# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1850 07 09_S178
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178

to enjoy the blessed instruction and fellowship of the blessed Spener, as well as of Joachim Lange, a new attack of his sickness compelled him once more to leave his studies and to return to his relatives. And so the same trial of faith came again several times. When the zealous young man had applied himself for some months with all his strength and with all earnestness to his studies and had prepared himself for the dear, earnest calling of his life, God called him again from his labor and removed him for several months from the high school of the sciences into that of sickness, which for him was perhaps still higher and more blessed. The more sparingly, however, the healthy days were counted out to him, the more faithfully did he husband them, and the lectures and fellowship of August Hermann Franke, as well as of the other teachers of theology at Halle likeminded with him, were so blessed and fruitful to his soul as to few other souls. From Merseburg also and Erfurt, where he was active as a teacher for the kingdom of his dear Lord, God called him away by sickness. His youngest sister had now also died, and the eldest sister, who alone was still living of his brothers and sisters and who had once stood in a mother's place to him, begged him to remain with her at Pulsnitz. Then the purpose, which had already once sprung up in him out of faint-heartedness over his constant sickliness, of giving up study altogether, would perhaps have become a deed, had not God, through the Christian friends at Halle, caused the call to the mission work in the East Indies to come to him, and at the same time made it certain in his heart that this was the day's work for which he had been ordained and prepared by the Lord of the Church from his mother's womb.

On the 15th of October, 1705, Ziegenbalg came, together with Heinrich Plüschau, who had been called at the same time to the work of missions, to Copenhagen, where these two young men received ordination, were thereupon taken into Danish service, and on the 29th of November joyfully began their sea voyage in a ship called Sophie Hedwig. Already on this voyage the two often experienced God's gracious help and abundant comforts; while still on the ship a book, entitled Schule der wahren Weisheit, was the fruit of their common prayer and diligence; in health and gladness they arrived at Tranquebar on the 9th of July, 1706. Here their first work was the learning and practice of the Portuguese and Malabar languages, in both of which they by God's help soon progressed so far that they were now themselves able to proclaim the Gospel in them. Thereupon they built, already in the summer of 1707, a small little church, which was called Jerusalem, and in which those poor heathen assembled to whom God opened the heart to hear and receive the Gospel. A year later, on the 17th of October, 1708, our Bartholomäus felt himself already far enough advanced in the knowledge of the Malabar language and strong enough in faith to lay the foundation of a work in which his whole soul had long rejoiced: he began to translate the New Testament into Malabar. He took up this labor with such love and such burning zeal that on the 19th of October he had already advanced as far as the 23rd chapter of Matthew, when God once more called him away from his work, not only, as formerly, by sickness, but by a still severer trial. On this day he was led away as a prisoner into the fort and shut up there. For the two faithful proclaimers of the Gospel had long since, by their earnestness and their zeal in the calling which God had laid upon them, drawn upon themselves the ill will and hatred of those distinguished "Christians" living in the East Indies, whose duty of station and of Christianity it would have been to protect the messengers of peace in every way and to further them in their work. This hatred had now laid aside all fear of God and men and laid its hand upon the innocent Bartholomäus, who begged in vain that he might at least be permitted to continue working at his translation of the Holy Scriptures in prison. But though this poor prisoner of Jesus Christ had been deprived of the possibility of carrying on the work and word of the Lord with pen and ink, yet they could at least not forbid him to carry on this word and work with tears and with fervent longing in his heart and with his tongue. He continued here in his quiet prison without ceasing in prayer and meditation on the Word, and received thereby only so much the greater inward strength for the later outward continuation of his work. He also wrote in prison two small German books.

After his release he then betook himself, with strength increased and purified by tribulation, to the continuation of his Bible work and of his teaching. The translation of the New Testament was completed, the oral instruction also seemed to promise some further fruits, when Bartholomäus saw himself compelled, on the 14th of October, to travel to Europe, in order to point out clearly to his superiors there the great outward hindrances which stood in the way of the mission work in the East Indies, and to ask for relief. On the 1st of June, 1715, he landed at Bergen in Norway. God let him find a favorable hearing with the king and all his superiors, and let his journey be blessed in every respect for the work of missions. He also let him find a faithful companion of his life and helper in the work; for the daughter of a deceased friend, the Licentiate Salzmann at Merseburg, whom he had taught in her childhood together with other children, resolved to accompany him as his wife to the East Indies. The sea voyage thither, on an English ship, lasted from the 4th of March to the 10th of August, 1716, and according to a letter which the newly wedded wife wrote to her friends in Europe, was like a merry pleasure-trip. With tears of joy and songs of praise the land of the beautiful calling was greeted, from whose cinnamon forests the fragrance came from afar to meet the voyagers.

Bartholomäus betook himself anew to his work of Bible translation and, by God's help, completed a part of the historical books of the Old Testament. God also let him not only experience manifold deliverances from dangers and His gracious help through many a distress, but also rejoice in many a fruit of his labors. In the year 1718 the building of a new church was finished, in which on the 11th of October he preached the dedication sermon on Jer. 16, 19-21. Yes, the Lord, who from childhood had been his strength and his power and his refuge in the day of trouble, had proved Himself his faithful helper in all the tribulations of his life hitherto, and would now also in the last and greatest, in the tribulation of death, be and remain his comfort. For several months he had already felt sickly, yet at Christmas 1718 and at New Year's 1719 he had still performed his office as preacher with joyful spirit, though with a weak body. In February of this year, however, he laid himself upon the bed of his last conflict. He had strengthened himself for this by partaking of the Holy Supper, and had once more taken a heartfelt and loving farewell of the members of his little congregation, when on the 23rd of February, 1719, early in the morning, his last little hour drew near. About his bed stood and wept the friends who in this land of exile were bound to him in the closest love; but most bitterly wept the poor woman who was now to remain behind here in the far country as a widow and lonely mother of several little orphans. He, however, comforted himself and her with the crown of life which awaits us after the good fight of faith is fought, with the hope that we shall soon be where He is, Jesus, our love. Suddenly, when the eyes already seemed to be breaking, he cried out: "How bright it is before my eyes, as if the brightness of the sun were shining into me!" Thereupon he desired that the hymn "Jesus, meine Zuversicht" be sung to him and played on the clavier, and when the hymn was ended and he had been set upright according to his desire, he gave up the ghost amid the tearful prayer of his own. Yes, he had experienced enough the words of the 7th verse of that Easter hymn: "What here is sick, sighs and pleads"; he was now also to experience what it means: "will go there fresh and glorious."

This was the end of one of the first messengers of peace of the more recent time in the Lutheran Church. (By G. H. v. Schubert, adapted from Christ. Gerber.)

Remark. "In the church at Pulsnitz prayer is made on Sundays for all institutions for the conversion of the heathen or missions, and indeed out of Ver-