Die Welt, die Gott dir gab.
Send Boten aus in jedes Land,
Dass bald dein Name werd’ bekannt,
Dein Name voller Seligkeit;
Auch wir steh’n dir zum Dienst bereit
In Kampf und Streit,
Zum Dienst in Kampf und Streit.
A missionary hymn written at the request of students at the Basel Mission House, Basel, Switzerland. The students wanted a good missionary poem to use with the present tune, then erroneously ascribed to J. Michael Haydn. Preiswerk supplied the first two stanzas. They were first sung June 17, 1829, at an anniversary festival. The third stanza was added by Count Felician von Zaremba, since it was felt that the first two did not have enough emphasis on foreign missions.
The hymn was sung at the laying of the cornerstone of Bethel College and again at the sixtieth anniversary of that event, celebrated October 12, 1948.
Samuel Preiswerk was born in Rümlingen, Switzerland, the son of the pastor of the Reformed Church at that place. He was educated at the Universities of Basel, Tübingen, and Erlangen. After serving in a curacy at Benken and on the staff of the Basel Orphanage, he taught Hebrew at the Basel Mission House, later accepting a pastorate at Muttenz, and a professorship at the Ecole de Théologie in Geneva. In 1840 he was called to the St. Leonhardt Church in Basel, where he became the main pastor in 1843. Finally he was made Antistes or Superintendent of the Reformed Churches in the Basel Area. Preiswerk was one of the editors of the Baseler Gesangbuch of 1854 and was otherwise active as a hymnologist.