Fac, Amor, aeternum sim maneamque tuus.”
It may be said with truth of Ziegenbalg that he was a born pioneer, undaunted in courage, fertile in resource, patient and yet full of inspiration, with a remarkable gift of organization. Plütschau, his comrade, on the other hand, was differently made, a timid, faithful, earnest and pensive man.
NEW JERUSALEM CHURCH, TRANQUEBAR
THE MISSION CHURCH BUILT BY ZIEGENBALG, 1717
After the loss of its leader the mission soon suffered again. Gründler, a faithful and able man, ordained by the Bishop of Zealand in 1708, under the same provocation from Copenhagen which killed his chief, died of a broken heart the year following, and the three young missionaries who came to pick up the thread were good but scarcely sufficient for the task. Benjamin Schultze was an intellectual and talented man, with linguistic gifts, which he used in translating the Bible, in this respect completing the work which Ziegenbalg had left unfinished. When he felt called to leave Tranquebar and make Madras his sphere of work Schultze showed his capacity for work and great ability. The school he started in Black Town was very successful; so many men came to visit him, asking for Christian teaching, that he was compelled to fix an hour every day to preach to them. While diligent with his pen it was his stated opinion that “viva voce preaching, the testimony of a living man, had a great advantage over the private reading of books.” But Schultze did both. He mastered the difficult Telegu; worked hard at Hindustani in order that, as this was the language used by the Mohammedans, he might translate the New Testament and part of the Old, and also write a refutation of the Koran. But he ruled badly, being restless and lacking in dignity. He could not get on with his colleagues, Sartorius and Geister, most excellent brethren, who were the first two missionaries sent out by the S.P.C.K. The committee had hoped that, by persuading Schultze to open a new mission at Cuddalore and leaving these colleagues at Madras, peace might be maintained. Certainly the epistle they sent to him is a model of considerate insistency.
“You have, good sir, we believe, as few failings as any missionary in India, and as warm a zeal to promote the Glory of God. Do what you can to sacrifice your chiefest failing to this Zeal, and to mortify the least degree of pride that can tempt you to assume a Superiority or Rule over your fellow labourers, altho’ your merit may make you worthy of it and would probably command it of them, if you did not assume it.”
Schultze, however, declined to move, and as a consequence Sartorius and Geister began the work at Cudalore (as then spelt), where the former died in 1738 and was buried in the English burial ground with every mark of respect.
Schultze finally returned to Germany in broken health, after twenty-four years of work in India. For years after, he served the cause of missions at Halle, and to him the honour was given of numbering amongst his students the distinguished and noble man who is the subject of the present biography.
Another, Keistenmacher by name, died after a few weeks of his arrival. The question of caste in the Church had become an “apple of dissension,” and two new missionaries, Walther and Pressier, reversing the practice of Schultze, maintained the toleration of caste as a matter of principle so that the Sudras were now kept a yard apart from the Pariahs, and their children in the schools separated. One important development marked this period of the mission: Aaron, a native catechist who had been baptised by Ziegenbalg, was ordained a minister according to the rights of the Lutheran Church, and sent to Tanjore. Other missionaries came out from Europe. One only perhaps needs specific mention here, Philipp Fabricius, who arrived at Madras in 1742 and for fifty years laboured with much wisdom and patience. He made a close study of Tamil literature and is always to be remembered as the hymn writer of the Tamil Christians. He was pre-eminently a scholar; indeed so slow and reverent was he in his translation work that when he was making his Tamil version of the Holy Scripture it is said that “he crept through the original Bible text on his knees as if he was himself a poor sinner or mendicant, carefully weighing every word to see how it might best be rendered.” It is a sorrowful fact to record that through financial speculations in which he was deceived by a dishonest catechist, poor Fabricius ended under a cloud of debt which brought scandal on the mission work, and old and quite weary of life, on the 23rd January, 1791, he passed to his rest.
As Tanjore will have considerable attention in the subsequent story of the spread of Christianity in this part of India, it is only fair to make some reference here to the earnest native who started the work in these earlier days. He was an outcast Pariah, by name Rajanaiken, a Roman Catholic, whose mind was awakened by reading Ziegenbalg’s translation of the New Testament, and forthwith, with great courage and devotion, he threw in his lot with the Protestant missionaries. He gave up his position as an officer in the service of the King of Tanjore, became a catechist, and, though persecuted with vindictive cruelty by the Jesuit Beschi, he stood faithful. His father was killed and his two brothers were wounded at his side by the emissaries of this man, but he was himself spared to do a good and permanent work among both heathens and Christians, and died in 1771 at the age of seventy-one.