# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1850 10 29_S34
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

34

of the Evang. Luth. Mission in East India, the first with the words: They go forth; the second with the words: They weep; the third with the words: They bear precious seed; the fourth with the words: They come with rejoicing and bring their sheaves,

Thus first: They go forth.

1. "Go ye into all the world, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost."

In these last words of our Lord and Master to His Church, the right and the duty of the Christian Church to carry on missions is expressed so clear as the sun that only the most stone-blind unbelief can doubt at such noonday brightness. Yet our Church in particular is not seldom reproached that of all Christian churches she is the laziest, and the most sullen, and the stiffest, and the lamest, when it comes to the point of actually going forth at her Lord's command and calling in the heathen from the hedges and highways to the great supper. The reproach is, alas, alas, not wholly unfounded with respect to the wretched present; it can and shall cast us down into the dust and drive us to prayer: Lord, Thou who wast gracious aforetime to Thy servants, lift up again the hands which hang down and the feeble knees!

With respect to the glorious past, however, it is crying injustice. Our Church in particular was, apart from some isolated mission attempts soon scattered again to all the four winds, the first to whom the word of the Lord, "Go ye," fell upon the ear and pierced the ear, and who then also stirred the foot and went forth and broke the way for the others. In the first two centuries of her existence she had, to be sure, so hard a struggle to endure for her self-preservation within and without that the impulse to propagate herself might readily have passed away; but at the beginning of the last century the command of the Lord, "Go ye," fell heavily upon the heart of a part of her living members, and behold, in the midst of the Church, which to many appeared a whited sepulchre full of moldering dead men's bones, there began a stirring and moving toward a first mission attempt on yet untrodden ways. The historical course of events, however, is this:

Frederick the Fourth of Denmark was a man after God's own heart and a faithful member of the Evang. Luth. Church; even while he was still crown prince, the thought had caused him much disquiet that for the many heathen who were subject to the Danish scepter nothing at all had yet been done, and when at last the heavy royal crown pressed his noble head, he felt himself doubly oppressed in his heart over it. He confided in his worthy court preacher and confessor, Franz Julius Lütkens, and the latter, to use his own expression, brought wood to it with joy, until he saw this fire blaze up in the royal heart. But there was still a lack of men who stood shod on their feet as ready to preach the gospel of peace. But the pious A. H. Franke, the founder of the Halle orphan house, bold in faith, the eloquent preacher of a faith active in love, the man of counsel and deed, to whom one had turned in this matter, was here also at hand with counsel and deed. He knew a young theologian of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, trained by himself, — the afterward so famous Ziegenbalg from Upper Lusatia, whom he judged fit for undertaking the office of evangelist, and although the latter met him with the scruple: Father, I am too young, I am not fit for a preacher! yet the fatherly man soon knew how to overcome all the misgivings of the young man, and now the fire in the royal heart at Copenhagen blazed up so high that Ziegenbalg was not even allowed time to take personal leave of his relatives. He hastened in October 1705 to Copenhagen for the sake of ordination, and indeed already no longer alone; his faithful school and university friend, Heinrich Plütschau of Mecklenburg, kindled by his example, went with him, and already in the middle of the following year the two inseparable friends landed, after a sea voyage of more than seven months, at Tranquebar, then the most important Danish possession in South India. And so from the year 1705 to the year 1824 no fewer than 56 Lutheran theologians have, one after another, become willing to go, — to go forth as missionaries to East India, and have there drawn the mission net from one place to another over the whole South. Thus they went forth.

II. But it reads: they go forth and weep. "They weep": that is now the second fundamental stroke in our picture. My friends! Nothing great has ever yet come to pass in the kingdom of God without much weeping. Did not the Lord Himself, in the days of His flesh, offer up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears? And the apostle writes: We must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God, and we may add, spread the kingdom of God amid much tribulation. But the weeping began already at Copenhagen, the natural tear of parting from kindred and fatherland being quite left out of account, in spite of the full sunshine from the royal throne. Most there did not know indeed how beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace; they mocked at their zeal; they called them adventurers. And when they now set foot at Tranquebar with ardent longing, and the sight of the brownish multitudes of heathen, at whose immortal souls they were henceforth to labor, moved their hearts through and through, behold, the Danish merchants and officials there prepared for them more than an icy reception. The missionaries, in spite of the king's handwriting and seal, were left to stand quite alone, first outside the gate, then in the market place, in the East Indian heat, the whole day until evening, and after at last, through the humane kindness of the Danish secretary, they had received admittance and lodging, and had settled in somewhat to the strange East Indian conditions, and now wished to open their mouths as messengers to the heathen, the tribulation set in again from another side: that with which the heart was full, of that the mouth could not overflow.

For there were then still no printed aids at all for learning the languages of the heathen there, and a suitable teacher for them was also not to be found. So one saw the two servants of God go to school with a heathen schoolmaster and crouch down on the ground among the schoolchildren and with them paint first letters, then syllables, and at last words in the sand. And when the word had now been given them, with joyful opening of their mouths, and already a congregation of 100 souls had gathered about the Word, the Danish commandant, because he had taken up the just cause of a poor widow, had the real soul of the mission, the missionary Ziegenbalg, led off publicly to the city prison like a common criminal by an armed band of heathen soldiers. And when Ziegenbalg was at last released after long and severe confinement, he had to eat his bread with tears for 5 months more with his faithful friend, since all support from home inexplicably failed to arrive. Such trials of faith, however, were not rare; yes, and when they once also sat in such distress, and the Danish ship which had a considerable sum on board for them already lay in the harbor, the money sank, just as they were about to receive it, before their eyes irretrievably into the sea. But they went forth and wept.

So they had strife within and without, tribulation, quite apart from the trouble with the young Christian congregations, and while they wept in Tranquebar they had to let the dead Orthodox in Germany and Denmark call them, in writings and from the pulpits, false apostles, haughty enthusiasts, abominable belly-servers, impudent liars and deceivers. — Now, my friends, that was an apostolic beginning of our Evang. Luth. Mission in East India. They went forth and wept. What would we more? They went forth and went about in want, in tribulation, in hardship, yes, some have suffered mockings and scourgings, moreover bonds and imprisonment. That was an apostolic beginning.

Yet they let themselves not be made weary by weeping, as it says in that hymn: In tears our courage grows, like palms in salted flood. They went forth and wept and:

III. Bore withal precious seed.

And here we now stand at the third fundamental stroke in our picture. That they were to carry out the precious seed of the divine Word upon the fallow, or rather thorn and thistle field of heathenism, of this they were deeply convinced from the beginning, and remained so to their end. Already on the ship all their thinking and caring was directed to how they might one day "rightly divide" this precious seed as skilful husbandmen of God. Therefore, when they had now the Cape of Good Hope behind them and the ship drove them with full sails in good hope toward their future field of labor, the two sank deeper and deeper into the depths of the divine Word, and resolved that each should choose a special subject for his meditation for the last remainder of the voyage. Ziegenbalg chose for himself wisdom, Plütschau truth, and they let themselves, as Ziegenbalg himself writes, be disturbed neither by the roaring of the wind nor by the