|A Letter to the King.| Gützlaff was born of humble folk in Pyritz in Pomerania in 1803. When he was twelve years old he was apprenticed to a saddler, but he had other intentions for his life, and wrote in poetical form his desire to become a famous man. This poem the lad addressed to no less a person than the King of Prussia, through whom he was sent first to Halle to school and afterwards to the institute of Jaenicke at Berlin. In 1826 he went as a missionary of the Netherlands Society to Java. After several years of labor, he determined to penetrate into closed and inhospitable China. When the Netherlands Society declined to give him permission, he left their service in 1831 and became an interpreter on a coast vessel.
|Appeals for Help.| Meanwhile during his service in Java, Gützlaff had learned the Chinese language, the most difficult of the many tongues which his extraordinary gift for language enabled him to master. Now in the many journeys which he made up and down the coast, he began to preach and to distribute thousands of tracts of his own translating. He wrote to England and America earnest appeals that workers be sent to share in his labors. Presently he was made an interpreter in the English consular service, in which position he had wide opportunity for Christian work. At the end of the Opium War he gave valuable service by his knowledge of the country and the people. Tradition records that at this time among China’s vast population there were six Christians.
Though five ports had been opened by the treaty of Nanking, foreigners were not allowed to go far beyond them. To meet this difficulty, Gützlaff began the training of bands of native workers who should carry the Gospel to the most distant of the eighteen provinces. He continued to preach and to call upon the home lands for aid. In 1849 he visited Europe. Travelling rapidly, he flew “like an angel” through most of the European countries, preaching, pleading and endeavoring to form societies, which should divide vast China into missionary provinces. Among the few who heard and answered his plea was, as we have seen, David Livingstone.
|A Cruel Disappoint-ment.| In 1850 Gützlaff returned to China. The bands of native workers which he had trained with such enthusiasm had not lived up to his high hopes but had basely betrayed him. Before he could do much toward repairing the damage which they had wrought, he died at the age of forty-eight. He was buried in Hong Kong and over his body was erected a mighty stone bearing in English the inscription, “An Apostle”, and in German, “The Apostle to the Chinese”.
|Author and Translator.| The literary labors of Gützlaff were enormous, especially when we consider that he was constantly occupied with other affairs as missionary and interpreter. He translated the Bible into Siamese; he aided the Englishman Robert Morrison in his translation of the Bible into Chinese; he published a monthly magazine in Chinese and wrote in Chinese various books on useful subjects. Among his English and German works were a “Journal of Three Voyages along the Coast of China in 1831, 1832 and 1833,” “A Sketch of Chinese History, Ancient and Modern”, “China Opened” and “The Life of Taow-Kwang.”
As remarkable as Gützlaff’s talent and industry was his enthusiasm. Where his work did not succeed, failure was brought about not by any lack in himself but in those of whom he expected larger things than they could accomplish.
A missionary historian describes a memorial to Gützlaff, which seems singularly appropriate to his life of devotion.
|A Memorial.| “We were passing through the Straits of Formosa at midnight when we saw suddenly before us on China’s wild coast a towering lighthouse. At the same moment a loud cry came over the water, ‘Gützlaff!’ We asked who was summoned and they answered that the lighthouse was named for the missionary Gützlaff, and thus by the use of his name instead of the accustomed ‘Beware’, was his memory recalled.”
German Societies.
It is proper to include here as elsewhere the histories of those German societies, which, though they are not wholly Lutheran, yet employ and are supported by many Lutherans. The three Lutheran or partly Lutheran organizations which have missions in China are the Basel, the Berlin and the Rhenish societies.