§ 183.2. The Order of St. John, secularized in A.D. 1810, was reorganized by Frederick William IV. in A.D. 1852 into an association for the care of the sick and poor. Under a grand-master it has 350 members and 1,500 associates. Its revenues are formed from entrance fees and annual contributions. It has thirty hospitals. In A.D. 1861 it founded a hospital for men in Beyrout during the persecution of Christians in Syria, and in A.D. 1868 gave aid during the famine that followed the typhus epidemic in East Prussia, and did noble service in the wars of A.D. 1864, 1866, and 1870.
§ 183.3. The Itinerant Preacher Gustav Werner in Württemberg.—Abandoning his charge in A.D. 1840, Werner began his itinerant labours, and during the year formed more than a hundred groups of adherents over all Württemberg. His preaching was allegorical and eschatological, and avoided the doctrines of satisfaction and justification. On his repudiating the Augsburg Confession, the church boards refused to recognise him, and he went hither and thither preaching a Christian communism. In A.D. 1842 he bought a site in Reutlingen, built a house, and founded a school for eighty children. In order to develop his views of carrying on industrial arts on a Christian basis, he bought, in A.D. 1850, the paper factory at Reutlingen for £4,000, and subsequently transferred it to Dettingen on a larger scale, at an outlay of £20,000. By A.D. 1862 he had established no less than twenty-two branches, in which manufacturing was carried on, with institutions of all kinds for education, pastoral work, rescuing the lost and raising the fallen. Each member lives and works for the whole; none receives wages; surplus income goes to increase the number and extent of the institutions. Vast multitudes of sunken and destitute families have been by these means restored to respectable social positions and to a moral religious life.
§ 183.4. Bible Societies.—The Bible societies constitute an independent branch of the home mission. Modern efforts to circulate Scripture began in England. As a necessary adjunct to missionary societies, the great British and Foreign Bible Society was founded in London in A.D. 1804, embracing all Protestant sects, excepting the Quakers. It circulates Bibles without note or comment. The Apocryphal controversy of A.D. 1825-1827 resulted in the society resolving not to print the Apocrypha in its issues. In consequence of this decision, fifty German societies, including the present society of Berlin, seceded. The New York Association, founded in A.D. 1817, is in thorough accord with the London society. The Baden Missionary Society revived the discussion in A.D. 1852 by making it the subject of essay for a prize, which was won by the learned work of Keerl, who, along with the stricter Lutherans, condemned the Apocrypha. The other side was taken by Stier and Hengstenberg, and most of the consistories advised adherence to the old practice, as all misunderstanding was prevented by Luther’s preface and the prohibition against using passages from the Apocrypha as sermon texts.—Bible societies altogether have issued during the century 180,000,000 Bibles and New Testaments in 324 different languages.[540]
§ 184. Foreign Missions.
Protestant zeal for missions to the heathen has gone on advancing since the end of last century (§ [172, 5]). Missionary societies increase from year to year. In A.D. 1883 there were seventy independent societies with innumerable branches, which contribute annually about £1,500,000, or five times as much as the Romish church, and maintain 2,000 mission stations, 2,940 European and American missionaries, and 1,000 ordained native pastors and 25,000 native teachers and assistants, having under their care 2,214,000 converts from heathenism. In missionary enterprise England holds the first place, next comes America, and then Germany. Among Protestant sects the Methodists and Baptists are most zealous in the cause of missions, and the Moravian Brethren have wrought most successfully in this department. The missions also did much to prepare the way for the suppression of the slave trade by the European powers in A.D. 1830, and the emancipation of all slaves in the British possessions in A.D. 1834, at a cost of £20,000,000. The noble English philanthropist, William Wilberforce, unweariedly laboured for these ends.—Also in England, Germany, Russia, and France new associations were formed for missions to the Jews, and the work was carried on with admirable patience, though the visible results were very small.
§ 184.1. Missionary Societies.—The great American Missionary Society was founded at Boston in A.D. 1810, the English Wesleyan in A.D. 1814, the American Methodist in A.D. 1819, the American Episcopal in A.D. 1820, and the Society of Paris in A.D. 1824. The new German societies were on confessional lines: that of Basel in A.D. 1816, of Berlin in A.D. 1823, the Rhenish with the mission seminary at Barmen in A.D. 1829, the North German, on the basis of the Augsburg Confession, in A.D. 1836. The Dresden Society, which resumed the old Lutheran work in the East Indies (§ [167, 9]), founded a seminary at Leipzig in A.D. 1849, in order to get the benefit of the university. Lutheran societies, mostly affiliated with that of Leipzig, were started in Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Russia, Bavaria, Hanover, Mecklenburg, Hesse, and America. The Neuendettelsau Institute wrought through the Iowa Synod among the North American Indians, and through the Immanuel Synod among the aborigines of Australia. The Hermannsburg Institute under Harms prosecuted mission work with great zeal. In A.D. 1853, Harms sent out in his own mission ship eight missionaries and as many Christian colonists. It has been objected to this mission, that endeavours after social elevation and industrial training have driven to the background the main question of individual conversion.—The advanced liberal school in Switzerland and Germany sought in A.D. 1883 to start a mission on their own particular lines. They do not propose any opposition to existing agencies, and intend to make their first experiment among the civilized races of India and Japan.
§ 184.2. Europe and America.—The Swedish mission in Lapland (§ [160, 7]) was resumed in A.D. 1825 by Stockfleth. The Moravians carried on their work among the Eskimos in Greenland, which had now become a wholly Christian country, and also in Labrador, which was almost in the same condition. The chaplain of the Hudson Bay Company, J. West, founded a successful mission in that territory in A.D. 1822. Among the natives and negro slaves in the British possessions, the United States, and West Indies, Moravians, Methodists, Baptists, and Anglican Episcopalians patiently and successfully carried on the work. Among the natives and bush negroes, descendants of runaway slaves, in Guiana, the Moravians did a noble work.—Catholic South America remained closed against Protestant missions. But the ardent zeal of Capt. Allen Gardiner led him to choose the inhospitable shores of Patagonia as a field of labour. He landed there in A.D. 1850 with five missionaries, but in the following year their corpses only were found. The work, however, was started anew in A.D. 1856, and prosecuted with success under the direction of an Anglican bishop.
§ 184.3. Africa.—The Moravians have laboured among the Hottentots, the Berlin missionaries among the wild Corannas, and the French Evangelical Society among the Bechuanas. Hahn of Livonia is the apostle of the Hereros. On the East Coast the London Missionary Society has wrought among the warlike Kaffirs, and other British societies are labouring in Natal among the Zulus. On the West Coast the English colony of Sierra Leone was founded for the settling and Christianizing of liberated slaves, and farther south is Liberia, a similar American colony; both in a flourishing condition, under the care of Methodists, Baptists, and Anglican Episcopalians. The Basel missionaries labour on the Gold Coast, Baptists in Old Calabar, and the American and North German Societies on the Gaboon River.—The London missionaries won Radama of Madagascar to Christianity in A.D. 1818, but his successor Ranavalona instituted a bloody persecution of the Christians in A.D. 1835, during which David Jones, the apostle of the Malagassy, suffered martyrdom in A.D. 1843. In the island of Mauritius, where there is an Anglican bishop, many Malagassy Christians found refuge. After the queen’s death in A.D. 1861, her Christian son Radama II. recalled the Christian exiles and the missionaries. He soon became the victim of a palace revolution. His wife and successor Rosaherina continued a heathen till her death in A.D. 1868, but put no obstacle in the way of the gospel. But her cousin Ranavalona II. overthrew the idol worship, was baptized in A.D. 1869, and in the following year burned the national idols. Protestantism now made rapid strides, till interrupted by French Jesuit intrigues, which have been favoured by the recent French occupation.
§ 184.4. Livingstone and Stanley have made marvellous contributions to our geographical knowledge of Central Africa and to Christian missions there. The Scottish missionary, David Livingstone, factory boy, afterwards physician and minister, wrought, A.D. 1840-1849, under the London Missionary Society in South Africa, and then entered on his life work of exploration in Central Africa. During his third exploring journey into the interior in A.D. 1865 as a British consul, he was not heard of for a whole year. H. M. Stanley, of the New York Herald, was sent in A.D. 1871, and found him in Ujiji on Lake Tanganyiká. Livingstone died of dysentery on the southern bank of this lake in A.D. 1873. Still more important was Stanley’s second journey, A.D. 1874-1877, which yielded the most brilliant scientific results, and was epoch-making in the history of African missions. He got the greatest potentate in those regions, King Mtesa of Uganda, who had been converted by the Arabs to Mohammedanism, to adopt Christianity and permit a Christian church to be built in his city. Stanley’s letters from Africa roused missionary fervour throughout England. The Church Missionary Society in A.D. 1877 set up a mission station in the capital, and put a steamer on the Victoria Nyanza. The church services were regularly attended, education and the work of civilization zealously prosecuted, Sunday labour and the slave trade prohibited, etc. French Jesuits entered in A.D. 1879, insinuating suspicions of the English missionaries into the ear of the king, and the machinations of the Arab slave-dealers made their position dangerous. Missionaries arrived by way of Egypt with flattering recommendations from the English foreign secretary in the name of the queen. But the traders, by means of an Arabic translation of a letter purporting to be from the English consul at Zanzibar, cast suspicion on the document as a forgery, and represented its bearers as in the pay of the hostile Egyptians. Mtesa’s wrath knew no bounds, and only his favour for the missionary physician saved the mission and led him to send an embassy of three chiefs and two missionaries to England in June, A.D. 1879, to discover the actual truth. His anger meanwhile cooled, and the work of the mission was resumed. He was preparing to put an utter end to the national heathenism, when suddenly a report spread that the greatest of all the Lubaris or inferior deities, that of the Nyanza Lake, had become incarnate in an old woman, in order to heal the king and restore the ancient religion. The whole populace was in an uproar; Mtesa, under threat of deposition, restored heathenism, with human sacrifice, man stealing, and the slave trade. Then the Lubari excitement cooled down. Mtesa, moved by a dream, declared himself again a Mohammedan, and converted the Christian church into a mosque. The English missionaries, stripped of all means, starved, and subjected to all sorts of privations, did not flinch. At last, in January, A.D. 1881, the embassy, sent eighteen months before to England, reached home again, and, by the story of their reception, caused a revulsion of feeling in favour of the English mission, which again flourished under the protection of the king. But Mtesa died in 1884. His son and successor, Mwanga, a suspicious, peevish young despot, addicted to all forms of vice, began again the most cruel persecution, of which Bishop Hannington, sent out from England, with fifty companions, were the victims. Only four escaped.
§ 184.5. Asia.—The most important mission field in Asia is India. The old Lutheran mission there had great difficulties to contend against: the system of caste distinctions, the proud self-sufficiency of the pantheistic Brahmans, the politico-commercial interests of the East India Company, etc. The Leipzig Society has sixteen stations among the Tamuls, and alongside are English, American, and German missionaries of every school. The Gossner Society works among the Kohls of Chota Nagpore, where a rival mission has been started by the puseyite bishop of Calcutta, Dr. Milman, to which, in A.D. 1868, six of the twelve German missionaries and twelve of the thirty-six chapels were transferred. The Basel missionaries labour in Canara and Malabar. The military revolt in Northern India in A.D. 1857 interrupted missionary operations for two years; but the work was afterwards resumed with great vigour. The Christian benevolence shown during the famine of A.D. 1878, in which three millions perished, made a great impression in favour of the Protestant church. In the preceding years throughout all India only between 5,000 and 10,000 souls were annually added; but in A.D. 1878 the number of new converts rose to 100,000, and in A.D. 1879 there were 44,000.—The island of Ceylon was, under Portuguese and Dutch rule, in great part nominally Christianized; but when compulsion was removed under British rule, this sham profession was at an end. Multitudes fell back into heathenism, and in the first ten years of the British dominion 900 new idol temples were erected. From A.D. 1812 Baptist, Methodist, and Anglican missionaries have toiled with small appearance of fruit. In Farther India the American missionaries have wrought since A.D. 1813. Judson and his heroic wife did noble work among the Karens and the Burmans. Also in Malacca, Singapore, and Siam the Protestant missions have had brilliant success. The work in Sumatra has been retarded by the opposition of the Malays and deadly malarial fever. The preaching of the gospel was eminently successful in Java, where since A.D. 1814 Baptist missionaries and agents of the London Society have wrought heroically. In Celebes the Dutch missionaries found twenty Christian congregations of old standing, greatly deteriorated for want of pastoral care, but still using the Heidelberg Catechism. At Banjermassin, in A.D. 1835 the Rhenish Society founded their first station in Borneo, and wrought not unsuccessfully among the heathen Dyaks. But in A.D. 1859 a rebellion of the Mohammedan residents led to the expulsion of the Dutch and the murder of all Christians. Only a few of the missionaries escaped martyrdom, and subsequently settled in Sumatra.