|Work for Another Church.| Aiding and succeeding Christian Frederick Schwartz in the English mission was his adopted son, the Rev. J. B. Kohlhoff, who arrived at Tranquebar in 1737 and worked among the Tamils for fifty-three years. His son, John Caspar, was ordained by Schwartz. Together Schwartz and the two Kohlhoffs worked in India for an aggregate period of one hundred and fifty-six years. Still another Lutheran in the English service was W. T. Ringeltaube, who was trained at Halle. Upon the foundation which he laid the London Missionary Society has built nobly and has now after a hundred years a Christian community of seventy thousand.
|A Period of Neglect.| It is estimated that at the end of the Eighteenth Century the Danish-Halle mission in India numbered fifteen thousand Christians. Then a period of rationalism in Europe brought about indifference and neglect of the mission fields. From England came the first wave of mounting missionary zeal and into English hands passed a large part of the work of the Danish-Halle missionaries. While we acknowledge that they have continued the work with zeal and with marked success, yet we cannot but regret that so much that was ours, so much that was won by the devotion of Ziegenbalg and Schwartz, no longer bears the Lutheran name.
|Another Steadfast Lutheran.| In the service of the English mission was Karl Ewald Rhenius, a German Lutheran who was sent soon after the opening of the new century to that field which had passed partly from Danish-Halle to English hands. He went first to Tranquebar and thence to Madras, where for five years he preached and studied. At the end of this time he was transferred to Palmacotta, the chief city of the Tinnevelli district. Here he began an original work, the founding of Christian villages. As soon as sufficient natives were converted, land was bought and they were settled upon it so that they might be removed from former associations and temptations. Presently a native organization was formed the object of which was the aid of new Christian settlements.
In 1832 Mr. Rhenius withdrew from service as a missionary of the English society, the chief ground of difficulty being the demand of the society that he be ordained by the English Church, and for four years he conducted an independent mission. In character and capacity for work Rhenius was not unlike Christian Frederick Schwartz. Beside a great amount of translating he had time to prepare a valuable essay on the “Principles of Translating the Holy Scriptures”. He is notable also as one of the earliest missionaries to take a decided stand against the observance of caste.
The appeal of Rhenius for his independent Lutheran mission in India was one of the influences in the first missionary activity of the American Lutheran Church. Upon his death his followers returned to the English Mission. In Tinnevelli where Christian Frederick Schwartz laid the foundation and Rhenius helped to build upon it, there are now over one hundred thousand Christians belonging to the Church of England.
|In the Far North.| It was in 1704 that the Danish King Frederick IV. turned his thoughts to the Christianizing of his East India possessions. Soon after this time his attention was drawn to a need nearer at hand. Among the Lapps who lived in the arctic lands to the north there was great destitution, both spiritual and material. Here idolatry and sacrifices to the evil spirits were common and the official transferral of the country from the Roman to the Evangelical Church had had no effect, since both before and after the natives were at heart heathen. Those who were most devout in spirit had worshipped both the heathen and the Christian gods, feeling that thus were they safe.
A commission was appointed by the King of Denmark-Norway in 1714 to inquire into the state of these northern people. To Finland was sent in 1716 Thomas von Westen, who had himself presented vividly the misery of these poor Esquimaux. Among them he found Isak Olsen, a devoted school master who had been engaged for fourteen years in missionary work, and who now offered his services for von Westen’s undertaking.
Concerning this Isak Olsen, it is related in Stockfleth’s Diary (Dagbog) that he had labored “with apostolic fervor and faithfulness; in poverty and self-denial; in perils at sea, and in perils on land. The Finns hated him because he discovered their idolatry and their places of sacrifice; almost as a pauper, and frequently half clothed, he travelled about among them. When, as it frequently happened, he was compelled to journey across the mountains, they gave him the most refractory reindeer, in order that he might perish on the journey. By all kinds of maltreatment, they sought to shorten his life, and to weary him out. In this purpose, however, they were not successful; for God was with Isak, and labored with him, so that his toil prospered.” He not only instructed the Finns in Christianity, but he taught a number of Finnish youths to write, an art which very few Norsemen had acquired at that time. In 1716, von Westen took him to Throndhjem, Norway, where he translated the Catechism and the Athanasian Creed into the language of the Lapps.
Travelling from place to place, von Westen won the affection of the benighted people whom he loved. He exposed before them the foolishness of the sorcerers, built churches, educated the children and sent young men to Throndhjem to prepare themselves to be ministers to their people. The hardships of three missionary journeys undertaken and carried out in a few years so wore upon him that he was added at the age of forty-five to those who have gone to their reward.
To Swedish Lapland went Per Fjellström (died 1764) who did not only valuable missionary work himself, but who laid the foundation for all future work by his translations of the New Testament, the Catechism and many of the Psalms. Through him and his associates the whole of Swedish Lapland heard the pure Gospel.