurred at New Haven, and Brainerd felt a deep interest in the spiritual welfare of fellow students. The conversion of the celebrated Samuel Hopkins appears to have been due to his influence. But that revival was attended, as elsewhere, by a degree of unhealthful excitement and con- sequently by some exceptionable proceedings. DAVID BKAINERD. 121 Brainerd made privately a remark relating to one of the college tutors, which, being over- heard by another student, was communicated to an injudicious woman, and at length reported to the rector or president. A statement of this remark was extorted from those „ „ . . College Career, who heard it, for which private offense he was required to make a public con- fession. Not complying with that unauthorized demand, and having attended a religious meet- ing contrary to the rector's arbitrary order, he was expelled from college in 1742 — his junior year. However inexcusable the offense, the discipline was still more inexcusable. One of Brainerd's biographers ' remarks, " That individ- ual fully justified by his subsequent proceed- ings" the phrase used in regard to the tutor, which was, " He has no more piety than this / chair." Other indefensible things occurred at that period. The Rev. Samuel Finley, after- wards president of New Jersey College, was prosecuted for preaching at New Haven, sent to jail, and then sent out of the colony as a vagrant. Ministers of experience and general good judgment were in some instances carried away by an unprecedented tide of excitement. Was it strange that a young collegian should be betrayed into an indiscretion? No similar ' The Rev. Wm. B. O. Peabody. Chap. I. 122 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. imprudence on his part is known to have oc- curred subsequently. Ten years after that date President Clap himself went to such a meeting as the one which the disciplined student had attended. Christian graces shone with uncommon luster in Brainerd. The injustice which President Edwards, President Burr, and other dispassion- ate friends believed to have been done him, so far from souring his spirit, was the occasion of a rare exercise of forgiveness.' This truly Christlike temper was far removed from self- complacent placidity. His sensibilities and emotions were keen. For example, e igious Brainerd's sense of unworthiness Exercises. and his self-abasement were pro- found, and this appears to have been independ- ent of the occasion of his being placed under a ban at college. After a century and a half the record before us reads remarkably in a time when we hear so little about conviction of sin: "I see myself infinitely vile and unworthy; . . . an unfathomable abyss of desperate wickedness in the heart." These are the utterances of a man outwardly irreproachable. John Bunyan here comes to mind ; but Bunyan had a lively imagination, Brainerd had not. He indulged in none of the illusory experiences of the period — sudden impressions, bright visions, and ' Note 21. DAVID BRAINERD. 123 the like ; nor, on the other hand, does there ap- pear to have been the faintest trace of — what may sometimes be discovered — a subtle self- righteous humiliation, a conceit of wretchedness. Coupled with a deep and honest self-abase- ment were lively aspirations after holiness. " I know," so he writes, " that I long for God and a conformity to his will in inward purity and holiness ten thousand times more than for anything here below." What mystic ever had more intense yearning for conformity to God? But Brainerd was not a mystic; his was no ill-regulated fancy, lifting him into the realm of enthusiasm — a realm verging toward pantheism. Likeness to God and personal ab- sorption in God differ widely as heaven from earth. David Brainerd showed no affinity with Eckhart the Doctor Ecstaticus. Longing for holiness was with him well defined ; was Scrip- tural, and not lost in rhapsody. Never would he listen to the self-flattery of perfectionism, that comfortable, purring delusion. Forgiveness he sought and obtained through Christ, but he could not forgive himself. The supreme motive of any man determines his character. What was Brainerd's chief de- sire? Evidently to renounce self and to honor God. Listen to him once more : " My soul longed with a vehement desire to live to God. . . . My soul cried. Lord, set up thy kingdom 124 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. for thine own glory; glorify thyself and I shall rejoice. Get honor to thy blessed name and this is all I desire. Do with me just what thou wilt." Brainerd was constitutionally melancholy, and that gave a coloring to his religious experience. A morbid tendency had long had place in the family. But who is responsible for the temper- ament with which he is born? The possibility and duty of correcting inherent ^ '^ tendencies are points not easily Temperament. ^ "^ determined. Brainerd dwelt dis- proportionately on the waywardness of his heart — disproportionately as compared with the believer's privilege of contemplating the ampli- tude of divine promises and the freedom of access to the all-cleansing fountain. Introspec- tion may not have been too frequent nor too searching, but there should have been more of what he enjoined upon others, more of exultant " looking unto Jesus." / Holy joy upon the par- don of sin is no less wa,rranted than godly sorrow for sin is demanded. -^ Brainerd was a man of superior mental power. So President Edwards regarded him.' He led his class in college — the largest , which up to that time had entered Yale. "^The logical faculty was well developed In him religious ardor is easily distinguished from the vehemence » Note 22. DAVID BRAINERD. 125 of a wayward fancy or the vehemence of mis- guided zeal, so sadly exhibited by Separatists during the period of the Great Awakening. The question is pertinent here, Did Brainerd have exaggerated views of his sinfulness? The superficiality of our day may impute his unusual self-abasement to a disordered temperament. We turn to some of the memoranda and memora- bilia of penitential autobiography, those not as- sociated with melancholy. "The chiefest of apostles " exclaims, " O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" The godly Bishop Beveridge confesses : ' "I cannot ^^.^^^ pray but I sin ; I cannot hear or preach a sermon but I sin; I cannot give an alms or receive the sacrament but I sin ; na}^ I cannot so much as confess my sins but my very confessions are aggravations of shame. My repentance needs to be repented of; my tears want washing." The seraphic Rutherford records, " Here I die with wondering that jus- tice hindereth not love, for there are none in hell nor out of hell more unworthy of Christ's love." A well-known memorandum of Jonathan Edwards need not be cited; yet was any con- temporary of Jonathan Edwards his superior in piety, or more sober-minded than he? We do not, of course, intimate that only such * Private Thoughts. Art. IV. 126 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. experience is genuine, nor that it is to be sought after. We do inquire, however, Has any man ever had unauthorized discoveries of his ill-desert? If the piercing search-light of heaven, or merely the lightning of Sinai, were turned full upon our inner selves, would any 9f us have less profound convictions of sin? [ Brainerd's despondency, resulting from inborn predisposition, differed, for instance, from a tran- sient experience of Sir Robert Boyle, due to the temporary unsettlement of religious belief; it differed from that of Cowper, which was the hallucination of a disordered mind. It was more like that of the German poet, Gellert, a thoroughl}^ Christian man, yet the victim of great depression of spirit^' In Brainerd there was no affinity with enthusiasts like George Fox, nor with zealots who arrogated a superior sanctity, as James Davenport. The hospital is the appropriate home for such. Spiritual de- lirium never seized him. The ship might seem at times to be water-logged, but compass and helm were still in good order. The pole star was always in place, though the sun did not always shine.y The work of grace in his soul appears to have been deeper than that of Augustine, and his diary is of more practical value than the confessions of that renowned church father. His experience was an echo of Romans vii, an object lesson of Edwards on the DAVID BRAINEED. 127 Affections. This should be added — he kept his melancholy very much to himself; it cast no social gloom. He was companionable, free and entertaining in conversation, ^Adth nothing of the demure or morose about him.' We have thus seen the man. We now turn to his missionary career. A " Society in Scot- land for Propagating Christian Knowledge " was formed in the year 1709. Not far from the time that Brainerd entered college prom- inent ministers , in the city and neighborhood of New York — among wliom were Jonathan Dickinson, of Elizabethtown, and Rev. Aaron Burr, both of them afterwards successively presidents of New Jersey College — wrote to Scotland regarding the wretched -,.,. f T A- • ^1 Preliminary, condition ot Indians in the prov- inces of New York, New Jersey, and Pennsyl- vania. The result was an agreement by the forenamed society to sustain two missionaries among those Indians, also the appointment of a commission, consisting of clergymen and lay- men, to administer the affair in behalf of the Scottish organization. The first selection was that of Azariah Horton, who, beginning in August, 1741, labored with considerable success among the Indians on Long Island. They had two small settlements at the east end besides little groups elsewhere. Intemperance, intro- ' Edwards' Memoir of Brainerd, 382, 473. 128 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. duced among them by their white neighbors, was the chief hindrance. The next year (November 25, 1742) Brainerd received ap- pointment from the commissioners or corre- spondents. He had been previously licensed as a minister of the gospel by the Ministerial Association which met at Danbury, Connecti- cut, July 29, 1742. His treatment at New Haven did not abate general respect for him. At this time a controversy was pending in regard to the land-tenure of those Indians among whom Brainerd was expected to labor; and hence, pursuant to information from the missionary (Sergeant) at Stockbridge, Massachu- setts, he went to Kaunaumeek," a settlement in the woods between Stockbridge and Albany, nearly midway between the two * , and about twenty miles from Kaunaumeek. . -, i a -i •< each.^ He arrived there April 1, 1743, and remained one year.^ During that time he established a school for the children ; by the aid of an interpreter'* he preached. Some degree of religious interest was man- ifested by the Indians; reformation, to a cer- tain extent, especially in their drinking habits and superstitious practices, took place. ^But ' Spelled also by Brainerd, Caunaumuck. ^ Note 23. ^ He left March 14, 1744. * John Kauwaumpegwunnaunt. DAVm BRAINERD. 129 the influence of unprincipled men, chiefly Dutch, calling themselves Christians, was bane- ful. By direction of the commissioners he spent a good deal of time with Sergeant in studying the difiicult language, riding twenty miles through the trackless woods and encoun> tering a good many exposures. Once, at least, he was lost, and lay all night in the open air; once he fell into the river. He was able to compose sundry forms of prayer in the vernac- ular, so that he could pray with his people; also sundry psalms, so that he could lead them in the service of song. Brainerd's surroundings were very unfavor- able. There was no English family within a score of miles. At first he was obliged to lodge two miles from the settlement, in a room made of logs, without a floor; his bed, a little heap of straw laid upon boards ; his diet, chiefly boiled corn and bread baked in the ashes. Afterwards he moved into a comfort- less wigwam till he could build a shanty for himself. For bread he had to go or send ten or fifteen miles, which was sometimes mouldy and sometimes failed for days altogether. After Brainerd's eleven and one half months at Kaunaumeek the commissioners proposed that he should go to the tribe originally contem- plated, the Delawares. The Indians at Kau- naumeek were few in number, and he wisely 130 PEOTESTANT MISSIONS. advised them to move to Stockbridge, where with their brethren they would be more ad- vantageously situated under the care of Mr. Sergeant. But will our missionary engage further and elsewhere in this line of labor? His health has already suffered seriously; he had begun, indeed, to raise blood when in college. He has some private property ; and, what is more, strong inducements to remain in his native colony were held out. He might have had an eligible settlement at Millington, a village near his birthplace. On his way from Kaunaumeek and its privations and perils he met a mes- senger from Easthampton bearing a unanimous invitation to the pastorate of No Wavering. that place — then the largest, pleasantest, most wealthy of the parishes on Long Island. The people were acquainted with him, and had before that more than once expressed a similar wish. Was not such a repeated call to be accepted as the clear in- dication of divine Providence? Brainerd has devoted himself to the welfare of Indians, and thoughts of comfort, of ease, of agreeable so- ciety, weigh lightly with him. He deemed it the will of God that he should persevere in his self-denying purpose. Regarding all such matters he said later, " I would not have the choice to make for myself for ten thousand DAVID BRAINERD. 131 worlds." Azariah Horton, his contemporarj, had resisted a similar temptation. Gordon Hall and many another in the present century- have met with similar inducements from the home field and have treated them in the same way. Lucrative positions in the employ of governments, literary labor, authorship, or a professorship may present temptations; but what then ? Shall the man who has put his hand to the ministerial or missionary plow look back? By order of the commissioners Brainerd pro- ceeded to an Indian settlement at the forks of the Delaware River in Pennsylvania, near where Easton is now situated. It is seventy or more miles from New York City and fifty or more north of Philadelphia. He arrived May 13, 1744. A month ^"longr ^ Delawares. later he received ordmation by Presbytery at Newark, New Jersey. In Octo- ber of the same year he paid his first visit to Indians on the Susquehanna — distant one hun- dred and twenty miles — at a place where was a gathering of mixed tribes, speaking various languages and not giving promise of being easily reached by religious influence. The visit was repeated in each of the two suc- ceeding years (1745 and 1746). After laboring in Pennsylvania for more than a year he commenced preaching (June 5, 1745) 182 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. at Crossweeksung, in New Jersey. The place, now known as Crosswicks, is about fifty miles southeast from the forks of the Delaware and about sixty southwest from New York. It was there that he met with his greatest success. One year later (May 3, 1746) he, with a body of Indians, removed to Cranberry, fifteen miles northwest from Crosswicks. We will now glance at some of the lim- itations which attended that period of labor among the Delawares. The amount of embar- rassment cannot be easily appreciated by us. At the middle of the 18th century only limited progress had been made in the construction of roads, and this was especially true as regards Indian settlements. Brainerd had a good deal of traveling to perform. His first journey into the Middle Colonies, from the Impediments. ,. t-,. i i .,, , neighborhood oi l^ishkill, on the Hudson, to the Delaware, he speaks of as "about a hundred miles through a desolate and hideous country." Later comes this record (November 22, 1743): "About six at night I lost ray way in the wilderness, wandered over rocks and mountains, down hideous steeps, I through swamps and most dreadful and danger- 1 ous places. . . . Was much pinched with cold and distressed with an extreme pain in my Ihead, attended with sickness at my stomach, so \that every step I took was distressing to me." DAVID ERAINERD. 133 Nor was that a solitary instance of the kind. He lodged on the ground for several weeks together. One night spent thus in the woods he was overtaken by a northeasterly storm, and having no shelter came near perishing. Again, with nothing but some barks for a shelter he heard wolves howling around in the night. During one twelvemonth he traveled four thousand miles. ' His state of health is to be kept in mind. The journal makes mention of " no appetite ; " " distressing weakness ; " " extreme faintness ; " "full of pain;" "a cold sweat all night;" "coughing and spitting blood;" "violent fever." Living as he did alone in a mere hut, without nurse or physician, with but few of the necessaries and none of the comforts of life, the only wonder is that his brief mis- sionary career was not yet briefer. Nor should the character of the Delawares be forgotten. Brainerd's heart was drawn out to them, yet he says : " They are in general unspeakably indolent and slothful. ... I am obliged to instruct them in, as well as press them to, the performance of their work, and take the oversight of all their secular business. They have little or no ambition or resolution. Not one in a thousand of them has the spirit of a man." Their hamlets were sparsely peo- pled, there being usually not more than two or 134 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. three families in a place, and these small settle- ments were for the most part miles away from his headquarters. The roving disposition, which was general, did not, of course, favor religious instruction and influence. They became vehe- mently prejudiced — and not without reason — against those bearing the Christian name. Some of the European settlers in their neighborhood much preferred to have the Indians remain heathens, as they would then be their more easy prey ; otherwise, " the hope of their gain was gone." They represented Brainerd as a knave, as a papist who had come to incite them to insurrection against the English, or else to sell them as slaves. Naturally suspi- cious, the Indians had their fears thus played upon effectually. If our missionary had been master of the language he would have been in a far more favorable position to meet insinua- tions, to rebut charges, and to communicate religious instruction. But in the vernacular there was no Bible, no literature, and he had no adequate helps whatever. It would be superfluous to say that such a man, whose desire was, "O that I could be ' a flame of fire in the service of my God!" was indefatigable in labor. To preach and cate- chise, to give private instruction, to take care of their secular affairs as if they were so many children, to ride about frequently in order to DAVID BRAINERD. 136 secure means for the support of the school, to decide petty differences among them, left no time for the study of the Indian languages. And how about the circumstances of his ministrations? In the cold season he had to preach in their wigwams, which were filled with smoke and intolerable filth, Devotedness. which would cause him violent sick headaches. Mothers would take no pains to quiet their crying children. Some in the little audience would be whittling sticks, some playing with the dogs, and some mocking at divine things. It should be added that as occasion seemed to require he employed his own private means judiciously in aid of the Indians. His salary was forty pounds (two hundred dollars) a year. In less than three years he spent fifteen hun- dred dollars of his own means, additional to the salary, for mission purposes. A favorable beginning, however, in the line of civilization was made. He induced a portion of the tribe ; — as previously indicated — to settle in a more compact manner and to undertake agriculture' with some degree of system ; but the plowing, \ planting, fence-building, and other operations | Brainerd had to oversee himself. / Before the close of his labor at Crossweek- snng a schoolmaster came upon the ground, who, after five months, testified that the chil- 136 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. dren — thirty or more — learned with surprising readiness ; that he had never had an English school comparable to this, some of the pupils being able within the time named to read the English Psalter or New Testament without pausing to spell the words. Twice a week they were instructed in the Assembly's Cate- chism, and in the course of the first four months some of them were able to repeat con- siderably more than half of it by heart. Keeping in mind the environment by which he was hampered, what success in that chief object which he had in view could this invalid expect amidst those savages during his short period of activity? No pause need be made to speak of labor, occasional and incidental, among the Dutch, Germans, and Irish, which was a blessing to those sheep without a shep- herd. Brainerd as a missionary Success. 1 T-. 1 1 to the Delawares gave heart and strength unreservedly to them. His great aim, his burning desire, was to save souls. Would it have been strange or unprecedented if no appreciable religious impression had been made? Usually the more degraded a people are the less susceptible they are to a sense of guilt. Acute conviction of sin, vivid joy upon a dis- covery of saving grace through Christ Jesus, and lively religious emotions in general are found for the most part only where there is DAVID BRAINERD. 137 some advance in civilization and where the great truths of Christianity have for a longer time been inculcated. Brainerd held a careful pen. Before full three months after his arrival at the forks of the Delaware were passed he noticed appearances of religious concern among the Indians. Before five months had gone by several came of their own accord to talk about their souls' concerns ; some, with tears, inquired "what they should do to be saved." Before the seven months of that year (1744) were completed his interpreter, as well as others, was under conviction of sin. One old man, apparently a hundred years of age, wept and seemed deeply convinced of the importance of what he had heard. We now follow him to Crossweeksung. We bear in mind that the Delawares are still sav- ages, improvident, heedless of the future, stolid, apathetic. Tenderness and humane emotions are little known among them. "But," says Brainerd, "the impressions made upon their hearts appeared chieflv x- eviva ^ -"^^ '' Experiences, by the extraordinary earnestness of their attention and their heavy sighs and tears." On one occasion there were only two persons with dry eyes. Conscience was aroused, and conviction of sin took hold of them. A "woman appeared in great distress for her soul. She was brought to such agony in seeking after 138 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. Christ that the sweat ran off her face for a con- siderable time together (although the evening was very cold), and her bitter cries were the most affecting indications of her heart." ' All classes were moved. No wonder the missionary should remark, "It was very affecting to see the poor Indians, who the other day were hal- looing and yelling in their idolatrous feasts and drunken frolics, now crying to God with such importunity for an interest in his dear Son." May not this have been mere animal excite- ment, the contagion of superficial, ignorant alarm? The constant aim of our missionary was not to appeal to the feelings but to the understanding, and to present only sober, essen- tial truth. He remarks : " Hence their concern in general was most rational and just. Those who had been awakened any considerable time complained more especially of their hearts.'''' Take a specimen : A woman " had been angry with her child the evening before, and was now exercised with fears lest her anger had been inordinate and sinful, which so grieved her that she waked and began to sob before day- light and continued weeping for several hours together." It should be kept in mind that Brainerd was a man of discriminating judg- ment in regard to spiritual exercises; that he » Note 24. DAVID BRAINERD. 139 knowingly gave no encouragement to nervous agitations ; that he discountenanced mere rhap- sodic and other enthusiastic manifestations. What now were some of the tokens confirm- atory of the statement above? Prayerfulness is one. When leaving them, for example, on a journey to the Susquehanna, before sunset they j began and continued praying till near break of '' day, never mistrusting till they went out and saw the morning star at a considerable height that it was later than bedtime. T-, ^ e 1 r 1 J • Genuine Work. Dread oi seli-deception was an- other token. Was it said in the early days of our era, "Behold how these Christians love one another?" That might well have been said at Crossweeksung. " I know of no assembl}' of Christians," writes Brainerd, "where there seems to be so much of the presence of God, where brotherly love so much prevails, and where I should take so much delight in the public worship of God in general as in my own congregation, although not more than nine months ago under the power of pagan darkness and superstition." The main point here is. What was actually accomplished by this young consumptive mis- sionary, single-handed and in so short a term of service ? Neither he nor our holy religion was responsible for a later sad history of aboriginal tribes, nor do we need to tarry 140 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. here in order to descant upon the cupidity and manifold iniquity of white men. Testi- monials from other sources were hardly re- quired ; yet ministers — William Tennent, of Freehold, one of them — and church officers living comparatively near Brainerd's field of operations, and having personal acquaintance therewith, volunteered warm attestations to the remarkable character of the results. One of them wrote, "I am for my part fully per- suaded that this glorious work is true and genuine, while with satisfaction I behold sev- eral of these Indians, discovering all the symp- toms of inward holiness in their lives and con- versation." The year after Brainerd's decease (1748) a competent witness visiting Bethel, the Indian settlement at Cranberry, writes: "The state and circumstances of the Indians, spiritual and temporal, much exceed what I expected. Notwithstanding my expectations were very much raised from Mr. David Brai- nerd's journal and from particular information from him, yet I must confess that in many respects they are not equal to that which now appears to me to be true concerning the glorious work of divine grace among the Indians." ' After all is it to be supposed that a tribe so ' Rev. Job Strong : Life of John Brainerd, 144. DAVID BRAINERD. 141 rude, so sunk in superstition, so enslaved by traditions and a dark heredity, can in a short time become the subjects of anything more than transient impressions? Did a radical change of character and life result? Trans- formation came and was indeed sudden. Brai- nerd says, " The pagans who were awakened seemed at once to put off their savage rough- ness and pagan manners, and became sociable, orderly, and humane in their carriage." "This day (July 19, a ions. 1746) makes up a complete year from the first time of my preaching to these Indians in New Jersey. What amazing things has God wrought in this space of time for this poor people ! What a surprising change ap- pears in their tempers and behavior ! How are morose and savage pagans in this short period transformed into agreeable, affectionate, and humble Christians, and their drunken and pagan bowlings turned into devout and fervent praises to God?" One incident reminds us of what occurred at Ephesus, "Many of them also which used curious arts brought their books together and burned them before all men." Brainerd re- cords : " It was likewise remarkable that this day (August 25, 1745) an old Indian, who had all his days been an idolater, was brought to give up his rattles — which they use for music 142 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. in their idolatrous feasts and dances — to the other Indians, who quickly destroyed them. This was done without any attempt of mine in the affair." Did the apostles on their evangelistic tours take with them young con- verts as assistants? Our missionary's earlier efforts in Pennsylvania having been but par- tially successful, at a later date (February 16, 1746) he took with him half a dozen from Crossweeksung, who did effective service.' What were the numerical results of Brai- nerd's labor? It will be recollected that the Delawares, so far as accessible by him, were not numerous. Toward the close of his first year among them he had baptized thirty-eight adults; but he baptized no adults except such as appeared to have a work of grace wrought in their hearts. At one time he speaks of eighty as either inquirers or apparently con- verted. It was probably the progress of disease and consequent bodily weakness that prevented a closing statistical review of labor among the Delawares. A question of no small historical and prac- tical importance here presents itself: What were Brainerd's chief methods? Two leading features are obvious. The first is the evan- gelical truths which he inculcated. We listen ' Note 26. DAVID BEAINERD. 143 once more : " I have frequently been enabled to represent the divine glory, the infinite pre- ciousness, and transcendent loveliness of the great Redeemer, the suitableness of his person and purchase to supply the wants and answer the utmost desires of immortal souls ; to open the infinite riches of his grace and the wonder- ful encouragement proposed in the gospel to unworthy, helpless sinners; to call, « ^, j invite, and beseech them to come and give up themselves to him and be recon- ciled to God through him ; to expostulate with them respecting their neglect of one so infi- nitely lovely and freely offered; and this in such a manner, with such freedom, pertinency, pathos, and application to the conscience as I am sure I never could have made myself master of by the most assiduous application of mind." "God was pleased to give these divine truths such a powerful influence upon the minds of these people, and so to bless them for the effectual awakening of numbers of them, that their lives were quickly reformed, without my insisting upon the precepts of mo- rality and spending time in repeated harangues upon external duties." Such were the Scripture truths enforced by Brainerd — the momentous facts of prime moment to every man, savage and civilized alike — the preaching of which has ever been 144 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. mighty to the pulling down of strongholds and stirring those depths of the soul which need to be stirred. Like the apostles he did not wait for the slow processes of school education, but addressed himself first of all and mainly to adults. The other chief element of Brainerd's power as a missionary was his prayerfulness. That habit characterized him from the earliest period of his religious life. Before entering upon , . work among the Indians his iour- Prayerfulness. . "* nal contains memoranda such as these : " God enabled me so to agonize in prayer that I was quite wet with perspiration, though in the shade and the cool wind. My soul was drawn out very much from the world for multitudes of souls." ' Once entered upon labor in behalf of the red men he says : " My great concern was for the conversion of the heathen to God, and the Lord helped me to speak for them." " Praying incessantly every moment with sweet fervency." "I feel as if my all was lost and I was undone for this world if the poor heathen may not be con- verted." " In prayer I was exceedingly en- larged." "Spent a great part of the day (December 19, 1744) in prayer to God for the outpouring of his Spirit on my poor people." » Note 26. DAVID BEAINERD. 145 In journeying from place to place, before preach- ing and after preaching, and even in his dreams supplication for individuals and for the people at large was the business of his heart. As a prince he had power with God and with men. Such a wrestler could not but prevail. His faith removed mountains. The student or mis- sionary who receives no impulse to prayer, to self-scrutiny, to heartiest consecration, from a perusal of Brainerd's memoir must either have made very rare attainments in the divine life or else have very languid aspirations. Given such preaching and praying by all ministers and missionaries, how long before the world would be converted ? Owing to the progress of pulmonary con- sumption he was compelled to leave the work in 1747. Deducting the time occupied by two short visits to New England, by other short absences, and the weeks during which he was laid aside owing to sickness — at one time con- fined nearly four months — there , ,1 , , Brief Period. remain less than two years and a half for actual labor '~araong' the Delawares. Enough is known to authorize the statement that since apostolic days there has probably not been a case in which, all things consid- ered, such religious results have attended the brief labors of a solitary missionary among pagan men of the woods. It was nearly six 146 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. years after his arrival in Burmah before Judson baptized a convert; seven years before Mora- vians rejoiced over a converted Greenlander; fifteen years before the pioneer band — thirty in number — of the London society's mission to the South Seas were cheered by a conversion on Tahiti; and a quarter of a century before Rhenish missionaries among the Hereroes of South Western Africa began to gather fruit from their sowing. During Brainerd's four years of missionary life he had no comfortable home. At different places of sojourn he successively built for him- self a cabin, in each instance rude and most scantily furnished. Suitable food, medicine, and nursing were rare. Great exposures were frequent; hardships constant; debility and sick- ness inevitable. Hectic fever, night sweats, and hemorrhages from the lunes were Last Days. ^ f „^ a natural consequence, l^ew men so reduced in bodily strength would have re- mained as long at their post. March 20, 1747, occurred his last interview with the Delawares, though not at the time supposed by him to be such. After the expiration of nearly a month from that date he left New Jersey; and, hop- ing still for improved health, proceeded by slow stages to New England, and after a month's time arrived at Northampton. One object was to consult a physician in that place. A part DAVID BRAINERD. 147 of June and July was spent in Boston. Re- turning to Northampton and to the house of President Edwards, he continued to suffer and to fail. The longed-for departure came Octo- ber 9, 1747. Anticipating the event, he often called it "that glorious day!" In our day a distinguished French artist ' at twenty-nine was decorated with the badge of the Legion of Honor ; a century before that David Brain erd at the same age,^ amidst ten thousand times ten thousand and thousands of thousands, received the crown of glory that fadeth not away. ' Paul Gustave Dore. '^ Note 27. vn DANISH MISSIONS. Denmark, though territorially so small, has eminence in four things. Her population is said to be better supplied with Bibles than that of any other country ; her government was the first in Europe to furnish education for the whole people, and is today expending more per capita for that purpose than any other nation in the old world ; she was the first to proscribe the slave trade ; and the first on the Continent, in the eighteenth century, to send missionaries to the heathen. It was, how- ever, in Germany that the revived evangelical spirit two hundred years ago took its rise, and out of that revival arose foreign missions. The first missionaries and a large majority of their successors in the early Danish movement were from Germany ; funds for their support to no inconsiderable amount were supplied from the same source, while the really directing mind of that enterprise was also in Germany. It DANISH inSSIONS. 149 might therefore be suitably denominated Ger- mano-Danish. Our attention may well be drawn to that little kingdom by an ancestral interest. Not more truly is England our mother country than Denmark is a mother country of the English. Thence came the language, the name, and the invading race — Angles — with whom, in the fifth century, begins the history of the English people — English as distinguished from antecedent British. With the bold Angles — a name still found in the duchy of Holstein — was early associated a neigh- 1 . 1 1 • 1 1 • Anglo-Saxons, boring people, kindred in race and speech, and hence arose the designation Anglo-Saxons. In that jirimeval homestead, that England older than Old England, is an early historic fountain of the blood now cours- ing through our veins. Present Anglo-Saxon enterprise, whether maritime or evangelistic, had its counterpart at that period when the Northmen became a terror in nearly all the waters of Europe, establishing a place for them- selves in France, plundering Paris, and giving their name to Normandy; pushing their way up the Guadalquivir; measuring prowess with the Moors of Spain ; sacking Seville ; founding a new kingdom in Naples; and assisting in the capture of Sidon. They were " the Arabs of the deep." Such was the terror inspired gen- 150 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. erally by the Vikings during this long preda- tory period that in the ninth century these words were added to the Litany, " From the rage of the Northmen, good Lord, deliver us ! " ' Early in the eleventh century the Danes, hav- ing conquered a part of Scotland and the whole of England, set their own king (Ca- nute) on the throne, and he became the most powerful monarch of his time. At the close of the fourteenth century Denmark ranked among the leading powers of Europe — Margaret, the Semiramis of the North, having by her courage and address united the three crowns of Den- mark, Sweden, and Norway. Frederick IV, whose name stands connected with the earliest Protestant mission of the eighteenth century, came to the throne in 1699. He found the treasury exhausted, commerce crippled, and the kingdom labor- ing under heavy difficulties. His struggle with Charles XH of Sweden, that thunderbolt of war, only increased embarrass- ments. But the Spirit of God was at work preparing the way for a movement that should mark an epoch in the history of Protestantism. Already while crown prince the king had re- flected on the condition of the heathen, and since coming to the throne he had consulted his spiritual adviser. Dr. Jespersen, in regard * A furore Normannorum libera nos, Domine. DANISH MISSIONS. 161 to sending Christian laborers among his Finnish subjects in Lapland. " Kings shall be thy nurs- ing fathers " was predicted of old ; and today the saying may be heard in Denmark when anything noble or beautiful takes place, " This proceeds from the king." But how came Frederick's thoughts to move in the direction of India ? The wealth flowing to other nations of Europe from the East India trade had, a century before, stimulated the enterprise of Denmark also, and in spite of numerous failures she made repeated attempts to find a northwest passage to Eastern Asia. At length the domination of Roman Catholic powers, especially Portugal, began to wane.' The Danes, as well as the Dutch, relinquishing the long cherished idea of a highway to In- dia through Behring Strait, and accepting the route by the Cape of Good Hope, acquired colonial possessions in the East. In the year 1621 Denmark purchased from the Rajah of Tanjore a permanent footing on the Coroman- del Coast, and the mind of any one on the throne might well be impressed with a sense of obligation to his pagan subjects. The immediate occasion of this new move- ment was a widow's distress. One evening in the month of March, 1705, Frederick sits read- ' Alex J. D. D'Orsey : Portuguese Discoveries, Dependencies, and Missions in Asia and Africa. London, 1893. 162 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. ing petitions from his people. Among them is one from a widow whose husband and eldest son, belonging to the garrison at Tranquebar, have been murdered by the natives. She asks aid for herself and her five remaining children. The king affords help ; but immediately sends for his chaplain, Dr. Liitkens, whom '^*^'"' he had called the j^ear before from Berlin, to consult with him about a mission to India. The good man enters warmly into the plan, and, though in a time of war, he is com- missioned to look out for candidates. They are not, however, to be found in Denmark.' The new spiritual life, reproachfully termed " Pietism," having Halle for its center, was felt but slightly in this neighboring kingdom ; and Frederick authorized his court preacher, who had been his religious instructor in youth, to seek missionaries elsewhere. Dr. Liitkens' ac- quaintance in Germany led to a correspondence which brought to light two young graduates from Halle — Henry Pliitschau and ,.. ."^^ . Bartholomew Ziegenbalg. In 1811 Missionaries. ° ^ the American Board sent to Eng- land for pecuniary cooperation ; a century ear- lier Denmark sent to Germany for men. The parents of Ziegenbalg died when he was young. One incident of his mother's last days he could never forget. Gathering the family 'Note 29. DANISH MISSIONS. 153 round her bed she said, " Dear children, I have a great treasure for you — a very great treas- ure have I collected for you." The eldest daughter asked where it was. "Seek it in the Bible, my dear children," answered the dy- ing woman ; " there you will find it. I have watered every page with my tears." The first Protestant mission to India originated in the heart of a praying mother. " There is a river the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God." The death of Ziegenbalg's father was also attended by noteworthy circumstances. A fire broke out in the place of his residence — Pulsnitz, a town sixteen miles northwest from Dresden — and reached the house where he lay unable to move. In their agitation friends could think of no way to remove the helpless man except by placing him in the cofiin which for some time had been in readi- ness, and being thus carried out to the market place he died there. In childhood Ziegenbalg exhibited unusual seriousness. As a youth he maintained habits of devotion which made him the target of ridicule for his schoolmates. Visiting various universities he nowhere found students like- minded with himself nor teachers so faithful as at Halle. From 1694 to 1730 that was the leading German university, and at the time of Ziegenbalg's stay there it was the focus of 154 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. a spiritual revival. In conversation one day Francke said to him regarding the heathen of India, " If one can truly lead a soul to God from amongst that people it is as much as winning a hundred in Europe, for these latter have each day means and opportunities suffi- cient for their conversion, while the former are entirely without them." That remark made a lasting impression upon him. He and a friend of his, Von der Linde, entered into a covenant, as follows : " We will seek nothing else in the world but the glory of God's name, the spread of God's kingdom, the propagation of divine truth, the salvation of our neighbor, and the constant sanctification of our own souls, wherever we may be and whatever of cross-bearing and suffering it may occasion us." Study was much interrupted by ill health, for he suffered from bodily weakness ; yet he and Pliitschau, his friend at the university, had become known by their acquirements, their piety, and their traits of character as qualified for such an undertaking in the distant East. It is one of the noticeable coincidences, often recurring in the history of missions, that Pro- fessor Francke, the founder of the Orphan House at Halle, had just been conferring with Ziegenbalg in regard to personal service among the heathen when the unlooked-for inquiry came from Copenhagen. DANISH MISSIONS. 155 To become pioneers at that time was a very different thing from what it is now to make an offer of foreign service. No healthful gen- eral sentiment on the subject existed. The charge of presumption had to be met, for not till years after Ziegenbalg's death did the labors of Eliot and the May hews 1 1 • /^ -nr The Period. become known in (rermany.' More trying still, the young men were pronounced enthusiasts and fools. But their purpose was not to be shaken. Commended to the king and to his worthy chaplain the two students went to Denmark, were ordained, and sailed (November 29, 1705) for the East Indies. The enterprise might be further denominated Dano- Hallensian. It should not be imagined that at the capital any general interest was felt in this movement. /Nor should too favorable an inference be drawn I regarding the religious character of Frederick IV. The fact that Cyrus liberated the chosen people did not prove him to be a worshiper of the true God. Pope Gregory the Great, who bought Anglo-Saxon youths at the slave market to edu- cate them as missionaries for Britain, and who sent zealous Augustine on the same errand, was not altogether a model of piety. Frederick, while not upon so low a level as the average * Professor Nitzsch, in Piper's Zeugen der Warheit, I, p. 613. 156 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. of contemporary monarchs, is not reported to have been a faultless man.' Nor was the sen- timent of Copenhagen very deeply religious. No crowded audiences gave the young men welcome or farewell. With few exceptions people looked upon the missionaries as enthusi- asts. The thought of effort to save others, and especially the heathen, was remote from the general mind. Self-seeking ruled the day. In Heligoland, not far from the track of our mis- sionaries' outward voyage, the inhabitants sub- sisted in part by wrecking, and their pastor, even down to the present century, prayed every Sabbath morning for a fresh supply of ship- wrecks.* On the nineteenth of July, 1706, the two missionaries reached their destined haven, after a voyage of two hundred and twenty- three days, including a short stop at the Cape of Good Hope. Tranquebar, at that time a Danish possession, on the Coromandel Coast, was the merest foot- hold. It had an area of only fifteen square miles, with a fortified seaport and about twenty smaller towns or vil- lages within the district. The population was not far from fifteen thousand. One hundred and forty miles southwest from Madras, it is * Schlosser : History of the Eighteenth Century. Translated London, 1845. ' Hurst's Life and Literature in the Fatherland, p. 392. DANISH ]\nSSIONS. 157 situated at the mouth of one branch of the Cavery, that sacred stream which traverses My- sore, and then, visiting the Carnatic, imparts productiveness there — the very Nile of the peninsula. Its delta is unsurpassed in fer- tility b}^ any other on the globe. This is India, and yet of that vast territory only a fraction. Survey that enormous triangle, nearly equilateral, each side not far short of two thousand miles — an area equal to Europe; equal t6~'the United States east of the Rocky Mountains. (The southern apex (Cape Comorin) is as far from the Himalayas as Gibraltar is from Iceland.) Within these boundaries are found one in_ey.ery five of the entire present population of our globe, one country alone having a larger number. The Roman Empire in its widest extent never had half as many millions as are here congregated. Politically India is not a country, but a con- geries of countries. You may count consider- ably more than one hundred separate states, to which the imperial government of Great Britain holds relations of varying supervision. Racial differences are numerous, and all grades of civ- ilization are found here. Would you communi- cate with the people in all their vernaculars ? Your polyglot will not fall short of two hun- dred languages, including dialects. Traversing India you will find it the land of peacocks, of 158 PKOTESTANT MISSIONS. elephants, of tigers, of lions too ; hence such titles as Singe, Lion, and the like. It is also the land of serpents. Official returns show- that from fifteen thousand to twenty thousand "^ of the inhabitants are annually victims of wild beasts, crocodiles, and deadly snakes. Few of the more valuable productions of any climate can be named which are not found here. Wherever practicable, rice is cultivated — the article which sustains a greater number of hu- man beings than any other plant and which yields to the acre the largest amount of nutri- ment. India is preeminently the land of palms, that are unsurpassed in gracefulness and beauty. Nowhere else does the banyan attain such di- mensions. There is one in Guzerat under the canopy of which five regiments of soldiers may find complete shelter from the sun's rays. The circuit of its outer stems measures two thou- sand feet. Quot rami, tot arhores. India has immemorially enriched the West. To have its carrying trade has always been a guaranty of wealth. Herodotus, a contempo- rary of Nehemiah, reported it as the most opu- lent country in the world. Its foreign trade in our day is eighty odd million dollars a year India has long been known as the land of gold, though it has no mines of that precious metal. Better than such, the balance of trade has uni- formly been in her favor. Reputed riches have DANISH MISSIONS. 159 long tempted the trader and the invader. Fol- low up the Ganges through the region of Hin- dustan proper to the great rocky barrier and its Khyber Pass, the northwest gate to India; through that Alexander led his Macedonian troops, three hundred years before Christ, and through that have since poured not less than seven eventful invasions. Over this land, where the sun shineth in his strength, there broods a hoary antiquity. Be- fore the first step toward the foundation of Rome was taken — indeed before Abraham built his first altar in Canaan — the Rig- Veda was a religious authority in India. While our remote ancestors were still rude barbarians in Great Britain civilized men were here mounted on elephants, were living in palaces, and possessed of a literature which Western scholars of today are exploring with wonder. India has imme- morially stimulated the Occidental imagination. The fascination is not yet wholl}'' dissipated. At Tranquebar — which in size is related to the rest of India as Denmark is to the conti- nent of Europe — was established the first per- manent Protestant mission on this widespread mainland. The previous history of these Danes in the line of evangelization in the East was not particularly creditable. During the war waged between them and their neighbors in Bengal it was a common practice to treat the crews of 160 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. captured privateers as slaves ; to baptize them, and then sell them at a price varying from five to ten piasters apiece. While we accord to Denmark priority in establishing a stable mission to the heathen of continental India, we at the same time raise the question, Why had she, a Christian power, held this possession full fourscore years without evangelizing her Hindu subjects? It is small relief to hear in reply that England had, even for a century, been guilty of similar remissness. Ziegenbalg and Pliitschau not going out in the employ of a voluntary society nor of a church board, but with a commission bearing the sign manual of the king, it might be ex- pected that their reception would have at least the forms of courtesy. So far from that there was positive unkindness. After „ ^! ^ landing thev were left for hours Experiences. ° '^ under a burning sun just outside the gates and then in the market place. But they had an interest with the King of kings. " For, as we had no human being," say they, " near us of whom we could ask advice as to how this or that should be begun, we went always to our dear Father in heaven and laid everything before him in prayer, and we were heard and supported by him both in advice and in deed." They had been students under Francke, whose motto was, Ora et labora. DANISH MISSIONS. 161 The climate is enervating. The Carnatic is the most intensely tropical part of India. They had come to a region where Brahmanism was more imperious than in almost any other district and Romanism no less unscrupulous than elsewhere, and where, by their own coun- trymen, their work was deemed visionary. In- deed, an attempt to Christianize the natives was regarded as intrusive. Even the Danish chaplain looked coldly upon these Christian brethren. The}^ had few precedents, except in the Acts of the Apostles. They addressed themselves as soon as practicable to the study of Tamil, the chief language of that region. Dictionary and grammar did not exist nor competent native teachers. The Portuguese — the first Europeans to secure possessions there — had left their language, as well as numerous descendants, behind them — the one about as mixed and corrupt as the other. The Indo- Portuguese dialect and the purer language of Portuguese literature our missionaries endeav- ored to master, that they might make them- selves useful to that portion of the people. After months of disappointing efforts to break through the barriers that hedged in the Tamil they took a native school, with its master, into their house ; and they might be seen sitting on the ground among the children, tracing with them letters, syllables, and words in the 162 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. sand.' Mastery of the vernacular should al- ways be the first endeavor of a missionary. Ziegenbalg began a dictionary which, in the course of two years, contained twenty thousand words and expressions — one column in Tamil character, one in Roman style, and a third the meaning in German. Four years later it had grown to forty thou- sand words and phrases. The vernacular liter- ature of India is chiefly in the form of poetry, and Ziegenbalg constructed a poetical lexicon of seventeen thousand words and phrases — not, however, without the aid of native amanuenses. Before the close of the year after their ar- rival they began to catechise in Portuguese, and at the beginning of the next year in Tamil. They opened a school in German for the benefit of Europeans who understood that language. Early in their work this record was made, "If the Lord shall be pleased to grant us the conversion of but one soul among the heathens we shall think our voyage sufficiently rewarded " — a thought repeatedly expressed. Ten months from the time they set foot on the coast of India the first baptism took place (May, 1707), when five slaves, after undergoing examination, received that ordinance. Many slaves were held by the Danes and Germans, as it was no unusual thing for the natives in 'Note 30. DANISH MISSIONS. 163 times of great scarcity to sell themselves for food and raiment. Better accommodation for worship was now needed; the ship, however, which had come in brought neither funds nor an encouraging word. But Ziegenbalg was a man of strong faith. "We begin," he writes, "in great poverty, but in firm trust and confidence in God, to build in a great street in the city." "Many mocked at us, but some were moved to pity and to helping us." Two months after laying the corner stone they dedicated (August 7, 1IQ7) their new place of worship — the earliest Prot- estant chapel for natives on the continent of Asia, as the one erected more than a century later (1822) at Bombay by missionaries of the American Board was the first on the west coast of India.' The two missionaries now began to preach twice every Sunday, both in Tamil and Portu- guese, besides holding catechetical exercises on several days of the week.^ They had also opened schools. Their heart was in the work. " We cannot express," say they, " what a tender love we bear toward our new planted congre- gations. Nay, our love is arrived to that de- gree, and our forwardness to serve this nation ' Note 31. "Pliitschau, as well as Griindler, afterwards preached in Portuguese. 164 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. is come to that pitch, that we are resolved to live and die with them." Their engagement was for only five years. At length, in the midsummer of 1708, a ship arrived from Denmark, bringing only half the promised amount of funds ; but a part of the cargo, in being landed, through the careless- ness of -drunken sailors went to the bottom and with it the thousand rix-dollars of mission money, never to be recovered. The hostile com- mandant and his attaches only jeered, saying they had always been right in declaring that heaven was high above the missionaries' heads and Copenhagen very far away ! Disappoint- ^j^^ Danish officials and most of ments. the European residents at Tranque- bar had gone there for worldly purposes, and the mere presence and evangelical faithfulness of such men as these missionaries were a silent rebuke to the ungodly. The commandant and the whole privy council maintained opposition and seemed bent upon crushing the good work. Ziegenbalg felt constrained to appeal directly to King Frederick for protection in his own behalf and in behalf of the congregation, which, within less than three years, had increased to one hundred souls, besides the candidates for baptism. One royal order after another was sent out enjoining favor toward the mission, but in vain. DANISH MISSIONS. 165 "In perils by mine own countrymen." Zie- genbalg was unjustly thrown into prison, con- fined there for four mouths, and so closely guarded that no outsider could get access to him. During the first month of confinement even pen and ink were denied him. But the One who stood by Paul and Silas at Philippi, by Judson at Ava, by Worcester and Butler in the penitentiary of Georgia, stood by Ziegen- balg in the Danish dungeon at Tranquebar. The injured man showed a forgiving spirit. Whatever else might be refused he could not be denied the luxury of praying for his perse- cutors. If they would go to the „ . . , , ■, Maltreatment. extreme oi injury he would go to the extreme of love. Thus he conquered the commandant, whose name was Hassius, a Norwegian by birth. Released from confine- ment, the injured man found his congregation scattered — intimidation and persecution having done their work — and he must begin anew. But the cruel proceeding was overruled for good. "Our imprisonment," Ziegenbalg wrote, "has been as a bell ringing far and wide throughout Europe to awaken many thousand souls to compassionate us and our young and [growing community." At length friendly letters, remittances of money, and John Ernest Griindler, as a reen- forcement, arrived (1709). He, too, had taken 166 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. his degree at Halle. He conceived so ardent a desire to carry the gospel to the heathen that he was ready to go out at his own charges if no other way presented. Polycarp Jordan, a fellow student, did follow at his own expense. Though a German, Griindler, like his two pred- ecessors, went to Copenhagen for ordination, together with John Bovingh, who was one of a reenforcement, but he proved a marplot in the mission. Griindler, truly happy in his work, became one of the ablest of Christian laborers. This excellent man sur- een orce- -^-^g^j ]^jg friend ' Ziegenbalg only ments. o o j a year, and the tombs of the two are on opposite sides of the altar in the Jeru- salem Church at Tranquebar, as the remains f of Luther and Melanchthon, similarly disposed, H.ie in the old Castle Church at Wittenberg. Not only was a reenforcement of ordained men sent out, but also a printing press — funds being furnished by friends in England — and a German printer. The ship which carried press and printer, sailing from England (1711), was captured by a privateer at Rio de Janeiro and the cargo seized, but the printing press, being stored away in the hold, escaped. In a simi- lar way, at the close of the century, the Lon- don Missionary Society's ship, the Duff, suffered ' Beide waren in Wahrheit ein Herz und eine Seele. C. C. J. Schmidt. Ill, p. 123. DANISH MISSIONS. 167 capture by the privateer Bonaparte on the South American Coast. This press was the first set up by Protestant Christians in Hin- dustan' (1710). ) Ziegenbalg's zeal could not be restricted to the narrow territory of Tranquebar. Dressed in native costume, like William Chalmers Burns and others more recently in China, he made excursions, visiting Madras and Nagapatam, and devoting more or less time to labors at Cudda- lore beneath the banyan where 1 ... -, Ziegenbalg's now stand a mission house and Ardor. church. He endeavored to obtain admittance to Tanjore, but the Danes had shown such intense greed of gain as effectually prejudiced the natives against his approach. Wherever practicable he exerted himself in be- half of heathens, Mohammedans, and Catholics. There was a touch of Martin Luther about him. Malignant opposition of Romanists made the Tranquebar missionary cry out in prayer: " May the Lord of hosts, whose work we de- sign to promote, perfect us and gather unto himself at last a church and peculiar people from among this wild multitude of heathens ! And then let the Devil and his infernal herd rage against it to the utmost; we know there is an overruling Power confining him to such ' Note 32. 168 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. boundaries as he will not be able to pass." Bold, ardent, courageous, and somewhat impul- sive, he was occasionally betrayed into appar- ent rashness, as when on one occasion he de- molished an idol in the presence of heathen worshipers. Pliitschau, faithful but quiet, and somewhat deficient in force of character, having com- pleted the period of his engagement (five years) and suffering from impaired health, re- turned home in 1711. Three years later Zie- genbalg paid a visit to Europe. ^"suid ^^^^^'^ ^®^® difficulties which he hoped a personal conference with the directors of the Danish East India Com- pany and with the College of Missions would enable him to remove. Speaking of his de- parture he wrote : ' " Every one of our young men and old men have wet my hands and my feet with tears." \Penmark was then at war with Sweden; but the king received our returned missionary as he had Pliitschau, very graciously, at Stral- sund in Pomerania, which he was then besieg- ing. Ziegenbalg naturally visited Copenhagen. At Halle and elsewhere in Germany his pres- ence awakened interest ; his preaching was elo- quent, and crowds thronged to hear him. The Duke of Wiirtemberg favored collections being ' He left Tranquebar October 26, 1714. DANISH MISSIONS. 169 taken up throughout his dominion. In return- ing to India our niissionary — now accompanied ,by a help meet for him — went to England, where he had an audience with George I and the royal family, preached repeatedly in the Savoy and royal chapel, and received many contributions for the work in India. His stay, though not long, was the occasion of new in- terest in the cause of missions to the heathen. But religious life was then at a low ebb. As on the Continent, latitudinarianism and spiritual languor prevailed. Throughout the Church of England, and to a sad extent also among dis- senting bodies, a semi-pagan praise of virtue (ir^tead of Christ and him crucified filled the pulpit, and a semi-rationalism was spreading. The next year after Ziegenbalg's return ' to Tranquebar (1717) over thirty natives were admitted by baptism to the Christian commu- nity and the year following upwards of fifty. In the course of twelve years' active service he performed no small amount of literary labor. On his vojage to Europe just referred to he took with him a Tamil boy for the sake of continued exercise in the language, and then commenced in Latin a grammar of the Tamil, which to this day is not wholly superseded. In the same manner, more than a century later (1845), Judson, when he sailed from ' He arrived March, 1716. 170 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. Literary Labors. Maulmain for Boston, took with him two na- tive assistants that he might continue his prep- aration of the Burmese dictionary. Ziegenbalg engaged in the transhition of several minor productions, some of them from the Halle stock of literature. Choice German hymns were ren- dered into Tamil. But his chief work was the translation of the entire New Testament and a portion of the Old Testament, as far as the Book of Ruth. This formed the basis of the Tamil Scriptures now in use. It has the defects characteristic of many translations of the Scrip- tures — it was not idiomatic' Thus two hun- dred years after Luther's immortal work the first version of God's Word into a language of India was made. It should be added that the Tamil belongs to the Dravidian, the Southern great stock of languages, and though the San- skrit element is large — forty per cent — it is less than in most others. The area of Tamil- speaking natives is about the same as that of England and Wales, and the Tamulians are the most important family of peoples in the south- ,ern part of the peninsula. But neither the Sanskrit, that mother of languages, unsurpassed by any other, living or dead, in its power of precision and expansion, nor the English, so much coveted by young Hindustan, nor any Note 33. DANISH MISSIONS. 171 other foreign tongue can be the medium of general evangelization. That must be the office of vernaculars. Ziegenbalg wisely set about the translation of our Holy Scriptures into the Tamil. The first edition of the New Testament was issued in 1716. Since that date versions of a part or the whole of the Bible have been made into perhaps threescore other native languages, to say nothing of sundry vari- ous tentative translations. India has thus been enriched beyond all that Golconda ever yielded. Do we hold to the unique divine inspiration of our canon, and, while conceding the human elements, yet do we bow to the volume as su- premely authoritative? To the apprehension of the Hindu there are scores of productions in his sacred literature that issued as the very breath from the mouth of the Self-existent. The pundit deems our Bible puny. His own divine writings he pronounces a fathomless, shoreless ocean. With him vastness is a crite- rion of excellence. He revels in the intermi- ,^ . __ ^ 'nable. Does the reading of three great epics — ^^L,x^t,^^' the Iliad^ the j^Meid, and Paradise Lost — seem '^A^^;^*?'^ a rather formidable undertaking in our busy age? The great epic of India, the Mahahha- rata^ is double the length of those three com- bined. Time is of small value in the East. Hindu imagination revels in vague immensity and inane prolixity. 2.CC- '-^ 172 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. Marshall, who devotes two stout volumes to disparaging Protestant missionaries, remarks : " Of Ziegenbalg but little need he said, for it does not appear that his life supplies any ma- terial for history." ' To lead the first mission which carried the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ to continental India ; to do this in spite of prejudice, misconception, derision, apathy^ and calumny (one pamphlet pronounced him " a Pietist and an impious idiot ") ; to give the book of the new covenant in their own lan- guage to a people numbering fifteen millions, from whom Romish propagandists had with- held it for more than a century ; to consume strength in a self-denying, persistent devotion to the highest interests of a pagan people, some of whom are now praising God in glory — will strike others as not unworthy of record. "Far in the East I see upleap The streaks of first forewarning, And they who sowed tlie light shall reap The golden sheaves of morning." Cotton Mather, to whom Ziegenbalg had writ- ten in Latin, replies in the same language: "A work how illustrious ! how celestial ! how sub- lime ! O, thrice and four times happy they who are ministers of God in such a work ! Happy though never so much harrassed with • Christian Missions, I, p. 280. DANISH MISSIONS. 173 labors and watchings and perpetual troubles! Happy beyond all expression did they but know their own happiness ! " ' A purse made up by young gentlemen in Boston was for- warded to Ziegenbalg in aid of his charity schools. Prayer, also, was elicited in behalf of the work carried on at Tranquebar.'' The Archbishop of Canterbury, writing to Ziegen- balg and Griindler (on New Year's Day), says : " I consider your lot is far higher than all church dignities. Let others be prelates, patriarchs, and popes ; let them be adorned with purple and scarlet ; let them desire bow- ings and genuflections — yoi\ have won a greater honor than all these." Ziegenbalg had overworked. Perplexities wore upon him. Discouragements are peculiarly re- laxing and disheartening in the tropics. Amidst his valuable labors fatal sickness came upon him, and the twenty-third day of February, 1719, was his last on earth.^ He asked to have the hymn sung: "Jesus, my Redeemer, lives; Christ, my trust, is dead no more."* Putting his hands to his eyes he exclaimed: ' Opus quam illustre, quam celeste, quam sublime, etc. 2 Note 34. ^ Dock die Nacht kam noch vor mittag. Baierlein, p. 84. * Jesus, vieine Zuversicht. By Louisa Henrietta Ton Branden- burg, wife of the Great Elector, Frederick William. 174 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. " How is it all so clear ? It seems as if the /sun were shining in my eyes ! " At thirty-six I years of age Clive, the hero of Plassey and Vl founder of the British Empire in India, was U-aised to the peerage ; at thirty-six Ziegenbalg was raised to a place among those "made kings and priests unto God and his Father." Thirty- six was the age of John Mayhew when he closed his missionary work on Martha's Vine- I yard and when Samuel J. Mills was committed ' to the great cemetery of the sea. At the same age Ann Haseltine Judson, the first American woman who resolved to go to India as a mis- sionary, was buried beneath a widespreading Hopia tree in Burmah ; and the same year, at the same age, Gordon Hall, the first American imissionary in Bombay, amidst the agonies of Asiatic cholera, on the veranda of a heathen Itemple, exclaimed three times, " Glory to thee, P God ! " and then fell asleep in Jesus. vin CHRISTIAN FREDERICK SCHWARTZ "We will station ourselves for a moment in the heart of Germany at the middle of the 18th century. Frederick the Great, self-reliant, per- sistent, skeptical, with a penetrating genius, but without exalted ideas, is midway in his brilliant and checkered course. The peace of Aix-la- Chapelle (1748) ended the eight , -ffT ^ , n. , • ri Germany, 1750. years War ot the Austrian Suc- cession and secured a breathing time before the seven years' War of the Spanish Succession. Iri the world of letters a new era is dawning — the birth epoch of a literature varied and rich. Klopstock, always more praised than read, has produced the first cantos of his Messiah. Less- ing, with his strong German genius and lan^ guage, is just coming upon the stage and will give impulse to the national mind, especially in the line of independent thought. The noble Gellert, of Leipzig, shows a classic ease and keen good sense, which delight the entire pub- 176 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. lie, even peasants, one of whom leaves a cart- load of firewood at his door as an acknowledg- ment of what he has enjoyed in reading the poet's fables. Good-natured " Father Gleira " indicates the new tendency of utter frivolity. " From my earliest days," says he, " I have had a thought of writing a book like the Bible." The result was a treatise thoroughly common- place and valueless on virtue. The philosophy of Leibnitz and Wolf is making inroads upon pietism, which has lost somewhat of its vitality and is, to a certain extent, growing narrow and censorious. Semler, who inaugurates a move- ment issuing speedily in rationalism, is called (1751) to Halle, and Michaelis, who contrib- utes to the same result, is installed at Got- tingen (1750). Emanuel Swedenborg occupies himself with what he is j)leased to call reve- lations. English deism, previously introduced into France, has been transplanted into Ger- many and is yielding baleful fruits. , The age is one of hoUowness ; few truly great men, few conspicuous men with noble motives, are any- where to be foLindrf It was in 1750 that Christian Frederick Schwartz, better known to English and Amer- ican readers than any other German missionary, one of the more eminent men of the eighteenth century, sailed for Tranquebar. He was born (October 26, 1726) at Sonnenburg in Prussia, chuistiAn" prederice: schwartz. 17 T fifty miles east from Berlin — a place now de- cayed, but of note when the Knights of St. John made it one of their seats and held fes- tivals there. Unlike the crusaders Schwartz and his townsman, Schultze, another able mis- sionary, were true standard bearers of the cross in the East. Like many another missionary Schwartz had a pious mother, who died during his infancy, but who, just before decease, in- formed her husband and her pastor that she had dedicated this son to the Lord; and she obtained from them the pledge that he should be informed of this, should be trained accordingly, and, if he chose the sacred ministry, they would give him encouragement. The year of his entering the gymnasium at Kiistrin (1740), whither his father accompanied him on foot, was the same with the accession of Frederick the Great, who, ten years before, had been a prisoner in this fortified town. A young lady interested herself in his spiritual welfare, loaning him a work' by the celebrated August Hermann Francke, which made a deep impression on his mind and marked the turning point in his life. Among the lectures which he attended at the University of Halle were those of the professor just named (Francke). He was recommended to take lessons in Tamil, with a view to assist ' SeegensvoUe Fusstapen. 178 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. Schultze, a returned missionary from Madras, in carrying Tamil works through the press for use in India. Such is the immediate occasion of his thoughts being turned toward that part of the world. Provided his father's approval can be obtained he proposes to offer himself as a missionary. But great obstacles stand in the way. Christian Frederick being the eldest son is looked upon as the chief hope of the family, so that no one supposes parental consent can be had. With great seriousness the young candidate states his wishes and his motive. The father very suitably takes a few days to consider, mentioning the time when his deci- sion will be made known. At the hour named he comes down from his chamber, gives his blessing, bids him go in God's name, forgetting native land and kindred that he may win souls to Christ. The mother's dedication is thus crowned with the father's benediction. Resign- ing his patrimony to younger members of the family he hastens back to Halle, and, though he receives within a few days the offer of an eligible situation in the ministry at home, hav- ing put his hand to the plow he will not look back. You recall the similar case of Horton, Brainerd, Hall, and many another. The spiritual life of German churches has at this time evidently declined, yet a warm cur- CHRISTIAN FREDERICK SCHWARTZ. 179 rent may still be traced and there are a few who sympathize with Schwartz. Some sweet singers of Israel there are to whom the prom- ised glories of Messiah's kingdom do not seem visionary, and although hymnody has lost much of its freshness and power the deeply pious Tersteegen is in his advanced prime ; so is Hiller, who composed more than a thousand hymns. That was the time when the first strictly missionary hymn appeared in the Ger- man language, under the title, "A prayer to the Lord to send faithful laborers into his har- vest, that his Word may be spread over all the world." It was composed (1749) by Charles Henry von Bogatsky, author of the well-known Grolden Treasury. The author states that it was written at a time when the Lord specially stirred him up to pray for the extension of his kingdom by means of devoted Christian work- ers.' The hymn is still a favorite at mission- ary meetings in Germany. It consists of four- teen stanzas and begins : Wach auf, du Geist der ersten Zeugen. "Awake, thou Spirit, who of old Didst fire the watchmen of the Church's youth, Who faced the foe, unshrinking, bold. Who witnessed day and night the eternal truth ; Whose voices through the world are ringing still. And bringing hosts to know and do thy will!" ' Kiibler's Historical Notes to Lyra Germanica, p. 41. 180 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. With a song in his heart Schwartz goes on his way. Like his predecessors in the Ger- mano-Danish mission he proceeds, in company with two other candidates, to Copenhagen for ordination (September, 1749). They take Eng- land in their way to India. While they were lying in Falmouth Harbor, where contrary winds detained them for a month (March, 1750), "an inhabitant of the town," so writes Schwartz, " came on board who had been pow- erfully awakened by Mr. Whitefield," which suggests that a favorable change has begun in the religious condi- tion of Great Britain compared with the time, half a century earlier, when the first two mis- sionaries, Ziegenbalg and Pliitschau, were on their way to India. This side the ocean in 1750 we see the Moravian Zeisberger also fas- tening his eye upon the Six Nations ; three years since David Brainerd fell asleep in Jesus and his brother John succeeded him ; Jolm Ser- geant, missionary among the Indians in West- ern Massachusetts, died one year ago (1749); and Jonathan Edwards, dismissed from North- ampton the present season, will soon succeed him in the same work (1751). When Schwartz reached India (July, 1750) it was in the midst of protracted struggles for ascendancy between the French and English.' 'G. B. Malleson : History of the Frtnch in India. London, 1893. CHRISTIAN FREDERICK SCHWARTZ. 181 Each sought alliance, now with one, now with another, native prince, till the strife carried desolation to many portions of the Carnatic. English power finally gains ascendancy. For the interests of the kingdom of God that re- sult, in his good providence, bids fair to prove scarcely less important than the corresponding supremacy which the English instead of the French achieved at the same period on this Western Continent. It was in 1750 that Clive, who went out two years before as a writer in the employ of the East India Company, cap- tured Arcot, the capital of the Carnatic. The disturbed state of that country does not hinder our missionary from settling down quietly to his work at Tranquebar. He enters upon a field already cultivated to some extent. We revert for a moment to that earlier period at which our survey in the preceding lecture closed. The next year after Zie- ,1,1.1.1 1 The Mission. genbalgs death three new col- leagues arrived, one of whom was Benjamin Schultze, an excellent linguist. He was some- what familiar with the classics and with He- brew, as well as various modern languages — the French, Spanish, Italian, Danish, and Dutch. True to the German linguistic instinct he soon mastered the Tamil and completed the translation of the Old Testament into that tongue, and the New Testament, as well as 182 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. portions of the Old, into Telugu. He was an ardent man, a hard-working man, mentally su- perior to his associates ; and, as is apt to be true in such cases, he grew somewhat arbitrary and could not work comfortably with them. After laboring six years in and around Tran- quebar he removed to Madras and passed into the employ of the English Society for Propa- gating the Gospel (1726). , Seven hundred heathen and Roman Catholics were baptized by him. Want of time forbids the rehearsal of all those names which appear in the list of reen- forcements at various intervals, as well as de- tailed accounts of the operations of the mission. In 1740, a little more than thirty years from its beginning — perhaps at its maximum of suc- cess — it had indirectly, by offshoots, extended northward to the settlements of Cuddalore and Madras and toward the interior into the king- dom of Tanjore. A staff of ten European and about thirty native laborers, one of the latter ordained, were in the field, and between five and six thousand baptisms had taken place. By some it is estimated that at the time of Schwartz's arrival nine thousand nominal con- verts had been secured. Within four months from his arrival at Tranquebar this young missionary, having the usual German facility for acquiring languages, CHRISTIAN FREDERICK SCHWARTZ. 183 preaches his first sermon in TamiL Besides ^^ y- keeping up his study of the Hebrew and'^'^^ '^ )Greek Scriptures he masters the Tamil and , nc^-. --iincio-Portuguese " and comes to speak the Per- | sian fluently — that being the tongue in use ^ by one part of the Mohammedan population — / also the Hindustani, the lingua franca of that country. His theory — a sound one, and to which his practice corresponded — was that preaching should be the chief work of the missionary. True he early engaged in cate- ^^ y,,,,,^^^,y, chising the schools, Tamil and Portuguese, and this may be called one branch and form of preaching. He did much in the way of establishing and maintaining schools, and, like Isaac Watts and some other eminent men who have remained unmarried, he was noticeably fond of children. Yet the more pub- lic oral promulgation of the gospel to adults was Schwartz's vocation. /In the year 1556 Martin Luther preached aV Eisleben, his native place, from the closing verses of the eleventh chapter of Matthew's Gospel, "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden." It was his last sermon and only three days before his death. Two hun- dred years afterwards Schwartz took up the same subject from the same words as the text 'Note 35. 184 PBOTESTANT MISSIONS. of his first Tamil sermon^ What could be more appropriate for the venerable reformer of the sixteenth century or this youthful evan- gelist of the eighteenth? The cross, which can never fail to supply subject-matter and inspi- ration to the preacher, be his field what it may, Schwartz kept steadily in mind. Has not " Conquer by this ! " sounded in the ear of every successful leader of the sacramental host, from the great apostle of the Gentiles to the last lay evangelist?" Wherever he went — by the wayside, in the choltry, in the shadow of Brahmanic temples, in the English camp, and at the court of the nabob — he was faithfully intent upon making known the gospel of sal- vation. Of this kind of labor, preeminently fitting, he performed more, perhaps, than any other man in the whole history of Danish missions. Schwartz was not of ardent temperament ; did not develop rapidly, but in a gradual growth. Ambition to shine in India or to win a reputation in Europe did not incite to pre- mature or impatient demonstrations. The aver- age man should be content to spend the first ten years of his professional life in laying [wisely the foundations on which he may ex- \pect to build for the remainder of life. Dur- ing his first decade in India our missionary • Note 36. CHRISTIAN FREDERICK SCHWARTZ. 185 was doing that. Associates did not predict his future. Mastering the vernaculars required in rhis work he also made himself familiar with (the religious views, social condition, history, 'habits, and entire circle of mental associations ]of the people. Year after year he not only used but was qualifying himself the better to use God's Word as the key for opening a way into the hideous chambers of imagery in the native mind. His sphere of operation gradually enlarges. He visits Negapatam, one hundred and eighty miles southward from Ma- dras. In response to an invitation from Cey- lon (1760) he visits Jaffna — in which district the American Board has now for nearly four- score years had a mission — and proceeds to Colombo and to Point de Galle, the southern extremity of the island, " confirming the souls of the disciples." There was a five months* absence from his own field. Later he makes an excursion to Madura at the time of its siege and capture (1764), and where our American mission was established in 1834. He makes a tour to Palamcotta, three hun- dred miles from Madras, in the district of Tinnevelly, the region of remarkable suc- cess at the present day on the part of the English Church Missionary Society. /For the first twenty years of his life in India he usu- ally walked when journeying. ) Accompanied 186 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. by another missionary he went in that way to Tanjore (1762), which place he often visited afterwards. It will be recollected that Tanjore is the native capital of Southern India, six 'oniles in circumference — the Benares of the South — an ancient center of learning and re- ligious influence. Within that little kingdom, now only a province, are temples unsurpassed in number and magnificence, and at that date there were a hundred thousand Brahmans liv- ing in voluptuous sloth. Forty miles from Tanjore up the River Cavery is the town of Trichinopoly. After the Christian Knowledge Society established a mission there (1767) Schwartz came under their patronage, and spent the remainder of his life chiefly at that place and at Tanjore. Purposing at first to remain only a few weeks he prolonged his stay for more than thirty years. Although more than a third of a century has passed since my visit to that place it comes with great distinctness to recollection, and more especially the Rock of Trichin- ^^^R^^k^"^ opoly, an inland Gibraltar, loom- ing abruptly from the plain — isolated, bold, precipitous, three hundred feet in height, surmounted by a fortress and a pa- goda. Lower down is a larger temple and the magazine. The ascent is by stone steps, and the view from the summit is one never to CHBISTIAN FREDERICK SCHWAHTZ. 187 be forgotten. Beneath you see the fort, the rajah's palace, and a population of eighty thou- sand souls ; while stretching out in all direc- tions lies an illimitable plain, fertile and popu- lous. Two miles distant the river divides and forms the sacred island of Seringham, where stands a famous temple. Temples in India are numberless, and as a general thing are small. No seats are found in them nor any assemblage to receive instruction. As compared with such structures in middle and northern districts those in Southern India are on a grander scale and have more ample decorations. Remarkable as some of these are they are yet perhaps less wonderful than the rock temples.' This struc- ture in Seringham has an outer wall four miles in extent, with a main entrance truly magnifi- cent. Some of the stones built into the front are of a size equal to those in the foundations of Solomon's temple — thirty feet or more in length and five in thickness. Fourteen pyram- idal towers rise to a great height around the inclosure. Inside are seven square inclosures, one within another — answering in number to the quadrangular courts which compose the ' John Dudley : Naology. London, 1846. M. W. Carr : The Seven Pagodas of the Coromandel Coast. Madras, 1809. James Fergusson : Illustrations of the Rock- Cut Temples in India. Lon- don, 1846. James Fergusson ; History of Indian and Eastern Architecture. London, 1876. 188 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. heaven of Vishnu — each surrounded by a wall twenty-five feet high. One apartment, a hun- dred and fifty feet in length, has a flat stone roof, supported by a thousand pillars, no two of them alike — each pillar a single block of granite, elaborately carved and representing some legend in the history of the god to whom the temple is dedicated. Five thousand priests are there accommodated, and throngs of debased worshipers resorting thither correspond with the general scale of things. But for the Christian visitor a special interest attaches to Trichinopoly as the place where Schwartz la- bored faithfully and where the author of our iifavorite missionary hymn closed his pilgrimage. You are shown the bath in which, April 2, 1826, was found the lifeless body of Bishop Heber. This part of the Carnatic was, in the course of the eighteenth century, the scene of repeated struggles between the English and French' and between English and native forces. It is in- separably associated with the name of a Mo- hammedan prince, Hyder Ali, the ablest enemy which England has met in India. As the mis- sionary life of Schwartz fell within the period and in the vicinity of such fierce struggles he could not easily avoid certain offices which ' G. B. Malleson : History of the French in India. Londoa, 1893. CHRISTIAN FREDERICK SCHWARTZ. 189 were as exceptional as was the general condi- tion of things. If Washington wisely advised our nation to avoid all entangling foreign alli- ances, much more is it needful that ambassa- dors of Christ should ordinarily keep aloof from political complications and from secular engagements which do not necessarily pertain to their high vocation. Those in the employ of the American Board are charged very strictly upon this point. To enter the service of any government sunders the connection of a mis- sionary with that Board. Jesuit missionaries have everywhere en- _. , ^ . . ^ Diploniatist. gaged in political intrigues, often apparently advantageous to them at the outset, but always damaging at last. In the case of Schwartz there would seem to have been a clear propriety in his accepting certain outside engagements that were urged upon him and which the exigencies of the hour appeared to render imperative. He was solicited to act as medium of communication between the local English government and some of the native princes and even between a native prince and his own subjects. Intimate acquaintance with the vernacular languages and with the condi- tion and customs of the country, a sense of gratitude to the East India Company for favors shown him, an opportunity to serve important interests auxiliary to his greater work, and aji 190 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. opportunity to make known the truth where he could not otherwise have done it induced him, without suspending his sacred office, to undertake temporarily an additional service. "At the same time I resolved," he says — and a wise resolution it was — "I resolved to keep my hands undefiled from any presents, by which determination the Lord enabled me to abide — so that I have not accepted a single farthing save my traveling expenses." The na- tives are shrewd in judging of character. Hy- der Ali was eminently sagacious, and any trace of a mercenary spirit would have been fatal to our missionary's influence. But with such manifest unselfishness and frank sincerity did he carry himself as to win fullest confidence. Afterwards the sanguinary Hyder, in the midst of a devastating career, gave orders to his army officers "to permit the venerable Padre Schwartz to pass unmolested and to show him respect and kindness, for he is a holy man and means no harm to my government." In the course of the war the fort of Tanjore was reduced to straits, provisions being insufficient even for the garrison, much less for a throng not belonging to the garrison. A powerful enemy was at hand. Grain enough might be found in the country, but no means of trans- portation. Outsiders, deceived and abused by government officials, had lost all confidence and CHRISTIAN FREDERICK SCHWARTZ. 191 refused to render assistance. The rajah, whose orders and entreaties were alike ineffectual, at length said, " We all, you and I, have lost our credit ; let us try whether the inhabitants will trust Mr. Schwartz." The missionary is accord- ingly empowered to make arrangements with the people. No time can be lost. The emaci- ated Sepoys are falling down from exhaustion and the streets are lined w^ith the dead every morning.' Such, however, is the confidence of the country people in this man of God that, upon his mere promise to indemnify them, he obtains in the course of a day or two a thou- sand oxen and all needed supplies of grain. The fort is saved. The next year, under simi- lar circumstances, the same thing occurs again. At another time, when the oppressed inhabit- ants suspended cultivation of the soil and left the region, no promises of the tyrannical rajah could recall them. Schwartz was solicited to assure them that at his intercession they should be treated kindly, whereupon seven thousand came back in one day. When he exhorts them to do their utmost they reply, "As you have showed kindness to us you shall not have rea- son to repent it ; we intend to work day and night to show our regard for you." In 1789 Tuljajee, failing of immediate de- ■Note 37. 192 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. scendants, adopted a relative (Serfogee '), ten years of age, as his successor in the kingdom of Tanjore. Sending for Schwartz the rajah pointed to the child and said : " This is not my son, but yours ; into your hand I deliver him." " I appoint you to be guardian ; I intend to give him over to your care." The missionary, how- ever, had the good sense promptly to decline such a charge, the rajah being near his end, though in the personal welfare and education of Serfogee Schwartz continued to exercise a lively interest and was recognized as guardian. Could there be more decisive proofs of the power of Christian character over Europeans and natives, peasants and princes alike ? Ulfi- las, missionary bishop among the Goths in the fourth century, went more than once as ambas- sador to Constantinople, yet his political serv- ices were less effective than those of our hum- ble German missionary in India. The position of Schwartz in that regard is perhaps without parallel, and will probably never be repeated. Judson's place in an embassy to the Burman court was that of translator, not of negotiator. But outside services of such delicacy and re- sponsibility should be eschewed. To be the counselor of kings, to be the confidential adviser of secular governments, must always prove a hazardous experience on the part of ^Sarbojee it should read. CHRISTIAN FREDERICK SCHWARTZ. 193 men who can never afford to compromise their high spiritual function. At the outset of his missionary career Schwartz wrote, " If we should ever suffer ignominy and disgrace for the sake of Jesus we are unworthy of so great an honor." His meekness, like that of many another mission- ary, was put to the test by the tongue of slan- der, but in the end he shone all the brighter. Possessing administrative talent similar to that of John Wesley he had much primitive sim- plicity and self-control. Kohlhoff, who was as- sociated with him for thirty-five years, testified that he had never seen him angry or indig- nant, except when servants of the Lord were acting inconsistently or timidly. Then he was on fire. His chief mistake — the mistake, also, of some other German missionaries — was too much leni- ency regarding caste.' This institution is the most conspicuous and most remarkable feature of society in India. The native Caste, theory is that birth determines the matter, that caste is of divine appointment. It is sanctioned by the sacred books, and, be- ing an affair of religion, takes firm hold of the ' C. V. Hamaswamy : Digest of the Castes of India. Madras, 1837. B. A. Irving : Theory and Practice of Caste. London, 1853. Arthur J. Patterson : Caste Considered. London, 1861. Edward W. Hopkins : Mutual Relations of the Four Castes. Leipzig, 1881. 194 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. Hindu mind. With us and elsewhere differ- ences of rank are determined by the course of events in human history. In India these dif- ferences are deemed to be original and consti- tutional. Our tribe of Flatheads, as well as Chinese parents, are responsible for the respec- tive deformities of skull and feet. Not so with the castes of India, which exist, as the people believe, by predetermining creation. Accord- ingly no individual can rise from a lower to a higher, and those in the lower are not less tenacious of their clan condition than those above them. The superior have a haughty bearing ; the inferior maintain abject servility. Love or fellowship between such is impracti- cable, and nothing can be more destructive of Christian brotherhood — nothing can more effec- tually neutralize the Golden Rule. An iron rigidity binds the caste man. Let an incident illustrate. A high caste soldier hav- ing fainted and fallen the military surgeon or- dered one of the Pariah attendants of the hos- pital to throw water on him. In consequence thereof none of his class would afterwards as- sociate with him, because his rank had thus, though involuntarily, been forfeited. Hence he soon committed suicide.' This amazing scrupu- losity has respect, for instance, to food. If President Grant or the Prince of Wales when ^New India, p. 157. CHRISTIAN FREDERICK SCHWARTZ. 195 in India had touched the humblest and hungri- est Hindu's boiled rice he would have thrown it away as unclean. Another occurrence will show how relentless caste can be. The Rev. Mr. Hoole relates that while dining one day at the mission house in Madras, a woman, much worn by hunger and fatigue, came opposite the door and lowered from her back a tall lad, who was reduced to a skeleton and unable to stand alone. Help was implored. The mission- ary at once ordered rice and curry to be taken from the table to them, but the woman rejected the food for herself and her famishing boy, be- cause it was against the rule of her caste to eat anything cooked or touched by Europeans.' Schwartz remained single. It was with him a matter of principle in his circumstances, upon the ground suggested by the apostle Paul in the seventh chapter of First Corinthians, and he continued strongly in favor of celibacy on the part of missionaries during the T i? ii • Ti« Celibacy, earlier years oi their lite among the heathen. This suggests an embarrassing incident, which revealed the possibilities of in- discretion on the part of persons meddling with matrimonial affairs which do not concern them. A ship chaplain had been requested by a friend of the elder Kohlhoff, then a widower, to nego- ' Hoole, Elijah : Madras, Mysore, and the South of India. Second edition. London, 1844. P. 314. 196 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. tiate in Germany for some one to go out and complete his domestic establishment. The offi- cious man announced that he had a commis- sion from the missionaries indefinitely to pro- cure wives for them. In consequence of these representations two young women sailed for Tranquebar, whom the chaplain had mentally designated to be companions for Kohlhoff and Schwartz, and that, too, although the latter never intimated a desire for such an arrange- ment, much less had authorized this matrimo- nial broker to act as his agent. The good man felt constrained to make the most solemn written asseveration that the proceeding was entirely without his sanction, and that even if the young woman in question were a suitable person — it was perfectly evident she was not — he could never depart from his avowed pur- pose and was free from all responsibility in the matter. Schwartz experienced signal preservations. Once when rising he found a very poisonous snake on the spot where he had been lying. When the powder magazine blew up at Trich- inopoly (1772) he was in imminent peril, but neither he nor any of his Christian communit}^ suffered injury. He had for the most part excellent health. He was a German oak in the land of palms.' Late in life he wrote : ' Heinrich von Mertz, in Piper's Zeuyen der Warheit, IV, p. CHRISTIAN FREDERICK SCHWARTZ. 197 "Though I am now in the sixty-ninth year of my age I am still able to perform the ordinary functions of my office. Of sickness I know little or nothing." Marshall, the Roman Cath- olic reviler of Protestant missionaries, says of Schwartz, " What he lacked was precisely that treasure of which he never knew his need — the gift of divine faith and the mission which God has resolved to bestow only on his church." ' God in his sovereign goodness imparted to him true Scriptural n .,^ 1 , 1 . . Devotedness. laith — clear, strong, and consist- ent — to an unusual degree, preserving him from the superstitions, ritualism, and gross errors of Romanism, and enabling him to wit- ness a good confession to the end. The faith- ful man remained on the field without once revisiting his fatherland or the country which for many years had sustained him. He was earnestly industrious. During the first period of his life in India he held a Tamil service every Sabbath morning early, one in English at ten o'clock in the forenoon, besides a Bible exercise in the evening, followed by a prayer meeting. The secular portion of the week was fully occupied, so much so that he often found no time for study except in the night. He loved his work. Toward the close of • Christian Missions, I, p. 282. 198 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. life he exclaimed (1796) : " Ebenezer, hitherto hath the Lord helped me ! Today I entered upon my seventy-first year. O, the riches of his grace, compassion, and forbearance which I have experienced during seventy years! Praise, honor, and adoration are due to a gracious God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost for the numerous proofs of his abounding grace ! " Happy, thrice happy old man ! The habits of our missionary, as might natu- rally be inferred, were simple and inexpensive. A small apartment and a dish of rice satisfied him, while no discernible elements of asceticism appeared. With a truly self-deny- ing spirit he acted as almoner and benefactor to all in times of bloodshed and famine ; and we are reminded of the good deeds of our own Calhoun amidst the massa- cres of Mount Lebanon, the kind ofiices of our missionaries after the earthquake in Eastern Turkey a few years ago, their exhausting serv- ices in behalf of victims of Turkish cruelty in Bulgaria, as well as during famines in Asia Minor, India, and China. Yes, as a class mis- sionaries are preeminently philanthropic, and nobly deny themselves out of regard to the name of their Master. Such a one was Schwartz. English residents in Southern India were fully convinced of this. At one time, owing to a general distress resulting from the CHRISTIAN FREDERICK SCHWARTZ. 199 ravages of war, he forbore to draw from gov- ernment his pay as chaplain. Repeatedly did he refuse pay tendered for special services. Starting on his return journey from Hyder Ali Schwartz found three hundred rupees in his vehicle, which he immediately set apart for purposes of charity. " Only let money be oflFered to any one," say the Brahmans, "and all his good resolutions vanish ; " yet so convinced Avere even the natives of this man's complete integrity that when the Rajah of Tanjore sent for him to secure his mediation he said to Schwartz, " Padre, I have confidence in you, because you are indifferent to money;" and an English oflScer declares, in a published work on India,' "The intelligence and uprightness of this blameless missionary have rescued the European character from the imputation of universal corruption." Schwartz lived seventy-two years, forty-eight of which were devoted to evangelistic labor in India. He took no part of that long period to visit Europe, nor for that purpose did Kier- nander take any part of his fifty- nine years in India. The popular o"&«vi y. impression has been that the climate of that country is not favorable to longevity among Europeans. So far, however, as German mis- sionaries are concerned vital statistics present ' Colonel Fullerton, in his Views of English Interest in India, 200 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. a rare showing. Four of them (Hiittemann,' Cnoll, Breithaupt, Gericke) were able to serve from thirt}^ to forty years ; six of them (Zeg- lin, Pohle, John, Klein, Cammerer, Schwartz) from forty to fifty years ; and five of them (Fabricius, J. B. Kohlhoff, J. C. Kohlhoff, Kier- nander, Rottler) from fifty to sixty years. Of these the elder Kohlhoff reached seventy-nine years of age, Fabricius eighty,^ Kohlhoff junior eighty-two, Rottler eighty-seven, and Kiernari- der eighty-eight. Among American mission- aries in the same country Ballantine labored thirty years, Munger thirty-four, John Scudder thirty-six, Poor thirty-nine, Meigs forty-one, Winslow forty-four, and Spaulding fifty-three. During the last year of life Schwartz's strength was evidently failing. Four months of suffering and of special grace were ap- pointed him at the close. Favorite liymns were sung in his room, his own ^^ ' voice often joining. On the thir- teenth of February (1798) native assistants sang the last stanza of Gerhardt's best-known hymn, Haupt voll Blut und Wunden: " Be near me when I'm dying ; O, show thy cross to me ! And for my succor flying, Come, Lord, and set me free!" ' Grimfield's Sketches of Danish Missions eyerywhere gives this as Hiifferman (pp. 80-112). ^Note 38. CHKISTIAN FEEDERICK SCHWARTZ. 201 Serfogee, the rajah, visited him in his last sickness, manifesting the most tender regard. At the funeral the prince wept freely as he gazed upon the face of so revered a friend, and he afterwards erected a monument to "the memory of Father Schwartz," which was exe- cuted by the celebrated sculptor, Flaxman. On the monument the rajah is represented as grasping the hand of the dying missionary and receiving his benediction. The traveler will find it in the old garrison church, no longer used, at Tanjore.' But the most impressive monuments to our missionary are the results of his labor. At and near Trichinopoly alone were three thou- sand reputed converts gathered in through the agency of this faithful man. Bishop Heber estimates the number in the whole district at between six and seven thousand. It is a nota- ble circumstance that while religious decline was going on in his native country — pastors and people not a few settling down into spirit- ual torpor, if not giving themselves over to avowed rationalism — this man in a far-off land of heathenism should be toiling indefatigably and successfully to the last, respected by his employers and employees, his colleagues and pupils, by Germans and Danes, by princes and Pariahs, by Christians, heathens, and Moham- ' Note 39. 202 PBOTESTANT MISSIONS. medans. Seldom has there been an instance of a man securing the respect of parties so unlike — military officers and civilians in the English service, a sanguinary and suspicious Oriental tyrant, as well as that tyrant's outraged and timid subjects. "They that be wise shall shine as the bright- ness of the firmament, and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars forever and ever." The same year that this devoted missionary fin- ished his course a countryman of his, the as- tronomer royal of England, discovered four new satellites belonging to the Georgium Sidus. On the scale of celestial estimates whose fame will be most enduring — that of the titled Sir Wil- liam Herschel or the plain Christian Frederick Schwartz ? IX CRITIQUE UPON THE MISSION Our last chapter was devoted to Christian Frederick Schwartz, the representative German missionary, more widely known than any other of the eighteenth century and who ranks with Eliot, Brainerd, Zeisberger, and Carey. When the mission at Trichinopoly was established (1767) he passed, as before mentioned, into the employ of the English Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, and his official connection with the Danish work and with Tranquebar ceased. It seemed, however, due to him and to the demands of general narrative that the survey of his life should not be arrested at that point. The lines of demarcation between the several fields of evangelistic work in the peninsula and between the responsibilities of employees were not at that period well defined. At times only this is clear — that the relations of Christian la- borers in Southern India to patrons in Europe 204 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. were vague and somewhat fluctuating. Most writers appear not to have kept in mind the exact sphere of the Danish mission ; but, in treating the history of evangelistic work in the Madras Presidency, have spoken of the later services of men who had left the e a ions Tranquebar field as if they were still in their old connection. It is no unusual thing for biography to leave us with some historical misconceptions. The strictly Danish work in the southern peninsula was limited to Tranquebar and its immediate neighborhood. It continued about one hun- dred and forty years. In 1845 the Danish pos- session (Tranquebar) was ceded to the English East India Company, and the mission has now for a long time been conducted by the Dres- den-Leipzig Society. The death of Schwartz marks an epoch in the course of Protestant missions in that part of India. Thence onward decay became more and more evident. After the date of his de- cease only five missionaries of the Danish society went to India. While at that period the religious condition of India was improving, such improvement had hardly begun in Germany, and as is Germany such substantially is Denmark. During the great spiritual decline of those countries it could not be expected that their missionaries CRITIQUE UPON THE MISSION. 205 would wholly escape the contagious torpor. As early as 1793 Christian Frederick John wrote home from Tranquebar, "A new honest mis- sionary would be a great help to us, but if no suitable man can be found it is better for us to die out." The mission was not harmonious within itself' nor on pleasant terms with the local government. Denmark having become in- volved in the general European war then rag- ing her East India possessions were exposed to attack. Tranquebar was captured by the Eng- lish (1801), and remittances from home were interrupted. The restoration of the place a year later to Denmark did not restore pros- perity to the mission. Various concurrent causes led to a continued abatement of evan- gelistic work, from which there was never more than a partial recovery.- The sentiment of Danish residents, some of whom had become infected with French infidelity, was, of course, adverse to attempts at converting the heathen. The local government proposed that the mis- sion should cease as an institution for that purpose, and in 1825 a royal rescript, placing it on a new footing, ordained that the pastor- ate of Zion Church in Tranquebar and the office of first missionary be united. It will in- dicate to what a low level Danish sentiment 'Note 40. ^Note 41. 206 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. had sunk, that the order should contain a dec- laration such as this, " The spiritual pastors who bear the name ' missionary ' in Tranquebar are to make effort for the conversion of the heathen only where the moral character of the persons seems to call for it, but they are not to expect any money to be spent on the extension of Christianity." What but extinc- tion of all missionary work could be looked for where such views prevailed? One sad experience of the Christian explorer is to find the tombstones of evangelical en- terprises, whether on the site of the seven churches of Asia, of the once flourishing churches in Northern Africa, or of missions like that at Tranquebar. Deplorable decay has been spoken of. May not an ecay exaggerated impression have been Lamentable. mi p made? The facts of the case, as they lie on the surface, appear to admit of no other representation. Testimonies from without concur.' Messrs. Tyerman and Ben- net, a deputation from the London Missionary Society, in their Journal"- (1821-1829), say of Tanjore that no vital religion was to be found in any of the native priests and people ; that the cankerworm of caste had destroyed every- thing that resembles true religion, only a form 'Note 42. 'Yo\. II, pp. 462-464. CRITIQUE UPON THE IVnSSION. 207 being left; and that the Tranquebar Mission was in the same sad condition. Ten years later (1837) Dr. Howard Malcolm, who visited the American Baptist missions in the East, though passing near Tranquebar, did not deem it worth while to stop — it being the current opinion of competent judges then in Southern India that there was almost no visible effect of missionary labor remaining there.' "As to Schwartz's people in Tanjore," says Lord Ma- caulay* (1834), "the}^ are a perfect scandal to the religion they profess." We do not account Thomas Babington Macaulay the most compe- tent witness concerning the religious character of native Christians in India; 3'et, with a meas- ure of exaggeration, not infrequent on his part, he reflects the average sentiment of English residents then on the ground. It becomes a grave question, What led to such an apparent failure at last ? So far as the particular responsibility of Schwartz is con- cerned it should be borne in mind that at the period last referred to he had been in his grave more than thirty years. It should also be remembered that in the earlier stages of the Tranquebar Mission there was much more evangelical earnestness and fidelity than in the later stages. Still from the first, as in the 'Malcolm's Travels, II, pp. 00-62. - Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay, \, pp. 332, 333. 208 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. early Dutch missions, there was this mischie- vous mistake — that evidence of regeneration need not be required of those who were ad- mitted to Christian ordinances ; that these may be administered to persons who profess only a mental assent to the historical facts and the truths of Christianity, about which, however, candidates do not need to know very much. The notion was entertained that natives once baptized would be more likely to desire further Christian instruction and would sooner or later become intelligent converts. In Superficiality. i j. j.u t -^ regard to the ordinances it was held that they have mystical efficacy for accom- plishing spiritual results; hence that the church need not attempt to discriminate carefully be- tween the mere nominal Christian and the one born again. Such a theory is sufficiently dan- gerous in well-educated Christian communities ; how much more among an ignorant people, almost incapable of conceiving what pure spir- itual religion is, and to whom temporal induce- ments are held out for the j^i'ofession of Chris- tianity ! A majority of the converts were from inferior classes — mere outcasts and slaves. Al- most universally aboriginal tribes and lower castes are the most hospitable toward the gos- pel, and those are the classes among which throughout India, to the present time, the gos- pel has had greatest success. Low castes and CRITIQUE UPON THE MISSION. 209 outcasts furnish not less than four fifths of all converts.' Natives in such social position could hardly fail to look upon the acceptance of the faith and forms of their rulers as likely to prove advantageous in secular respects ; hence the greatest caution was needed to guard against mercenary motives. But as temporal aid was afforded to converts there would natu- rally be awakened in the minds of persons looking on a suspicion that they were virtually bought, and the epithet " Shilling Christians " gained currency. Supplies ceasing, converts fell away. The missionaries were obliged to confess that many of the baptized failed to give evidence of any moral reformation.^ The tour of Gericke, when he visited (1802) the districts lying south toward Cape Comorin — though not belonging himself to Tranquebar — illustrates the unwise readiness, especially of later German missionaries, to administer the rite of baptism. The people had been suffering much from political disturbances and were en- tertaining unwarranted hopes of amelioration from a change of religion. Accordingly whole villages demolished their idols, turned their temples into churches, and received baptism — scores upon scores in a day — at the tourist's hands. During that journey the good man, 'Note 43. ^'Note 44. 210 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. zealous and credulous, baptized thirteen hun- dred, and immediately afterwards the native teachers baptized two thousand and seven hun- dred more. Most of them, however, had but little knowledge of what the Christian religion is, and had still less of its spirit. As in mili- tary invasions, so in missionary operations it is much easier to overrun than to hold a wide extent of territory. At Tranquebar converts were taught the Lord's Prayer, the Ten Com- mandments, together with the words of the in- stitution of both sacraments, and many of them appear to have given unquestionable evidence of conversion. Some of them stood the test of persecution ; while, on the other hand, too many seem never to have advanced beyond a mere outward rite. Our satisfaction, then, at statistical results suffers abatement when we read that by the first jubilee of this mission (1756) eleven thousand persons had embraced the gospel, and that at the close of a hundred years perhaps fifty thousand had received bap- tism. As a whole they bore a different char- acter from more recent native Christians of Northern India, for instance, who, in the main, stood firm during the mutiny of 1857. Another mistake of the Danish mission in India was an unauthorized toleration of caste among the converts. This subject was alluded to in our last lecture. We grant that it is CRITIQUE UPON THE MISSION. 211 one of delicacy and difficulty, that something must be conceded to the inexperience of early missionaries. Yet even after thirty years' ac- quaintance with this evil the mission wrote, in regard to their useful and excellent catechist, Rajanaiken, " We should greatly hesitate to have the Lord's Supper administered, by him, lest it should diminish the regard of Christians of a higher caste for that sacrament itself." It needs but a short acquaintance with such a bane of social life to learn its essential an- tagonism to the spirit of Christ. ... . Caste Surely an institution which teaches that one part of a community belongs to a superior race ; that Pariahs are born to be slaves ; that the two classes may not live in the same street, eat from the same vessel, drink from the same cup — even the sacramental cup — or occupy the same seats in the house of God ; which forbids intermarriages between the two castes; which insists upon separate sections in the burial ground ; which forbids a high caste congregation to receive a low caste re- ligious teacher; and would persuade the mis- sionary clergyman to partake of the sacred supper last, that none of the communicants might be contaminated — such an institution needs no long debate to determine whether it shall be tolerated in the Christian Church. By condoning this mischievous element nomi- 212 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. nal conversions were multiplied, but Christian- ity was dishonored. Dr. C. F. John, one of the later missionaries at Tranquebar, greatly- distressed by this antichristian practice, deter- mined to put an end to such odious distinc- tions — at least as relates to the Lord's Table and so far as his responsibility was concerned. He melted into one the two cups that were used, and thus for once settled that matter. The excellent Schwartz erred with others in regard to caste. If this demon had been exor- cised at the outset the subsequent history of Southern India would have been materially dif- ferent. At present the only German society known to wink at this deformity is the Lu- theran Society of Leipzig, which is in sympa- thy with the High Church element in England. That society's agents have little fellowship with other missionaries and do not formally join in conferences. They are significantly exclusive, and often set territorial comity at defiance, introducing schools and catechists into fields long occupied by evangelical laborers. Litur- gical and sacramentarian bodies seem somewhat generally to entertain the thought that it is tlieir sphere, letting others undertake initial drudgery and hardships, to come in later and gather the fruits into their sectarian garner. Conservative of abuses, and carrying on a su- perficial system of proselytism, they render it CRITIQUE tJPOK THE MISSION. 213 difficult for neighboring missions to maintain proper discipline in their churches. It should be added that native Roman Catholics also kept up an observance of caste as rigidly as the heathen. The Vaisya, with the gold ring, embroidered dress, and cashmere turban, puffed up with pride of birth, was invited to sit in the high places of the church ; while the poor Christian Pariah was bidden to stand in the doorway, taking care that he should by no means touch with his unclean body the gar- ments of his lioly superior ! ' It was a further mistake that the mission did not ordain more native pastors. For many years there were none. The schools had been looked to as nurseries for the ministry, but therein they failed, and this is by no means a solitary instance of the kind. Catechists were to some extent supplied by the Tranquebar schools, yet very few ^^'^^ natives came forward to whom the missionaries deemed it fitting to intrust the sacred office. Suitable men evidently were not numerous, and when permission to ordain na- tives was at length asked from the home author- ities it could be obtained only after long delay. In the Tranquebar Mission proper only half a dozen — if so many — natives received ordina- tion during a period of a century and a half. 'Mullen's Missiotis in Southern India, p. 77. 214 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. Not till towards half a century since was the importance of establishing local churches and a native pastorate duly appreciated among the various missions of India, but within the period named a noteworthy development in that direc- tion has taken place. It began among the mis- sions of the American Board (1855), and it marks an epoch in foreign evangelistic work. The results, as seen in the extent to which native Christians, and especially their preachers, rise from the condition of pupilage, acquiring strength and independence of character, are truly encouraging. Disproportionate outlay upon schools was an- other mistake. The Germans are almost consti- tutionally educators, and the Lutheran Church is eminently an educating church. It was natu- ral that these experimenting missionaries should early devote themselves to gathering schools. We find Ziegenbalg writing in 1706: "Truly the training up of children will be of the greatest consequence in this aifair, if we were but able to purchase and maintain a good many of them." "We must buy such children, sometimes at a high price, from their parents." ' His successors la- bored largely in the same line — not, indeed, of purchasing pupils, but of securing them at 'Taylor's Protestant Missions at Madras. Introduction, pp. iv, V. CRITIQUE UPON THE MISSION. 215 all events. They looked to this source for an effective Christian element, but the hope proved fallacious ; and so it is always liable to do if the boarding school displaces an earnest oral publication of the gospel. When the mis- sionary merges himself into the schoolmaster, when touring is wholly relinquished for the more comfortable routine of pedagogy — then aggression and spiritual advance, present and prospective alike, may be expected to suffer. Decline had proceeded far in this mission when Dr. John opened his school for Europeans in- stead of native Tamulians, and when (1824) the local government proposed that mission schools should cease altogether as an institu- tion for securing converts and that mission- aries should give themselves merely to incul- cating useful knowledge. It is almost a corollary that excessive inter- est was felt in matters of science. Quite possi- bly in our day, too, a disproportionate value may be placed on the incidental benefits of Christian missions ; and mission- aries may sometimes be beguiled Subordinate "^ - -. ° Pursuits. mto an undue expenditure of strength on the auxiliary studies of lexicogra- phy, mythology, and the like. Works have come from such pens so elaborate as to be read by heathen Hindus simply for the pur- pose of becoming better acquainted with their 216 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. own systems. Rottler's collection in botany, John's collection in conchology, and Klein's collection in ornithology and entomology be- came famous. Eight learned societies in Eu- rope elected these men members. In the year 1795 Messrs. John and Rottler received, as an acknowledgment of their high attainments and valuable contributions to natural history, the honorary degree of Doctor of Physical Sci- ences. When such side studies are carried on simply as a recreation it may be well ; v/hen they trench upon time and interest which should be consecrated to immediate Christian work their results are rather a reflection than an encomium on the missionary. If Paul had left behind him immortal treatises on the Greek language, poetry, and philosophy, or on Roman jurisprudence, would he not have been obliged to expunge passages from his inspired writings which the world cannot afford to lose, and which would be a greater loss than the loss of the most elaborate scientific works ever pro- duced? "For I am determined not to know anything among you save JesUs Christ and him crucified;" "Yea, doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowl- edge of Jesus Christ my Lord." The mission encountered great obstacles, some of them peculiar to itself, for which it was not responsible. These related in part to the period CKITIQUE UPON THE MISSION. 217 and the countiy. For a considerable time there were distnrbances and violence. One native prince after another would claim sovereignty over the region. Hyder Ali, with a hundred thousand men, sweeps down the Carnatic like a tornado, leaving ruin in his track. Every European war was attended by an Indian out- break, just as an eruption of Etna is attended by simultaneous activity among volcanoes in the East. Now a French fleet, and now an English, appear off the coast. Missionary oper- ations, as well as supplies from Europe, are impeded, sometimes ° **\" '- , Disorder. suspended. Famine, that twin de- mon of war, makes its appearance. In 1782 such destitution prevailed in this small Dan- ish territory alone that ten thousand perished. Numbers dying daily in the streets of Tran- quebar were left to be buried at public ex- pense. When the quiet pursuits of husbandry are interrupted, even in time of peace, any country like Southern India, where agriculture depends upon irrigation, will suffer from famine. Whenever the gospel takes effect among the lieathen persecution usually ensues. It has been so from the first in Hindustan. It is so today, though now the consolidation of English power prevents, in some good measure, those more open and flagrant acts of cruelty once so com- mon. If the missionaries were harassed bj 218 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. their OAvn government, what must have been the condition of converts under tyrannical native rule? Heathen authorities could not be relied upon to protect converts from the Roman Catholics. Ecclesiastics were sent with an express charge from the pope to "root out the Protestants from Tranquebar," and they were only too true to their commission. Take a specimen. Rajanaiken, a faithful catechist, who had been converted from the Romish faith, joined the evangelical church (1728), but it cost the father his life. A Persecution* number of armed papists made an attack, and while the old man was endeav- oring to defend his youngest son from the murderers he himself sank under their blows and died two hours afterwards. His other sons exposed the corpse at the gate of the town, hoping to attract attention, but they had no money to give ; hence could obtain no justice. The assassins afterwards confessed that they acted upon the instigation of priests, who offered a reward in heaven to all who should merit it by exterminating these heretics. Re- peated attempts were made upon the life of Rajanaiken. His wife once threw herself be- tween him and a drawn sword. At two dif- ferent times the Romanists beat this catechist till they left him for dead upon the road. Beschi, the Jesuit, was known to instigate such CRITIQUE UPON THE MISSION. 219 outrages.' Speaking of a catechist in his day whom persecutors had beaten to a senseless condition Schwartz remarked, " They are of their father, the devil, and the pope." Another class of embarrassments had respect to home administration. The difficulty was in- herent. This Danish mission, composed chiefly of German laborers, received much pecuniary aid and considerable advice from England. The superintendence was nominally at Copen- hagen, really at Halle ; while funds came from Denmark, Sweden, Germany, and diversities* England. Relations so diverse and complicated could hardly fail to cause per- plexity. Harmon}^ all around would have been well-nigh a miracle. The reports from Tran- quebar were published at Halle — Copenhagen publishing nothing originally, being content to receive information through that channel. Al- most all depends upon the man, not upon the home administration, however it may be com- posed. Two of the more able and success- ful missionaries of this period (Schwartz and Gericke) were in no very intimate executive relations to any body of men in Europe. Differences in religious sentiment and differ- ences of national feeling existed among the missionaries. The pietism of Saxony never ' Even Pope Benedict XIV pronounced the Jesuit fathers inobedientes, contumaces, captiosi, et perditi homines. 220 PEOTESTANT MISSIONS. gained any wide acceptance in Denmark ; yet a majority of the missionaries, the earlier ones especially, were Halle students, and, happily, bore the impress of that institution — a circum- stance, however, which did not conciliate Dan- ish sympathy. By the close of the century more than fifty missionaries had gone out. The predominance of German blood and the German language among them served to create embarrassments. It was nothing strange that the Danish element should find occasion for criticism. In our day it is sometimes the case that persons of diverse training and social habits fail to work harmoniously in the same mission. Royal patronage, though at the time and under the circumstances deemed to be of great importance, was hardly a help on the whole. In that age the traditional idea prevailed that everything great and good must, to be success- ful, have the support of govern- „ /^*^ ment. The present facility of or- Relations. . . t , . . , , . ganizing did not exist; indeed, it had hardly dawned upon the minds of men that for many purposes private persons have a perfect right to associate, and that they can accomplish their objects better in the absence of endowment and interference of every kind from civil powers. Now throughout the civi- lized world the drift — here and there amount- CRITIQUE UPON THE MISSION. 221 ing to a struggle — is to secure a free chnrch in a free state. King Frederick meant well, but the missionaries were led to expect too much from royal orders. Mandates from the home government had but little influence in rectifying abuses at Tranquebar. Rendering unto Csesar the things that are Csesar's, men must beware of expecting from Caesar what can come only from God. One embarrassment which the missionaries met with was peculiarly trying — the pernicious influence of many European residents who bore the name of Christians. This is an obstacle which in every part of the world, more especially at the great emporiums of trade and wherever European commerce or arms extend, has been encountered. Throughout the mari- time resrions of the East Indies and ^^ . . " Christians. the island groups of the Pacific, other things equal, Christian work has been successful in the ratio of distance from Euro- pean and American nominal Christians. If in the early days of New England, with a ruling sentiment so strongly in favor of pure religion and sound morality, John Eliot found occasion to complain of the evil influences exerted upon the Indians by unprincipled men, how much more urgent must be the occasion where no restraints of public opinion or of law exist! It is notorious that the morals of Portuguese, 222 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. Dutch, Danes, and English in the East have largely been a reproach to the Christian name.' Though calling themselves Christians they are such, not by holding the distinctive doctrines of onr religion, but because in the general census of the world they are not classed as Jews, Mohammedans, or idolaters. Englishmen were then wont to say that they left their reli- gion at the Cape of Good Hope on the way out, which they could pick up on the way back to Europe. What religion those men had was not likely to enrich South Africa in the mean- time. Sir Monier Williams remarks, "I doubt, however, whether the worst Indians are ever so offensive in their vices as the worst type of low, unprincipled Europeans."^ When a cer- tain European, who had been a terror and a disgrace to a district in Southern India, died the natives habitually offered brandy and cigars at his tomb to propitiate his spirit, which was supposed to be still wandering about with bad intentions.^ It is not yet a century since Cap- tain William Bruce wrote to Southey that if our empire in India were overthrown the only monuments that would remain of us would be broken bottles and corks. Schwartz declares that in his earlier acquaintance with India he ' Note 45. ^Modern India, p. 128. ^ Modern India, p. 136. CRITIQUE UPON THE MISSION. 223 sought in vain for a pious European. Later missionaries have sometimes confessed to much the same.' There was not a precept of their own religion which the natives did not observe, nor a precept of Christianity wliich some Euro- peans did not disregard. What could the hon- est servants of Christ do in the midst of such harassing retorts as were made by the Hindus? "When I was once talking to them," writes Ziegenbalg, "and seemed to have reached ther consciences, they answered me, ' If you Chris- tians, with your eating and drinking, ^^our for- nication and adultery, your cursing and swear- ing, and your wicked lives, expect to be saved, surely we, with our quiet, orderly lives, may hope for it also, even if our religion be false and altogether a fabrication.'" Failures on the score of Christian character occurred among missionaries themselves. At Tranquebar, of about half a hundred men,^ there were several who made shipwreck.^ Per- versions even to heathen beliefs have occurred. Colonel Vans Kenneday, for instance, an Ori- ental scholar, was understood by the Hindus to have become a believer in their religion. Strange as it may seem, one of the earliest converts secured by Rammohun Roy was an 'Arthur's Missiotis to Mysore, p. 65. ^From 1706 to 1819, fifty-four. ' Note 46. 224 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. Englisli missionary sent out by the Baptist Society.' One dark spot in the history of every church which has organic connection witli the state is the inevitable absence of discipline. Nothing but a sense of historical justice could reconcile us to direct the eye to such blots as have now been mentioned. It is hardly necessary, and yet very gratifying, to add that in later years there has been a great improvement ; that the riot- ous livincr and otoss vices of earlier times have been largely corrected; that, whereas author- ities, civil and military, formerly to no incon- siderable extent patronized idolatry, there have been and are now men of high positions who maintain a decidedlj^ Christian character and second Christian endeavors. Both hither India and farther India furnish noble illustrations. The names of Robert N. Cust, LL.D.; of Brig- adier Parsons and Brigadier Nicholson ; of Ma- jor General Sir Herbert Edwardes, General Sir Henry Havelock, General Sir Henr}^ Lawrence, and General Sir Robert Phayre ; of Sir Robert Grant and Sir Bartle Frere, governor of Bora- bay; of Lord Lawrence and Lord Northbrook, * James Vaughan: The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross. London, 1876. Pp. 209, 210. " Which is only a little less re- markable than the fact that an unlettered Zulu should be able to shake the faith of an English prelate ! Doubtless the same reason will stand good in either case — the faith thus shaken was very shaky to begin with." CRITIQUE UPON TFIE MISSION. 225 governors general of India, are to be mentioned with special honor.' But there were direct results which it is cheering to contemplate. Of the missionaries sent out to India during all this long period only twenty-four labored exclusively at Tran- quebar. Many thousands, as we have seen, were admitted to the church. What propor- tion of these were truly converted it is, of course, impossible to say, but probably a large number. Among more immediate results should be named the rise of other stations or missions, north, west, ^. ' ' ' Direct. and south — at Cuddalore (1737), at Madras (1726), at Trichinopoly and Tanjore (1767), at Negapatam (1732), at Palamcotta (1785), also an unsuccessful attempt on the Nicobar Islands (1756). Tranquebar became the mother of missions, which, however, in their infancy were adopted by the English Christian Knowledge Society, some of them never hav- ing properly a distinctive Danish existence.^ Chiefly to the influence of this mission must be ascribed the cessation of slavery among the Danes, which was effected in 1745. The press also, through the Bible and other treasures in Christian literature, exerted a sensible influence in purifying and elevating a portion of the 'Note 47. ''Note 48. 226 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. native community. Books from this source — then the solitary Protestant source — found their way to Ceylon, to Bombay, and to the northern Circars. Today there are numerous presses in India. Books and tracts are fur- nished in more than thirty languages and dia- lects; while thousands of copies of God's Word are issued annually, the aggregate of portions or the whole volume of Sacred Scriptures amounting already to millions. The Tranque- bar stock decayed and lost nearly all its vital- ity, yet it lives in offshoots, as branches from the banyan may thrive though the original trunk be dead. There were incidental results of considerable moment. The reacting influence at home of any mission is to be regarded as second in importance only to what it accomplishes in the foreign field. Denmark herself derived but lit- tle benefit comparatively from this evangelistic operation. And no wonder ! The j^ '^ f^ enterprise was almost purely an affair of the Danish court, not of the Danish people. Whatever the crown is known to favor will, as a matter of fashion, have a certain amount of consideration; but this work among the heathen never took hold of the hearts of the people. It was a royal undertaking, for which another nationality had to be subsidized at the outset, and in the CRITIQUE UPO N THE MISSION". 227 service of which no Dane ever became promi- nent. Danish missionaries were unwilling to engage for a life service, and demanded, after a few years in Tranquebar, some lucrative situ- ation at home.' The missionary college was rather a bureau of the civil government than an affair of the church. Neither the court nor the community at home was ever very much moved by this enterprise. One can hardly help calling to mind the fact that in the Baltic Sea the water has comparatively a small pro- portion of salt and that there is almost no flux or reflux. Except now and then a ripple of detraction, indifference seems to have pre- vailed. Dr. Liitkens retained the superintend- ence while he lived, but upon his decease the Bishop of Zealand would have nothing to do with it, and an occasional pamphlet appeared reflecting upon the enterprise or upon the agents employed in it. Only an inconsiderable benefit from foreign missions can accrue, in the way of reaction, to any church or community which does not study the subject, feel the re- sponsibility, and have at least a large share in furnishing missionaries and their supplies. The reacting influence of the mission in Ger- many was more apparent and proportionately more valuable. True, from the first there were those in the universities and elsewhere who ' Germann : Missionar Schwartz, p. 184. 228 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. derided the enterprise and showed the bitter- ness of a most unchristian prejudice.' Still, reports of the good work were widely read, and the missionary spirit then centering in Halle never wholly died out in Germany, though it approached the point of extinction. But for these smoldering embers there might have been no such rekindling as has been witnessed within the last three quarters of a century. England, too, shared happily in the indirect benefits. As we have seen, some of the early missionaries hailing from Denmark visited Lon- don on their way out and were kindly re- ceived; abstracts of the Tranquebar correspond- ence were issued from the English press; dignitaries of the English Church — notably Archdeacon Wake — manifested a laudable in- terest. From the Reformation onward there has been a measure of religious sympathy between Germany and England. About the middle of the 18th century Frederick the Great was court- ing the alliance of England — an alliance which became popular. The House of Brunswick hav- ing come to the English throne, a mission so largely German might be expected on that account to receive all the more consideration. Ziegenbalg wrote to George I, and the king sent two letters to the mission. The Christian 'Note 49. CRITIQUE UPON THE MISSION. 229 Knowledge Society made a special arrangement for receiving funds in aid of the good work, manifesting a persistent interest in the evan- gelization of India. Contributions of mone}', books, and paper were sent out, as well as the press previously mentioned. The greatly revived interest in the evangelization of India and other heathen lands which sprang up in England at the close of the eighteenth century was partly a result of Danish and German labors in the southern peninsula. Time was when Danes levied tribute on the English ; when they restrained all English ship- ping from trade in Norway, save at one port (1429) ; and when, in the tenth century-, three archbishops of Danish family presided over the English Church. But we have now seen Eng- lish ships conveying Danish missionaries and English patronage helping to keep alive a Dan- ish movement — one of the pioneer Christian enterprises of modern times. The Head of the Church appears to have accepted this Chris- tian kindliness, and to have treated it as the grain of mustard seed which was to grow into the wide-branching tree of present British mis- sions among the heathen. One incidental result remains to be noticed — that of spiritual benefit to European resi- dents in the East. Many of them, both in the civil and military service, have been greatly 230 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. blessed in their religious life by the public services and private intercourse of missionaries.' The Scottish widow has rejoiced over a trans- formed prodigal : " He was dead, but is alive again; he was lost, but is found." ^ "I was born," said one, "and reared in Britain, a land of light, where I lived in darkness. In Ceylon, a land of darkness, I have been made partaker of the light of life." Others not a few can say the same concerning those heathen lands where faithful missionaries are found, and they in turn become Christian workers. Resident q^^^ ^£ ^-^^ most useful assistant Europeans. . . , . i • , i Wesle3'^an missionaries m the island of Ceylon came to a knowledge of the truth through the instrumentality of a pious soldier, who was himself the fruit of missionary labor on that island. Native soldiers have sometimes become Christian converts, although time was when that brought down oppression from the government of India as severe as it would from heathen sources. For example, there was a well-known case at Meerut of such a man in the ranks who, on being brought before a mili- tary court, was reported as a dangerous charac- ter and removed from the regiment. Schwartz once declined to receive the legacy which a grateful English convert had left him lest his » Pearson's Memoir of Schwartz, pp. 73, 91, 106, 111. 2 William Campbell : British India. London, 1839. P. 176. CRITIQUE UPON THE MISSION. 231 motives should be impeached. Colonel Bie, the governor at Serampore, had enjoyed the instruc- tion and religious influence of Sclnvartz, and was thus prepared to shelter missionaries whom the East India Company were so reluctant to see in Bengal. It was to William Chambers — who had been brought to Christ through the instrumentality of Schwartz — on removing to Calcutta that Charles Grant owed his conver- sion, and Charles Grant was the first man con- nected with the government who became an advocate in England for the mental and reli- gious improvement of natives in India. It is a gratifying circumstance that Lieutenant Wade, an aid to the commander in chief at Bombay, and who assisted our first missionaries there, attributed his conversion to them. A scene witnessed from the housetop of one of our missionary stations in India comes to my recollection with great distinctness. An officer of the English Army on his way from the interior to the seacoast stopped for an hour or two to pay his respects to one of our missionary staff. More elegance of person or courtliness of manners than those of that Eng- lish colonel are seldom met with. The Amer- ican Board has perhaps never sent out a man of such elephantine figure and movement as the missionary referred to. When the moment of leave-taking came I happened to be looking 232 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. down from the flat roof of the house, and never did a loving Timothy shed tears more profusely or greet " Paul the aged " with a "holy kiss" more ardent than were bestowed by the once proud Englishman on that rough American, his spiritual father. X HANS EGEDE. And now from tropical to arctic regions. Even the extreme north has its fascination. The barriers which surround it and the mys- teries which hang over it, so far from deter- ring, only stimulate one class of adventurers. Since the time of Columbus more skill and intrepidity have been displayed in arctic ex- ploration than perhaps in all ,, , . T,. Arctic Regions, other exploring expeditions com- bined. The hope of discovering a northwest or a northeast passage, and of thus opening a shorter way to the Indies, has for nearly four hundred years moved different governments to engage in this line of search. Learned socie- ties have lent their aid, while for many of those who personally embark there is a charm in the very magnitude of difficulties. The se- crets of that inclement polar world appeal to the heroic in noble natures. The men most likely to volunteer for a new expedition are 234 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. men who have already experienced northern rig^ors. The fact that more than a hundred and thirty expeditions have proved failures, or that a passage if found would be of small prac- tical value, does not check renewed attempts; nor will Captain Nares' report of a steady temperature at sixty degrees l)elow zero and of common ice one hundred and fifty feet thick deter adventure while there remains so broad a tract which man has never visited. Look in upon Captain Parry, braving the ex- treme polar cold for two years on Melville Island ; read Kane's narrative of his explora- tions or the narrative of Greeley's expedition, and say if these can be surpassed by any record of human endurance. Beyond the arctic circle one finds himself where there are only two seasons to the year, one of light and one of darkness — a day of eight months and a night of four months, a night, however, that is relieved by brilliant auroras. And what shall we say of the cold? Explorers have found that no later than the first of October and no higher than latitude seventy-five strong drinks turn to ice and burst the vessels, and that even spirits of wine thicken and become like congealed oil. When one boils water it often first freezes over the fire till heat gains the mastery." Be- * Cranz's History of Greenland, p. 43. HANS EGEDE. 235 fore ice begins to form along the coast the sea smokes and produces a mist called frost- smoke, which has the effect of blistering the skin. Quite superfluous is it to say that even in the more favored southern portions of Greenland vegetation is scanty and stunted. The tallest trees are but eighteen feet high.' Of forests there are none. Why has the Creator so disposed physical forces as to produce such a region? Why attach such a crystal pendant to the extreme frozen north, a polar trinacria, mere clusters of barren rocks swathed with eternal ice, scarcely accessible on its eastern coast, and on its western presenting a rampart that frowns upon all approach? "Whatsoever the Lord pleaseth that did he in heaven and in earth, in the seas and in all deep places." The same sovereign Avill that would have Europe without a desert would have Green- land the one that is only a desert. The sunny south may not say to arctic regions, "I have no need of you ; " nor does it behoove the one third land surface of our globe to wonder at the two thirds water surface. The law of dif- ferences reigns everywhere, and is indispensable in the great economy of nature. Owing to diversities of temperature oceanic currents keep 'Note 50. 236 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. polar and tropical waters in a constant inter- change, preserving their purity and softening what would otherwise be destructive extremes. The divine Architect has ordained an immense stretch of ice as a beneficent refrigerator for other latitudes. Early in the 18th century the germ of a new settlement and of a new Christian movement came into being. That germ was a thought in the mind of Hans Egede. The persistence of benevolent purpose displayed by him in finding his way to Greenland and remaining there in the face of appalling discouragements entitles his history to some measure of detail. He was a Norwegian, born 1686, and ge . j^g^^-j-jg studied for the sacred office at Copenhagen was ordained pastor of a church in Vaagen,' on the western coast of Norwaj^, 1707, the year after Ziegenbalg and Pliitschau reached Tranquebar. He had read old chron- icles relating to his countrymen in Greenland, and after a twelvemonth of pastoral labor the thought occurred to him that something should be done to ascertain their condition and to re- claim them if, as he feared, they might have relapsed into heathenism. Before the close of the seventeenth century 'Various readings: Vaage, Vagen, Vogen, Waagen, "Wagen, etc. HANS EGEDE. 237 three kings had successively entertained the purpose of sending out ships to reopen com- munication with the lost colony ; success was reserved for this lonely Protestant pastor. The geographical position of Norway favored the turn which his thoughts were taking. Its northern extremity reaches within the polar circle, and its lofty mountain peaks confront the Arctic Sea. You have only to strip that rugged country of its tall pines and push it up farther toward the pole to obtain a repetition of Greenland. Indeed, Egede's parish lay in a latitude somewhat higher than Cape Farewell. Mere curiosity, as he imagines, leads him to make inquiries of Bergen shipmasters who are engaged in the whale fishery. Musing on the condition of supposed forlorn Northmen, de- scendants of his own Norwegian forefathers, from whom nothing has been heard for a long while, he begins to entertain the idea of doing something for them. At first such an endeavor seems impracticable. A home field of labor has been given him ; he has a wife and chil- dren. Vividly do the sufferings and perils of an undertaking like the one which occurs to him stand out to view, and he endeavors to banish the subject. Egede has not yet come distinctly to the consciousness that God is call- ing him. The Danish mission to Tranquebar had its origin in a crowned head; the Danisb. 238 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. mission to Greenland springs from the Chris- tian heart of an obscure pastor. Brooding over the matter he at length draws up a memorial, setting forth Scripture promises concerning the conversion of the heathen, the command of Christ, the example of many pious and learned men, and forwards it to Bishop Krog, of Drontheim, and Bishop Randulf, of Bergen, with a petition asking them to use influence at court in favor of a project for Christianizing the Greenlanders. That was (1710) just one hundred years before Judson and the three Samuels — Samuel Newell, Samuel Nott, and Sam- Leadings. ; _ ' uel Mills — memorialized the Gen- eral Association of Massachusetts regarding a mission among the heathen. The next year a favorable answer comes from Bishop Krog, commending Egede's pious intention and giv- ing encouragement of assistance. The bishop's geography is, to be sure, somewhat at fault, for he remarks that Greenland is in the neighbor- hood of Cuba, where Spanish and other col- onists found gold, of which a supply might be obtained." Hitherto Egede has kept the matter chiefly in his own breast, but through this corre- spondence the project becomes known to his ■ Note 61. HANS EGEDE. 239 friends, who raise vehement opposition. His wife,' mother, and mother-in-law do their ut- most to divert his mind from what appears to them a preposterous enterprise. Yielding for a time to their tears and remonstrances Egede tries to persuade himself that he has labored under a delusion, but the words of our Saviour, "He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me," stir up a new con- flict of feeling. He has no rest in spirit day nor night. Local vexations arise at Vaagen which at length reconcile his wife to leaving the place, and this he regards as providentially opening the way. It is suggested that these embarrassments may have been sent on account of their reluctance to give up all for Christ. The wife carries this subject to God in prayer, and becomes convinced that she is called to embark with her husband in the good work. Egede addresses a memorial to the College or Board of Missions, which Frederick IV had established (1714) at Copenhagen, who urged the Bishops of Bergen and Drontheim to sec- ond Egede's request. They, however, counseled delay till more favorable times. Postponements continued, and hence in 1715 he drew up a vindication. It was entitled, " A Scriptural and Rational Solution and Explanation, with ' N€e Gertrude Rast 240 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. regard to the objections and impediments raised against the design of converting the heathenish Greenlanders." An imappreciative world still urged the dangers of the voyage, the severity of the climate, the madness of exchanging a certain for an uncertain liveli- hood, and of exposing wife and children to such perils, and finally they resorted to def- amation, charging him with selfish motives. Egede was a popular preacher, and members of other congregations flocked to hear him. A neighboring pastor imputed to him the fault of empty seats, and hence became a detractor. Restive under prolonged delays he resolves to visit headquarters that he may the better prosecute his undertaking. He proposes to re- sign his office on condition that his successor shall pay an annual pension till he himself is provided for in Greenland or elsewhere, but no one will accept the benefice thus hampered. At length (1718) he resigns unconditionally. Hans Egede is the only pastor known to history who spent ten years in unavailing endeavors to gain access to a mission field and at length surrendered his charge, still uncertain whether he would be able to secure cooperation or reach the desired place. Just then comes a rumor that a vessel from Bergen has been wrecked on the coast of HANS EGEDE. 241 Greenland, and that the crew were devoured by cannibals. But this frightful tale does not deter the good man and his wife. She was already being disciplined into a Christian her- oine, and with their four children they move to Bergen, still determined to find a way to disparaged Greenland. At Bergen Egede meets with the usual ex- perience of pioneers in Christian benevolence ; he is looked upon as a fanatic for abandon- ing a comfortable home and starting out upon such knight-errantry of benevolence. It be- comes necessary to give up the expectation of awakening sufficient interest to effect his object independently of secular inducements. The Greenland trade from Bergen had been ruined by the competition of other nations, and those to whom he looks for cooperation are not prepared for any venture in that line, especially so long as the war then existing with Sweden lasts. Was it outside the de- signs of Providence that precisely at that junc- ture (1718) the erratic career of Charles XII of Sweden, who had been at war with Den- mark, should suddenly come to an end and peace ensue? Egede hastens to Copenhagen. He presents to the College of Missions his memorial, with proposals in which the fact of an existing mission to Tranquebar is pleaded in behalf of one to Greenland. He obtains a 242 rrwOTESTANT missions. favorable answer and also an interview with His Majesty Frederick IV, who listens to his proposal. " Seest thou a man diligent in busi- ness? He shall stand before kings." Success, however, is not yet assured. A royal order (November 17, 1719) transmitted to Bergen requires a magistrate to collect the opinions of commercial men who have been in Davis' Strait regarding traffic with Greenland and the feasibility of planting a colony there. But no one seems favorably disposed, and Egede's scheme again becomes a mockery. He endeavors to make interest privately with individuals, and meets with some success ; but the tide turning once more fresh derision is his lot. Under obloquy and disappointment another year wears away. His heart, however, does not fail. The Macedonian cry has been wafted to his ear by polar winds. It is some- body's business — it is Hans Egede's business — to become the apostle of Greenland; otherwise would "all the ends of the earth see the sal- vation of God ? " At last a few are touched by his zeal, so indefatigable despite repulses and mockeries. A capital of two thousand pounds sterling is subscribed; the king sends a present of forty pounds for the equipment, appoints him pas- tor of the new colony and missionary to the heathen, with a salary of sixty pounds per HANS EGEDE. 243 annum. A ship called Haabet ("The Hope") — the Mayflower of that enterprise — is pur- chased, Egede himself subscribing three hun- dred dollars. Another is fitted out for the whale fishery, and a ncourage- •^ ' ment Tardy, third to bring back word from the colony. May 12, 1721, one hundred years after the Pilgrims landed at Plj^mouth, Egede, with his wife and four children, embarks. He leads an expedition numbering about forty souls. Thirteen years had he been meditating and praying over the enterprise, and ten years had he toiled for the opportunity to embark on this forlorn hope. We are reminded of the most illustrious of navigators. Not till after many years of poverty and repulses, of distrust and suspected lunacy, did Columbus find a happy juncture. The fall of Grenada left the Span- ish court at leisure to listen. Ferdinand's mandate to the authorities and people of Palos was treated much as Bergen treated that of Frederick. But a lofty enthusiasm sustained the great Italian explorer till, in spite of mutiny and manifold discouragements, he conducted his three caravels to Hispaniola. Details of the perilous voyage to Greenland need not be given. One of the three vessels, the whaler, parted company from the others, came near foundering in a squall, and was 244 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. driven back to the coast of Norway. July 3, 1721, the remainder of the party landed on the western coast, in latitude sixty-four, at Ball's River, the largest stream of Greenland. In the estuary of that river are numerous small islands, and on one of them, named for their ship, Hope Island,' they built a house of stone and earth, which they entered after a sermon on Psalm cxvii : " O praise the Lord, all ye nations: praise him, all ye people. For his merciful kindness is great toward us: and the truth of the Lord endureth forever. Praise ye the Lord." Egede's expectations regarding the people of the country, called Skroellings (" chips " or "parings"), were disappointed — a mistake no greater than that of Columbus, who sailed, as he supposed, for Cepango (Japan), and who died in the belief that he had discovered the East Indies.^ Ruins of ancient Norwegian villages and even churches were found by Egede. But the Greenlanders then on the ground were neither Northmen nor descendants of North- men; they were Eskimos. Finding their social and moral condition extremely low, and their language wholly different from any other with ' Called by the natives Kangek. 2 In 1614 Baffin sailed under instructions to press to the north, then to steer westerly, by which course it was hoped he might "bear down upon Japan." HANS EGEDE. 245 which he had acquaintance, our missionary was met, but not daunted, by obstacles the most disheartening. A man of genuine faith and Christian heroism, his spirit rose to the oc- casion. He had come to Greenland as a missionary, and here was a people evidently heathen. The vernacular must ^7 r 6 6 Ti 1 £1. Ti d c r s be mastered. Learning at length the significance of one word, Kina, "What is this?" he used it with all diligence and so obtained a vocabulary. A member of his party was detailed to live for a time amongst the natives in order to catch their speech. Paul, the eldest son of Egede, made good progress, and rendered service by his pencil in rudely sketching Bible scenes which his father en- deavored by words to set before the mind of natives. Acquisition, however, was necessarily slow, and slower yet all instruction of the Eskimos. Youths who for a little while were willing to learn at the rate of a fishhook for a letter soon grew weary, saying they could see no use in looking all day at a piece of paper and crying. A, B, C ; that the missionary and the factor were worthless people, doing noth- ing but scrawl in a book with a feather ; that the Greenlanders were brave ; they could hunt and kill birds. Indeed, their own name for themselves is Innuit, "the men." As with all rude people their conceit was unbounded. 24G PROTESTANT MISSIONS. Highest commendatioa of a European they would express by saying, " He is almost as well behaved as we are ; he is beginning to be a man." Egede, being secular head of the colony as well as its minister and a missionary to the heathen, felt obliged to make explorations in order to find some source of remunerative pecuniary returns. He had to combat de- pression among the colonists, whose privations were great and whose profits next iscourage- ^^ nothing. For provisions they ments. or j were compelled to depend upon the mother country. These being inconstant and insufficient they were sometimes on the verge of starvation. True the king granted a lottery for their benefit, but it proved a failure. He levied a tax on the kingdom of Denmark and Norway, called the "Greenland Assessment," yet remittances were irregular and insufficient. Was it strange that under the influence of such a climate and under discouragements such as perhaps no other missionary ever encoun- tered Egede should begin to waver in his purpose of remaining, especially as others had resolved to quit the intolerable region? But Gertrude, his wife (noble woman!), would not listen to the thought. She would render no assistance in packing up, and his courage ral- HANS EGEDE. 247 lied. During their multiplied perplexities she maintained cheerfulness, under all burdens keeping up her fortitude and faith. " Our Lord called us away," she said, "from our country and our father's house to come hither, and he will never fail us." She was indefat- igable in her kindness to the natives, espe- cially in times of sickness. She belongs to a group of early missionaries' companions — Har- riet Newell, Ann Haseltine Judson, and others — who have reflected so much honor upon their sex and upon the cause of Christian philanthropy. With a true womanly fortitude she endures the repulsiveness of her surround- ings, the intensity of northern frosts, and the intrusion of wild beasts. Once a huge and hungry polar bear breaks into the house, but into his eyes and open mouth she dashes a kettle of boiling gruel, and bruin retreats. The merchants of Bergen who had taken stock in this colonizing enterprise became dis- heartened and the company disbanded (1727). Three years later King Frederick died, and his successor, seeing no likelihood of reim- bursement from the Greenland trade for sums already expended, issued an order (1731) that all the colonists should return home. It was made optional with Egede to leave with the rest or to stay with such, if any, who of their own accord would remain. Provisions 248 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. were allowed for one year, but it was an- nounced expressly that he could expect no further assistance. Now after ten years of such hardship, vexations, and want of success, religious as well as temporal, could any man be expected to tarry, especially in view of such a royal mandate ? There was good rea- son to believe that he would be abandoned by the government and little reason to sup- pose that private funds would afford relief. Our missionar}^ and his wife resolved to stay. A handful of other colonists stayed with them. His two colleagues went back to Perseverance. ^ Denmark, ihe next year King Christian VI sent necessary supplies, and the few colonists that remained met with more secular success than in any previous year. Later came word that the Greenland trade was to be opened anew and the mission to be sustained, for which purpose his majesty had ordered a gift of four hundred pounds sterling. Persistent loyalty to the King of kings triumphed. One party of northern ex- plorers in the preceding century named a high promontory which they discovered "Cape Hold- with-Hope." Egede, whose very name suggests firmness," would seem to have kept that bold headland always in his eye, " Hold-with-Hope." Health meanwhile was much impaired. Such * Egede — Eeg, the Danish for " oak.' HANS EGEDE. 249 incessant labor, solicitude, privation, and se- verity of climate would tell upon any foreign constitution, however robust. For a time even his mind appears to have sympathized in a measure with its racked tenement, and the only wonder is that there was not an entire collapse of both body and mind. With the exception of chest difficulties Greenland is subject to few diseases. No epidemic or con- tagious malady had been known among the natives until one of six youths who were sent to Copenhagen on returning brought the small- pox, which was communicated to his country- men. It raged for a twelvemonth, making fearful havoc. Certain places were depopu- lated, some of the people in their panic com- mitting suicide. When trading agents after- wards went over the country they found every house empty for leagues along the coast, and it was computed that from two to three thou- sand died of the distemper. Egede at that time, as always, showed himself a true friend to the Eskimos. He shrank from no offensive and wearisome offices of kindness in their be- half. This epidemic occurred about the time that Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was en- deavoring to introduce vaccination into Lon- don. Egede's magnanimous wife at length succumbs, the victim of overwork and philan- thropic exposures during the epidemic. She 250 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. died at the close of 1735. Like the eider fowl of Greenland, which plucks the finest down from her own breast to furnish a warm bed for her young, so was Gertrude Egede a self- sacrificing mother to the natives. The dauntless devotion of Egede to the work he had undertaken did not fail to win a degree of favor to the cause in Norway and Denmark.' But what were the spiritual results of the mission in those days of incip- iency ? Alas ! that an answer no more cheer- ing can be given. A large harvest from such soil could not be expected. Egede's motives were undoubtedly pure and his aim most praiseworthy, but by necessity his position was embarrassing. As we have seen, apparently the only way for him to reach Greenland and have the prospect of subsistence there was to organize a colony, and the basis of that undertaking on the part of stockholders and colonists was a commercial venture. Its originator had to be its leader. Under the contract, formal or implied, he was morally bound to look after the secular interests of those who had assumed pecuniary responsibilities. It was, then, a formidable embarrassment that Egede should from the first feel obliged to be all the while looking out for places and sources of more profitable ' Note 62. HANS EGEDE. 251 trade and should experience constant chagrin at the inadequate financial returns. What in the way of religious achievements can be expected of a missionary whose thoughts are occupied largely with sealskins, whalebone, and blubber ? Without adverting again to the almost in- surmountable impediments of climate, to im- pediments in the language and habits of the people, which are likely to be met with in any barbarous region, we must notice that Egede was not fully possessed with the true idea of evangelization. He entertained the mistaken theory that civilization must precede Chris- tianity. With such a theory no one will have large success in " turning men from darkness to light and from the power of Satan unto God." Nor J^ ^ , Theory, with such a theory should any large success be looked for even in the line of mere civilization. The quickest, surest method for starting a savage on the high road of mental improvement and improve- ment in social relations is to secure the lodg- ment in his soul of some worthy energizing thought. And what impulse can be so mighty as the sense of personal responsibilit}^ to the holy God, the sense of sin with its penal consequences, and acquaintance with the good news of free grace through the atoning Lamb? 252 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. There is no need of preparing a way for the gospel; it makes a way for itself and for everything else that is good. Preliminaries not having immediate and direct reference to the salvation of the soul are no more required than are introductory arrangements before re- pentance and faith can become obligatory and can be suitably pressed upon the conscience. Breaking down superstition does not neces- sarily introduce vital religion. Of all health- ful forces for moving man in the career of ennobling civilization, what can compare with saving faith? The truest philanthropist is the one wlio determines first of all not to know anything among men save Jesus Christ and him crucified, and who accounts himself "debtor both to the Greeks and to the barbarians." The very alpha of the missionary's office, in the tropics or at the poles, is to deliver the message of Him who has sent him, " Look unto me and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth." Egede had only slight success, if any, in saving souls. His heart was right, but his theory defective. The natives mimicked and derided — than which is there anything harder to bear? In his wearisome and unfruitful toil it would have been very singular if he did not sometimes adopt the psalmist's ejaculation, " O Lord, how long?" Would it have been any- HANS EGEDE. 253 thing strange if, like John Baptist in the castle of Machffirus on the dreary eastern shore of the Dead Sea, Egede in his icy prison during the long night of winter should sometimes grow moody ? Fifteen years of unremitting and unrequited labor were now passed. He preaches his farewell sermon. His text is (Isaiah xlix : 4), " Then I said, I have labored in vain, I have „ ^* * Returns. spent my strength for nought, and in vain: yet surely my judgment is with the Lord, and my work with my God." In shattered health, taking the cherished remains of his wife, he returns to Copenhagen. The king gives him an audience, makes him super- intendent (1740) of a training seminary for the mission, and confers on him the title of Bishop of Greenland, as upon his son after him. He wrote a narrative of his enterprise,' and died (1758) at the age of seventy-two. His name is perpetuated on the Greenland coast in the name of a settlement, Egedeminde^ "Egede's Memorial." " A failure I " ejaculate the unsympathizing. "What good came of it?" they ask supercil- iously. That all expectations. Christian and secular, were not realized has been fully ad- ' Relation angaende den Gronlandske Missions Begyndelse ag forslitelse. Copenliagen, 1738. Also, Den gamle Gronland. Co- penhagen, 174;l-4i. 264 PKOTESTANT MISSIONS. mitted ; but in point of fact this noble Nor- wegian headed and planted what has proved to be a permanent colony, and that too under circumstances more disheartening than have been met by any similar enterprise in the whole range of colonial history. Greed was never his motive, nor did he incur any reasonable censure for mismanagement. With respect even to commercial interests it did not become worldly Danes to speak dispar- agingly of this private enterprise, conducted as it was with prudence, energy, and more of success than we should expect considering the obstacles encountered. How was Heroism. •■ ..i • ^^ i. it With a similar government un- dertaking of that period? One Danish com- mander lighting upon a bank of Greenland sand that resembled gold fancied that his fortune was made. Filling his ship with the supposed treasure he sailed for Denmark, revel- ing on his voyage in dreams of opulence. In 1728 four or five Danish ships were sent out — one a man-of-war — with masons, carpenters, and other handicraftsmen, taking artillery and materials for a fort and a new colony. The officers took horses with them to ride across the country and over the mountains with a view to discovering the supposed lost colony of the eastern coast. Those useless animals soon died. The soldiers mutinied. Neither HANS EGEDE. 255 the governor nor the missionary was safe, for houses of correction had been emptied to fur- nish the colonists. Egede, who before could sleep in the hovels of savage Greenlanders, now needs a guard to defend his bed against the attacks of Christian fellow countrymen. How much of disaster has attended nearly all secular enterprises at the north ! ' Time was when the Arctic archipelago might be seen studded with abandoned sliips, six of them left in the ice — the Investigator at Mercy Bay, the Resolute and Intrepid at Mel- ville Island, the Assistance and Pioneer in Wellington Channel, and the Advance in Smith's Sound, besides the Erebus and Terror, which were believed to have been left before in the Strait of James ^. Disasters. Ross. In Melville Bay more than two hundred ships have already perished. Superior character and superior skill have not sufficed. Sir John Franklin was a man of piety, so were Parry and Scoresby, and though more than one ship's company have perished of cold and starvation we do not pronounce all those expeditions unauthorized.^ While one chief object in view has been but ' Although a thousand years have passed since Eric the Red discovered Greenland the interior remained less known than was the interior of Africa till within a few years. 2 Sargent's Arctic Adventures, p. 472. 256 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. partially accomplished there are few problems relating to the physics of our globe — atmos- pheric pressure, electricity, currents, the aurora, the figure of the earth — which can be under- stood otherwise than by an observation of polar phenomena. Important benefits have accrued to science and indirectly to commerce. Hans Egede's mission was not a failure. Weisfht and worth of character are measured by something else than success. The awards of heaven are not graduated by results, but according to fidelit3\ " Except," says Dr. Geikie, "except that the ancestors of Egede perished on the east coast of that most dismal country, and that its unsurveyed leagues of ice and snow were figuratively under the Danish flag, we know of no claim which Greenland ever had upon Danish Christians."' Not so had this pious man learned Christ, nor did he thus interpret Providence. He had been called of God to that undertaking. By heed- ing the divine summons he accomplished more for Scandinavia, more for mankind, by far than he could have done among the rocks of Vaagen. He was a debtor to those north- ern barbarians, and obeying the divine impulse he became a historical character. His noble example is felt in the world today and will * Christian Missions. London, 1861. P. 98. HANS EGEDE. 257 be felt to the end of time. We marvel at the obtuseness that fails to see in the career of this humble missionary an example of moral sublimity. When King Frederick had just been searching for Danish subjects qualified to enter upon mission work in India with its attractions, and had to solicit recruits from a foreign nationality, a young pastor on the rock- bound coast of Norway and almost within hear- ing of the Maelstrom was meditating on the forlorn condition of men in a region yet more rugged. The King of kings was giving him a call. He could not n^^t"* clearly interpret the summons at first. Circumstances seemed to chain him to the rocks of Vaagen. At length, as to the strong man at Lehi, " the Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him ; " without wavering he toils on year after year amidst suspicion and obloquy for the privilege of expatriating himself and of reaching an icy home that he may benefit a wretched population. Once there he endures a fifteen years' martyrdom of priva- tion, perils, reproaches, and disappointments. He has the genius of Christian patience.' Ir- resolution never masters him. The sternest realities man can ever meet he looks in the face unterrified. To faith in Christ there are no obstacles that cannot be overcome; to the ' Le genie c'est la patience. — Buffon. 258 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. man who takes counsel of duty rather than of difficulty there are no impossibilities. Hans Egede pioneered the way for other missionaries, Danish and Moravian. By his endurance and perseverance he showed the capabilities of Christian fortitude. His life at the north changed the temperature of that continent of frost for all time to come. His example is no coruscation of the borealis, but a steady beacon light to guide and animate every wavering Christian laborer in lands less inhospitable. Estimated on the scale of mo- tives and qualities this apostle Usefulness. , i i • • • was a hero and his mission a triumph. You are familiar with the incident of two northern travelers lighting upon a man at the point of freezing. One of them sprang to his relief, raised him, half buried in the snow, chafed him, restored warmth, and by the rescue of a benumbed wanderer brought himself into a thorough glow. His inactive companion, wrapped in furs, came near perish- ing from cold. So is it with communities, and Norway has today a life she would not possess but for that philanthropic service in Greenland. Did she ever produce a man more useful to herself than Hans Egede? The mission as well as tlie colony established by him became permanent. After a century and a half it exists today. When in the latter HANS EGEDE. 259 part of the last century and beginning of the present the Danish church at home had be- come torpid through rationalism this mission, as might be expected, declined. Since then there has been to some extent a favorable change; yet the preachers sent out from Den- mark are in the main candidates, not of the first grade, who go for only a limited time, five to eight years, who do not usually acquire the language, and who — as has sometimes been true elsewhere — make this service a stepping- stone to some more attractive benefice at home. It is to be acknowledged that the power of evangelical Christianity is not strik- ingly marked in the character and habits of the native people, yet decided improvement has taken place; the community has become nominally Christian. In Danish Greenland proper the last acknowledged pagan Eskimo died some years since. Most of the people are able to read and write, and here is one of the instances of a rude people increasing instead of diminishing by contact with civili- zation and superior foreigners.' The Danish Government — to its special honor be it said — has pursued a paternal policy, for one thing wisely excluding ardent spirits, that destructive bane among so many rude races. ' In 1789 the population was only 5,122; in 1872 it had become 9,441. 2G0 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. There is in Greenland singularly one warm spring, with a uniform temperature of a hun- dred and four degrees Fahrenheit ; and while most of the birds are birds of prey there is one bird of song, the linnet. Such are the fountain and melody of our holy religion in that land of appalling dreariness. XI MORAVIAN MISSIONS. In a suburb of Constance, near where the Rhine leaves the lake, stands one of the more appropriate monuments in Europe. It is a rude, massive bowlder placed on the spot where more than four and a half centuries ago John Huss and Jerome of Prague were burned at the stake. Few incidents of foreign travel ever impressed me more than to find on the morning of an anniversary of the martyrdom of Huss that a Prot- estant gentleman from Prague, in ^° Bohemia, had climbed before daybreak over the high iron fence which incloses the monu- ment and with a wreath of fresh immortelles had crowned the memorial rock. John Huss, the true-hearted, with noble simplicity and con- scientious firmness, never made giddy by ap- plause nor despondent by persecution, a re- former before the Reformation and a Bohemian Brother before the Unitas Fratrum, furnished an impulse and type of that movement which 262 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. issued in the colony at Herrnhut. Between his martyrdom, in July, 1415, and the present hour there lie two noteworthy eras in the history of the United Brethren — the one a testimony of endurance under cruel oppression, the other achievements of signal evangelism. These two eras are by no means disconnected. By the evident design of Providence they form a coherent whole. The roots of the present always lie hid in the past. One of two results usually flows from severe trial ; individuals and communities either en- feeble their spiritual life by pitying themselves and nursing an expectation of pity from others, or else active benevolence is stimulated. Suf- fering that fails to make a man or a church more enterprising in the way of Christian phi- lanthropy, that fails to ennoble and expand character, fails of its chief end. Discipline, j^ self-indulgent inactivity results decay will ensue. Seldom is anj^ one called to notable service in behalf of fellow men without some severity of previous discipline. In the pit and in prison Joseph qualifies to become the best governor Egypt ever had. The op- pression of Pilgrims and Puritans in England, their early hardships on the rugged shores of New England, and their subsequent experiences in war contributed to that character which has revealed itself in missionary movements now MOKAVIAN MISSIONS. 263 constituting the truest glory of our land. Embarrassments under which John Eliot and others like him labored in the mother country and the condition of self-exile to a wilderness made them all the more ready for Christian effort in behalf of the Indian. Often does the baptism of fire and blood seal a consecration to high and far-reaching aims. On the anvil and under the hammer character grows broad. The Hebrew lad sold to Ishmaelites is not the only instance of a slave effecting vast benefit to others. Was it not in the divine thought that both king and queen of the Iberians should be converted when a Christian female in the fourth century was carried away captive into Asiatic Georgia? Was it not in order to the planting of Christianity in Abyssinia that God allowed the capture by fierce natives of two Christian youths, one of whom became the first bishop in that countrj-? During all the Moravian experience of oppression and bloodshed He who seeth the end from the beginning had evidently in mind salvation for the Eskimos in arctic regions, for African slaves in tropical West Indies, and for Hot- tentots in Africa. Having prepared a volume of lectures on Moravian missions I shall not, of course, in a single chapter attempt much of detail, but only present a few general considerations and facts. 264 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. The merit of a revived, collective apprehension of Christ's great aim in his kingdom on earth belongs to the Renewed Church of the United Brethren. What Wittenberg was to Rome Herrnhut became to Protestant Christendom. In modern times the Moravian Church was the first as a church and at the orayian Q^^set of her career to render Antecsdence. practical in her life a just con- ception of what Christianity has to do for our world. Individual and sporadic efforts, gov- ernmental and colonial movements, in the line of foreign evangelism had, as we have seen, taken place, yet few of them proceeded upon the basis of a distinctly recognized duty to give the gospel to the heathen as heathen and because such is the command of Him who died for all. Reverting once more to the low countries we gladly accord to that commercial corporation, the Dutch East India Company, a laudable interest in supporting ministers of the gospe'i in the Asiatic possessions of Holland — For- mosa, Ambojma, Java, and Ceylon — and that, too, before similar movements in Great Britain. The main impulse, however, proceeded, as we saw, from the circumstance that Hollanders — government servants and merchants — were set- tled in those islands, and that by conquest in the first half of the seventeenth century native MORAVIAN >nssiONs. 265 peoples had come under Dutch rule. The method of evangelization was to a consider- able extent unsatisfactory. Not a little coer- cion was used. Christianity, instead of being introduced into the heart or sometimes even into the head, was imposed upon the people. It need hardly be said that the Reformed Church of the Netherlands was very far from being thoroughly leavened with a missionary spirit. In England, also, societies like that for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, whose charter bears the date of 1701, sprang primarily from a desire to supply British col- onies with clergymen, catechists, and school- masters. Labor in behalf of heathen in and near the colonies was a subordinate, an in- cidental, consideration. Only a few in the Church of England and among Dissenters had dreamed of what was due from them to the out- side pagan world. The Congregational churches of New England in the last half of the seven- teenth century came nearer than any others of that period to some just appreciation of the great duty owed by Christian men to those who sit in the region and shadow of death. Their sense of obligation, as has been shown, began to find expression during the decade from 1640-1650 in labors commenced by John Eliot and the May hews — labors into which 266 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. others also entered then and later. But the men who led in that example remained pastors of churches composed of English colonists, so were others who followed their example. Ex- clusive devotion by any Protestant to Christian work among the Indians in that century was scarcely known. The little kingdom of Denmark having ac- quired possessions on the Coromandel Coast of India, a colonial interest, as you recollect, occasioned the mission to Tranquebar. The originating motive of Hans Egede's expedition to Greenland was the hope of finding and ministering to supposed descendants of Chris- tian Scandinavians who centuries before had settled in that region of ice. Those associated with him in the enterprise, except his noble wife Gertrude, were at the outset chiefly in- fluenced by the prospect of a remunerative trade. But those early Danish missions had only a feeble hold upon the Lutheran Church of Denmark and Norway. A foreign mission as we now understand that term — a movement, simple and pure, of Christian men entertaining the primary purpose of carrying the gospel to the heathen because they are heathen — was scarcely known in the Protestant world till 1732. Just eleven years after Egede the Norwegian sailed from Bergen and just eleven years before David Brainerd MORAVIAN MISSIONS. 267 betook himself to Kaunaumeek such an under- taking originated at Herrnhut. As for the refugees from ancient Egypt there was needed a counselor and lawgiver of emi- nent piety, breadth of culture, endowed with the qualities of a statesman and prophet, one educated elsewhere than in a servile condition, so the refugees in Upper Lusatia needed a leader with far different training from what could be had among persecuted artisans of Bohemia. Such a leader was in preparation. Of noble birth, by marriage connections re- lated to several royal families on the Conti- nent, with superior endowments, from boyhood onward moved to a consecration of talents and treasures to the promotion of evangelical interests at home and abroad. Count Zinzendorf rises to our view as one of the more remarkable characters of the last century. What other name is known to ecclesiastical annals of a man in such high social position who at an early period of life became possessed with a grand Christian idea so foreign to men of his rank and so in ad- vance of his age, who in the sanctified ardor of youth entered into covenant to do all possi- ble for the cause of evangelization, and that, too, among those most neglected by others — a covenant from which he had not swerved when at threescore (1760) death closed his 268 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. earthly activities? Gross Hennersdorf, German universities, and the Saxon court furnished Herrnhut with a Moses. But what of the period? In Germany it was to a sad extent a period of scholasticism in both the Lutheran and Reformed Churches; a period of bitter theological contests; a period of sheer orthodoxy, evangelical feeling and life having largely evaporated. The spurious illu- minism of later years is just becoming visible in its murky dawn ; the philosophy which brought on rationalism is making its early essays to dominate revelation. In ^°^ ' the person of Frederick William I there sits on the throne of Prussia the strangest compound of religiosity and violent passion that ever wore a crown, and there will soon be a reaction in favor of French tinsel and French infidelity. Pietism distressed by the petrifying condi- tion of the religious world had for many years been striving, and with a measure of success, to throw off the stiff bands of coufessionalism and revive a Biblical piety. It insisted upon a new heart, a new creature in Christ Jesus, as the primary need of every man, savage or cultured, and then of a warm Christian fellow- ship. But in its reaction from torpor pietism had in turn somewhat deteriorated; it was becoming narrow, concentrated within itself. MORAVIAN MISSIONS. 269 and censorious. Some good men of the Halle school thought Zinzendorf could not be a child of God because he had not been through the penitential struggle after their pattern. The excellent men who gave in their adhesion to that form of revived religion kept themselves unduly apart from the rest of society; they lacked breadth; their theology was too much a theology of feeling and frames. There was needed a forth-putting spirit, a spirit of enter- prise in behalf of others, an element which happily did enter into the life of Moravianism. Herrnhut became indeed a tropical island in a polar ocean, but her fruit trees were destined to be transplanted. The two leading ideas of church existence — personal culture and aggres- sion, growth intensively and extensively, each an auxiliary to the other — harmonized in the spiritual temperament of the United Brethren. This will appear all the more noticeable when it is considered what the regimen was which Zinzendorf introduced — an isolated com- munity, whose municipal, industrial, and social affairs were administered by church authorities, no outsider to hold real estate or to have resi- dence within corporate limits. Such a system, continuing still in Great Britain and on the continent of Europe, though relinquished in this country, was not of itself as a polity suited to enlargement or perpetuity. Were 270 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. it not for tlie evangelistic movement outward to the farthest lines, local and social, of our race Herrnhut might before this have become an entity of the past. The well-defined resto- ration of a primitive missionary element sup- plied the required conserving and vital force. The main question evermore confronts us. What is a man, what is a communion, worth for the kingdom of God, that progressive king- dom which is to fill the earth? Every people as well as every individual has by divine ap- pointment an office to perform, a niche to fill. The function of Moravianism has been to em- body and illustrate before the eyes of Protes- tants the harmony of Christian life at home centers and evangelistic energy abroad. In every great undertaking or discovery chief merit pertains to priority. To Herrnhut belongs the credit of having as a church taken the lead, beginning her missions in 1732, and having persisted therein amidst the religious apathy and growing rationalism of the last century and the early part of our present cen- tury. The year 1732 was the year in which Voltaire published his Lettres Philosophiques, and the grinning infidel had only too much occasion to chuckle over the fact that Vernet, a Protestant minister at Geneva, w^as insisting, not upon the necessity, but the utility, of our holy religion! It will be remembered, too, MORAVIAN MISSIONS. 271 that besides Moravianism there was another remarkable manifestation of the spiritual re- vival, which began with Spener's Collegia Pietatis two hundred , years ago. It was Wes- leyanism. The pietistic wave struck Great Britain, and its marvelous result is second only to the Reformation of the sixteenth cen- tury. That, however, in its organization and its foreign missionary movement was later by a generation than Herrnhut and was in some measure an outgrowth of Herrnhut. The question arises. What was the distinc- tive element out of which sprang the move- ment that marks 1732 a red-letter year in missionary annals? That element was an un- usually fervent love to our Saviour. I will not pause to speak of infelicities in the poetic imagery of an early Moravian era, particu- larly in the Sifting Period. Of , , , ii .• Motive Power, what account are mere aesthetic blemishes as against the substantial and more important features of vital piety? Why should they even be alluded to — as is often done, and sometimes discreditably — when the denom- ination has sloughed them off and repudiated them? I repeat, one marked characteristic of the Brethren's Church and the fountain of her remarkable missionary zeal is warmtli of loyalty to Him who is Head of the Church. I am not aware that since primitive days any communioa 272 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. of believers have as a body in such marked manner and so uniformly kept the eye upon the Lamb of God who taketh away the sin of the world. Thence has come the inspiration which makes a Moravian community in its best days so free from pomp, noise, and worldliness, from the greed of gain and honor; which sheds the charm of simplicity and cheerfulness over social life, over religious worship, over death and the resting place of the dead — a charm restful and refreshing, that abides even in the most repulsive regions of foreign missionary toil. Every evangelical church possesses in some measure, of course, a genuine affection for our Lord; but as Faraday has shown that a dormant magnetism exists in all metals, which will become apparent only at a certain temperature, so in some Christian bodies there is required a degree of rare religious fervor to make it apparent that charity abides there. It must be said that this virtue, with some alter- nations of vigor, has been eminently cultivated by the United Brethren, among whom there has never prevailed a Christless Christianity, nor Christ without the cross, nor the cross without the resurrection. Philosophy under- takes no foreign missions; she will never quit her groves of Academus. Little would it avail if she did. Mere philanthropy will not take men into unevangelized regions. No reliance MORAVIAN MISSIONS. 273 for reclaiming the race can be had save upon those who discover that on the cross justice and mercy harmonize, who become so pene- trated by the love of God in Christ Jesus that they "cannot but speak the things which they have seen and heard." The place where they shall witness, whether among kindred at home or heathen at the ends of the earth, is a matter of comparative indifference so the Master makes his pleasure plain. The excel- lent Charles Simeon, of Cambridge, kept a portrait of Henry Martyn in his study, which seemed to be all the while saying, "Be ear- nest, be earnest ; don't trifle, don't trifle ; " and Simeon would say, " Yes, I will be ear- nest, I will be earnest; I will not trifle, for souls are perishing and Jesus must be glori- fied." Missionaries of the United Brethren have for the most part kept the eye on a countenance more commanding, more lovely, "looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith." Such being the case, what might be expected of Moravian missionaries with regard to their fields of remote and arduous labor? Just what we find — that they go forth not so much in the service of the Unitas Fratrum as from personal obedience to the Lord Jesus, because his express command brings to them an un- transferable duty and because the pledge of 274 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. his perpetual presence they know will be re- deemed; just what we find — that in their peculiarly trying experience they are kept hopeful and cheerful by the lively conscious- ness of that union, which is so intimate that if a member be wounded here on earth the Head in heaven feels it. By experience as well as by the Word of God are they taught that spiritual life does not spring up out of native depths in man's soul, but comes down from Christ into individual hearts ; that saving knowledge is not revealed by flesh and blood, but is something divinely imparted ns lan ^i^^^.]^ finds its wav to the center Loyalty. _ ^ of one's being and there masters the man; and how can they do otherwise than lift up the cross to the gaze of sin-smitten man? Thanks that Zinzendorf inculcated the "theology of blood," his own expression; thanks that Francke, his teacher, taught "a drop of faith is more noble than a whole sea of sci- ence, though it be the historical science of the divine Word." There are only two systems of salvation — every man his own saviour or no man saved by himself alone. What other ground of peace and hope for the guilty is there besides Calvary, that focus of the uni- verse? The expiatory and propitiatory cross is the appointed place for friendly meeting be- tween God and man, heaven and earth. Only MORAVIAN MISSIONS. 275 from the cross waves the white flag of truce. Deeply penetrated with a conviction of this truth missionaries of the United Brethren have started out, never questioning the universal need or the universal adaptation of the gospel. They have held with peculiar distinctness that the Greek is no better fitted to receive the gospel and to enter heaven by his speculation, and that the barbarian is no less fitted by his rudeness; that there is no aristocratic salva- tion; that Christianity is no more designed for Philemon, the wealthy master, than for Onesimus, the bond servant; that it is suited to man as man, whatever his language, color, kindred, or country — suited to every existing, every conceivable, type and grade of civiliza- tion and of degradation ; hence, believing as- suredly that for spiritual vision the Sun of Righteousness is equally indispensable and equally adapted to every eye, whether that organ be blue or black or whatever its shade. " God hangs great weights on small wires," says an Oriental proverb. The truth thus homely expressed has been illustrated in Mo- ravian missions. It has been maintained by the supreme Ruler from the first. Objects, places, and instruments for the accomplish- ment of purposes more intimately relating to his spiritual kingdom have usually been chosen with apparent reference to staining the pride 276 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. of human glory. Is the angel Jehovah to appear signally to Moses? It will not be in the tall cedar or terebinth, but in a burning bush. By the vision of a barley loaf prostrat- ing a tent among the host of Midian is fore- shadowed what the little band under Gideon will accomplish. Would we behold the eternal Word made flesh and come to dwell among us? Shepherds will be our guides and we look into a stable. The first to announce his ceremonial presence at the temple will be an aged widow; the first to herald his resurrec- tion, a humble woman. This law, of which we are so often reminded in the history of the Church, is one which our countrymen have special need to ponder. We are addicted to an idolatry of bulk. We boast of great lakes, great rivers, great spaces, as if these things would make a nation great, whereas the aggregate of little things is usually greater than the aggregate of great ones. It would require a larger chasm to hold all the coral insects of our world than all the elephants, and what those animal- cules accomplish is of more importance in the economy of nature than the huge quadrupeds of Asia and Africa together. Pride of jjigness fails to consider that dwelling among superior magnitudes only makes conceit and vanity the more glaring. Is it not time for us to give MORAVIAN MISSIONS. 277 thought rather to the busy bee than to the spread eagle? Go to the ant — architect, sol- dier, political economist; consider her ways and be wise. Was it the vast territory of Scythia or little Attica that furnished states- men, philosophers, poets, and historians who have been models to the rest of the world ? Was it in populous Peking or in Bethlehem Ephratah, little among the thousands of Ju- dah, where the Lord of glory appeared in human form ? It is great and good ideas associated with energy that make a man or a people truly great. That alone which re- veals the divine, that which is knit to a noble future, knit to eternity, ranks really high. Humble instrumentalities and grand ulti- mate consequences disclose the strength and skill of the mighty One of Israel. Was the size of Moses' rod wherewith he brought water from the rock of any account? The human following and force of our Lord at first were only a few fishermen, a few women, and a few children. Let us travel back one hundred and sixty- two years to the Hutberg at Herrnhut in Lusatia. Casting an eye at the neighboring hamlet we see no imposing architecture, nor in society or worship any imposing forms. The place has had existence for only ten years. A majority of the inhabitants are 278 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. exiles, poor and not highly educated, with two or three exceptions not high born, planted and permitted on this spot rather by sufferance than with the good will of any government. Among them is a young man from Suabia, twenty-seven years of age, a potter by trade. One night in July, 1731, he is sleepless. What keeps him awake? There was once a young man at Athens who said the trophy of Miltiades would not let him sleep ; is any such ambition at work here ? A thought from on high has been received, a holy ardor is kindled in his soul. No such little affair as that of Marathon fills his mind; per- Herrnhut, 1732. , -,. , sonal aggrandizement has no place. Amidst night watches his heart turns toward benighted slaves in the West Indies, and his purpose is formed — he will carry the news of salvation to Africans in bondage. There has for some time been a prayer meet- ing at Herrnhut every evening, and he is always present. A remarkable season of re- freshing from on high four years ago stood evidently connected with his prayers and those of his immediate associates. He was at the meeting when Count Zinzendorf spoke of the condition of West India slaves, also when Anthony, the black man from St. Thomas, told the story of his dark-minded countrymen and of his sister, who had some desire to know MORAVIAN MISSIONS. 279 the way of life. The thought of saving one soul prepares this young brother for any sacri- fice. The cross of Christ is the trophy that will not let Leonard Dober sleep that night. The next day he finds that his friend Tobias Leupold was similarly affected at the same time with himself by the same circumstances and has been moved to the same resolution. In missionary annals similar coincidences not unfrequently present themselves, and such a coincidence usually marks an epoch. The year 1644 furnishes an example. John Eliot began his study of the Indian language and Thomas Mayhew, encouraged by the conversion of Hiacoomes, was preparing for Christian labors in the vernacular of Martha's Vineyard, but the undertakings of those two , , .. . , Coincidences, devout men were quite inde- pendent of each other. Seventeen hundred and ninety-five yields an illustration. Dr. Bogue was supplying the pulpit of the Tab- ernacle in Bristol, England; Dr. Ryland, of that city, received letters from the Baptist missionaries in Bengal and sends for Dr. Bogue, who belongs to a different denomina- tion, to hear them read. Then they kneel and pray together, and the thought occurs to Dr. Bogue that it was most desirable and might be practicable to unite Christians of dif- ferent denominations for missionary purposes. 280 PROTEST AKT MISSIONS. That was the germ of the London Missionary Society. We return to Herrnhut. Leiipold writes a letter to the congregation communicating the desire of himself and Dober to become mis- sionaries. By the public reading of that let- ter two more young men, Matthew Stach and Frederick Bohnisch, are simultaneously impressed, resolve to offer themselves for serv- ice in Greenland, and next year will be on their way thither. The very atmosphere of Herrnhut is becoming quick with the evan- gelistic element. The delay of a twelvemonth only confirms the resolution of Dober. It has taken time, though far less time ... / ^ . than is usual, to convince the Missionaries. ' Moravian Church that the scheme is neither a wild one nor premature. Martin Linner, the worthy chief elder of the congre- gation, an invalid, has set his heart on having Dober succeed him in office and cannot bear to have him leave. Generally the best men suited for foreign service are most needed at home. The day for departure is at hand. David Nitschmann, who after awhile will be ordained as the first bishop of the Renewed Church of the United Brethren, and chiefly with a view to furthering the cause of missions, has been selected to accompany Dober. Leave-taking, MORAVIAN MISSIONS. 281 with prayer and singing, is over. No laudatory speeches are made, no torchlight procet^^iuns take place. The morning of August 21, 1732, dawns; no, it has hardly dawned. At three o'clock they start northward, Count Zinzendorf taking them some miles on their way to Baut- zen. Thence they set out — a potter and a carpenter, with a small bundle in hand and less than four dollars each in the pocket — for a journey of six hundred miles on foot, and at the end of that journey they will still be four thousand miles from the place of destination. Chimerical ! preposterous ! exclaim the un- thinking. Pause a moment. Into the soul of that man whose trade is to work in clay there has come a spark from heaven. It has kindled a flame, clear, calm, steady. Since primitive times he is the first missionary to African slaves. He is the first Protestant missionary to the heathen of tropical America. At Herrnhut he has not been argued out of his convictions; at Copenhagen stories of can- nibalism will not frighten him out of his pur- pose, nor will he be wearied out of it by the refusal of every Danish shipmaster to take him to St. Thomas. On the long pedestrian journey from Lusatia to Denmark all profess- ing Christians, save one, laugh at the potter and carpenter or else pity them; and that one, the appreciative Countess von Stolberg, 282 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. represents just about the proportion of persons then on the Continent who would be likely to estimate aright the motives and aims of these men. There are some who can declaim well on the subject of universal brotherhood ; there always have been such. Even heathen poets could get off fine sentiment now and then, Seneca say- ing,' "I was not born for one corner; this whole world is my country;" Lucan professing to believe that he was born,^ "not for himself solely, but for all mankind." Yet which of them ever lifted so much as a finger for phil- anthropic purposes? And of all the thousands in evangelical Europe on the twenty-first of August, 1732, how many were moving toward the heathen world in obedience to Christ's command? Just two men, who have bidden good-by to Herrnhut long before sunrise — men who have taken in the simple distinctive idea of evangelization and in whom that means something else than stay at home. They head a long line of quiet, unostentatious laborers of the Unitas Fratrum^ who have knocked at frozen doors for permission to proclaim the love of Jesus; who have traversed regions where the sun shineth in his strength, foUow- * Non sum uno angulo natus ; patria mea totus hie est mundus, ^ Nee sibi, sed toti gentium se credere mundo. 3 Note 63. MORAVIAN MISSIONS. 283 ing in tracks most familiar to the tornado and to the pestilence that walketh in darkness ; ' who in the face of the brand and the toma- hawk have gone with a song in the heart and on the lips. Not unfrequently have they had precedence on given foreign fields.^' While David Brainerd was ^. . ticism. still a freshman at Yale Moravian missionaries devoted themselves to a portion of the Delaware tribe. They reduced the lan- guage to writing and printed a number of works, religious and of an educational charac- ter. For a century and a half have they in various languages made cultivated plantations, primeval forests, and dreary wastes vocal with the hymn of Zinzendorf, "Jesus, thy blood and righteousness," and Paul Gerhardt's, "0 Head, so full of bruises!" Chiefly it is to men on the outer verge of moral and social hopelessness that they have gone, yet not primarily to civilize them; not so much to make Moravians as to make Chris- ' Note 54. ^One instance is that of labor in behalf of the Cherokees, which was begun by Steiner and Byhan in 1801, eleven years before the American Board sent men to Bombay and sixteen years before the Board established a mission among that tribe. 284 ritOTESTANT MISSIONS. tians ; not mere reformation, but salvation, is their great aim. Civilization never saves, may fail altogether of preparing for Christianity. Christianity never fails to bring civilization in its train. The United Brethren have, indeed, every- ^Yhere introduced schools and industrial arts, but the hiding of their missionary power is in the cross of Christ. Studiously and wisely have they abstained from intermeddling with political affairs ; theirs is not the gospel of intrigue. Largely toiling for self-support they have yet seldom become secularized. Most courageously have they as a general thing kept to their work. Purloin- ing the fruit of other men's labors, welcoming the disciplined members, and employing the re- jected native helpers of neighboring missions are not chargeable upon them. What though physical science has not been their forte; what though no great invention or discovery, no epic poem or popular romance, has emanated from them ; theirs is a work unspeakably higher on the scale of the Messianic kingdom — winning souls to Christ and fitting them for glory. With rare persistence have they clung to their purpose. Does a backslidden Indian leave the mission settlement and wander into the wilderness? A youthful Moravian follows him into the forest, finds him at length, tells MORAVIAN MISSIONS. 285 him it is in vain he flees ; were he to go hun- dreds of miles he would still pursue him. The Indian's heart melts. "Do the brethren re- member me still? Are you come merely to seek me?" and he weeps in bitter contrition. Thousands upon thousands of converts are the more than golden reward of such perseverance. Numberless are the witnesses like a dying Eskimo girl. "O Redeemer!" she exclaims, raising her wasted hands toward heaven, " O Redeemer! how is it that when I hear of thee I cannot refrain from tears? As the eider fowl to the rock, so cleaveth my soul to thee!" August 21, 1732! Not Yorktown or Water- loo ; not Aboukir or Trafalgar ; not the birth- day of king or empress, but the birthday of a movement having grandeur in that only kingdom which shall flourish forever. Once more I call attention to the fact that the influence of a country or a community upon the destinies of our race has little respect to its geographical extent. "^"^ It was a land whose greatest length was about the same as the distance from New York to Boston, and whose entire area did not exceed one half that of Missouri, which saved Europe from the desolating invasion of Persian hordes. Venice was never more influential than when her territory on the mainland was less than 286 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. one square mile. Within seven years from August 21, 1732, Herrnhut sent out ten dif- ferent missions — than which is there any fact in the whole range of evangelistic history more noteworthy?' From that obscure radi- ating point in Central Europe missions have been established on each of the five other continents, yet to the present day Herrnhut is a settlement of only one thousand souls. If other Protestant churches, the older and the younger, had been equally prompt and in proportion to numbers equally devoted to this cause, instead of sleeping on obliv- ious to what is due to the unevangelized, equipped with so small an amount of infor- mation and so large a supply of objections, Zion would be seen to have arisen, her light being come and the glory of the Lord being risen upon her. Had that been done Jesuits would not be glorying in their priority of missionary zeal, nor would the heathen world be now flinging back reproaches upon Chris- tendom for her unpardonable tardiness;^ the Karen would not have put to the missionary ' It is said that not long since a Moravian functionary called at the office of the East Africa Company in Berlin to solicit some facilities for the new missions on the lakes. His request was cordially granted, and he was invited in to see the directors. After a little pleasant chat one of the gentlemen asked him whether the Moravian Church had ever carried on a mission before! — Missionari/ Review, March, 1894, p. 231. 'Note 55. MORAVIAN MISSIONS. 287 the questions: "If so long a time has elapsed since the crucifixion of Christ why has not this good news reached us before? Why have so many generations of our fathers gone down to hell for want of it?*' nor would the New Zealand mother have held up her last living child to a missionary, exclaiming, " If j'ou had come before and brought me the gospel I should not have murdered my twelve other children ! " At the present time there are one hundred and thii-ty-seven mission stations and more than seventy affiliated or out stations in var- ious parts of the earth. They are found widely distributed through all latitudes, from arctic and sub-arctic regions of frigid Laborador, and Alaska Forces through Indian resei'vations in North America, through tropical West Indies and the mainland of Central and South America; from the snowy heights of Tibet to Australia and to South and East Central Africa. In those fields are more than four hundred and sixty missionaries, sixty-two of them natives. In their day-schools there are over twenty-three thousand pupils. Under their care are not far from thirty-two thousand com- municants — about the same, including children, as in their home churches. The Moravian for- eign field counts ninety-seven thousand adherents. 288 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. nearly two and one-lialf times the whole number in home churches.'' Gladly do we place a wreath on the mon- ument of John Huss, on the monument of every martyr and faithful missionary; yet will we never forget that in the burning fiery fur- nace of Bohemia there was One, and under scorching rays of the tropics there now is One, like unto the Son of God; that amidst the long winter of Greenland and Labrador near by those humble missionary dwellings are footsteps which leave no print on the snow. Before him we cast all crowns, saying, "Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory, and honor, and power ! " Since the founding of Herrnhut Mora- vians have been singularly free from self- assertion. Talking but little they have done nobly. There is no proof of practicability like a practical illustration. The demonstra- tions which Columbus made with the egg and with his fleet settled two The Lesson. , , . ^ rm . . things forever. ihe missionary operations of the Unitas Fratrum during the eighteenth century were a rebuke and at length an incitement to the rest of Protes- tant Christendom. Though a silent factor ' Moravian home missions are not here included. Diaspora stations are found in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Russia, Poland, Germauy, Switzerland, and the United States. MOKAVIAN MISSIONS. 289 they were an important factor in starting the evangelistic movements which began in Great Britain a hundred years ago. We do well, indeed, to render devout thanks for what is now being done in behalf of peo- ples unevangelized or supplied only with a decayed Christianity. In contemplating more than sixteen thousand missionaries, nearly six thousand main stations, S3venty-nv'3 thousand native helpers, and nearly fourteen hundred thousand communicants scattered through the wide world we behold the mightiest of agen- cies engaged in a work more sublime and destined to an issue more triumphant than an)' other. But undue relative magnifying of the present is an undeserved reflection upon the past. Great streams are fed by remote rills. The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries made contributions without which the wealth of the nineteenth would be want- ing. The Persians say "Ispahan is half the world ; " Oriental ignorance and Oriental ar- rogance are yet more unseemly in Western Europe and in this Western World. APPENDIX APPENDIX Note 1. — Page 10. Sundry mistakes regarding this move- ment have been put forth : " After consultation with the other pastors of Geneva he [Calvin] sent two, Guillaurae Chartier and Pierre Richier, who were afterwards joined by several others." — Newcomb's Cyclopedia of Missions, p. 325. "Geneva sent two clergymen and fourteen students to accompany the colonists." — Newcomb's Cyclopedia of Missions, p. 726. " The church of Geneva as early as 1556 inaugurated foreign missions by send- ing a company of fourteen missionaries to Rio de Janeiro in hope of being able to introduce the reformed religion into Brazil." — McClintock and Strong's Cyclopcedia, VI, p. 356. Note 2. — Page 17. Geddes, Michael: History of the Church of Ethiopia. London, 1696. La Croze, Maturin Veyssiere : Histoire au Christianisme D'Ethiopie et D'Armeine. A la Haie, 1739. P. 322. Hotten, John Camden: Abyssinia and its People. London, 1868. At the end a bibliography of more than two hundred works relating to Abyssinia. Thirsch, H. W. J. : Abyssinia. Translated by Sarah M. S. Pereira. London, 1886. Bent, J. Theodore: The Sacred City of the Ethiopians. London, 1893. Note 3. — Page 30. "The churches there being so hap- pily planted and watered and having divers pastors, teachers, and overseers set over them." — 1643, Campbell's Missionary Success in the Island of Formosa, I, p. 41. "In the course of thirty-seven years twenty-nine ordained men labored in For- mosa. One or more of them and also some of the Dutch 294 APPENDIX. Bchoolraasters proved to be unworthy of the service." — Campbell's Missionary Success in the Island of Formosa, I, pp. 69, 70. Note 4. — Page 31. It has never been easy to obtain access to the archives of that company, and no adequate history of early evangelistic operations by the Dutch in the East has been written. A thorough and candid investi- gation of original sources is much to be desired. Note 5. — Page 32. "Because a residence of three or four years only is not admissible and better not be under- taken at all, as he could not become familiar with the lan- guage in so short a time, whereas in ten or twelve years he could attain to a complete mastery of it." — Letter of Can- didius the missionary in Missionary Success in Formosa, pp. 72, 73. Note 6. — Page .34. "The Dutch governor told him [Cap- tain Gardiner] that he might as well try to teach the monkeys as the Papuans, and the Dutch clergy gave him very little encouragement." — C. M. Yonge's Pioneers and Founders. London, 1874. P. 272. Note 7. — Page 53. It was not till the first quarter of the present century that American notices of Eliot began to give his alleged birthplace. The name given varies thus: Nasin, Nasing, Nazing, Nazeing, in the county of Essex. Later his birth was credited to Little Baddow in the same county. Within the last twelvemonth Dr. Ellsworth Eliot, of New York City, has announced the discovery of the date of the baptism of his ancestor the apostle Eliot as recorded at Widford, county of Hertford. In the parish register of the Church of St. John Baptist at that place the record is as follows: "John Elliott, the Sonne of Bennett Elliott, was bap- tized the fyfte daye of Auguste, in the year of our Lord God 1604." Among the marriages is that of his parents, Bennett Eliot and Letteye Aggar, the thirtieth of October, 1598. The late Archbishop Richard Whately was baptized at the same font and Charles Lamb often worshiped in the same church — a venerable building, parts of which date probably from the Norman period, eigiit hundred years ago. Through the APPENDIX. 296 efforts of Dr. Ellsworth Eliot and the Rev. John Travis Lock- wood, rector, a memorial window has been introduced into the Church of St. John. Tlie inscription reads : " To the glory of God and in pious remembrance of John Eliot, A. B. Cantab, called ' the apostle to the Indians/ who was baptized in this church August 5, 1604; emigrated to New England A.D. 1610, and died in Roxbury, Massachusetts, May 21, 1696. This window was erected by his descendants A.D. 1894. 'The righteous shall be in everlasting remembrance.'" The dedica- tion of the window took place on the twenty-first of May of the year (1894), the then American minister at the court of St. James, His Excellency the Hon. T. F. Bayard, being present. Note 8. — Page 53. Through the courtesy of Robert N. Gust, LL.D., of London, and of IL A. Morgan, master of Jesus College, Cambridge, I have lately received the follow- ing transcript from the register of that college, to which the copyist adds two memoranda, one of them relating to Eliot's Bible : " 1622 Mail die XV° Johannes Eliott [sic] habuit licentiam sibi concessam petendi gratiam ab universitate ad respondendum quaestioni spondente M""" Beale." " Mr. Beale was his tutor, a fellow of the college. The 'license' is equivalent to what we call a supplicat which the college gives to qucEstionis proceeding to the B.A. degree (see Mullinger's History of University of Cambridge, Vol. 1, p. 852)." "John Eliot presented to the college a copy, now in our library, of his version of the Bible in the Indian language. Title : 'The Holy Bible containing the Old Testament AND THE New Translated into the Indian Language &c Cambridge Printed by Samuel Green and Marmaduke Johnson MDCLXIII' / 296 APPENDIX. " On the fly-sheet in his handwriting ' 'Pro Collegio Jesu Accipias, mater, quod alumnus humillimus offert Filius, oro preces semper habere tuas Johannes Eliot.' " Mr. Morgan remarks : " I observe that in the life given of him in tlie Encyclopcedia Brilannica it is stated that he took his bachelor's degree in 162J, but in Leslie Stephen's Biographical Dictionary in 1622, and the latter date is without doubt correct. Tiicre was a Thomas Eliot at this college who took his degree in January, 1624 — which in those days counted as 1623 — and this I think must have led to mistakes as to when John Eliot took his." It should be added that the Whiting portrait of Eliot is not well authenticated. Note 9. — Page 57. Major-General Gookin, a candid, con- scientious acquaintance, testifies : " The truth is, Mr. Eliot en- gaged in this great work of preaching unto the Indians upon a very pure and sincere account ; for I being his neighbor and intimate friend at the time wlien he first attempted this enter- prise, he was pleased to communicate unto me his design and the motives that induced him thereto, which, as I remember, were principally these : First, the glory of God in the conver- sion of some of these poor desolate souls ; secondly, his com- passion and ardent affection to them as of mankind in their great blindness and ignorance ; thirdly, and not the least, to endeavor, so far as in him lay, the accomplishing and fulfill- ing the covenant and promise that New England people had made unto their king when he granted them their patent or charter, viz., that one principal end of their going to plant these countries was to communicate the gospel unto the native Indians." "It doth evidently appear that they were heroic, noble, and Christian principles that induced this precious serv- ant of Christ to enter upon this work, and not any carnal or by-ends ; for in these times nothing of outward encouragement did appear." Note 10. — Page 60. "During a religious interest among a tribe in Rhode Island, conducted in part by white men, who, of APPENDIX. 297 course, used the English language while most of the Indians still employed their native tongue, an Indian female became very deeply interested for her salvation. She seemed to have embraced the notion since Cliristianity had been brought to her people through the English tongue that it was to be sought through the medium of that language. She feared God would not listen to her rude, pagan speech. The few converted Indians had acquired some knowledge of the English. She, however, had learned to pronounce but one word — the word 'broom.* Her anxiety became intense. Her Christian countrymen ex- horted her to pray. She felt a deep desire to pray, but knew not how to pray as she supposed she ought since she could not employ the acceptable tongue. At last the demands of her soul and the strivings of the divine Spirit so far overcame her that, throwing herself into the attitude of a suppliant, she cried aloud, ' Broom ! Broom ! Broom ! ' God answered her heart instead of her lips, and instantly filled her soul with light and love and tlie joys of his salvation. She rose up to shout his praise, and ever afterwards served him in a pure and joj'ful ^ life." — Rev. Frederick Denison, in Westerly and its Witnesses. P. 80. Note 11. — ^Page 70. A resident about the time referred to says: "Boston is two miles northeast from Roxberry. Hia situation is very pleasant, hemmed in on the south side with the bay of Roxberry, on the north side with the Charles River, the marshes on the back side being not half a quarter of a mile over, so that a little fencing will secure their cattle from the wolves." " It being a neck and bare of wood, they are not troubled with three great annoyances, of wolves, rattlesnakes, and mosquitoes." — William Wood, in New England's Prospect. Published at London, 16.34. Note 12. — Page 78. Such is the spelling of his name by the man himself in a deed dated April 3, 1692. On the grave- stone the inscription reads : " Here lyes the Body of Takawomb- pait, aged 64 years. Died September the 17th, 1716." Note 13. — Page 79. General Gookin says : " We being at Wabquissit, at the Sagamou's wigwam, divers of the principal 298 APPENDIX. people that were at home came to us, with whom we spent a good part of the night in prayer, singing psahns, and exhor- tations." Note 14. — Page 79. Eliot owed not a little to his wife, a very capable and excellent woman. The first marriage re- corded in tlie town records of Roxbury was that of John Eliot and Hannah Mumford (or Mountford, or Mountfort), 4th Sep- tember, 1032. But James Savage, in the Genealogical Dictionnry of the First Settlers in New England, Vol. II, says tliat date can- not be correct, as the ship in which the bride elect came did not arrive till twelve days after that. Among the descendants of Eliot are persons of note : ' Rev. Joseph Eliot, settled at Guilford, Conn., 1664, was the only son of the apostle, whose posterity now living bear the family name. Rev. Jared Eliot, D.D. and M.D., of Killingworth, Conn., now Clinton, a son of Joseph, was a man of mark in his day, on intimate terms with Franklin, and a correspondent with learned men in the old world. Charles Wyllys Elliott (1817-1883), author of several works. Among descendants not bearing the name of Eliot was Hon. Josiah Quincy, LL.D., president of Harvard College, and others of that distinguished family. The late Samuel A. Eoote, governor of Connecticut, United States senator, etc. Mrs. Susan Huntington, wife of Rev. Joshua Huntington, of Boston, whose memoir was published. Dr. Elisha Mitchell, professor in the North Carolina Uni- versity, for whom Mt. Mitchell, the highest point of land east of the Mississippi, was named, and on whose summit his remains rest. Fitz-Greene Halleck, born in the year 1790, taking rank among the poets of our country. He died in 1867. Mrs. Ethelinda Eliot Beers (1817-1879), who wrote "The Picket Guard," "All Quiet Along the Potomac," and who died the day her collected poems were issued. Philadelphia. I Oenealogy of the Eliot Family. By William N. Eliot. Kevised by William S. Porter. New Haven, 1854. APPENDIX. 299 Henry C. Bowen, Esq., proprietor of the New York Inde- pendent. His native place, "Woodstock, Conn., was first named New Roxbury. Not far from his country seat In that town is the rock, on Plain Hill, from which Eliot preached to Indians of a September morning in 1674. His text was, " Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you." From the years 184.3-1858 there were, at different times, seven members of the Eliot Church, Roxbury, Mass., who were descendants of John Eliot. Note 16. — Page 87. The Rev. Jonathan Mayhew, D.D., pastor of the West Church in Boston (1747-1766), a son of Ex- perience Mayhew, had one daughter, Elizabeth, who married Peter Wainwright, an Englishman. Their son, Jonathan May- hew Wainwright, became bishop of the diocese of New York, 1852. Note 16. — Page 88. Experience Mayhew, writing in Octo- ber, 1651 : " There are one hundred ninetie-nine men, women, and children that have professed themselves to be worshippers of the great and everliving God. There are now two meetings kept every Lord's Day, the one three miles, the other about eight miles off my house : Hiacomes teacheth twice a day at the nearest, and Mumanequem accordingly at the farthest ; the last day of the week they come unto me to be informed touch- ing the subject they are to handle." Note 17. — Page 89. Hubbard says, " But the greatest appearance of any saving work and serious profession of Christianity amongst any of them was at Martin's [Martha's] Vineyard, which, beginning in the year 1645, hath gradually proceeded till this present time, wherein all the island is in a manner leavened with the profession of our religion, and hath taken up the practice of our manners in civil behaviour and our manner of cultivating the earth." Note 18. — Page 91. Experience Mayhew in the preface to his work, Indian Converts, says, "Though I could have men^ tioned many of our Indians who have discovered very probable signs of true repentance in the time of their last and long sick- nesses, many of them dying of chronical diseases; yet, consider- 300 APPENDIX. ing the doubtfulness of a deathbed repentance, I have not put any into my catalogue of penitents in whom a remarkable change did not appear while they were well and in health." Note 19. — Page 98. The statement of Dr. Sereno E. Dwight in his edition of Edwards' works (Vol. I, p. 449) is in- correct, 80 far as concerns Sergeant's use of the language in preaching : " Mr. Sergeant devoted much of his time to the study of their language (tlie Mohnkaunew), yet at the close of his life he had not made such progress that he could preach in it, or even pray in it, except by a form." Note 20. — Page 118. Professor Tholuck writes : "It may be said that even among us more awakenings have proceeded from the written lives of those eminent for piety than from books of devotion and printed sermons. We are able, at least in the circle of our own knowledge, to address a great number of Christians — and among them names of the first rank in the religious world — who are indebted essentially to works of biog- raphy for the confirmation and stability of their spiritual life. The writer can assert this in regard to himself. He can make such an acknowledgment respecting a book to which he knows that not a few in Europe, America, and Asia will bear a similar testimony. The biography of the missionary Martyn — the man who even among the Persian Mohammedans was known only as the holy — opened also in my own Life a new era of religious progress." — Sonntags Bibliothek, Note 21. — Page 122. " My soul was full of tenderness and love, even to the most inveterate of my enemies." " I longed that those who, I have reason to think, owe me ill will might be eternally happy. It seemed refreshing to think of meeting them in heaven, how much soever they had injured me on earth; had no disposition to insist upon any confession from them in order to reconciliation and the exercise of love and kindness to them." Note 22. — Page 124. " God sanctified and made meet for his own use that vessel, which he made of large capacity, having endowed him with very uncommon abilities and gifts of nature. He was a singular instance of ready invention, APPENDIX. 301 natural energy, ready flowing expression and sprightly appre- hension, quick discerning, and a very strong memory, yet of a Tery penetrating genius, clear thought, and piercing judgment." — Edwards' Sermon at Brainerd's Funeral. Note 23. — Page 128. Kaunaumeek was sixteen miles east from Albany and about five miles northwest from New Leba- non. Brainerd's Bridge, its present name, is a small village in Rensselaer County, N. Y., which received that nnme not from David Brainerd, but from Jeremiah Brainerd, a relative of his who settled there and built a bridge across Kinderhook Creek. Note 24. — Page 138. " One man considerably in years, who had been a remarkable drunkard, a conjurer, and a murderer, and was awakened some months before, was now brought to great extremity under his spiritual distress, so that he trembled for hours together, and apprehended himself just dropping into hell without any power to rescue or relieve himself." " I stood amazed at the influence which seized the audience almost uni- versally." "Towards night the Indians met together of their own accord, and sung, and prayed, and discoursed of divine things among themselves, at which time there was much affec- tion among them." Was there an eagerness to learn divine truths? "They are so unwearied in religious exercises, and insatiable in their thirsting after Christian knowledge, that I can sometimes scarcely avoid laboring so as greatly to exhaust my strength and spirits." How about Sunday and social worship ? " The Lord's Day was seriously and religiously observed, and care taken by parents to keep their children orderly upon that sacred day ; and this, not because I had driven them to the perform- ance of these duties by frequently inculcating them, but be- cause they had felt the power of God's Word upon their hearts, were made sensible of their sin and misery, and hence could not but pray and comply with everything which they knew to be their duty from what they felt within themselves." Note 25. — Page 142. " I this day met with them and the Indians of this place. Numbers of the latter probably 302 APPENDIX. could not have been prevailed upon to attend this meeting had it not been for these religious Indians, who accompanied me hither and preached to them. Some of those who had in times past been extremely averse to Christianity now behaved soberly, and some others laughed and mocked " (February 17). " My people of Crossweeksimg continued with them day and night, repeating and inculcating the truths I had taught them, and sometimes prayed and sung psalms among them." Note 26. — Page 144. He speaks often of "wrestling" with the Lord ; of intercession, fervent intercession, as a delight. "Just at night the Lord visited me marvelously in praj'er. I think my soul never was in such an agony before. I felt no restraint, for the treasures of divine grace were opened to me. I wrestled for the absent friends, for the ingathering of souls, for multitudes of poor souls, and for many that I thought were the children of God, personally, in many dis- tant places. I was in such an agony from sun half an hour high till near dark that I was all over wet with sweat." " () that the kingdom of the dear Saviour might come with power, and the healing waters of the sanctuary spread far and wide for the healing of the nations ! " Note 27. — Page 147. In the cemetery at Northampton the grave of Brainerd is not far from the entrance. On it rests a slab of red sandstone, and on this rests another similar slab two feet higher, supported by fluted pillars, now weather- beaten. In the upper center is a marble slab, inserted in a socket, on which appears this inscription: "Sacred to the memory of the Rev. David Braikerd, a faithful and laborious missionary to the Stockbridge, Delaware, and Susquehannah Tribes of Indians. Who died in this town Oct. 10, 1747. JEU 32." APPENDIX. 303 The corners of the main upper slab have been chipped off, probably by pilfering relic hunters. A former marble tablet, bearing the same inscription as the one now seen, had been chipped and ruined in the same way. Yet even that was not the original one. Mr. Seth Pomeroy, some years since, stated at a public meeting that the cavity was first filled by a leaden tablet, which had been removed during the War of the Revolution and run into bullets for use at the blockade of Boston. The age given, "thirty-two years," is an evident mistake. Brainerd, having been born April 20, 1718, and having died October 9, 1747, lived only twenty-nine years and nearly six months.' Note 29. — Page 152. Studiosi Danici non idonei sunt ad hoc opus : illi dediti sunt luxuriae, crapulae, ignavae, scortation- ibus. See Germann : Ziegenbalg und Pliitschau, p. 47. Well for the heathen that such men did not offer their services. Note 30. — Page 162. "Indeed," writes Ziegenbalg, "in the three years I have been in India I have scarcely read a German or a Latin book, but have given up all my time to reading Malabar books ; have talked diligently with the hea- then, and executed all my business in their tongue, so that now (1709) it is as easy to me as my mother tongue, and in the last two years I have been enabled to write several books in Tamil." Note 31. — Page 163. Tracy's History of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, p. 114, where a mistaken statement is added, that it was also the first from the neighborhood of Calcutta on the east to the shores of the Mediterranean on the west. Note 32. — Page 167. Later (1714) the society had occa- sion to write to Tranquebar, making the timely suggestion, "We do not doubt that your work has been made much easier to you by the printing press which you are now ar- > Styles gives the date of Brainerd's death as Friday, October 6, instead of Tuesday, October 9, 1747. 304 APPENDIX. ranging, but take care that you are not inconsiderately led into so much translation and printing that you do not find sufficient time for constant intercourse with the heathen." Under the skillful superintendence of Mr. P. R. Hunt, for- merly of the American Board (1840-1866) at Madras, the missionary press in that city stood at the head of its class in India. Tamil and Telugu typography was much improved. Note 33. — Page 170. Besides his translations of Scrip- ture the following works were published: 1. Allgemeine Schule der wahren Weisheit. Frankfurt und Leipzig, 1710. 2. Aus- fiihr, Bericht wie er das Amt des Evangelii unter den Ileiden und Christen fiikre. 4 Aus., Hallae, 1735. 3. Grammatica Damulica. Hallae, 1716. 4. Brevis Delineatio Missionis operis. Tranquebar, 1717. 5. Numerous extended reports of mis- sionary labor. Remaining in manuscript : 1. Der Gottgefiillige Christenstand. 2. Der Gottgefallige Lehrstand. 3. Bibliotheca Malaharica. 4. Beschreihung des Malabarischen Heidenthums. 6. Genealogie der M alaharischen Gutter. 6. Drei Moralienbiich- lein. 7. Mehere kleine ascetische Schriften in einem Fascikel. Note 34. — Page 173. In a sermon entitled "The Joyful Sound Reaching to Both the Indies " the author says, " While our supplications to our Father are thus engaged we shall remember our dear brethren of the Danish mission so far as Malabar, the good news of whose amiable enterprises have been as cool waters to our thirsty souls." — India Christiana, a discourse to the Commissioners for the Propagation of the Gos- pel among American Indians, by Cotton Mather, D.D. Boston, 1721. Note 35. — Page 183. After his intercourse with the people and princes of Tanjore had begun — the latter being descendants of the Mahratta conquerors — "I learned," he states, "at the request of the king, the Mahratta language, into which I translated a dialogue between a Christian and a heathen, composed by me in the Malabar tongue" — that is the Tamil, for thus did the early missionaries mistakenly des- ignate that language. This was tlie beginning and the end of Schwartz's labor in the line of authorship. Miss Yonge APPENDIX. 306 remarks justly {Pioneers and Founders, p. 54) : " Schwartz's facility in learning languages must have been great, for the English of his letter is excellent, unless his biographer, Dean Pearson, has altered it. It is not at all like that of a German." Note 36. — Page 184. A specimen of Schwartz's method. He is addressing an assembly of Mohammedans at Trichin- opoly (1770). Two of them have been extolling the merits of good works. Our missionary observes that the real founda- tion for the remission of sins is Christ's merit and satisfaction. " We are sinners and deserve the wrath of God. Consider his pure and holy nature. The more we think of God and our- \ selves the more we must be convinced that either we must suffer ourselves the punishment due to our sins, or that an- / other person duly qualified must endure in our stead. This / person is no other than Jesus Christ. God has made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin ; accepting, out of infinite compassion, his atonement, which he has sufficiently demon- strated by his resurrection. He is now the foundation of all grace, so that unless you seek through him the forgiveness of your sins the guilt will rest upon yourselves, and you must bear the punishment." As he approached threescore years and ten, writing to an English lady Schwartz said : " Many of your clergymen make little of a redeemer. Dr. Price's [Richard Price, the Arian] book of sermons was sent me. I opened them ; was shocked at his doctrine ; cut the book in pieces and burned it. They destroy the foundation of true happiness and true holiness. What can they build ? " Note 37. — Page 191. "Ich stehe an den Pforten der Ewigkeit," he once wrote to a friend. Of the period from 1780 to 1783 he writes, "Often more than eight hundred of the poor and hungry were standing before our door." Note 38. — Page 200. Hiittemann, thirty-one years ; Cnoll, thirty-five years ; Breithaupt, thirty-six years ; Gericke, thirty- six years ; Zeglin, forty years ; Pohle, forty -one years ; John, forty-three years ; Klein, forty-four years ; Caramerer, forty-six years; Schwartz, forty-eight years; Fabricius, fifty years; S06 APPENDIX. Kohlhoff (father), fifty-three years; Kohlhoff (son, born in In- dia), fifty-seven years; Rottler, fifty-eight years; Kiernander, fifty-nine years. In his History of Missions, Vol. I, p. 176, Dr. Brown says, " Schultze, after having been twenty-four years in India, returned to Halle, and it appears he lived till 1799, when he must probably have been upwards of one hun- dred years old, as he came to India in 1719." Schultze, how- ever, died in 1760, aged 71. Note 39. — Page 201. Another monument, at the expense of the East India Company and executed by the sculptor Bacon, was placed in the Fort Church at Madras. At the same time, however, the company would gladly have ex- cluded Carey from the neighborhood of Calcutta ; but hap- pily they had no control over the little Danish territory of Serampore. Note 40. — Page 205. The financial affairs of the mission were not always well administered. Such definite arrange- ments for the treasurership, for accounts and responsibility in disbursements, as should be maintained by every mission did not exist. Hence there sometimes arose jealousies, suspicions, and accusations. Indiscreet expenditures were made, and in general there appears to have been a looseness which, to- gether with the conflict of individual opinions upon certain matters, could not result otherwise than in alienations. These divisions became deplorable at times, and were a scandal among lookers-on, most of whom had no good will toward evangelistic work. Note 41. — Page 205. The pecuniary aid afforded by the Christian Knowledge Society and the personal reenforcement for a short time of Messrs. Schnarre and Rhenius, together with a remittance of eighteen hundred pounds sterling in oi» year (1816) from the king of Denmark, failed to bring reca peration. A few years later that part of the field containing eleven small church buildings, with the property pertaining thereto, eleven catechists, and thirteen hundred Christians, which lay within the province of Tanjore and was subject to England, Cammerer made over to the society above named. APPENDIX. 307 Note 42. — Page 206. Dr. Buchanan remarks (1806), " Kohlhoff stated that there were upwards of ten thousand Protestant Christians belonging to the Tanjore and Tinnevelly districts alone who had not among them one complete volume of the Bible, and that not one Christian, perhaps, in a hun- dred had a New Testament ; and yet there are some copies of the Tamil Scriptures to be sold at Tranquebar, but the poor natives cannot afford to purchase them." Note 43. — Page 209. Sherring's Protestant Missions, p. 158. Mr. Sherring's later estimate is five sixths of the converts in the various missions. See Proceedings of the London Confer- ence, p. 118. Note 44. — Page 209. It might be supposed that Serfoge, the native prince who manifested such tearful respect for his guardian, Schwartz, would embrace the religion of his bene- factor and follow in the steps of that good man. But a missionary of the American Board wrote, in 1828, regarding him : " The rajah has become very unfriendly to missionaries. He has yielded himself up to dissipation, and given immense sums to the Brahmins and to the temples to make himself a Brahmin." — Rev. Mr. Winslow, Missionary Herald, Vol. XXV, p. 146. Note 45. — Page 222. Hough, III, 332. "The deists, to- gether with many careless professors of Christianity among the Danes, treated the missionaries and their instructions with contempt — conduct which they seldom experienced from the heathen, who, though unwilling to embrace the gospel, very rarely thought of reviling its doctrines or precepts. Under the Danish government the public servants had never been allowed to molest the Christians; but unhappily the British authorities at Madras had thought proper to patronize the idolatries of the country in a way that was all but tanta- mount to identifying themselves with the worst abominations of Hindu superstition. The native officers at Tranquebar, presuming upon this concession on the part of their new mas- ters, compelled the poor Christians to assist at the heathen festivals and to attend their public ceremonies." — Hough, HI, 347-349. "There were, in truth, no outward motives to pre- 308 APPENDIX. serve morality of conduct or even decency of demeanor; so, from the moment of their landing upon the shores of India, the first settlers cast off all those bonds which had restrained them in their native villages. They regarded themselves as privileged beings — privileged to violate all the obligations of religion and morality and to outrage all the decencies of life. They who went thither were often desperate adventurers, whom England, in the emphatic language of the Scripture, had spewed out — men who sought those golden sands of the East to repair their broken fortunes, to bury in oblivion a sullied name, or to wring with lawless hand from the weak and unsuspecting wealth which they had not the character or the capacity to obtain by honest industry at home. They cheated; they gambled; they drank; they reveled in all kinds of debauchery. Associates in vice, linked together by a com- mon bond of rapacity, they still often pursued one another with desperate malice, and, few though they were in num- bers, among them there was no fellowship, except a fellow- ship of crime." — John William Kaye, in Christianity in India. London, 1859. Pp. 45, 46. Note 46. — Page 223. Geisler became an unbeliever and opposer. Bovingh sided with enemies of the mission. Three — Bosse, Hutter, and Friichtenicht — became intemperate. The first married a wife of the same habits, and was dis- charged ; the last named became a brazen-faced drunkard and quarrelsome bully, insulting and threatening his colleagues, and even appearing at church on Christmas in a state of intoxication. Hiittemann could write (1779) : " Der Kirche Jesu ist an solchen Proselyten wie Malabaren, Nicobaren Gronlandern, Eskimos wenig gelegen. AUe diese Nationen sind eine Art Affengeschlecht, die miissen erst zu Menchen werden, ehe das Christenthum ihren mit Nutzen gepredigt wird." — Germann's Leben Schwartz, S. 289. Note 47. — Page 225. The list might be extended by inserting the names which here follow and many more : Sir Charles Aitchison, Sir Charles Barnard, Sir Thomas Candy, Sir Henry Durand, Sir Vincent Eyre, Sir Robert Montgomery, Sir Richmond Shakespear, Sir Rivers Thompson. APPENDIX. 309 i I Note 48. — Page 225. Mr. Sherring {Protestant Missions in India, p. 28) and otliers are mistaken in placing Calcutta on the list of the Danish missions. Kiernander, a Swede by birth, was, even at Cuddalore, and not less at Calcutta (1758), entirely under the direction of the English Christian Knowl- edge Society, and for a time was supported by the same. After marrying a rich widow he no longer required aid from that source, but lived in a showy and luxurious style till pecuniary reverses necessitated a change. Note 49. — Page 228. In 1708 a public disputation, " De Pseudo-Apostolis," was held at Wittenberg, under the presi- dency of Dr. Neumann, in which it was more than intimated that Ziegenbalg and Pliitschau were false apostles and would do mischief in Tranquebar. Note 60. — Page 235. Such timber as is found comes for the most part from Siberia, carried down by a current between Spitzbergen and the east coast of Greenland to Cape Farewell, thence it drifts upward along the west coast, and by winds and currents is carried ashore even as far north as Holsteinberg. — Graak's Expedition, p. 24. Note 61. — Page 238. Bishop Krog appears to have been as little acquainted with the true missionary spirit as with geography. He persistently opposed Thomas von Westen, who showed such laudable zeal in behalf of tlie Finns. See Vorm- baum's von Westen. Nor was he wholly peculiar in his geo- graphical conceptions. Archbishop Lorenzana, quoted in Pres- cott's Mexico, I, p. 4 (note), says, " It is doubtful if the country of New Spain does not border on Tartary and Greenland — by way of California on the former, and by New Mexico on the latter." Note 62. — Page 250. Reenforcements were sent out — in 1723 Albert Top, whose health broke down, and who after four years was obliged to return home ; in 1728 two col- leagues, Olaus Lange and Henry Milzorg; in 1731 a Mr. 01m- sorg. But Paul Egede, the eldest son of the missionary, ren- dered far more efficient service than any other one. Indeed, from twelve years of age onward he was his father's assist- 310 APPENDIX. ant. He studied four years at Copenhagen, and returned (1735) as missionary of a colony planted at Disco. After- wards he presided over the station at Christian's Hope till 1740, when he removed to Copenhagen, there becoming a member of the College of Missions, director of the Hospital for Orphans, and at length Bishop of Greenland. He con- tinued indefatigable in his efforts to promote the welfare of the enterprise ; published a Greenland grammar in Danish and Latin ; a dictionary in the same manner ; a translation into Eskimo of the New Testament and portions of the Old, as well as Thomas a Kempis' Imitation of Christ and several Danish prayers and liturgies. He also prepared a work en- titled Information on Greenland, which is one of the treasures of Danish literature. He died in Denmark, 1789, at the age of eighty-one. Note 53. — Page 282. In earlier days very few except uneducated laborers were sent out. Afterwards there was occasionally a scholarly man, and in recent years there has been an increasing number of well-educated men. At Niesky, in Silesia, there is now a training institution, established in 1869. A glance at the literary labors of missionaries in Greenland, Labrador, among the Indians of North, Central, and South America, South Africa, and Thibet shows that they have made very important contributions to various vernacu- lars. See The Literary Works of the Foreign Missionaries of the Moravian Church, by the Rev. G. Reichel, of Herrnhut, Saxony, translated and annotated by Bishop Edmund De Schweinitz. Note 54. — Page 283. In the course of the first fifty years one hundred and sixty missionaries died in the West Indies. During the first year of labor in Surinam thirty-nine missionaries and twenty-one wives of missionaries died. Note 55. — Page 286. A savage Indian entered the hul of the faithful Moravian, Mack, near what is now Newtown, Fairfield County, Connecticut, and said to unfaithful English colonists there, " You ought to be ashamed of yourselves, to have been so long among us and never to have told us any- thing of what we hear from this man." INDEX. ABYSSnnA, 16, 17, 263, 293. Acquiring vernaculars, 303-304. Adaptation of Christianity, 276. Adolphus, Gustavus, 13, 14. AUeine, Joseph, 43. Alva, Duke, 23, 24. Ainboyna, 28. Anglo-Saxons, 149. Arctic regions, 233-236, 255. Augustine, 126. Bach, 87. Ball's River, 244. Batavia, 30, 37. Bancroft, Bishop, 47. Banyan tree, 158. Barber, Jonathan, 111. Baxter, R., 79, 80. Bede, 65. Beers, Mrs. E. Eliot, 298. Berge7i,241, 242, 247. Beveridge, Bishop, 125. Bible Society, British and Foreign, 14. Bible translations, 170. Boles, John, 11. Bogatskv, 179. Boston, 70, 297. Bbnisch, Frederick, 87. Bourne, Joseph, 93. Bovingh, 166. Bowen, Henry C, 110, 299. Boyle, Robert, 45, 52, 126. Brainerd, David, 283, 300-303. Branford, 110. Brant, 114. Brazil, 9, 12. Brotherton, 114. Banyan, 122. Burr, President, 122, 127. Calvik, John, 10. Campanius, 15. Candidius, George, 39. Came, 62. Camatic, 188. Caste. 193-195, 211-213. Celebes, 36. Celibacy, 195-196. Chalmers, Dr., 118. Chapel built, 163. Charles V, 10, 23. Charles XII, 241. Charters, 50. Christian VI, 248. Christian laymen, 224-225, 308. Christian loyalty, 273-275. Christians, nominal, 164. Civilization, 251. Clap, President, 122. Climate of New England, 60. Clive, 174, 181. Coincidences, 279. Coligny, 9. Colonial evangelism, 49. Colonial labors, 264-265. Columbus, 60, 243. Conference of 1888, 4. Constance, 261-2G2. Conversion of Europeans, 229-232. Conversion of Indians, 68. Converts, Indian, 138-143. Copenhagen, 154, 156. Cotton, John 91,95. Cotton, Josiah, 94. Cotton, Rowland, 93. Cowper, 126. Coxinga, 30. Cromwell, 41, 44. Crossweeksung, 132. Cutshamakin, 61. Danes in India, 151, 169-161, 167. Danforth, Samuel, 96. Dankaerts, 28. Dartmouth College, 113. Dartmouth, Earl, 112. Davenport, James, 126. Delaware Indians, 129, 131, 133. Denmark, 148-152, 160, 204, 226-227, 259. Dickinson, Jonathan, 127. Discipline, 262. Diversities, 219-220. Dober, Leonard, 278. Dutch, 11, 264-265. (311) 312 INDEX. Dutch East India Company, 264. Dutch societies, 35. East Indies, 26, 35. Eastham, 94. Eckhart, 123. Edgartown, 83, 85. Edwards, Jonathan, 101-103, 122, 124-125. 147. Edwards, Jonathan, Jr., 103. Egede, Gertrude, 239, 246-249. Egede, Hans, 236-260, 266. Egede, Paul, 309-310. Eliot, C. W., 298. Eliot, John, 15, 52-81, 110, 155, 263, 294-298. Eliot, Jared, 298. Eliot, Joseph, 298. Elizabeth Islands, 83. England, 169, 180-181, 228-229. English intolerance, 42. English Reformation, 40. Erasmus, 6. Eschatology, 8. Eskimos, 244, 263. Famine, 219. Fidelity, 284. Finland, 13. Finley, Rev. Samuel, 121. Fitch, James, 111. Formosa, ,30. 37, 293. Fox, George, 126. Francke, A. H.. 154, 160, 177. Frederick IV, 150-151, 155, 164, 242. Frederick the Great, 175, 177. Frederick William I, 268. Frobisher, 43. Gayhead, 84, 92. Geekie, Dr., 78, 80, 256. Gellert, 126, 175. George I, 228. Gleim, 176. Gobat, Bishop, 17. Gookin, Daniel, 96, 110. Gookin, General, 95, 296-297. Government neutrality, 38. V NCH-i^: ■ f) Princeton Theological 5emintiry-5pet 1 1012 01099 6876 ■■:■"!: <:M