The villagers in this town of Glaucha were degraded, poor, untaught. Moved by their need, Francke opened a school for the children in one room. He had little money but he trusted God. In a short while it was necessary to add another room, then two. He next established a home for orphans, then he added homes for the destitute and fallen. As fast as his enterprises increased, so rapidly came the necessary support.
|The School at Halle.| It is not possible to tell here the amazing history of the Halle institutions which sheltered even before the death of Francke more than a thousand souls, much less of the enormous Inner Mission institutions in other parts of Germany which had here their inspiration. That activity of this remarkable man with which we are chiefly concerned is his missionary labors. In the words of Doctor Warneck: “He knew himself to be a debtor to both, Christians and non-Christians. In him there personified that connection of rescue work at home with missions to the heathen--a type of the fact that they who do the one do not leave the other undone. Home and foreign missions have from the beginning been sisters who work reciprocally into each other’s hands.”
JOHN EVANGELIST GOSSNER.
MEN’S BATHING GHAT AT PURULIA.
Francke’s institution became a training school for Christian workers. There was no specific instruction for such undertakings, but “in those that came in near contact with him he stirred a spirit of absolute devotion to divine service, such as he himself possessed in highest measure, and which made them ready to go wherever there was need of them.” There came into the school later, as a lad, the Moravian Zinzendorf, afterwards a zealous missionary, who describes thus the effect of the surroundings upon him: “The daily opportunity in Professor Francke’s house of hearing edifying tidings of the kingdom of Christ, of speaking with witnesses from all lands, of making acquaintance with missionaries, of seeing men who had been banished and imprisoned, as also the institutions then in their bloom, and the cheerfulness of the pious man himself in the work of the Lord ... mightily strengthened within me zeal for the things of the Lord.”
From Halle there went forth during the following century about sixty missionaries, among them Ziegenbalg, Fabricius, Jaenicke, Gericke and Schwartz, whose careers we shall study. Here also was trained Muhlenberg, the patriarch of the Lutheran Church in America, who intended first to go as a missionary to India. Here were published in 1710 the earliest missionary reports in a little periodical which was continued under different titles until 1880, one hundred and seventy years. Among those for whom the heart of Francke yearned were the Jews, in whose interest he founded the Institua Judiaca. From Halle there spread an influence not only through Germany but through the world which is difficult to estimate but almost impossible to exaggerate. By no means the least of the missionary activities which had there their inspiration was that of the Moravian Church, the most ardent in missionary work of all Churches.
The missionary influence did not have any means free course. The opposition shown to the theories of Justinian von Welz continued. Francke was considered no less of a fanatic. This contrary spirit may be shown by the expression of a deeply pious clergyman who concluded an Ascension sermon with the following couplet:
“‘Go into all the world,’ the Lord of old did say;