In 1833 we find Wolff in India, visiting the white and the black Jews of Cochin, and the Beni-Israel of Poona, Calcutta and Bombay. This was not an unexplored field, as the L.J.S. missionaries had been working there from 1820 to 1830. Wolff found plenty to do, and at Calcutta, for six successive days, talked twelve hours on end to all who came to his "retreat."
Hitherto Asia had been the principal scene of Wolff's labours, but in 1835 he was in Abyssinia and in 1836 in Arabia, visiting the Yemen. At Sanaa he expounded Isaiah liii. to the Jews, and subsequently baptized four with their families. The Jews were polygamists, but apparently dissatisfied with the state of things thus entailed.
Lack of space prohibits us from enlarging on Wolff's labours in the East. His own descriptions remain to this day the most entertaining of missionary annals, and bear witness to the wonderful activity of the man whose striking personality, not unmixed with a harmless and naive egotism, carried him through numberless dangers, and extricated him from perilous situations. The restlessness of his nature, which in early life impelled him to wander over Europe in search of light and learning, developed in succeeding years into that consecrated fiery energy and impulse which made him so peculiarly fitted to play the rôle of pioneer missionary. Many of his friends, as he said, "believed him to be Elijah," though he archly added, "he always believed himself to be Joseph Wolff!" But a pioneer he was in every sense of the word, and as such rendered yeoman service to a cause, which more than all others, perhaps, needs all the glamour and romance it can call to its aid. So great was his dramatic power in describing his travels that Archbishop Whately proclaimed him to be "a missionary Shakespeare."
Wolff had an iron constitution and a powerful frame, absolutely impervious to matters of climate, and privations, however severe and enduring. He records that, when travelling in India in 1832, he was stripped of everything, and in danger of being "made into sausages," and "had to walk without a rag of clothing on for 600 miles from the Hindu Koosh to the Punjaub, through storms and snow!" He was relieved and clothed at Cabul by Lieutenant Burnes. Wolff's character, wonderful activity, and resources, were thus caustically summed up by one who knew him:—
"He appears to me to be a comet without any perihelion, and capable of setting a whole system on fire. When I should have addressed him in Syria, I heard of him at Malta, and when I supposed he was gone to England, he was riding like a ruling angel in the whirlwinds of Antioch, or standing unappalled among the crumbling towers of Aleppo. A man who at Rome calls the Pope 'the dust of the earth,' and at Jerusalem tells the Jews that the 'Gemara is a lie'; who passes his days in disputation, and his nights in digging in the Talmud; to whom a floor of brick is a feather-bed and a box is a bolster; who makes or finds a friend alike in the persecutor of his former or of his present faith; who can conciliate a Pasha or confute a patriarch; who travels without a guide, speaks without an interpreter, can live without food, and pay without money, forgiving all the insults he meets with, and forgetting all the flattery he receives; who knows little of worldly conduct, and yet accommodates himself to all men without giving offence to any—such a man (and such and more is Wolff) must excite no ordinary degree of attention in a country and among a people whose monotony of manners and habits has remained undisturbed for centuries. As a pioneer I deem him matchless, aut inveniet viam, aut faciet; but, if order is to be established or arrangements made, trouble not Wolff. He knows of no church but his heart, no calling but that of zeal, no dispensation but that of preaching. He is devoid of enmity towards man, and full of the love of God. By such an instrument, whom no school hath taught, whom no college could hold, is the way of the Judæan wilderness preparing.... Thus are his brethren provoked to emulation and stirred up to inquiry. They all perceive, as everyone must, that whatever he is, he is in earnest; they acknowledge him to be a sincere believer in Jesus of Nazareth, and that is a great point gained with them, for the mass of the ignorant and unconverted Jews deny the possibility of real conversion from Judaism."[27]
General Sir Charles Napier said that Wolff had "worked harder for religion, and had gone through more dangers for it, with a brave heart, than any man living."
Of his life in England as a parochial clergyman, but little can be said in this biography. He married, when a young man, the daughter of the Earl of Orford, Lady Georgiana Walpole, with whom he lived happily for thirty years, and whose son was Sir Henry Drummond Wolff. When he settled in England, he became vicar of Linthwaite, a small village in Yorkshire. His friend, Henry Drummond, after whom he had named his son, wrote, "Your call is to be an evangelist for all the nations of the earth, and for this you are fit; but, to use your own simile, you are as fit for a parish priest as I am for a dancing-master." Wolff shortly afterwards removed, on account of his wife's health, to the sole charge of High Hoyland, another Yorkshire village, with about 120 souls. There, too, he must have felt like a lion in a cage; and when, five years later, he resigned his charge on the ground of not being able to meet his expenses, and undertook his second journey to Bokhara, he must indeed have rejoiced in an aftermath of the freedom and action of his earlier career. One little incident is too good to be omitted. Before Wolff entered upon the curacy, his predecessor, doubting the sentiments of his successor, preached his farewell sermon from the text, "After my departure shall grievous wolves enter in among you." Wolff remarks, "However, he was very merciful, and made no allusion to the coming 'Wolff' in his sermon!"
On his return from Bokhara, Wolff was appointed to the living of Isle-Brewers, in Somersetshire, with a population of 300, amongst whom were two farmers, all the rest being peasants. There Wolff remained for the remainder of his life, his talents and brilliant gifts being wasted in such retirement, but his energy knowing no diminution. He built a new parsonage and schools, defraying a portion of the expense from the proceeds of his works and lectures; and erected a new church, for the cost of which he laid all his numerous friends and everybody else, under contribution by incessant correspondence and personal applications. He was a father to his poor, and every winter supported thirty-five families with the necessities of life. Wolff was the neighbour and firm friend of George Anthony Denison, "dearer to him than any," although theologically in the opposite camp. Amongst Wolff's other numerous friends and acquaintances, we may mention the names of Sir Walter Scott, Dean Stanley, Dean Hook, Alfred Tennyson, and Alfred and Margaret Gatty.
Wolff died in 1862, at the age of 66 or 67 years—a long life, when the restless activity of brain and body is taken into account, and a full life, in every sense of the word. He exemplified in his person the saying, "It is better to wear out than to rust out." And his epitaph might well have been, "The zeal of Thine house hath eaten me up."
Wolff, Oscar Ludwig Bernard, was born in Altona, 1799. After embracing Christianity (the date uncertain) he held the professorship of modern languages and literature successively at Weimar and at Jena, where he died in 1851. His literary works appeared at Jena in 1841-43 in fourteen volumes. The best known of his works are "Poetischer Hausschatz des Deutschen Volkes" (Leipzig, 1839); "Hausschatz Deutscher Prosa" (ib., 1855) and "Geschichte des Deutschen Romans," Jena 1843.