Thus the work of the Danish Mission, for the first forty years of the eighteenth century so zealously pursued and in its later years so generously supported by the S.P.C.K., had spread from Tranquebar to Cuddalore and Madras and to Tanjore in the interior. In many instances the missionaries rendered great services to the English garrisons, especially to the foreign levies, for in 1749 an enlistment of Swiss soldiers made the ministrations of these Danish and German clergymen very acceptable. These missionaries, it must be remembered, used the English Prayer Book or translations of it, taught the Church catechism in their schools, and in their adult work observed the ordinance of baptism according to the English rite. In one of the ancient minutes of the S.P.C.K., dated 4th December, 1744, are the words, “Recommended to ye Missionaries to continue ye use of ye ch. of Eng. Catechism and to baptise in ye form of Com. Prayer.”
We have now arrived at a point in the history of these early missions of Christianity in India at which in the Providence of God one of the greatest, if not the most distinguished, of the missionaries of his time appears upon the scene.
FOOTNOTES:
[3] Venn, Life of Xavier, p. 28.
[4] Ibid., p. 37.
[5] Venn, Life of Xavier, p. 156.
[6] W. Fleming Stevenson in Good Words, Dec., 1872.
CHAPTER III.
FROM COLLEGE TO MISSION FIELD.
In the little town of Sonnenburg, in the Electorate of Brandenburg, as it was then called, was born on the 8th October, 1726, a little boy, Christian Frederick Schwartz. Little is known of his home and parents; his father, however, seems to have occupied a respectable position in life, and, what is of much more consequence, he was a devout and godly man. His mother, like so many of the mothers of missionaries, was a woman of consistent piety, and her child was from the very threshold of life dedicated by her to God and His service. She was not spared to see her son grow up—even in his boyhood he was motherless—but before she passed away she solemnly left him to the care of his father and the pastor of their church, to be trained up like Samuel as a servant of God, and as her natural and devout ambition was that he might one day become a minister she made them promise that they would in every possible way encourage and help her boy to that end. There is no evidence to show that these guardians were in any way unfaithful to this solemn charge. At the early age of eight years we find the boy a scholar in the principal Grammar School of his native place, and in Herr Helm, the rector, he had a guide and adviser who trained his pupils well. His boys were not only given a good education, with a special eye to the classics, but they were taught to pray and commit all their needs to the care of their Heavenly Father. The boy Schwartz was evidently of a thoughtful disposition. Like Henry Martyn he was wont to steal away from the playground to read a book; probably his love of retirement at this period was also due to a lack of the physical robustness of the average school boy. From his earliest years he had a sensitive soul which felt instinctively any act of wrong-doing, however simple it might appear, and he could never rest until in the solitude of his room or in a walk in the woods he had poured forth his confession to God and regained the peace of forgiveness. He seems to have been singularly fortunate in having a wise and sympathetic teacher in Herr Helm, and the boy was ripening under his training when a change came, a new headmaster being appointed, who perhaps did his part well as an educationalist, but lacked the moral and religious tone of his predecessor. None are so quick to catch the change of temperature in moral training as boys, and the young Schwartz seems to have soon abandoned many of his religious habits and grown cold and indifferent towards higher things. In the ordinary course, however, he was confirmed with other scholars according to Lutheran usage at the school, but it is recorded that his preparation for this solemn occasion was hardly more than superficial and that the clergyman who performed this office scarcely impressed this candidate, at any rate, with the necessity of a real consecration of his heart and life to God. He partook of Holy Communion with some little religious emotion but this soon passed away.