THE FRIAR AND THE LUTHERAN.

It was Marco Polo, after his travels in the East at the end of the thirteenth century, who first awoke the Church in Europe to take some interest in the Christian community far away in India. He told the tale of what he had seen on his visit to Malabar, how that the shrine of St. Thomas attracted many pilgrims and that cures were wrought by a handful of sacred dust from his grave. Also that the church which contained the body of the martyr was supported by the produce of the groves of coco-nut palm trees, and that in the vicinity were many Jews. Here then was the ancient Syrian Church preserving the flickering flame of truth amid the darkness of heathenism.

Meanwhile the two great Orders of the Middle Ages, the Franciscans and the Dominicans, were, at the bidding of the Popes, carrying far and wide the missions by which the all-embracing power and authority of Rome would assert itself, not only in making converts, but in bringing the political power of courts into its grasp and subjection. In the year 1319 a group of friars sailed for the Far East and found themselves on the shores of India (near the modern Bombay), and the leader of them, Jordan or Jordanus, during a stay of two years, visited the Nestorian churches and travelled amid many perils, for the leaders of Islam were oppressing the Christians. The true mission of Jordan was doubtless to bring the Nestorians to acknowledge the supremacy of the Pope, for up to this time they accepted only the rule of their own Archbishop at Bandas (Baghdad). He bitterly complains in his letters to the Pope of the disorder in doctrine which prevails. Not even the rite of baptism is administered and many are so ignorant that they believe Saint Thomas the Great to be the Christ. This friar had, however, the saving quality of optimism, especially in the work of his own Order, for he says, “Of the conversion of those nations of India I say this, that if there were two or three hundred good friars who would faithfully and fervently preach the Catholic faith, there is not a year that would not see more than ten thousand persons converted to the Christian faith.”

With the dawn of the sixteenth century we meet the awakening of that spirit of discovery which was to affect so deeply the missionary enterprise of the world. Vasco da Gama had already visited India in May, 1498, and henceforward from Portugal, the faithful son of the Romish Church, sailed ships of exploration and adventure to establish trading colonies, upon the decks of which were hundreds of friars. Churches, monasteries, and colleges sprang up wherever they landed, and Goa, raised to the dignity of a bishopric, became the flourishing centre of Church and Empire. One of the most significant events of this age, however, was the meeting together on the Feast of the Assumption, in the year 1534, of Ignatius Loyola and six friends to establish the Society of Jesus. One of them was a young man who had been reared amid Protestant influences and was related on his mother’s side to the Kings of Navarre. This was Francis Xavier, whose name and character is a glowing point in the history of that time. Shorn of the legends which his Church has woven about his career, the great missionary cannot fail to command the attention and admiration of the historian, and, as his first sphere was India, he deserves a special reference in the early history of Christian missions there. At first his royal patron, John III of Portugal, hesitated whether he should not keep Xavier at home, but eventually he was sent with the new Viceroy and a suite of notables in a well-equipped fleet of seven vessels to Goa on the 7th April, 1541. The young monk, burning with missionary zeal, looked across the waters with a beating heart. He did not lack authority, temporal and spiritual, for he went out as Papal Nuncio to the new world, with full powers to propagate the faith of the Church of Rome in all the East, was recommended to the care of David, King of Ethiopia, and all the princes and governors were urged to pay him respect and service. But his heart’s desire was not dependent upon these. He came as one ready to suffer and bear trials, and to the end of his life these were bravely borne. The inner spirit and purpose of the man is best revealed in his letters, and when he arrived at Goa, and saw what awaited him, he wrote thus home to his friends:

“I am persuaded that those who truly love the Cross of Christ esteem a life thus passed in affliction to be a happy one and regard an avoidance of the cross or an exemption from it as a kind of death. For what death is more bitter than to live without Christ when once we have tasted His preciousness; or to desert Him, that we may follow our own desires? Believe me, no cross is to be compared with this cross. On the other hand, how happy it is to live in dying daily and in mortifying our own will and in seeking not our own but the things that are Jesus Christ’s! I trust that through the merits and prayers of our holy mother the Church, in which is my chief confidence, and through the prayers of its living members, to which you belong, our Lord Jesus Christ will sow the Gospel seed in this heathen land by my instrumentality, though a worthless servant. Especially if He shall be pleased to use such a poor creature as I am for so great a work it may shame the men who are born for great achievements, and it may stir up the courage of the timid, when forsooth they see me, who am but dust and ashes and the most abject of men, a visible witness of the great want of labourers.”[3]

With a spirit so brave and aims so high and self-renouncing, one cannot help wondering what he might not have done had he preached a purer creed and been less fettered and influenced by political association. His landing at Goa, with the whole heathen and Mohammedan millions to win for Christ, was rather a bad beginning, since being under the orders of the Viceroy he had to limit himself to the pearl fishers at Tuticorin. Here he had to make Christians in order to bring a valuable industry to Portuguese advantage, an arrangement having already been made whereby the fishermen were willing to change their religion if they might be protected against the Mohammedans.

Xavier knew nothing of the language and did not seem to think it necessary at any time to learn. He went from village to village with a hand bell, getting the crowd of boys to repeat after him words of the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer and Ave Maria, and then as opportunity offered baptising old and young wholesale. He admits his difficulties when he writes: “Conceive therefore what kind of life I live in this place, what kind of sermons I am able to address to the assemblies when they who should repeat my address to their people do not understand me or I them. I ought to be an adept in dumb show. Yet I am not without work, for I want no interpreter to baptise infants just born or those which their parents bring, nor to relieve the famished and the naked who come in my way. So I devote myself to these two kinds of good works and do not regard my time as lost.”[4] So little did his catechumens understand what they were doing that he admits to his companion Mansilla that he found they were stumbling over the very first sentence of the creed and saying “I will” (volo) instead of “I believe” (credo) in their baptismal services.

Leaving the pearl fishers after a year’s work the great Jesuit turned his attention to the conversion of princes and kings. He gained great influence over the King of Travancore, using it for the protection of Christians, for many of the members of the old Syrian Church were living on the western coast of his dominions and suffered much from the oppression of tax gatherers. The truth of his labours is sadly exaggerated and overladen with the legends of his Jesuit biographers, who relate miracles performed by him even so improbable as the raising of the dead. Twenty years after his death, when he was canonized by Gregory XV as a Saint, these miracles were set forth to his honour, among them being a gift of tongues by which without any learning he could fluently speak any language, a statement which his own letters prove to be a fiction.

It is not within the scope of the present work to deal with anything beyond his three years’ work in India, which leaves the greater portion of his deeply interesting career unrecorded. This first attempt to evangelize the world certainly gave him no content or satisfaction. He writes on 14th January, 1549, on the eve of his leaving for Japan, these words of keen disappointment, speaking of India:—“The natives, on account of the enormity of their wickedness, are as little as possible fitted to embrace the Christian religion. They so abhor it that they have no patience to listen to us if we introduce the subject. To ask them to become Christians is like asking them to submit to death.”[5]

On his return he spent some months in arranging the work of the crowd of Jesuits who had followed him, but it cannot be said that he renewed his original plan of preaching Christianity in a simple and elementary manner to the nations of India. But with all his limitations he stands on the horizon of history as one of the greatest missionaries his Church ever knew. He had the courage of a hero and the piety of a martyr, and his end, as he died of fever in a dirty hut on the Island of Sancian, amid unsympathetic strangers, without the rites of his Church, with his glowing eyes wistfully looking towards the China he hoped to win, forms a sad but not inappropriate close to his life.

His less distinguished successors are deserving of only a brief mention. Their methods were open to grave objection, and, indeed, were condemned by Pope Clement XI. The Jesuit influence declined with the decay of Portuguese power and the advance of that of the Dutch. The newcomers were not disposed to favour Roman Catholic missionaries; it could hardly be expected that the nation which withstood the arrogance of Philip of Spain could tolerate with equanimity the Jesuits in their Eastern possessions. On the other hand, the missionaries of the Reformed Protestant faith were naturally encouraged to go forward, and in Ceylon the Dutch missionaries won great though ephemeral successes.

We must now look at the part played by Denmark in the evangelization of India. This was largely due in the first instance to that enlightened Christian King Frederick IV, who having concluded a long and disastrous war with Charles XII of Sweden was able to turn his attention to the work of evangelizing the East. In this he was prompted by Dr. Lütkens, his chaplain, who was also interested in the development of a strip of territory purchased from the Rajah of Tanjore. Here then was the moment of providential opportunity and soon the man appeared who was ready and willing to embrace it.

Bartholomæus Ziegenbalg,
Misnensis Saxo, Ecclesiæ ex Indis
collectæ Præpositus.

In the little town of Pulsnitz in Lusatia was a youth named Bartholomew Ziegenbalg, who was born on 24th June, 1683. The fatherless boy, who had lost his mother a few years before, recalled her words about gathered treasure: “Seek it in your Bible, my dear children, you will find it there, for I have watered every leaf with my prayers.” His studies were in the direction of a ministerial career, which he felt God had placed before him, but his weak health and lack of means were hindrances to this. Through the kindness of friends, however, he was able to study at Halle under the direction of Professor A. H. Francke, and eventually he was discovered by Dr. Lütkens and, with his friend Henry Plütschau, was appointed to go to India. He set sail on the 29th November, 1705. He left behind many friends who wished him God-speed, but not a few, of little faith and equal grace of soul, sneered at his zeal and predicted nothing but failure and shame.

Through a long and stormy passage he worked hard to acquire a knowledge of Portuguese, and at last, reaching his destination, stepped ashore without a friend to meet or welcome him and his companion to this strange land. They were evidently not wanted in India. On every hand they looked round only to find a fresh trial of their faith.

The natives were bigoted Hindus and Mohammedans, whose tongue had to be mastered; added to this the Europeans, with the flimsiest semblance of a Christian profession, were living dissolute and mercenary lives which brooked no interference. It is the old story, many times repeated since then. The name of Christ was profaned by the white people who were supposed to represent and honour it. Said a native to a chaplain: “Christian religion! Devil religion! Christian much drunk, much do wrong, much beat, much abuse others!” But Ziegenbalg and his comrade had come to warn their unruly brethren and to vindicate the power and grace of Christ to the heathen. They taught the children in schools, they learned Tamil in order to preach, and toiled with an unremitting zeal which soon broke down the health of poor Ziegenbalg.

It is marvellous to see what the faith and persistency of these brave men could accomplish. This is what Ziegenbalg writes about the building of their little church:

“We began, in great poverty but in firm trust and confidence in God, to build in a great heathen street in the city, and though we did not know how we should bring the work to a conclusion, God so strengthened our faith amidst obstacles, that we spent upon it all we could save from our salaries and whatever we had laid up before. Many mocked us but some were moved to pity and to help us. Thus this house of assembly was carried on with all speed, thirty persons, who were all heathens, working on it daily. On the 4th of August, 1707 (exactly two months after laying the first stone), it was consecrated in both languages, in the presence of a great number of Christians, Mohammedans and heathen, and the church received the name of New Jerusalem.”

Wherever he went he entered into conversation with the people on the subject of religion and was bold in declaring that their idols were naught. It was also his custom to gather at Negatapatam the learned Brahmins for a discussion sometimes lasting for five hours, and on one occasion one of these declared that the Supreme Being had revealed Himself to Europeans in one way and to Hindus in another; they might believe in Jesus Christ, but the Hindus were equally right in worshipping idols; a virtuous life was the one thing needful. “My friend,” said Ziegenbalg, “no man can lead such a life but by the help of Christ, but it is not in my power to make you perceive this; go home and bow down humbly before the supreme Lord of All and ask Him to show you how it is necessary to believe in Jesus Christ and own Him for your Redeemer.”

His greatest difficulty seems to have been with the civil authorities, and Hassius, the governor of Tranquebar, an ill-conditioned Jack-in-office, actually struck the missionary on the breast during an outburst of passion and had him arrested on some frivolous pretext and conducted from his study just as he was, in dressing gown and slippers, through the streets under an armed escort. For four months he was immured in a dark cell, deprived of pen and paper and books, the governor thereby hoping to break his spirit so that his prisoner might beg for release and return to Europe. But he had mistaken the mettle of his man. The answer of Ziegenbalg to this insolent suggestion was: “I bear you no ill will, but you may see that I do not fear you in the least.” Meanwhile, crowds outside clamoured for his release, even the natives who did not accept his religion holding him in deep respect and honour. When he eventually returned to his work he found the Christians all scattered by persecution, his schools closed, and, to add to his troubles, the ship which was bringing him money and supplies had foundered at sea. Soon afterwards, however, a letter came to him from the King of Denmark, and three brethren, Gründler, Bövingh and Jordan, arrived to strengthen his hands.

Ten years before this, the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge had been established and these English friends were destined to become the faithful and effectual supporters of Ziegenbalg and the Danish Mission in India. Through their agency the work was made widely known to England and Europe, and help was sent out for the translation of the Holy Scriptures and the opening of schools. The chaplains of the English forts at Madras, Calcutta and Bombay were entreated to show the missionary and his flock every favour. Ziegenbalg’s companion, Plütschau, had to return to Europe on account of failing health, but the work grew and extended in different directions. One of the notable converts at this time was a Tamil poet, Kanabadi by name, who was asked by Ziegenbalg to translate some portions of the Bible into that language and by doing so was led into the light. Afterwards he rendered the life of Christ into verse and used to sing it with the children on the housetops in the cool of the evening. Whatever great things our nation has done for India since then—and the Church has poured forth without stint her best treasure and noble witnesses for the salvation of its people—the palm of credit must be given to Denmark and Germany for the pioneer missionary efforts. The great missionaries of England were yet unborn, but the hearts of many godly people were deeply stirred by the tidings of what was being dared and done by the Lutheran brethren who had gone forth with their Bibles in their hands. Their letters home had been translated into English by the Rev. A. W. Boehme, the German chaplain of Prince George of Denmark (the uncle of King Frederick), and these were sent to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, asking their sympathy and help. The latter, however, it was not in their power, under their original charter, to give, as they were limited to the “English Plantations and Colonies,” so the appeal came to the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, which was not so bound in its action. Thus it came to pass in the order of Divine Providence that this Society should have the privilege of expressing the pious liberality and equally precious direction which the Christian love and faith in England placed at the service of the needs of India. Its practical sympathy was shown at once by sending many copies of the New Testament in Portuguese to Tranquebar and a printing press with a fount of Roman type, together also with one Jonas Fincke, a printer by trade. These, however, were perilous days for ships, and the French captured the ship off Brazil, which seems a little out of her course, and took Fincke as a prisoner of war. In the end he was set free but died at the Cape of Good Hope of fever and the belated press arrived in India the following year. Fortunately, one of the soldiers of the East India Company was found who could work a press, and thus catechisms, hymn books and tracts began for the first time to be printed for the mission.

In 1714 Ziegenbalg returned to his native land for a little rest, freely forgiving his old foe the Governor, who trembled for the consequences if the King heard of his shameful conduct. Bövingh, full of fault-finding, was already on his way back to Germany, scarcely on friendly terms with his old leader and comrade. Ziegenbalg reached the camp when the King was engaged in the siege of Stralsund and his reception was a remarkable tribute to his character.

“One evening there was evidently a profound movement among the Danish troops. A stranger of note had had an audience with the King, who had shown him singular favour, and for hours, it was said, they had been closeted together. The soldiers who had gathered round may have been disappointed when they saw he was only a clergyman, a man indeed of commanding presence, of a wonderful dignity and fire, resolute and calm, with a keen eye, a bronzed and almost swarthy face seamed with deep lines of care, and a winning courtesy and lovableness of manner. But when he opened his lips and preached to them and they heard it was Ziegenbalg, the missionary from Tranquebar, there were some at least who ceased to wonder at his welcome from the King. To the camp Ziegenbalg had hurried with all speed. Letters had given no warning of his journey and he seemed to have dropped out of the clouds. He was accustomed to rapid movements, and he had no time to spare, but he got his story told to the King and was content. Some days were snatched from war for this work of peace, changes and arrangements were proposed in the management of the mission, Ziegenbalg was informed that his patent of superintendent had already been sent out to India, and for details he was referred to Copenhagen. Thither he journeyed with restless speed, and then into Germany to Francke at Halle, halting little at any place and preaching to vast crowds who filled the churches and swayed out into the street, ‘very weak,’ we are told, ‘yet kindling by his presence the zeal of all the mission friends and moving his audience as he would by his glowing appeals.’”[6]

His visit to England was specially gratifying to Ziegenbalg. He was personally for the first time to meet all those good friends of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge who had so liberally supplied him with money, books and letters full of encouragement. At a meeting of the Society he was welcomed with an eloquent Latin address, to which he replied in Tamil. Before his return the aged missionary was presented to King George I, the Prince and Princess of Wales, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of London and other eminent persons, and afterwards in 1717 the King wrote him a letter in Latin in which he said: “We pray you may be endued with health and strength of body, that you may long continue to fulfil your ministry with good success, of which we shall be rejoiced to hear, so you will always find us ready to succour you in whatever may tend to promote your work and to excite your zeal.”

Two years afterwards when Archbishop Wake was acting as President of the Society he sent to Ziegenbalg and his colleague Gründler a Latin letter full of good wishes. The following extract will show the spirit of this Apostolic epistle:—

“Your praise it will be (a praise of endless duration on earth and followed by a just recompense in Heaven) to have laboured in the vineyard which yourselves have planted, to have declared the Name of Christ where it was not known before and through much peril and difficulty to have converted to the faith those among whom you afterwards fulfilled your ministry. Your province therefore, brethren, your office, I place before all dignities in the Church. Let others be pontiffs, patriarchs, or popes, let them glitter in purple, in scarlet or in gold, let them seek the admiration of the wondering multitude and receive obeisance on the bended knee. You have acquired a better name than they and a more sacred fame. Admitted into the glorious society of the prophets, evangelists and apostles, ye with them shall shine like the sun among his lesser stars in the Kingdom of your Father, for ever.”

The subsequent years spent at Tranquebar were a mingled experience of blessing, progress and difficulties, and disappointment at the loss of some very promising converts. And the time for the departure of Ziegenbalg drew near. It is painful to hear that the sorrow which hastened his end was not the opposition of unbelievers but the persecution of a man who for a time was the presiding power on the Missionary Board at Copenhagen. With a narrow and uncharitable spirit he assailed Ziegenbalg and his co-workers, trying to force upon the already wearied workers theories and orders as foolish as unkind. Ziegenbalg answered this mandate with a dying hand, but the mischief was already wrought. He was not the first brave witness of Christ who has laid down his life in a storm. On Christmas Day, 1719, he preached to his flock for the last time, and after much patient suffering, interspersed with tender counsel, meditation and prayer, he asked to be seated in his armchair and that they would sing his favourite hymn—written by Louisa Henrietta, Electress of Brandenburg.

“Jesus Meine Zuversicht.”

As the voices filled the chamber he caught the sound of other music beyond the river and passed heavenward. Old before his time, for he was scarcely thirty-six, Ziegenbalg had put into those years a consecrated labour which was evidenced by the four hundred converts and catechumens who followed their stricken shepherd to his rest. He was buried in the Jerusalem Church he had built, and the remains of his colleague, Gründler, are also within those walls. On the other side of the way is the old Danish Government Church of Zion, built in the early days of the mission. In the vestry is suspended a curious representation of the Last Supper carved in high relief and painted, the Latin inscription underneath being:—

It may be said with truth of Ziegenbalg that he was a born pioneer, undaunted in courage, fertile in resource, patient and yet full of inspiration, with a remarkable gift of organization. Plütschau, his comrade, on the other hand, was differently made, a timid, faithful, earnest and pensive man.

NEW JERUSALEM CHURCH, TRANQUEBAR
THE MISSION CHURCH BUILT BY ZIEGENBALG, 1717

After the loss of its leader the mission soon suffered again. Gründler, a faithful and able man, ordained by the Bishop of Zealand in 1708, under the same provocation from Copenhagen which killed his chief, died of a broken heart the year following, and the three young missionaries who came to pick up the thread were good but scarcely sufficient for the task. Benjamin Schultze was an intellectual and talented man, with linguistic gifts, which he used in translating the Bible, in this respect completing the work which Ziegenbalg had left unfinished. When he felt called to leave Tranquebar and make Madras his sphere of work Schultze showed his capacity for work and great ability. The school he started in Black Town was very successful; so many men came to visit him, asking for Christian teaching, that he was compelled to fix an hour every day to preach to them. While diligent with his pen it was his stated opinion that “viva voce preaching, the testimony of a living man, had a great advantage over the private reading of books.” But Schultze did both. He mastered the difficult Telegu; worked hard at Hindustani in order that, as this was the language used by the Mohammedans, he might translate the New Testament and part of the Old, and also write a refutation of the Koran. But he ruled badly, being restless and lacking in dignity. He could not get on with his colleagues, Sartorius and Geister, most excellent brethren, who were the first two missionaries sent out by the S.P.C.K. The committee had hoped that, by persuading Schultze to open a new mission at Cuddalore and leaving these colleagues at Madras, peace might be maintained. Certainly the epistle they sent to him is a model of considerate insistency.

“You have, good sir, we believe, as few failings as any missionary in India, and as warm a zeal to promote the Glory of God. Do what you can to sacrifice your chiefest failing to this Zeal, and to mortify the least degree of pride that can tempt you to assume a Superiority or Rule over your fellow labourers, altho’ your merit may make you worthy of it and would probably command it of them, if you did not assume it.”

Schultze, however, declined to move, and as a consequence Sartorius and Geister began the work at Cudalore (as then spelt), where the former died in 1738 and was buried in the English burial ground with every mark of respect.

Schultze finally returned to Germany in broken health, after twenty-four years of work in India. For years after, he served the cause of missions at Halle, and to him the honour was given of numbering amongst his students the distinguished and noble man who is the subject of the present biography.

Another, Keistenmacher by name, died after a few weeks of his arrival. The question of caste in the Church had become an “apple of dissension,” and two new missionaries, Walther and Pressier, reversing the practice of Schultze, maintained the toleration of caste as a matter of principle so that the Sudras were now kept a yard apart from the Pariahs, and their children in the schools separated. One important development marked this period of the mission: Aaron, a native catechist who had been baptised by Ziegenbalg, was ordained a minister according to the rights of the Lutheran Church, and sent to Tanjore. Other missionaries came out from Europe. One only perhaps needs specific mention here, Philipp Fabricius, who arrived at Madras in 1742 and for fifty years laboured with much wisdom and patience. He made a close study of Tamil literature and is always to be remembered as the hymn writer of the Tamil Christians. He was pre-eminently a scholar; indeed so slow and reverent was he in his translation work that when he was making his Tamil version of the Holy Scripture it is said that “he crept through the original Bible text on his knees as if he was himself a poor sinner or mendicant, carefully weighing every word to see how it might best be rendered.” It is a sorrowful fact to record that through financial speculations in which he was deceived by a dishonest catechist, poor Fabricius ended under a cloud of debt which brought scandal on the mission work, and old and quite weary of life, on the 23rd January, 1791, he passed to his rest.

As Tanjore will have considerable attention in the subsequent story of the spread of Christianity in this part of India, it is only fair to make some reference here to the earnest native who started the work in these earlier days. He was an outcast Pariah, by name Rajanaiken, a Roman Catholic, whose mind was awakened by reading Ziegenbalg’s translation of the New Testament, and forthwith, with great courage and devotion, he threw in his lot with the Protestant missionaries. He gave up his position as an officer in the service of the King of Tanjore, became a catechist, and, though persecuted with vindictive cruelty by the Jesuit Beschi, he stood faithful. His father was killed and his two brothers were wounded at his side by the emissaries of this man, but he was himself spared to do a good and permanent work among both heathens and Christians, and died in 1771 at the age of seventy-one.

Thus the work of the Danish Mission, for the first forty years of the eighteenth century so zealously pursued and in its later years so generously supported by the S.P.C.K., had spread from Tranquebar to Cuddalore and Madras and to Tanjore in the interior. In many instances the missionaries rendered great services to the English garrisons, especially to the foreign levies, for in 1749 an enlistment of Swiss soldiers made the ministrations of these Danish and German clergymen very acceptable. These missionaries, it must be remembered, used the English Prayer Book or translations of it, taught the Church catechism in their schools, and in their adult work observed the ordinance of baptism according to the English rite. In one of the ancient minutes of the S.P.C.K., dated 4th December, 1744, are the words, “Recommended to ye Missionaries to continue ye use of ye ch. of Eng. Catechism and to baptise in ye form of Com. Prayer.”

We have now arrived at a point in the history of these early missions of Christianity in India at which in the Providence of God one of the greatest, if not the most distinguished, of the missionaries of his time appears upon the scene.