|A Land of Many Nations.| By South Africa we mean the great southern portion of the continent extending from Cape Town up to the Zambesi River, which flows toward the east and the Congo which flows toward the west. Here, in addition to the native tribes who are chiefly Hottentots, Bushmen and Bantus, Kaffirs and Zulus, are large settlements of whites, who, unable to go beyond this section on account of the climate, are more and more steadily making the country their own. Their presence, as may easily be imagined, complicates and makes immensely difficult all mission work. To this fertile land, rich in gold, diamonds and other minerals, have gone naturally the adventurous and in many cases the wicked of other nations. There have been already fearful struggles between native and foreigner, black and white. When we realize that among the five hundred and seventy-five thousand baptized native Christians, one hundred and twenty thousand are Lutherans, our interest in the sadly complicated situation becomes keen.
|The Missionary Press.| The first German society to work in South Africa was the Rhenish which, like the Basel Society, is not wholly Lutheran. This society in 1829 established stations first in Nama Land, then in Herero Land, then in Ovambo Land. Here we have another record of opposition, of native wars, of indifference. The mission station lies almost entirely in the German colony. It has in all fifty-two missionaries. The number of Christians is now more than twenty-six thousand. Here also, the Germans have translated and taught with the greatest care. The press is constantly used to bind together the scattered Christians in the sparsely settled districts, two monthly religious papers, one in the Nama, the other in the Herero language, being published.
|A Labor Not in Vain.| Says Doctor Warneck: “It has been a laborious work of patience that the missionaries have done in these great countries, industrially so poor,--a work made difficult by the great inconstancy of the Hottentots and the strong opposition of the Herero, as well as by the entanglements of war,--and more than once in Herero Land the workers were on a point of withdrawing. But German fidelity at last carried the day. Now the whole of the great region from the Orange River to beyond Walfisch Bay, far into the interior of Great Nama Land and Herero Land and even up to Ovambo Land is covered with a network of stations. All the points that could be occupied have been made mission stations and the whole population has been brought under the educative and civilizing influence of Christianity.”
The Rhenish Society has also a mission in the southern part of Cape Colony. Its first station was at Stellenbosch, near Cape Town, established in 1829.
The society has now in all a membership of twenty-one thousand four hundred Christians. A number of its churches are financially independent. Here as everywhere there are discouraging backslidings into the old sins of drunkenness and impurity, but even so the light has shone and will shine with increasing brightness.
|The Discovery of Diamonds.| The Berlin Missionary Society began work in South Africa in 1834, first among the Koranna people between the Orange and Vaal Rivers, and later, in 1838, in Cape Colony itself, its first station being at Peniel. At first few foreigners penetrated into this district between the Orange and the Vaal, but in 1870 when diamonds were discovered, Cape Colony, in spite of the protests of the Orange Free State to which it had belonged, annexed it. At once thousands of adventurers poured in, both black and white. In 1860 the missionaries went north into the Transvaal.
The Berlin Mission is the largest in South Africa. Its last report names fifty-eight stations and one thousand sub-stations. The Christian community, which numbers sixty thousand is organized in five synods of Cape Colony, the Zulu-Xosa district, Orange River Colony, South Transvaal and North Transvaal.
Among the notable Lutheran missionaries of the Berlin South African mission have been Merensky, a famous writer upon missionary subjects, Grützer, who gave forty-nine years of devoted service to the mission, Wuras, who gave fifty and Doctor D. Kropf who did valuable work as a translator.
Another Berlin missionary of large achievement describes his early experience, writing in 1889:
“After having worked myself weary through the week, when on Sunday I saw these wild men of the wilderness sitting before me, absolute obtuseness toward everything divine, together with mockery and brutal lusts written on their faces, I sometimes lost all disposition to preach. Those fluent young preachers who not only like to be heard, but to hear themselves, ought to be sometimes required to ascend the pulpit before such an assemblage. There is not the least thing there to lift up the preacher of the Divine Word or to come to the help of his weakness. As when a green, fresh branch laid before the door of a glowing oven shrivels up at once, such has sometimes been my experience when I had come full of warm devotion, before the Kaffirs, and undertaken to preach. I have sometimes wished that I had never become a missionary. Once the hour of Sunday services again approached. The sun was fearfully hot, and I felt weary in body and soul. My unbelieving heart said: ‘Your preaching is for nothing’, and Beelzebub added a lusty amen. The Kaffirs were sitting in the hut waiting for me. ‘I’ll not preach to-day’, said I to my wife, but she looked at me with her angelic eyes, lifted her finger, and said gravely: ‘William, you will do your duty. You will go and preach’. I seized Bible and hymn book, and loitered to church like an idle boy creeping unwillingly to school. I began, preluding on the violin, the Kaffirs grunting. I prayed, read my text, and began to preach with about as much fluency as stuttering Moses. Yet soon the Lord loosened the band of my tongue, and the fire of the Holy Ghost awakened me out of my sluggishness. I spoke with such fervor concerning the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world, that if that sermon has quickened no heart of a hearer yet my own was profoundly moved.”