The writer, Missionary Posselt, lived to baptize one thousand Kaffirs.
|The Progress of Tropical Medical Treatment.| One of the interesting developments in the Berlin Society mission has been the great decrease in sickness, owing to the progress of tropical medical treatment. No employee of the society, whether missionary, wife of missionary or artisan, is sent to Africa without a thorough course in tropical hygiene. To those faithful scientists who discovered the cause of malaria is ascribed the success of the Panama canal; no less are they to be thanked for the continued life and work of many missionaries.
The Hermannsburg Mission entered South Africa in 1854. Its field is located among the Zulus in Natal where there are twenty-one stations and twelve thousand eight hundred Christians, and among the Bechunas in the Transvaal where there are twenty-eight stations and sixty-one thousand Christians.
|The Ship “Candace.”|. We have learned in Chapter II of the origin of the Hermannsburg Mission in the mind and heart of Louis Harms. After a year or two, a number of German sailors, recently converted, sought admission to the training school, and at their suggestion a ship was built and named the ‘Candace.’ This ship was to carry the Gospel to South Africa, and on October 8, 1853, she sailed from Hamburg. On board were sailors, colonists and missionaries who were to found a missionary colony. To each separate class Pastor Harms gave separate directions, but upon all he urged the necessity for prayer. “Begin all your work with prayer; when the storm rises, pray, when the billows rage round the ship, pray; when sin comes, pray; and when the devil tempts you, pray. So long as you pray it will go well with you, body and soul.”
The missionary colony hoped to settle among the Galla tribes, but were driven away by the Mohammedans, therefore they returned to Natal. On the 19th of September, 1854, they established their first station near Greytown, giving it the dear name of Hermannsburg. Each artisan began to practice his trade, a house was built, and before three months had passed the first converts of the Zulu church were baptized.
|A Truly Lutheran Mission.| No Lutheran mission has so intense a Lutheran spirit as the Hermannsburg mission, whose founder wished all the Lutheran symbols and especially the beautiful Lutheran liturgy to be recognized and used by mission churches as well as by churches in the fatherland.
The good ship “Candace,” one of the most famous and probably the first of the missionary ships of the world, made many journeys. Not the least interesting, at least to those concerned, was her second when she carried to Natal reinforcements and additional colonists, among them a wife for each of the missionaries who had made the pioneer journey.
The Hermannsburg mission has not lacked a baptism of blood. In 1883 thirteen stations were destroyed and Missionary Schroeder met a martyr’s death.
The Hanover Free Evangelical Lutheran Church Missionary Society, branched off from the Hermannsburg Mission in 1892. It has six stations in Natal and Zululand with about twenty-two thousand Christians, and among the Bechunas in the Transvaal three stations with thirty-six hundred Christians.
East Africa.