Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 13.djvu/664

* MISSIONS. 592 MISSIONS. America the French missionaries followed the Hag of France, and worked unremittinjrly after IGIl throughout all the dominions over which it floats. In 1634 .Jesuit missionaries accompanied the first colonists of Maryland. III. THE MODERN PERIOD. A. Protesiaxt Foreigx Missions : ( 1 ) St.te AIlssioNAKY Enterpkises. At the time of the Keformation, Christendom was still bcloapuered by armed Islam. Up to the very end of the se^•e^lt(•enth century a groat part of llungarj- was in the possession of Turkey, and in 1683 Vienna barely escaped falling into the hands of the Mussulmans. Missionary access to Eastern Xorth Africa and Western Asia was barred by the sword of Islam. At the same time trans- marine heathen lands were so distant that Im- perial resources alone could reach them. Such resources were all in the hands of the great Ro- man Catholic powers. The conditions under which the Reformation develojjcd left to the reformers no place for planning foreign mission- ary enterprise. Luther and his as.sociates ap- preciated the essentially missionary quality of the Church of Christ, but limited its sphere of action to their own surroundings. They deemed that in any case the Church was helpless regard- ing foreign missions, since such vast undertak- ings could be dealt with by governments alone. The first Protestant foreign missions, then, were State enterprises. In 1555 Admiral Coligny induced the Council of. Geneva to send mis- sionaries to Brazil in connection with a Hu- guenot colony. But both mission and colony soon ended in bloody disaster. In 155!) (Justavus Vasa of Sweden sent missionaries to labor for the pagan Lapps of his own dominions. But this mission came to naught, -fter the con- quest by Ilolbincl of several Portuguese colonics in the East Indies, the Dutch East India Com- pany was formed in 1602, and the governors of the various islands were ordered to do all in their power to Christianize the natives. Clergy- men were sent out to Ceylon, Formosa, and the Malay Archipelago as missionary chaplains, who.se duty included the Christian instruction of natives. But the governors of the colonics obeyed their orders literally, and 'Christianized' the natives without waiting for the missionaries to instruct them. Consequently, when Dutch govcrnnieni came to an end in Cey- lon, some 300.000 ollicially converted natives re- turned to their former faith. In Formosa Chris- tianity was extinguished by the Chinese, when they drove the Dutch from the island in 1661. In .lava, however, the missionary chaplains slowly translated the Scriptures into Malayan. The second of modern Bible translations into heathen languages (.lolm Eliot's Indian liiblc. printed in 16S.'?, being the first) was thus produced by the initiative and published (in 1701) at the ex- pense of the Dutch (Jovernment. With all its de- fects this State mission enterprise had permanent results. In .Java, the Moluccas, and Celebes has crown up a native Christian Church, numbering nearly 250.000 adherents, with over 350 i)as- tors .ind |)rcachers. s)ipj)ortcd by the Dutch TIov- ernmint. Of these proliably not more than half are the fniit of later missionary efforts. A simi- lar mission undertaken by Holland in Brazil, through the West India Company, about the year lfi21. camp to an end with the expulsion of the Dutch about the middle of the century. Such missionary enterprises undertaken for reasons of State, numned by official appointment, and su- pervised by colonial bureaus and chambers of commerce, were foredoomed to failure. The next of the State missionary enterprises originating on the Continent of Europe illus- trates this fact. In 1705 a woman whose husl)uid had betai killed by natives in the Danish colony of Tranquebar, in Soutli India, pe- titioned King Frederick IV. of Denmark to send missionaries to teach the people there. The ]ie- tition was effective. The King endowed the mis- sion, and, no fit men being found in Denmark, two Germans were appointed to go to India. They were of the disciples of Francke, the German piet- ist, who saw that the highest form of Christian fruit fulness includes foreign as well as home mis- sions, and whose encrgj- formed scliools at Halle to prepare men to serve Christ in the ends of the earth. The two young nuMi. Ziegenbalg and Pint .schau, taught singleness of ])urpose at Halle, and sent out by King Frederick 1'. in 170G. began the first serious Protestant mission enterprise in India. Before his death, in 1710, Ziegenbalg had made a translation of the New Testament into the Tamil language, which became the basis of the existing Tamil Bil)le. and the third modern translation of the Serijiturcs into heathen lan- guages. Other missionaries from the same home surroundings followed the two pioneers of this Danish mission. n<ilably Schultze and his later associate, Schwartz. Each of these men made a permanent impression upon the people of the country. Fifty thousand Tamils became Chris- tians before the en<l of the century. After the death of King Frederick IV^. the English Society for the Promotion of Cliristian Knowledge as- sumed the whole support of the Danish mission in India until 1824. when the <'ntcrpri.se was passed over to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. Another mission maintained by King Frederick IV. was that commenced by Hans Egede in Greenland in 1721. It was later trans- ferred to the Danish Missionary Society, and the whole Eskimo population in the neighborhood of the numerous Danish trading-stations was long ago Christianized. The British Government took steps early in the seventeenth century for the Christianizing of its colonies. The Virginia Company, whose enter- prise began in 1584. was directed by its charter to teach Christianity to the Indians, and Sir Walter Raleigh subscribed one hundred jiounds to that object. The same duty was laid upon the Massachusetts Colony by charter in 1(')2S. In 1646 the Legislature of Massachusetts passed a law for missionary work among the Indians. This gave .State support to the eti'orts of .John Eliot of Koxbury. Thomas Mayhew of Martha's Vineyard, and others. In 1648 Cromwell induced the English Parliament to consider the organiza- tion of a Government foreign missionary enter- prise. The renewal of civil war. however, put an end to the scheme. But the Corporation for the Propagation of the Gosjud in Xcw England, formed in England in 1640. received a grant from Parliament and aided Eliot's mission. It still exists under the name of 'The New England Com- pany.' and expends the revenue from its endow- ment funds for the cdiication of Indians in the Dominion of Canada. .Ml these efforts re- sulted in the formation of several villages of con-