"Purpose of the Book." It is the object of this book to give a general survey of the missionary labors of the Lutheran Church in all lands. A knowledge of the work of our own Church is of first importance, both that we may be well informed concerning those enterprises which we support and that we may through them become interested in the achievements of other churches.

This account of Lutheran missions cannot be exhaustive. Volumes have been written upon the history of many Lutheran missions. Many names which deserve record must be omitted and those heroes who have been selected for mention are no more devoted, no more noble than many others whose names are lost to human recollection.

"The Missionary Impulse." Even if the specific commands of our Lord were lacking, we believe that every good Christian would find in his own heart a missionary impulse which could not be denied. There is no good news which we do not hasten to tell; the man who would withhold from his neighbors that which would benefit them is rightly condemned. Would it not be strange if we told all good news but the greatest? The Christian has found peace and life and hope in the Gospel, surely it is his duty and it should be his chief joy to tell the good news to others.

"The Benefits of Missionary Study." The study of missions is a fascinating pursuit. Its subject matter is the noblest in the world--the history of the evangelizing and Christianizing of mankind. The characters are heroes and heroines. The effect of such study is not only inspiring but improving. The student will gain through diligent attention to the courses offered by mission boards a mass of general information which could be gained so easily in no other way. He will visit all the countries of the world; he will hear something of their history, their geography, their flora and fauna. He will see Eliot and Campanius preaching to the American Indians, he will see Hans Egede laboring among the Greenlanders, he will hear of the wise colonial policy of England, of the amazing devotion and great learning of the Germans, he will observe the daily life of the mission stations where the sick are healed, where lepers are cared for, where to everyone the Gospel is preached. The opening of windows into the wide world is not the least of the rewards for a study of missions.

Before beginning the actual history of Lutheran missions we will review briefly Christian missions before the establishment of the Protestant Church, so that the student may connect the present with the past.

"Salvation Intended for the Whole World." Christ did not present to the Jews the first intimation of salvation for the whole world. Just as all spiritual truths which He elaborated and fulfilled were shadowed forth in the Old Testament, so was the missionary idea. Here we find the hidden seeds, the promises and prophecies which were to mature and to be fulfilled in the New Testament. God is revealed as the Creator of the whole world. It was all mankind which sinned in Adam, the mankind which God had made “of one blood”. Saint Paul makes clear to the Ephesians the fact that the Gentiles are “fellow heirs and fellow members of the body”. God said to Abraham that in him should “all the families of the earth be blessed.”

"Israel’s Conception of God’s Purpose." Gradually in the nation of Israel there developed the idea of a new covenant of grace. With the growth of this it became more and more clear to Israel’s prophets and seers that Israel was the center of a great kingdom which God should gather from all nations. Many testimonies may be found to this new consciousness. “For the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.” “For from the rising of the sun even unto the going down of the same, my name shall be great among the Gentiles.” In the Prophet Jonah we have an Old Testament missionary, proud and unwilling, but a witness, nevertheless, to the fact that God’s mercy extended not alone to Israel but to all His works.

"The Jew as a Missionary." Unconsciously to themselves the Jews were engaged in missionary work. Trained in seclusion, then carried into captivity or trading in all known quarters of the world, they continued to worship the living God. They worshipped Him in private and in public, their synagogues rising plain and austere among the impure temples of the heathen deities. Long-suffering, devout, faithful, they did God’s great task.

"The Septuagint." About two hundred years before the birth of Christ the Jews accomplished an important missionary work. They were now no longer in Judea alone, but lived all over the Roman Empire. For this scattered host the rabbis translated the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek, the common speech. The translation is called the Septuagint because it was made by seventy men. Here is the first great spreading of the Living Word. The Septuagint was read not only by the Jews but by many learned Greeks, who, while they did not accept its teachings, yet admired its eloquence. One of the greatest factors in the success of the early Christian Church was this acquaintance of the Greeks with the Hebrew Scriptures.

"The Roman Empire." For the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies the world was preparing in other ways. The Roman Empire was at the height of its power, its roads led everywhere, it had pushed back the boundaries of the world, it was adding to itself great barbarian nations, little dreaming that all its pride was to serve the will of the Hebrew’s God!

"The Supreme Missionary." When the time was ripe, God sent His Son into the world, the Supreme Missionary. To convince a doubter of the divine authority for missions, one need go no farther than to point to Christ’s earthly life.

"The Disciples Sent Abroad." Just as God had sent His Son into the world, so Christ sent abroad His disciples. Their appointment was made directly by Him. The command is positive. “All authority hath been given unto me in heaven and on earth. Go ye therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.” “Thus it is written, and thus it behooved Christ to suffer ... that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name among all nations beginning at Jerusalem.” “As my Father hath sent me, even so send I you.” “Ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you, and ye shall be witnesses unto me, both in Jerusalem and all Judea, and in Samaria and unto the uttermost parts of the earth.”

"The Record of Their Missionary Work." We have in the Acts of the Apostles a record of the work of the first missionaries appointed by Christ. It describes the disciples gathered together waiting for the promise of the Father. It describes the pentecostal visitation with its mighty wind, its tongues of fire, its strange speech, Parthians and Medes and Elamites, Mesopotamians, Judeans and Cappadocians, Asians, Egyptians, Cretans and Arabians speaking each in his own tongue “the mighty works of God”. It tells the history of the Church, of its early work in Jerusalem, of its miracles and persecutions, of the death of its first martyr. It tells of the missionary work of Peter among the Jews, the beginning of work among the Gentiles. It tells of the conversion of one Saul, a Jew, who had been laying waste the new Church.

"Saint Paul." In the crises of history, great characters seem to be almost a special creation. Such a man was Lincoln, such a man was Luther, such a man was the apostle Paul. Paul was a Jew of the straitest sect of the Pharisees who had kept the most minute provision of the law and who had felt that the law was unable to solve the problem of sin. He was acquainted also with the wisdom of the Greeks. To him it became clear after his conversion that in Christ lay the fulfillment of the Jewish law and the way of salvation for mankind.

To those outside the law Paul became the first missionary. Through his teaching Christianity was made a universal religion, by his personal work he evangelized a large part of Asia Minor and the chief cities of Greece. His accomplished task was but a small part of that which he planned. His longing eyes turned toward the West, toward the “utmost ramparts of the world”. When the sword of the executioner ended his life in Rome, only a small part of his dreams had been realized.

"The Early Church." Not only the apostles but the whole of the early Christian Church was filled with the missionary spirit. To that early period our eyes turn with longing desire to penetrate farther into the story of devotion, of passion for the things of Christ, of persecution, of martyrdom and of eventual triumph. To us glorious and pathetic relics remain in tradition, in a few written accounts and in inscriptions on tombs and funeral urns. In Thessalonica (now Saloniki), that city in which Paul and Barnabas were said to have “turned the world upside down,” were found two funeral urns of this period. Upon one was the inscription “No hope”; on the other, “Christ my life.” What a mighty hope had been born in the hearts of men!

"Its Extent." It is impossible to know exactly the size and extent of the Christian Church at any of the early periods of its history. It is estimated by the conservative that at the end of the First Century there were in the Roman Empire two hundred thousand Christians, and at the end of the Second perhaps eight millions, which was about one fifteenth of the population. By the time of the Emperor Constantine, Christianity had become so vast in its extent and so tremendous in influence that he made it in 313 A.D. the State Church of the Empire.

"A Change in Method." As we study the history of the Christian Church during the next centuries, we observe a new method of Christianizing. The apostles had built up small churches, had watched and nourished them, had chidden the backsliders, had permitted no sacrifice of the cardinal Christian principles. Now there were added to the Empire barbarian countries upon whose people the Christian religion was imposed, whether or not they were truly converted, whether or not, indeed, they were willing to receive it. There were not lacking, of course, many individual conversions, there were not lacking hundreds of Christians who labored with apostolic diligence and devotion and who doubtless deplored the growing union of their religion with the corrupt politics of a great empire.

"Early Missionaries." Among the famous missionaries of this period were Gregory, the Illuminator, a missionary to the Armenians about the year 300; Ulfilas, who invented a Gothic alphabet so that he might translate the Scriptures into Gothic; Chrysostom, who founded in Constantinople a missionary institution, and Saint Patrick, who converted Ireland. From the secluded churches of Ireland and the Scottish Highlands there went forth to Iceland, to the Faroe Islands, and far into the barbarian sections of the Empire a new band, Columba, Aidan, Columbanus and Trudpert. From the young English Church went Wilfrid to Friesland, Willibrord to the neighborhood of Utrecht, and Boniface to Germany. Further to the east the Gospel was proclaimed under fearful difficulties. At one time it seemed that Christianity might become one of the religions of old China.

"Church and State." Gradually the alliance of the Church and State came to its inevitable conclusion. The Church began to share the ambitions of the State. Christianity armed itself with the sword and strove to wrest from the Moslem the sepulcher of the Prince of Peace. A measure of the true spirit of the Nazarene remained in such as Raymond Lull, who protested against extending God’s kingdom by the sword and testified to his convictions by giving up his life. The great missionary societies of the Church, the Jesuit, the Dominican, the Capuchin, accepted in the main the Church’s theory of conquest, a theory made enormously advantageous by the discovery of new continents. The missionary enterprises of Spain and Portugal were marked by hideous oppression of those who would not accept the offered religion.

Upon the ministers of the Church the alliance with the State wrought its evil effect. The ambitions of a bishop of Rome led him in 442 to ask the weak Emperor that he be made the head of western Christendom. Henceforth the See of Rome grew more and more powerful. The Church lost entirely the democratic quality of its early life. Pope Gregory claimed toward the end of the Eleventh Century that he had power not only over the souls of men but over all rulers. The lives of great prelates grew evil, the administration of ecclesiastical affairs venal, the pure Gospel was obscured. A mistaken emphasis was put upon good works as a means of winning that forgiveness of sin which God had promised for Christ’s sake. Before the missionary stream could flow for the blessing and healing of mankind, a clear passage must be opened to its Source.

"Boniface." Among the missionaries who had set out full of zeal from the English Church in the Eighth Century was Boniface, a man of extraordinary energy and power. Among the fields in which he worked was that of Thuringia in Germany. Here, among the dark forests, encouraged and supported by the Pope and by the ruler, Charles Martel, he preached the Gospel, converting thousands and binding them to Rome. With the Gospel he gave them a new sort of superstition, an idolatrous reverence for Rome and a deep awe of the sacred relics which he brought with him. He established monasteries, synods, schools, and required not only faith but knowledge of the forms of the Church, such as the Lord’s Prayer and the Creed. When an old man, he went to visit the country of Friesland which had rejected his early preaching and there with his companions was murdered.

"The Church of Germany." His Church, however, continued. Closely bound to the great Roman See, it reproduced all the evils of that powerful organization. Here were the great celibate orders, here collections of relics, here a constant demand for money to build magnificent churches and to support an idle and ignorant priesthood. Here, especially, was a tremendous traffic in indulgences by which in exchange for money the sinner could secure not only release from penance on earth and pain in purgatory, but, to the minds of the ignorant, actual pardon for sin. The essential truths of Christ’s teaching were forgotten while men busied themselves with a thousand non-essentials and found no peace for their souls.

Now, as in other times of dire need God provided a man should point to the true way of salvation.

"Martin Luther." In Germany, as well as in all other parts of the Church, there were many simple, devout Christians whose superstition was underlaid by a deep and childlike faith. To two such pious souls, Hans and Margaret Luther, there was born in 1483, seven hundred years after Boniface had died, a son, Martin. Hans Luther was a poor miner who had moved before Martin’s birth from MÖhra to the village of Eisleben. For this son Hans and Margaret were ambitious. They wished him to possess first of all a good character and to that end trained him strictly. His mother taught him simple prayers and hymns and that God for Christ’s sake forgives sin. They wished in the second place that the lad should rise above their humble estate and for that reason sent him to school, first to Mansfield and Magdeburg, then to Eisenach.

"University Days." When he was eighteen years old Martin entered the University of Erfurt. His father had become more prosperous and continued in his determination that the boy should have every possible opportunity.

Luther was popular among his mates. He won his bachelor’s then his master’s degree and began the study of the law for which his father intended him. Suddenly with crushing disappointment to that ambitious father and to the amazed disapproval of his friends, he abandoned together the study of the law and the world itself and entered a monastery.

"“What Must I Do to be Saved?”" It had not been his studies alone which had occupied the young man during his university course, but meditation upon the needs of his own despairing soul. We have every evidence that he led a pure and godly life, yet the weight of that sin to which all mankind is heir lay heavily upon him. To a man of his time there was but one way of escape--the monastery, in which he might work out his salvation. Vowed to celibacy, to poverty, to obedience, devoting himself to prayer and fasting, he might hope to be saved.

If “Brother Augustine,” as he was called, had any fault as a monk, he erred upon the side of too strict obedience. He followed all the rules of the order, he fasted, he scourged himself cruelly. But still he found no peace. God appeared to him an implacable judge, whose laws it was impossible to keep. He wearied his fellow-priests with confessions and inquiries, but his heart was not at rest.

"The Answer." Finally, however, he found an answer to his question. Partly by the help of his superiors, chiefly by the aid of the Scriptures, which, contrary to the custom of the time, he studied diligently, he saw a new light. God was a kind Father who required only that his children should throw themselves in faith upon His grace, accepting Christ’s sacrifice for them. Good works were simply the natural expression of a soul already reconciled with God and could have in themselves no merit. If one simply believed, one was justified by his faith. That this doctrine was not that of the Church, Martin did not realize.

But he was soon to learn that his discovery was not acceptable to his superiors. There came into the neighborhood a monk, Tetzel by name, selling those indulgences which had become a menace to spiritual life. Against him and his traffic Luther protested, first in a sermon and then in a series of ninety-five theses which he nailed to the door of the Castle Church.

"A New Evangel." The sale of indulgences began promptly to decline, and the money, intended partly for the building of St. Peter’s Church at Rome, ceased to flow into the treasury. The local clergy took alarm, the alarm reached to Rome. Threatened, cajoled, greatly disturbed, but steadfast, Luther clung to his conviction. “The Christian man who has true repentance has already received pardon from God altogether apart from an indulgence and does not need one; Christ demands true repentance from every one,” said Luther. At once came a stern reply. It was the Pope and not Luther who had the right to decide this and all other questions. Thus reproved, Luther began to investigate the claims of the Pope upon the lives and fortunes of men. Excommunicated, threatened, with the fate of the martyr Huss in store for him, but gathering courage each day, he persisted until he had separated essentials from non-essentials and, thrusting aside the judgments and traditions of men, had founded his theology upon the Word of God. Tearing out the weeds of false doctrine and false practice, he cleared the stream of the Gospel to its clear and living Spring.

"The Bible Translated." Luther not only opened the stream, but provided for its continued freedom. To his German people he gave their Bible. His was not the first German translation, but it was the first which was at once readable and true to the original. With the most painstaking care and with the aid of his friends, Luther prepared his version, drawn from the original languages, true to the German idiom, a joy to laity and scholars alike.

"Luther and Missions." The interest of Luther in missions has been the subject of much unnecessary discussion. There are fervent admirers who claim for him a missionary enthusiasm which he did not possess. There are others who deny for him all interest in this vital question. The truth lies midway.

Missionary enterprise was not one of the first activities of the new Church, nor was it to be expected that it should be. The turmoil and difficulties connected with the establishment of the evangelical religion occupied fully the minds of the reformers. Germany was practically an inland nation and a divided nation. It had no ships, no foreign possessions, no communication with the heathen world. There were not for the early Protestants as for the early Christians great Roman roads leading the imagination afar, there were no large cities where men of many nations touched elbows. The newly discovered lands were the possession of Catholic countries in whose domain the new Gospel, which was really the old Gospel, would have had no hearing.

Not only Luther but other reformers in other lands were concerned chiefly with the heathenized Church about them. For it they labored and prayed. The business of laying a sound foundation absorbed them. That the foundation was well laid, the missions of later centuries will show. In the words of Doctor Gustav Warneck: “The Reformation not only restored the true substance of missionary preaching by its earnest proclamation of the Gospel, but also brought back the whole work of missions to Apostolic lines.”

"The Beginnings." There is always a difference of opinion about the actual beginnings of a great work. Modern missions offer no exception to this rule. General historians are unwilling to find any indication that even in the Seventeenth Century the Church of the Reformation felt an obligation to heathen nations. Lutheran historians, searching the matter more thoroughly and with a less prejudiced spirit, have discovered various individuals to whom missions were a matter of deep concern.

"In Europe and Asia." As early as 1557, Primus Truber translated into the language of the Croats and Wends to the east of Germany the Gospel, Luther’s Catechism and a book of spiritual songs. In 1559, Gustavus Vasa, King of Sweden, and later Gustavus Adolphus, endeavored to bring into the Lutheran Church the Lapps, who, though nominally Roman Catholic, had been in reality heathen, but the effort was not successful. Denmark, which had acquired possessions in India, provided for a minister to the colony, whose chief concern should be the spiritual needs of the natives. The creditable undertaking was brought to naught by the wickedness of the appointed ministers. In 1658, Eric Bredal, a Norwegian bishop, began preaching to the Lapps. Some of his assistants were killed; he died and his work came to no earthly fruitage. But the missionary spirit was none the less clearly exhibited.

"In Africa." In 1634 Peter Heiling of LÜbeck journeyed to Abyssinia to try to rouse once more the churches of the East whose spiritual life had almost ceased. There, after translating the New Testament into Amharic, he died a martyr.

"In North America." In 1638 the Swedes established “New Sweden” on the banks of the Delaware River in America. That there existed in their minds an interest in the spiritual welfare of the Indians surrounding them is recorded in one of the resolutions for the government of the colony. “The wild nations bordering upon all other sides, the Governor shall understand how to treat with all humanity and respect, that no violence or wrong be done to them ... but he shall rather, at every opportunity exert himself that the same wild people may gradually be instructed in the truths and worship of the Christian religion, and in other ways be brought to civilization and good government, and in this manner properly guided.” Among the Swedish Lutheran pastors who obeyed this injunction was John Campanius who translated in 1648 Luther’s Small Catechism into the language of the Virginia Indians, a work which antedated by thirteen years the publication of John Eliot’s translation of the New Testament for the Indians of Massachusetts. The work among the Indians lasted for over a hundred years.

"In South America. Justinian von Welz." The most important name of the Seventeenth Century in our study of Lutheran missions is that of Justinian von Welz, a German nobleman. To him there came clearly the true vision of the indissoluble relation of living Christianity and Christian missions. In 1664 he issued two pamphlets, one bearing the title, “An invitation for a society of Jesus to promote Christianity and the conversion of heathendom,” the other “A Christian and true-hearted exhortation to all right-believing Christians of the Augsburg Confession respecting a special association by means of which, with God’s help, our evangelical religion might be extended.” In the latter pamphlet there were such questions as these: “Is it right that we evangelical Christians hold the Gospel for ourselves alone?” “Is it right that in all places we have so many theological students, and do not induce them to labor elsewhere in the garden of the Lord?” “Is it right that we evangelical Christians expend so much on all sorts of dress, delicacies in eating and drinking, etc., but have hitherto thought of no means for the spread of the Gospel?”

"His Appeal Ridiculed." When this appeal was met with opposition and ridicule, von Welz issued a still stronger manifesto. He called upon the court preachers, the learned professors and others in authority to establish a missionary school where oriental languages, the lives of the early missionaries, geography and kindred missionary subjects might be studied. Alas! von Welz was considered now more fanatical and insane than before. When he suggested the sending out of artisans and laymen to tell the Gospel story, since the learned and influential leaders would not go, he was thought to be quite mad.

"A Martyr." Forsaking his noble rank, this eager soul turned away from his own country to Holland, where he found a minister to ordain him as “an apostle to the Gentiles”. Arranging his affairs so that all his wealth might be applied to his great endeavor, he set sail as a missionary to Dutch Guiana in South America. There in a few months he found a lonely grave.

"A Hero." In Justinian von Welz the Church of the Reformation possesses one of her worthiest and least known heroes. It was not until 1786, more than a century later, that the Baptist William Carey, considered the first standard bearer of modern missions, lifted up his admonishing voice. Of von Welz, Doctor Warneck, the greatest of all missionary historians, speaks thus: “The indubitable sincerity of his purposes, the noble enthusiasm of his heart, the sacrifice of his position, his fortune, his life for the yet unrecognized duty of the Church to missions, insure for him an abiding place of honor in missionary history.” To him another German missionary historian pays this tribute: “Sometimes in a mild December a snow drop lifts its head, yet is spring far away. Frost and snow will hold field and garden in chains for many months. But have patience. Only a little while and Spring will be here!”

"The Spring at Hand." Von Welz’s labors and prayers were to bear fruit. His teaching sank into the hearts of some of those who read. In a period of dreary rationalism which followed there began to spring up the seeds which he had sowed. Missions became more and more a subject of discussion among learned men. Among those who gave the theories of von Welz his earnest attention was the German scientist Leibnitz who urged the sending of missionaries to China through Russia. When men began not only to think and to discuss but to pray, the Spring was really at hand.

"Philip Spener." To two Lutherans above all other men the world owes the impulse to modern Protestant missions. If Philip Jacob Spener and August Herman Francke had not lived, the preaching of the pure Gospel to the heathen, already long delayed, would have had a still later Spring.

Philip Spener was born in 1635 and died in 1705. He was a man of deep piety and great learning. Occupying many important positions, among them that of court preacher at Dresden, he preached and taught constantly that pure living must be added to pure doctrine, urging that the “rigid and externalized” orthodoxy of the Church be transmuted into practical piety which should include Bible study and all sorts of Christian work. He held in his own house meetings for the study of the Bible and the exchanging of personal religious experiences. From the name of these meetings, collegia pietatis, the name of Pietists was given in ridicule to him and his followers.

Among the practical manifestations of a true Christian spirit which Spener urged was the sending of missionaries to the heathen. On the Feast of the Ascension he preached as follows:

“We are thus reminded that although every preacher is not bound to go everywhere and preach, since God has knit each of us to his congregation, yet the obligation rests on the whole Church to have care as to how the Gospel shall be preached in the whole world, and that to this end no diligence, labor, or cost be spared in behalf of the poor heathen and unbelievers. That almost no thought has been given to this, and that great potentates, as the earthly heads of the Church, do so very little therein, is not to be excused, but is evidence how little the honor of Christ and of humanity concerns us; yea, I fear that in that day unbelievers will cry for vengeance upon Christians who have been so utterly without care for their salvation.”

"A. H. Francke." Most famous among the followers and admirers of Spener was August Herman Francke, who was born in 1663 and died in 1727. He showed as a child extraordinary powers of mind, being prepared to enter the university at the age of fourteen. In 1685 he graduated from the University of Leipsic after having studied there and at Erfurt and Kiel. In 1688 he spent two months with Spener at Dresden and became deeply impressed with pietistic theories. In 1691 he was appointed professor of Greek and Oriental languages in the University of Halle, then recently founded. Here he became pastor of a church in a neighboring village, an undertaking which was to have world-wide importance.

The villagers in this town of Glaucha were degraded, poor, untaught. Moved by their need, Francke opened a school for the children in one room. He had little money but he trusted God. In a short while it was necessary to add another room, then two. He next established a home for orphans, then he added homes for the destitute and fallen. As fast as his enterprises increased, so rapidly came the necessary support.

"The School at Halle." It is not possible to tell here the amazing history of the Halle institutions which sheltered even before the death of Francke more than a thousand souls, much less of the enormous Inner Mission institutions in other parts of Germany which had here their inspiration. That activity of this remarkable man with which we are chiefly concerned is his missionary labors. In the words of Doctor Warneck: “He knew himself to be a debtor to both, Christians and non-Christians. In him there personified that connection of rescue work at home with missions to the heathen--a type of the fact that they who do the one do not leave the other undone. Home and foreign missions have from the beginning been sisters who work reciprocally into each other’s hands.”

Francke’s institution became a training school for Christian workers. There was no specific instruction for such undertakings, but “in those that came in near contact with him he stirred a spirit of absolute devotion to divine service, such as he himself possessed in highest measure, and which made them ready to go wherever there was need of them.” There came into the school later, as a lad, the Moravian Zinzendorf, afterwards a zealous missionary, who describes thus the effect of the surroundings upon him: “The daily opportunity in Professor Francke’s house of hearing edifying tidings of the kingdom of Christ, of speaking with witnesses from all lands, of making acquaintance with missionaries, of seeing men who had been banished and imprisoned, as also the institutions then in their bloom, and the cheerfulness of the pious man himself in the work of the Lord ... mightily strengthened within me zeal for the things of the Lord.”

From Halle there went forth during the following century about sixty missionaries, among them Ziegenbalg, Fabricius, Jaenicke, Gericke and Schwartz, whose careers we shall study. Here also was trained Muhlenberg, the patriarch of the Lutheran Church in America, who intended first to go as a missionary to India. Here were published in 1710 the earliest missionary reports in a little periodical which was continued under different titles until 1880, one hundred and seventy years. Among those for whom the heart of Francke yearned were the Jews, in whose interest he founded the Institua Judiaca. From Halle there spread an influence not only through Germany but through the world which is difficult to estimate but almost impossible to exaggerate. By no means the least of the missionary activities which had there their inspiration was that of the Moravian Church, the most ardent in missionary work of all Churches.

The missionary influence did not have any means free course. The opposition shown to the theories of Justinian von Welz continued. Francke was considered no less of a fanatic. This contrary spirit may be shown by the expression of a deeply pious clergyman who concluded an Ascension sermon with the following couplet:

"The First Missionary Hymn." But even in poetic form missionary activity was soon to find an expression. In Halle a Lutheran Karl Heinrich von Bogatsky wrote in 1750 the first Protestant missionary hymn.

Before this time, however, the first call for missionary workers had come to Halle from outside Germany.