# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1853 05 24_S131
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

131

preach Christ to them." At first he indeed regarded this thought as a grievous temptation and therefore sighed unceasingly to God to deliver him from it; yet in the year 1710 he could not refrain from drafting a "Proposal for the Conversion and Enlightenment of the Greenlanders" and sending it to the Lutheran bishops at Bergen and Drontheim. These answered encouragingly; but when the matter became known, relatives and friends, and at first also his own wife Gertrude, so pressed upon him with complaints and entreaties that he was often tempted to think no further of it. Then the LORD held before him day and night His word, Matthew 10:37: He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; yea, God turned Gertrude's heart, so that her will also bowed, and "she at last bore as fervent a longing as her husband to see Greenland and that the kingdom of God be planted there." From that time Egede did what lay in his power for the furtherance of the work, all the more zealously because in the year 1714 a Mission College had been established at Copenhagen by the godly King Frederick IV, who was also King of Norway, which sent forth preachers of the Gospel among the heathen, e.g. in the East Indies. Nevertheless everything seemed to be in vain, since the war which Denmark was then waging with Sweden allowed no work of peace of the kind to come forward. Egede indeed resigned his office in the year 1717 and in 1718 moved to the seaport of Bergen, in order to take up the matter the more zealously and unhindered. The distress of war abated in the year 1718, when King Charles XII of Sweden was shot before the fortress of Frederikshald; King Frederick IV also gradually took more serious part in the undertaking, yet only in the year 1721, thus 3 years later, was a ship, called the Hope, appointed for the voyage to Greenland, and Egede called as missionary. As Jacob served 14 years for Rachel, so Hans Egede sued 14 years for the office of preaching among the heathen Greenlanders.

On the 3rd of May 1721 Egede sailed from Bergen with his family, in all 46 persons, counting the ship's crew, and already on the 12th of June they sighted the southern point of Greenland. Before them they saw high icebergs and snow-cliffs, nowhere an opening; indeed, after they had sailed up and down 12 days among the drift ice, their ship was wedged in between icebergs during a south storm. To human eyes it was only to be foreseen that the ship would soon be crushed. But already in the following night, as Egede, strengthened by fervent prayer, was just comforting his own and the ship's company, the storm subsided and the icebergs gave way by a miracle of God. On the 3rd of July they came to a harbor, the "Harbor of Hope," by the island of Imeriksok, and on the 8th of July they began a building of turf and stone. The Greenlanders came thither in throngs and informed Egede that he would not be able to endure the winter there, but nevertheless lent a hand themselves when their warnings were not heeded. The house was finished on the 31st of August, when Egede preached in it on the 117th Psalm. He now began his office as preacher among the heathen.

The Greenlanders, who were then moving into their winter tents, at first shrank shyly from the strange people, but about Christmastime they grew bolder; one of Egede's companions, Aron, in particular, found favor with a Greenlander, Arok, who from then on became Egede's advocate among his countrymen. Yet he had much trouble on account of the shy nature of the heathen, and no less also from his own people, who often murmured over the want of good provisions and the hardships of the hunt, and longed for home, like the children of Israel for the fleshpots of Egypt. But Hans Egede believed and could pray, and so he obtained one victory after another. How hard it was to learn the Greenland language! At first he had to stammer quite softly with the Greenlanders, and seek by signs to give them some impression of God in their hearts. He soon took note of the word "Pina," in German: what is that called? With this he now inquired the names of all possible objects and wrote them down. Often he painted his sermon for the Greenlanders in the sand or snow with all sorts of pictures. Besides, he had to invent many new words for their language; for, says he, seeing that these people are strangers to all divine worship, and I am unable to find words in their language by means of which the essential mysteries of our faith (such as creation, faith, love) might be explained to them, one must for the present borrow such words from our language, which can be further explained by signs and pictures, until they grasp the sense of them in some measure. To carry on this work he had to live among the Greenlanders themselves as much as possible. So he often went in a frail boat through the roaring icy sea, whose waves, flung in by the storm, instantly turned to ice, so that he thought to sink under this burden; now he was in danger of being driven by the storm out into the open sea; now he was wedged between cliffs and icebergs which threatened to crush him; then his feet threatened to freeze, so that while sailing he had to hold them hanging out of the ship down into the water, because otherwise they would have become wholly numb; the Greenlanders, however able seamen they are, often marveled at him and dared not do as he did. Another time he walked miles far in deep snow over mountain and valley against the cutting wind, missed also, it may be, the dwellings sought, and had to pass the night in the open field; and when he found houses and Greenlanders, what torment to lie there in the filthy huts among the filthy people, while the snow stormed in, and under the weight of it the roof now and then broke in and threatened to shatter everything. Almost always in winter he came home with his clothes frozen fast to his body, so that his preacher's cloak, in which he usually went, could stand upright. Yet this hardship troubled him not; with good courage he worked on forward himself and also trained his sons, Paul and Niels, who learned the Greenlandic as their second mother tongue, to be Greenland preachers. However dumb or stammering his love had to be at that time, the Greenlanders soon learned to esteem him, soon even to love him, the more so because their Angekoks (sorcerers) declared to them that he was himself a great Angekok, and therefore had by no means come to harm them. God was with His faithful servant.

During these hardships Egede came into danger of being left behind alone by his companions. For since the ship which had been promised from Denmark did not arrive, and the provisions which had been brought from Europe were coming to an end, the greater part of the ship's company wished to return home and were already packing. Egede, however, did not stir a finger and called to those packing that they would soon have to unpack again. He had foretold rightly. In June 1722, instead of one, two ships came, which had been held back at sea by bad weather. A more convenient building site and harbor was now sought out, and there the settlement Godthaab (Good Hope) was built. God's blessing was manifestly with all the work. Egede took two Greenland boys into his house, to train teachers from them, and wrote in the Greenlandic language the "Einfältigen Katechismusfragen" for his pupils. From Monday to Friday he went as a rule from one hut to another and gave instruction; on Saturdays he labored at home upon the Sunday sermon. More and more the heathen came to meet him, and the report of the pellesse, that is, preacher, spread over the whole land, so that not seldom people came from far away to hear him and especially also to see the pictures with which he sought to set before them the Bible history and the like. Up to this hour, he writes in the year 1722, I have perceived no particular devotion or emotion in them; yet little by little the Spirit and the light of truth begin to shine through among them.

In the year 1723 the preacher Albert Top came from Copenhagen, and, after he had learned the rudiments of the Greenlandic language from Egede, founded the colony Nepisene. The ships which came at this time Egede used to explore the coasts of Greenland farther on; he found the ruins of churches from the days of the old Norwegians, and preached here and there among the Greenlanders, who now flocked to him in throngs and often accompanied him by hundreds from one place to another. They could not enough