Chapter II

of the origin of the Hermannsburg Mission in the mind and heart of Louis Harms. After a year or two, a number of German sailors, recently converted, sought admission to the training school, and at their suggestion a ship was built and named the ‘Candace.’ This ship was to carry the Gospel to South Africa, and on October 8, 1853, she sailed from Hamburg. On board were sailors, colonists and missionaries who were to found a missionary colony. To each separate class Pastor Harms gave separate directions, but upon all he urged the necessity for prayer. “Begin all your work with prayer; when the storm rises, pray, when the billows rage round the ship, pray; when sin comes, pray; and when the devil tempts you, pray. So long as you pray it will go well with you, body and soul.”

The missionary colony hoped to settle among the Galla tribes, but were driven away by the Mohammedans, therefore they returned to Natal. On the 19th of September, 1854, they established their first station near Greytown, giving it the dear name of Hermannsburg. Each artisan began to practice his trade, a house was built, and before three months had passed the first converts of the Zulu church were baptized.

[Sidenote: A Truly Lutheran Mission.] No Lutheran mission has so intense a Lutheran spirit as the Hermannsburg mission, whose founder wished all the Lutheran symbols and especially the beautiful Lutheran liturgy to be recognized and used by mission churches as well as by churches in the fatherland.

The good ship “Candace,” one of the most famous and probably the first of the missionary ships of the world, made many journeys. Not the least interesting, at least to those concerned, was her second when she carried to Natal reinforcements and additional colonists, among them a wife for each of the missionaries who had made the pioneer journey.

The Hermannsburg mission has not lacked a baptism of blood. In 1883 thirteen stations were destroyed and Missionary _Schroeder_ met a martyr’s death.

The _Hanover Free Evangelical Lutheran Church Missionary Society_, branched off from the Hermannsburg Mission in 1892. It has six stations in Natal and Zululand with about twenty-two thousand Christians, and among the Bechunas in the Transvaal three stations with thirty-six hundred Christians.

EAST AFRICA.

[Sidenote: German East Africa.] The colonial expansion of Germany in the eighties stimulated missionary interest and activity in its newly acquired possessions in East Africa, where is situated the largest and most thickly populated of the German Colonies, with about seven and a half million inhabitants. The mission field is a difficult one, the natives belonging to one of the lowest human groups. Hard of heart, slow to give up their heathen customs, especially that of polygamy, affected in some sections by Islam, they are difficult to impress and reluctant to be won. Yet among them a harvest has been reaped.

The East African mission field is inseparably connected with the name of a Lutheran, _John Ludwig Krapf_, who in the employ of an English missionary society founded Christian missions in this section.

[Sidenote: A Call to Service.] [6]Krapf was born in 1810 near Tübingen in Germany. A fondness for geography coupled with the reading of a pamphlet describing the spread of missions among the heathen impelled him when he was a mere boy to prepare himself for missionary work. After studying at Basel, he became pastor of a congregation, but he could not shut out from his heart the needs of unchristianized lands. “In the needs of my congregation I recognized those of non-Christian lands in a measure that affected me very deeply; in their sorrow I recognized the wretchedness of the heathen. The grace which I myself enjoyed and which I commended to my own people, was, I felt, for the heathen as well, but there might be no one to proclaim it to them. Here, everyone without difficulty may find the way of life; in those lands there may be no one to show the way.”

Footnote 6:

The account of John Ludwig Krapf is taken largely from the Rev. F. Wilkinson, _Missionary Review of the World_, November, 1892.

[Illustration: ADMINISTRATION BUILDING AND CLASS ROOMS, KYUSHU GAKUIN, KUMAMOTO, JAPAN.]

[Illustration: PASTOR’S RESIDENCE, CHAPEL, AND STUDENT DORMITORY, TOKYO. AMERICAN MISSIONARIES, NATIVE PASTORS AND WORKERS WITH WIVES AND CHILDREN.]

[Sidenote: A Slave Market.] Following his inclination, he offered himself for missionary work and was sent by the Church Missionary Society of England, which used Basel missionaries in the work, to its Abyssinian Mission. Leaving England in 1837, he reached Alexandria and started up the Nile. At Cairo he had his first glimpse of Africa’s great curse, the traffic in human beings. He visited the slave markets and there saw the wretched creatures men, women and children, lying fainting under the burning sun, to be examined like cattle by purchasers. Like Abraham Lincoln on his journey down the Mississippi, Krapf vowed eternal hatred for the hideous institution of human slavery.

[Sidenote: The First Repulse.] Journeying to Adoa in the highlands of Abyssinia, Krapf joined other missionaries trained at Basel and employed by the Church Missionary Society, Blumhardt and Isenberg by name, but they were soon driven away by the ruling prince. Thus repulsed, Krapf determined to go to Shoa in the south of Abyssinia, and, accompanied by Isenberg, he arrived there after a severe illness in June, 1859. There, when Isenberg had returned to Egypt, Krapf worked for several years alone.

[Sidenote: Once More the Door Closed.] In 1842, he left Shoa to meet his future wife, Rosina Dietrich, in Egypt and to help on their way two new brethren who had arrived on the coast. Travelling on foot, ill, fatigued and several times set upon by robbers, he reached the coast where he expected to find the two missionaries, only to learn that they had been there and had gone back to Egypt. When he with his bride returned to Shoa they found that its ruler, like the ruler of Adoa, had closed the kingdom against him.

[Sidenote: The First Sacrifice.] The need of the Gallas, a nation to the south to whom no Gospel messenger had been sent, had lain heavily upon the heart of Krapf and now, driven from Shoa, he tried to reach them, but found it impossible. Thereupon he determined to do what he could by circulating the Scriptures. Joining himself to a caravan, he started for the interior, with him his young wife, whose newborn baby was in the course of a few weeks buried in the desert.

[Sidenote: “Cast Down But Not Destroyed.”] Alas, even this long journey and these trials were in vain, for once more was Krapf forbidden to proceed with his work. The brave man, disheartened, but not completely cast down, wrote home: “Abyssinia will not soon again enjoy the time of grace she has so shamefully slighted.... It is a consolation to us and to dear friends of the mission to know that over eight thousand copies of the Scriptures have found their way into Abyssinia. These will not all be lost or remain without a blessing. Faith speaks thus: Though every mission should disappear in a day and leave no trace behind, I would still cleave to mission work with all my prayers, my labors, my gifts, with my body and soul; for there is the command of the Lord Jesus Christ, and where that is there is also His promise and His final victory.”

[Sidenote: A Christian Grave in East Africa.] Krapf now determined to attempt to gain a footing on the coast, in order from there to reach the Gallas, whose language he had learned. With this object in view, he sailed, with his wife, in an Arab vessel from Aden in November, 1843. Strong headwinds and a heavy sea compelled them to return to Aden. In spite of their exertions, the water gained upon them in their leaky boat, and on reaching the entrance to the harbor the land wind drove back the vessel toward the open ocean. Half an hour after they were taken from the vessel it sank. Eight days later Krapf sailed again, and after four or five weeks’ journey arrived at Mombasa. Scarcely, however, had he begun to work at Mombasa when he was called to pass through another sorrow, in the loss of his wife. In prospect of death she prayed for relatives, for the mission, for East Africa, and for the Sultan, that God would incline his heart to promote the eternal welfare of his subjects. The next day she appeared much better, but the day following much worse, while her husband himself was so weakened by fever as to be obliged to leave the care of her almost entirely to others. The next day she breathed her last, and on the following morning--Sunday--they buried her, according to her wish, on the mainland in the territory of the Wanika, her newborn daughter by her side. Krapf, even amid all these trials, wrote in a letter to the secretary of the missionary society: “Tell the committee that in East Africa there is the lonely grave of one member of the mission connected with your society. This is an indication that you have begun the conflict in this part of the world; and since the conquests of the Church are won over the graves of many of its members, you may be all the more assured that the time has come when you are called to work for the conversion of Africa. Think not of the victims who in this glorious warfare may suffer or fall; only press forward until East and West Africa are united in Christ.”

[Sidenote: Two Friends.] In 1846 he had the joy of welcoming a fellow laborer, a Lutheran, _Johann Rebmann_. The two men were exactly opposite in nature. Krapf, restless and energetic, entertained far-reaching plans, and even saw in imagination a chain of missions stretching from Mombasa to the Niger, and thus connecting east and west Africa; Rebmann, on the contrary, believed in settling in one place and staying there. Nevertheless, the two men worked in harmony. When they finished the building of a house in a village not far from the sea-coast, Krapf felt that the first step toward the dark interior had been taken.

After twelve years of labor, Krapf visited Europe. When he returned to Africa he took with him two missionaries and three mechanics, an undertaking which was not altogether happy. But in the midst of discouragement he took heart.

[Sidenote: Still Undismayed.] “And now let me look backward and forward. In the past what do I see? Scarcely more than the remnant of a defeated army. You know I had the task of strengthening the East African Mission with three missionaries and three handicraftsmen; but where are the missionaries? One remained in London, as he did not consider himself appointed to East Africa; the second remained at Aden, in doubt about the English Church; the third died on May tenth of nervous fever. As to the three mechanics, they are ill of fever, lying between life and death, and instead of being a help look to us for help and attention; and yet I stand by my assertion that Africa must be conquered by missionaries; there must be a chain of mission stations between the east and west, though thousands of the combatants fall upon the left hand and ten thousand on the right.... From the sanctuary of God a voice says to me, ‘Fear not; life comes through death, resurrection through decay, the establishment of Christ’s kingdom through the discomfiture of human undertakings. Instead of allowing yourself to be discouraged at the defeat of your force, go to work yourself. Do not rely on human help, but on the living God, to whom it is all the same to serve by little or by much.... Believe, love, fight, be not weary for His name’s sake, and you will see the glory of God.’”

Twice Krapf tried to penetrate into the distant interior but was both times compelled to return without establishing missions. In 1853 he returned to Europe on account of ill health, but the next year set out to Africa once more, only to be compelled on account of weakness to give up the journey.

Once more, however, he visited the country of his love. Wishing to open a mission in East Africa the Methodist Free Churches requested him to accompany their missionaries and to assist them in establishing the mission. He agreed to go and said of the new station: “The station Ribe will in due time celebrate the triumph of the mission in the conversion of the Wanika, though I may be in the grave. The Lord does not allow His Word to return unto Him void.”

[Sidenote: A Heroic Life Ended.] Returning to Europe, Krapf continued to work and to pray for missions until, in November, 1881, he was found dead, kneeling in the attitude of prayer.

[Sidenote: The Missionary as Explorer.] The names of Krapf and Rebmann are associated not only in heroic missionary labors but in important linguistic work and most valuable geographic discoveries. When they declared that there existed in the center of Africa snow-capped mountains and an inland sea, they were laughed at, but as a result exploring expeditions were sent out to discover that what the missionaries claimed was true. The American poet Bayard Taylor, struck by the marvelous variety of temperature and verdure upon Mt. Kilimanjaro, whose base was surrounded by tropical forests and whose summit was wrapped in snow, celebrated it in verse.

“Hail to thee, monarch of African mountains, Remote, inaccessible, silent and lone-- Who, from the heart of the tropical fervors, Liftest to heaven thine alien snows, Feeding forever the fountains that make thee Father of Nile and creator of Egypt! I see thee supreme in the midst of thy co-mates, Standing alone ’twixt the earth and the heavens, Heir of the sunset and herald of morn. Zone above zone, to thy shoulders of granite, The climates of earth are displayed as an index, Giving the scope of the book of creation. There in the wandering airs of the tropics Shivers the aspen, still dreaming of cold: There stretches the oak, from the loftiest ledges, His arms to the far-away lands of his brothers, And the pine looks down on his rival, the palm.”

[Sidenote: David Livingstone.] This section of Africa cannot be passed without a mention of that other hero, David Livingstone, the missionary, scientist, and explorer, who said, “I am tired of discovery if no fruit follows it”, and “The end of geographical achievement is only the beginning of missionary undertaking”, who was a king among men and who considered it his only glory that he was a “poor, poor imitation of Christ.”

There is a very particular reason for including a mention of Livingstone in a history of Lutheran missions, because his impulse to become a missionary was directly inspired by a Lutheran, Karl Frederick Gützlaff, whom we shall study in