This malady of unbelief affected the Church, however, for only a short time. By the beginning of the Nineteenth Century men were already returning to the hope which they had rejected. With the return came once more that sense of obligation to the heathen world which had been so clearly seen by von Welz, Francke, Ziegenbalg and Schwartz.
|A Missionary School.| The new light shone out in the opening year of the new century. Then John Jaenicke, who was called “Father” Jaenicke, established in Berlin a missionary school, the first Protestant institution whose object was primarily the direct training of missionaries. For many years Jaenicke had been the only believing preacher of the Gospel in Berlin. In spite of a disease which threatened constantly a fatal hemorrhage, he labored with a humorous disregard of his physical disability--and lived to be eighty years old! His church in Berlin was composed partly of Bohemians, and to these he preached in the morning in Bohemian, his native tongue. In the afternoon he preached in German and on Monday evening he gave a powerful review of his Sunday sermons, dwelling constantly on two cardinal points, human sin and divine grace, and crying earnestly to his people. “You are sinners, you need a Savior, here in the Scriptures Christ offers Himself to you!”
Visiting the sick, giving alms to the needy, comforting the desolate, and alas! constantly laughed at and mocked, this godly man pursued the course which he had set for himself. As in the case of Francke, so in the case of Jaenicke an abounding charity concerned itself not only with those at hand but with those afar off. From his missionary school, he sent out in twenty-seven years about eighty missionaries. Before his death the beauty of his character and the softening heart of his country enabled men to see him as he was.
The Jaenicke school exists no more as such, but in the impulse given to missions and in a successor, the Berlin Missionary Society, it still lives.
Methods.
|A Method of Work.| For those who are acquainted only with the missionary methods of the American Lutheran Church, in which missionary work is done officially by the various branches of the Church, it is necessary to explain briefly the different procedure of Germany and other foreign countries. Where the Lutheran Church is the State Church, it cares officially only for those within the State. All other varieties of Christian work are carried on by societies which have been organized either by groups of zealous men and women or else by a single person. The circumstances connected with the foundation and the history of these organizations are often intensely interesting. It is to be regretted that we can give only a short space to each one.
German Societies.
|A Century of Service.| No missionary society has had a more interesting beginning than the Basel Society. There was encamped on one side of the Swiss city of Basel in 1815 a Hungarian army, on the other side a Russian army. Destruction seemed certain, and when it was averted the pious folk determined in gratitude to establish a mission seminary to train preachers for the heathen. While this undertaking is partly Reformed, its intimate connection with the Lutheran Church makes it proper for us to include its work in a history of Lutheran missions. Many of its directors and a large proportion of its workers have been Lutherans and a great deal of its support has come from Lutheran sources.
At first the men trained in the Basel school went into the employ of English missionary societies, but in 1822, after eighty-eight missionaries had served the English Church Missionary Society alone, the society sent its men to its own fields. Between 1815 and 1882 the society trained eleven hundred and twelve candidates.
The Basel society has certain distinct and peculiar characteristics. It combines with its evangelical work industrial work which is managed by a missionary trading society. It was the first of the German societies to combine medical with evangelical work. It trains surgeons, farmers, weavers, shoemakers, bakers, workers in wood and iron, tailors, printers and mechanics as well as teachers and ministers.