|A Devoted Wife.| Preaching, translating, trying to establish better methods of agriculture, now receiving aid from home, now apparently forgotten, Egede labored for fifteen years. Beside the heavenly assurance of ultimate victory his chief solace was the devotion of his wife. “She was confined to the monotony of their humble home, while he was called here and there by the duties of his office; but though its comforts were very scanty, she saw the ships from Norway come and go, and heard tidings from her native land without any desire to desert her work. Amid all his troubles her husband ever found her face serene and her spirit rejoicing in God. His greatest trial was the want of success in his work. Though many pretended to believe, he could find little change in heart or life, for those who affected to hear the Word with joy, among their own people still spoke of his instructions and prayers with derision.”[[3]]
[3]. Ibid.
Presently a fort was established to protect the colony and the island from other nations, but the presence of armed men drove the islanders farther away. After the death of Frederick IV., the colonists were commanded to return to Denmark. Egede declined to go. In 1733 hope was once more kindled by the announcement that trade would be renewed and the mission be supported.
|A Sad Heart.| But greater misfortunes were at hand. A fearful epidemic of smallpox ravaged the country. “In their despair some stabbed themselves, others plunged into the sea. In one hut an only son died and the father enticed his wife’s sister in and murdered her, as having bewitched his son and so caused his death. In this great trial Egede and his son went everywhere, nursing the sick, comforting the bereaved and burying the dead. Often they found only empty houses and unburied corpses. On one island they found only one girl with her three little brothers. After burying the rest of the people, the father lay down in the grave he had prepared for himself and his infant child, both sick with the plague and bade the girl cover them with skins and stones to protect their bodies from wild beasts. Egede sent the survivors to the colony, lodged as many as his house would hold and nursed them with care. Many were touched by such kindness, and one who had often mocked the good man, said to him now, ‘You have done for us more than we do for our own people; you have buried our dead and have told us of a better life.’” Finally the missionary’s wife fell also a victim to the plague. Dying she blessed him and his work.
In 1736, broken in health, Egede returned to Denmark, invited by the King. There by pen and tongue he continued to work for Greenland until his death.
|The Church of Greenland.| Upon the foundation laid by Egede missionaries of a closely-related Church built a noble superstructure. Appealing to the heart rather than to the intellect, the heroic Moravians won the country for Christ. Soon spring dawned in that wintry land. When a Moravian missionary dwelt upon the love of God and the agony of Christ, an Esquimaux stepped forward asking eagerly, “How was that? Tell me that again, for I also would be saved.”
The mission to Greenland offers not only records of noble devotion and sacrifice but a touching and remarkable conclusion. In 1899 the Moravians handed back to the Danish Lutheran Church the work which the Lutherans had begun. The missionary task was complete; with no selfish desire to hold for themselves in ease what they had won in great difficulty, the Moravians turned their labors into other fields among the many which they have so diligently harvested. The Lutheran Church which has sent so many laborers into other mission fields has here had a brotherly return.
|A Malady.| The latter part of the Eighteenth Century offers a less happy missionary spectacle than the earlier part. Upon religious life, not only in Lutheran countries but in other Protestant countries fell the blight of indifference and of rationalism. When men do not believe the doctrines of the Scriptures, when a future life becomes a matter of doubt and personal salvation the subject of amusement, they cease to feel an obligation to those who are less favorably situated, and the carrying of the Gospel message becomes a useless or worse than useless undertaking.
HOSPITAL FOR WOMEN AND CHILDREN, RAJAHMUNDRY.