A History of the Moravian Church

by J. E. Hutton

We pass now to South Africa, the land of the Boers. For the last hundred years South Africa had been under the rule of the Dutch East India Company; and the result was that the Hottentots and Kaffirs were still as heathen as ever. For their spiritual welfare the Boers cared absolutely nothing. They were strong believers in predestination; they believed that they were elected to grace and the Hottentots elected to damnation; and, therefore, they held it to be their duty to wipe the Hottentots off the face of the earth. "The Hottentots," they said, "have no souls; they belong to the race of baboons." They called them children of the devil; they called them "black wares," "black beasts," and "black cattle"; and over one church door they painted the notice "Dogs and Hottentots not admitted." They ruined them, body and soul, with rum and brandy; they first made them merry with drink, and then cajoled them into unjust bargains; they shot them down in hundreds, and then boasted over their liquor how many Hottentots they had "potted." "With one hundred and fifty men," wrote the Governor, Van Ruibeck, in his journal, "11,000 head of black cattle might be obtained without danger of losing one man; and many savages might be taken without resistance to be sent as slaves to India, as they will always come to us unarmed. If no further trade is to be expected with them, what should it matter much to take six or eight thousand beasts from them." But the most delightful of all Boer customs was the custom of flogging by pipes. If a Hottentot proved a trifle unruly, he was thrashed, while his master, looking on with a gluttonous eye, smoked a fixed number of pipes; and the wreathing smoke and the writhing Hottentot brought balm unto his soul.

And now to this hell of hypocrisy and villainy came the first apostle to the natives. As the famous Halle missionary, Ziegenbalg, was on his way to the Malabar Coast he touched at Cape Town, heard something of the abominations practised, was stirred to pity, and wrote laying the case before two pastors in Holland. The two pastors wrote to Herrnhut; the Herrnhut Brethren chose their man; and in less than a week the man was on his way. George Schmidt was a typical Herrnhut brother. He had come from Kunewalde, in Moravia, had lain six years in prison, had seen his friend, Melchior Nitschmann, die in his arms, and watched his own flesh fall away in flakes from his bones. For twelve months he had now to stay in Amsterdam, first to learn the Dutch language, and secondly to pass an examination in orthodox theology. He passed the examination with flying colours. He received permission from the "Chamber of Seventeen" to sail in one of the Dutch East India Company's ships. He landed at Cape Town. His arrival created a sensation. As he sat in the public room of an inn he listened to the conversation of the assembled farmers {1737.}.

"I hear," said one, "that a parson has come here to convert the Hottentots."

"What! a parson!" quoth another. "Why, the poor fool must have lost his head."

They argued the case; they mocked; they laughed; they found the subject intensely amusing.

"And what, sir, do you think?" said a waiter to Schmidt, who was sitting quietly in the corner.

"I am the very man," replied Schmidt; and the farmers began to talk about their crops.

For six years George Schmidt laboured all alone among the benighted Hottentots. He began his labours at a military outpost in the Sweet-Milk Valley, about fifty miles east of Cape Town; but finding the company of soldiers dangerous to the morals of his congregation, he moved to a place called Bavian's Kloof, where the town of Genadendal stands to-day. He planted the pear-tree so famous in missionary annals, taught the Hottentots the art of gardening, held public service every evening, had fifty pupils in his day-school, and began to baptize his converts. As he and William, one of his scholars, were returning one day from a visit to Cape Town, they came upon a brook, and Schmidt asked William if he had a mind to be baptized there and then. He answered "Yes." And there, by the stream in a quiet spot, the first fruit of African Missions made his confession of faith in Christ.

"Dost thou believe," asked Schmidt solemnly, "that the Son of God died on the cross for the sins of all mankind? Dost thou believe that thou art by nature a lost and undone creature? Wilt thou renounce the devil and all his works? Art thou willing, in dependence on God's grace, to endure reproach and persecution, to confess Christ before all men, and to remain faithful to him unto death?"

As soon, however, as Schmidt began to baptize his converts the Cape Town clergy denounced him as a heretic, and summoned him to answer for his sins. The great charge against him was that he had not been properly ordained. He had been ordained, not by actual imposition of hands, but by a certificate of ordination, sent out to him by Zinzendorf. To the Dutch clergy this was no ordination at all. What right, said they, had a man to baptize who had been ordained in this irregular manner? He returned to Holland to fight his battle there. And he never set foot on African soil again! The whole argument about the irregular ordination turned out to be a mere excuse. If that argument had been genuine the Dutch clergy could now have had Schimdt ordained in the usual way. But the truth is they had no faith in his mission; they had begun to regard the Brethren as dangerous heretics; and, therefore, for another fifty years they forbade all further mission work in the Dutch Colony of South Africa.