The German Jerusalem Union has been at work since 1852. Its chief care is for the German churches in Palestine, but it conducts also mission work in the old Christian Arab population.
The German Jerusalem Association was founded in 1889 for the benefit of the German Evangelical congregation in Jerusalem. This is in no sense a missionary enterprise, but the fact that it is supported and authorized by the German government gives importance to all the German Lutheran work in Palestine. In 1898 the German Emperor and Empress were present at the dedication of the Church of the Redeemer, supported by this organization. This church building stands within the walls of the city not far from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
|The Work of Deaconesses.| Schools and hospitals at Jerusalem, Beirut, Constantinople and Cairo are supported and conducted by the Kaiserswerth Deaconesses, who for sixty years have labored in the East. The last report gave one hundred and twenty-eight as the number actively engaged.
The Danish Lutherans have small stations in Syria, Asia Minor and Arabia.
The Church of Sweden conducts a hospital in Bethlehem.
The only direct work by American Lutherans for the Near East is done through the small Intersynodical Orient Mission Society of the American Norwegians, Swedes and Germans, whose field is Kurdistan. The Joint Synod of Ohio supports a missionary in Persia, a vast and uncultivated field, where there is one missionary to two hundred and twenty-one thousand of the population. There has also been another Lutheran Society at work, the Syro-Chaldean.
|A Lutheran Scholar.| It is doubtful whether all other enterprises for the conversion of the Jews have equalled in bulk or importance the work of a Lutheran, Dr. Franz Delitzsch, one of the most celebrated scholars of his time, who was born in 1813, and who died in Leipsic in 1890. His greatest devotion was given to mission work for the Jews, and for them he translated the New Testament into Hebrew. The first chapters appeared in 1838; by 1888 eighty thousand copies had been published. Though to millions of Jews the languages of the countries in which they sojourned had become familiar, yet to them religion and religious instruction could be given in no other tongue than the sacred Hebrew to which they were accustomed.
Doctor Delitzsch’s translation was not the first which had been made, but like Luther’s translation of the Bible into German it far surpassed in accuracy and literary value all that had gone before.
On account of his close friendship with the fathers of the Missouri Lutherans in this country, Doctor Delitzsch’s name is a familiar one to a large part of the American Church.
Beside his translation of the New Testament he contributed many other works to Hebrew literature, tracts upon various subjects, commentaries, and a monthly journal.