Chapter 2
THE missionaries and emigrants planted themselves at a place which they named New Hermannsburg, and it figures on the recent maps of South Africa. But the planting was not so soon done as said. Indeed, they encountered many difficulties.
They did not lightly give up the purpose of settling among the Gallas. The Gallas were an inland tribe, and the way to their location lay through the territory of the powerful and despotic Imaum of Muscat. After negotiations with him, in which their hopes were raised only to be entirely dashed, they were driven out of his territory. They proceeded to Natal. There, three courses were open to them: to place themselves under the English Bishop; to settle on government land; or to purchase ground for a colony. The first was decided against, and the second, as the least expensive, they determined to adopt. But here again difficulties beset them. The English governor refused to allow them to settle.
It had been given out that they were all Jesuits; and the captain of the Candace—out of sheer wickedness, it must have been—reported that they were revolutionary demagogues. Their blowing of German chorales on their long trumpets contradicted the one falsehood, and their letters to well-known missionaries gave the lie to the other. However, they were not allowed to settle on government land, so they were compelled to purchase land for a colony. At a low price they secured six thousand and eighteen acres. It was a good location, and formed a valuable centre for missionary operations. Much of the land was arable, the rest pasture. There was coal, and stone, and lime; and a river flowed through it. Wood was scanty, and timber for building was four hours' journey off. But there were other advantages. It was under English protection ; it was not very distant from the seacoast ; it touched on the most important tribes of Southern Africa ; and by penetrating to the north, it was still possible to reach the Gallas, Within the Natal colony were at least one hundred thousand Zulu Kaffirs ; to the north was the largest body of the Zulus, under their king Umpanda ; further on were the Metabele; the Boers of the Orange River to the west, and beyond them the Bechuanas, among whom Dr. Moffat labored so long and so successfully. In their immediate neighborhood were twenty-five Germans, sent out to grow cotton and the sugar-cane, who had one of Gossner's missionaries settled among them. So that there was work enough to do, whichever way they looked.
And, indeed, there was need enough for the work they chiefly desired to do. The white population, according to the census just returned for Cape Colony, forms only one in four of the aggregate inhabitants, and the whites were much fewer thirty-five years ago. While the native Africans were in a low and debased condition, that of the white population was not much better, for they showed less and less of the outward form of Christianity. Their measure of civilization was no effectual barrier against the barbarism of the natives, who adopted the worst habits of the whites. So true it is, that nothing short of the Gospel in its purity and power, as an abiding, ruling principle in the heart and life, can sustain men in the fear and love of God, or prove a converting agency among barbarians, savages, and the dissolute and ungodly of any race or color. The mere forms of religion are not proof against the evils of a wicked and deceitful heart, on the one hand, and the wiles of the devil and the snares of the world, on the other. Union with Christ, and fellowship with Him by faith and prayer and obedience, alone can sustain a man amid the most corrupting surroundings. Where there is no spiritual life, there can be no divine renewing.
Having secured their purpose in obtaining an excellent location, every hand went to work diligently. Wood had to be felled for building; ground had to be broken up for gardens and corn-growing; bricks had to be made; a wagon had to be built, and various kinds of work performed by the smith and other artisans. The dyer had no need of his craft, so he became cook for the whole settlement. Sheep were bought, and a tolerable farm-yard sprang up. Maize was plentiful, but there was scarcity of money, and everything was dear, so that a pound sterling would not go so far as a dollar in Germany.
Meanwhile the missionaries did not forget their vocation. If they had to angle for fish to supply their table, or shoot a buck or a peacock to help their larder, or tame the oxen to do their plowing, they also fished for men, drew their gospel bow at a venture, and sought to tame the rude Zulus of various ages. To master the language was no small toil, especially to men who had had more to do with spades than grammars. Nevertheless they persevered. Around the camp-fires the workmen would try their hand at Kaffrarian, and when one got knocked up with excessive toil, he would recruit his energies with a month's study of Kaffir, with Posset, the Gossner missionary. “I have seen them," says that good man, in writing to Harms, “struggling with their clicks and clacks till their eyes turned round in their head. It is a hard nut for them to crack; but they are indefatigable, and they never flinch; real martyrs in the cause." It would have been far easier for them to have acted as missionaries among the Germans scattered everywhere, but they had come to evangelize the heathen, and to this work they adhered.
They spoke to the natives through an interpreter; but this was slow and uncertain work, and involved many misconceptions, some of them ludicrous enough. This urged on the missionaries with even greater eagerness to master the language. And thus it was that with grammars, building, farming, study, cookery, tailoring, exploration of the neighborhood, missionary tours among the whites, and the necessary services of their own worship, and the practicing of chorales, they had no time to spare. Harms warned them of the African laziness. They replied " A bell rings us up at half-past five; we have worship at six; after coffee everyone hurries off to his work; for breakfast we have bread and milk; the bell rings from work to dinner at twelve; at half-past one there is coffee, and then to work again as long as our dear Lord lets the sun shine."
New Hermannsburg prospered. Around the mission premises other houses were built; Kaffir huts were dotted here and there; the settlers kept their stores there; the arable land reached to the jungle; and it became a place of sufficient importance to attract the attention of a friendly English magistrate, and through him of the Government. A dispatch from Lord Clarendon recognized the admirable character of the mission, recommending it to special care, and on the arrival of Sir G. Grey, still brighter prospects arose. He on one occasion, is said to have remarked, that if he were not a governor he would be a missionary. Heal-lotted three thousand acres of land to New Hermannsburg, and so far favored all new missionary settlements as to make grants of six thousand acres to all new stations, of which favor the New Hermannsburgers availed themselves from time to time. Meanwhile New Hermannsburg was again and again replenished by emigrants and missionaries from Old Hermannsburg, which prospered all the m ore by reason of these branches "running over the wall."
There was no lack of money with Harms for his great work. “All things are possible to him that believeth," and he that asks in faith for the glory of God is never ashamed. If the demands of one year exceeded, or even doubled, those of the year preceding, so did the income, and that without any expensive organization, such as is employed by most missionary societies in England. The rich and the poor, and the rich of all grades, joined in helping forward the work.
The service in Kaffrarian was well attended, and blessed results followed. The converts settled around the mission, and learned habits of cleanliness, industry, and thrift. Others, not professing conversion, were attracted to them, either for education or some other benefit. Among the whites a marvelous change was wrought. Drunkards became sober and diligent; gamblers destroyed their cards; where the Bible had been an unread book, there was now a confession of Christ; entire families were transformed, and many of them converted, and those who had been so degraded as to have scarcely any sense of religion became obedient to the faith.
The proofs of this mission being in a special sense the work of God may be seen, in addition to what has been already noticed, in the facts that almost insuperable difficulties were overcome, that the Holy Spirit worked mightily among the superstitious and ignorant heathen to turn them to the Lord, and that this was accomplished by the instrumentality of men who were mainly humble peasants and artisans, with no earthly patronage and no human power or authority at their back. Their only power was in and through Christ, and in His glorious gospel, which is “the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth." Individual cases of conversion would occupy too much space to narrate; but the sort of converts—the thoroughness of their conversion from all the grossness, stupidity, superstition, and paramount selfishness of heathenism—may be seen in such cases as that of the Bechuana chief, Sechele, mentioned by Dr. Livingstone, who, when a Boer (one of the descendants of the old Dutch settlers), passing through his territory, had been seized and brought to him for judgment, said: "Your white brothers have killed my young men they have stolen my wives, my children, and my cattle, and I did them no wrong. If I would act like your white brothers, I would shoot you dead and seize your goods. But the good white man preached here the Word of God to the poor Bechuanas; and I will follow that Word, and send you away with your life and your goods."
Another case, in which faithful obedience to the claims of the Lord's Day is illustrated, is related. Six English officers, riding through Hermannsburg one Sunday morning, one of their horses lost a shoe. They stopped to have one put on. “It is Sunday," said the smith, "and we do not work." Our Lord's word about the ox or the ass falling into a pit, was urged. "But a horse's shoe is neither an ox nor an ass," was their reply, “and there is no necessity." The party had to be content to leave the shoeless horse with a servant until Monday.
Thus in Old Hermannsburgand in New Hermannsburg the word of God had free course, and was glorified. The Spirit of the Lord triumphed over the darkness and sin and thralldom of the people. As before the six days' creation, there were chaos and darkness and void, until God said, "Let there be light," so He who commanded the light to shine out of darkness manifested His grace, power, and glory through the gospel of Jesus Christ.
The Zulu war wrought terrible mischief among the New Hermannsburgers, but the work still goes on and prospers, notwithstanding, alas, the too early death of Pastor Harms.
R. S.