Part II, Chapter I — The Beginning of Foreign Mission Work in the General Council
COUNCIL (1869)
As the delegate of the Minnesota Synod, Dr. Heyer at- tended the convention in Reading, Pa., December 12-14, 1866, which planned the formation of the General Council of the EvangeHcal Lutheran Church in North America, unequiv- ocally founded on the Confessions of the Lutheran Church. He served as a member of the first committee on the prepara- tion of a hymn book. He took an active part in all the de- liberations and was an enthusiastic advocate of the new movement. At the first convention of the General Council in Ft. Wayne, Ind., November 20-26, 1867, he was appointed a member of the mission committee of which Rev. Wm. A, Passavant, D. D., was chairman, and which "respectfully sug- gested that the executive committee of the Pennsylvania Synod be requested to effect arrangements for the prosecu- tion of the work of missions among the heathen during the coming year." Thus, from its very foundation the General Council sought to fulfil its obligation as a factor in the ful- fillment of the great commission of our Lord. To continue to support the India Mission of The Foreign Missionary Society of the General Synod was not possible under the cir- cumstances. The executive committee of the mother synod decided that it would be most advisable to start a new mis- sion in some other non- Christian land. In its report to the i2ist annual convention of the Pennsylvania Ministerium, convened in St. Mark's Church, Philadelphia, June, 1868, it offered the following recommendations:
"Your committee, after a careful consideration of the subject, deems it best to propose to the synod the establishment of a mission in China. They have made application to The Foreign Missionary Society of the Evangelical Lutheran
Church to transfer to this synod the moneys collected for the establishment of a mission in China, several years since, most of which were contributed by our congregations. We pro- posed this in the spirit of peace to avoid all questions of claims to the property of the India Mission and all conflicts in the foreign field. To this proposal no answer as yet has been received." That the Ministerium of Pennsylvania might have established its title to much property in Guntur, Rajahmundry and the Palnad is certain; that it relinquished its claims in that direction and merely asked for the funds contributed for a China mission, but not used for that pur- pose, was a magnanimous proposal.
By a rising vote the Pennsylvania Ministerium resolved to begin a mission in China, to call the Rev. Robert Neumann as its missionary, and to educate a young Chinaman whom Rev. Neumann recommended in one of the Lutheran Seminaries in the United States, to be sent out later as a native ordained pastor. Had the Rev. Mr. Neumann ac- cepted the call of the synod, the General Council would have begun the history of its foreign mission work by an effort in behalf of the christianization of China; but the Rev. Mr. Neumann declined the call, the Chinese student left the country, and nothing further was done to carry out the resolution of the synod. It remained for the Swedish Augus- tana Synod to undertake, in the year 1908, independently of the other synods in the General Council, the original pur- pose of those to whom the General Council entrusted the inauguration of its foreign mission work; and we cannot re- frain, at this point, from expressing the hope that some day the whole General Council will be permitted to join in an effort to christianize the Chinese republic. When the General Council met in its second annual con- vention in the First Lutheran Church, Pittsburgh, November 12-18, 1868, the outlook for foreign mission work was still uncertain, and a special committee was appointed to consider the whole matter and report to the next meeting. Before it could arrive at any definite conclusion, however, God so guided affairs as to return to the Pennsylvania Ministerium,
FOREIGN MISSION WORK IN GENERAL COUNCIL (1869) 135 and through it to the General Council, a part of the Telugu Mission in India, where the mother synod had begun the foreign mission work of the Lutheran Church in America. While negotiations were pending between The Foreign Missionary Society of The General Synod and The Church Missionary Society of England for the transfer of the Rajahmundry Mission by the former to the latter, Dr. Heyer was liv- ing temporarily at Helmstedt, Germany, whither he had gone with a granddaughter to direct her education. When he heard of the proposed transaction, he hastened, in April, 1869, to Apenrade, to confer with Groenning and, if possible, to prevent the transfer. Apart from the keen personal interest which these pioneers took in the Rajahmundry Mission, they were unwilling that the condition should be violated on which The North German Missionary Society had transferred it, in 1850, to The Foreign Missionary Society, namely, that it should remain a Lutheran Mission. In Groenning's home Heyer met two young men, Hans Christian Schmidt and Christian Friedrich Johan Becker, whom Groenning had been preparing for service in India under The Foreign Missionary Society, which, however, had failed to call either one of them. Both expressed their willingness to go to Rajahmundry; and it was arranged that they should accompany Heyer to the United States and offer their services to the Pennsylvania Ministerium in the hope that the mother synod would make an effort to assume full responsibility for the work at Rajahmundry, and thus prevent its transfer to a non-Lutheran society. Only Schmidt could arrange to leave Germany at once; but Becker agreed to hold himself in readiness to go to Rajahmundry as soon as he received a call.
Heyer and Schmidt reached New York just in time to attend the annual meeting of the Pennsylvania Ministerium in Trinity Church, Reading, Pa., beginning Trinity Sunday, May 23, 1869. The unexpected appearance of the intrepid pioneer foreign missionary and his address to the synod created a most profound impression. Protesting most earn- estly against the transfer of the Rajahmundry Mission to a non-Lutheran Society as a breach of contract, he pleaded for the continuation of the work at that station by the mother synod, which had sent him out as the first foreign missionary of the Lutheran Church in America. He introduced Mr. Schmidt, a pupil of Father Groenning, who had accompanied him to America because he was willing to become the synod's missionary at Rajahmundry; and then, reaching the climax of his plea and holding up his travelling bag, he said that he was ready to go at a moment's notice, if the synod wished it, even though he was seventy-seven years old and it would be his third journey to India, in order that he might direct his younger brethren in the reorganization of the mission work. On Thursday afternoon the special committee appointed to consider and report on the threatened transfer of the Rajahmundry Mission to The Church Missionary Society submitted the following resolutions:
"Whereas, A report has reached us that it is proposed to transfer the mission stations at Rajahmundry and Samulkot in India to The Church Missionary Society of England, and
"Whereas, We learn from a report of the proceedings of the General Synod's Missionary Society at Washington, that a transfer of these mission stations to another interest was referred to its Foreign Mission Board with power to act as in their judgment they should deem most advisable, and
"Whereas, This synod originally established the India Mission and sustained the same successfully for many years; therefore,
"Resolved, That we most solemnly protest against the transfer of the Mission to any other than a Lutheran Mis- sionary Society, and
"Resolved, That the Rev. C. F. Heyer be requested to lay this protest before the Foreign Mission Board of the General Synod, and
"Resolved, That the executive committee be authorized to take such action in consultation with the committee on Foreign Missions of the General Council, as they may deem proper."
These resolutions were adopted by the synod, and Schmidt,
FOREIGN MISSION WORK IN GENERAL COUNCIL (1869) 137 after having been examined and recommended by the minis- terial session, was ordained, together with twelve other candi- dates, on Wednesday evening, May 26th. The executive committee of the Pennsylvania Minis terium^ met on June 15, 1869, delegated Heyer to meet with the execu- tive committee of The Foreign Missionary Society and "learn whether it was still in its power and whether it were willing to transfer the mission stations to the Ministerium of Pennsyl- vania," and elected the Rev. S. K. Brobst, the Rev. B. M. Schmucker and Mr. H. H. Muhlenberg as a sab-committee on foreign missions. Furthermore, the General Council's committee on foreign missions was duly informed of the action of the Pennsylvania Ministerium and of its executive commit- tee, and its approval was requested and obtained.
Heyer experienced no difficulty in securing the consent of the executive committee of The Foreign Missionary Society to the proposal of the Pennsylvania Ministerium, and its secretary was instructed to communicate at once with the officers of The Church Missionary Society in England and with Missionary Unangst in India, directing that the negotiations with that society be discontinued.
At the meeting of the executive committee of the Penn- sylvania Ministerium, held in Reading, Pa., August 27, 1869, the transfer of the Rajahmundry Mission, formally offered by the executive committee of The Foreign Missionary Society, was accepted, and Heyer, Schmidt and Becker were called to be the Ministerium's foreign missionaries. The resolu- tions of the committee read as follows:
"Resolved, That we accept the transfer of the mission stations at Rajahmundry and Samulkot; that the Rev. C. F. Heyer, the Rev. H. C. Schmidt and Mr. C. F. J. Becker be sent to labor at those places ; that the necessary travelling ' This committee then consisted of the officers of the synod, namely, the Rev. C. W. SchaeiTer, D. D., President; the Rev. B. W. Schmauk, German Secretary; the Rev. Jacob Fry, English Secretary; the Rev. A. T. Geissenhainer, Treasurer; and the Presidents of the Conferences (among others the Revs. W. Rath, F. J. F. Schantz, J. Hapler and J. W. Hassler), and the following addi- tional members: the Rev. B. M. Schmucker, D. D., the Rev. F. A. Muhlenberg, D. D., the Rev. J. J. Kuendig, the Rev. J. Kohler, the Rev. S. K. Brobst, and Messrs. H. H. Muhlenberg, C. Pretz, H. Trexler, J. Henry and F. Lauer.
expenses of Heyer and Schmidt be paid; that the sum of $150 for an outfit be paid Rev. Heyer; that $100 for each of the others be appropriated; and that the whole expense do not exceed $1500.
"Resolved, That the salary of each missionary be $500, gold; that the missionaries be authorized to expend for native missionaries and schools a sum not exceeding $300, gold, a year; that information of this action be transmitted to the committee of the General Council on Foreign Missions; and that the delegates of the Pennsylvania Ministerium to the General Council lay this action before that body and oflfer to transfer the mission to their custody and control."
Heyer felt that no time should be lost in making the transfer practically and fully effective by the actual occupation of the field; and on the last day of August, 1869, four days after the ratification of the transfer, he sailed from New York, bound for India by the shortest route.
The General Council in session in the Swedish Immanuel Evangelical Lutheran Church, Chicago, November 4-10, 1869, heartily endorsed the action of the executive committee of the Pennsylvania Ministerium, accepted the custody and control of the Rajahmundry Mission, elected as its committee on foreign missions the executive committee of the Pennsyl- vania Ministerium, and requested the district synods to forward all their foreign mission contributions to the treasurer of the General Council to be applied to the Rajahmundry work.^
Before leaving America Heyer had been instructed to ascer- tain whether the Hermannsburg Missionary Society could be induced to co-operate with the General Council in foreign mission work in India; and after visiting his brother, Prae- positus Heyer, in Plau, Mecklenburg, Germany, he went to Hermannsburg for a conference with Pastor Ludwig Harms 1 The General Council also instructed its foreign mission committee to correspond with the Leipsic and Hermannsburg Missionary Societies and solidt their co-operation in the Rajahmundry Mission; to take the claims of the in- creasing Chinese population in the United States into consideration; and, through the Swedish Secretary of the Council, to confer with the Finnish Lutheran Missionary Society concerning the establishment of a mission among the Indians in Alaska.
FOREIGN MISSION WORK IN GENERAL COUNCIL (1869) 1 39 and Inspector Anstaedt. They gave him no encouragement, however, and told him that they preferred to work independently in their newly estabhshed mission at Naydupet, north of Madras. Heyer then visited Groenning at Apen- rade, who cheered him with the assurance of Becker's willing- ness to follow him to Rajahmundry and with the prospect of securing one or two additional missionaries from the Mission Institute in Copenhagen.
From Trieste Heyer crossed the Mediterranean Sea to Suez, though the canal had not yet been officially and formally opened. He reached Bombay on October 23, 1869, and from that city took a train on the newly constructed railway to Sholapur, where it terminated. Over two hundred miles to the south lay Secunderabad, eight miles beyond that Hydera- bad, and still farther south the Palnad, through which he wished to pass on his way to Guntur. We will let Heyer himself describe his long overland journey from Sholapur to Secunderabad, quoting from a letter written to Miss Nora laeger, of Reading, Pa.:
"When the agent understood that I was engaged in mission work, he offered, if I would consent to let him put some mer- chandise in the body of the bullock-cart and to make a kind of bed on the top, to charge me nothing. I accepted, not considering or knowing what I would have to endure. Only think of an old missionary, seventy-seven years of age, in a horizontal position on top of store-boxes in a common country cart, carried two hundred miles by day and by night! If the roads had been good and the weather favorable I might have endured it without much suffering, but on the second day I was caught in a heavy monsoon rain, coming down in Indian style. It did seem as if there might have been five hundred washer-women in the clouds pouring down rain by the buckets- ful. Night came on and the cart stuck fast in the mud. I spent a most uncomfortable night in the upper story of my cart. Next morning additional bullocks were brought, and we started again. After going a mile or two we came to a place where a bridge had been washed away and where about 3ne hundred bandies were waiting to get across. Seeing that
I40 THE TELUGU MISSION OF THE GENERAL COUNCIL it would be a tedious business, I left the cart and walked five miles to the next bungalow. Thus it went on for six days, travelling at the rate of two miles an hour. The cart stuck fast every day, and every day I had to walk from three to six miles to reach some bungalow. After six days we got into better roads, and for the last three days we went about three miles an hour. Passing through the Mahratta and Canara regions it was with difficulty that I could get the people to understand me. By signs and tokens only could we exchange a few ideas. Indeed, I found that I had undertaken more than I ought to have done, and only wonder how the Lord enabled me by patience and perseverance to overcome the difficulties in the way without sinking under them. Novem- ber 5th I arrived at Secunderabad and parted with my coach, bruised and sore, in a condition which I had never before been." In Secunderabad Heyer bought a palankeen for $12 and engaged bearers to carry him to Bayawarrow, one hundred and sixty-six miles. He paid the bearers Rs. 70 or about $25. They covered the distance in about twelve days; but even this comparatively more comfortable mode of travel was wearisome. November i6th, Gurjal was reached. Six- teen years had elapsed since he had last been in the Palnad, and he rejoiced to find there some of the converts whom he had baptized. The bungalow which he had built at Gurjal was still standing, and he occupied it again for a few days with a devout feeling of gratitude. The catechist, Cully, welcomed him most cordially and told him of the progress of Chris- tianity in the district, where the Christian community numbered six hundred. After spending a week in the Palnad, Heyer proceeded to Guntur. "Boniface," he wrote, "could not have been received more joyfully and respectfully by his German converts than the native Christians received their old missionary who had unexpectedly come to visit them." December i, 1869, he arrived at Rajahmundry, just three months after starting from New York.
Writing soon after his arrival he said: "My own impres- sion before I left America, as well as the opinion of some of
FOREIGN MISSION WORK IN GENERAL COUNCIL (1869) 141 the brethren, was that our prospects in India were rather discouraging; but from personal observation I am fully con- vinced that it is an erroneous opinion. . . . Unangst found that he could not attend to all the stations and, being left without funds to meet the current expenses of the mission, called in the assistance of a neighboring missionary belonging to the Church Missionary Society. Last spring (1869) a kind of transfer was made to the C. M. S., and since last May to December ist, the catechists and teachers connected with the Rajahmundry Mission were paid by the C. M. S. This money, of course, must be refunded and the sooner the better for our credit. The General Synod's Board should be held responsible for May, June, July and August. Conse- quently, our executive committee will assume payment from September ist, the time when the Board made the transfer to the Pennsylvania Synod. I have not yet received the ex- act statement, but it will amount to about $31 a month for catechists and teachers. Besides this the C. M. S. has given a monthly allowance of $10 for traveUing expenses."
In Rajahmundry Heyer found ten native Christian families and a school of about twenty children taught by a native Christian teacher; at Dowlaishwaram, five Christian families; at Metta, six Christian families and a school with a teacher and sixteen children; at Peddahem, one Christian family; at Gowripatnam, three famiHes of inquirers; at Muramunda, the oldest congregation outside of Rajahmundry, twelve Christian famiHes and thirteen children in a mission school; at Jegurupad, six Christian famiHes and twenty-four children in school; at Peravaram, five Christian families and a newly opened school; at Lolla, one family of inquirers. Counting three on an average to each family, the number of Christians was 135; counting four, 180. The total number of children in all the mission schools reported by Heyer was 73. Forty- nine persons from Rajahmundry and adjacent villages attended the first administration of the Lord's Supper by Heyer at Rajahmundry on Christmas day, 1869. After Christmas Heyer made his first tour of the out- stations. From Rajahmundry he walked to Dowlaishwaram
142 THE TELUGU MISSION OF THE GENERAL COUNCIL on foot. There, in a small building which Groenning had secured for the mission, he reopened a school. Then he went by canal to Jegurupad and Muramunda, baptizing three women and two girls at the latter place. At Samulkot he found nothing but the bungalow which Long had built. The total force of native Christian workers consisted of two catechists, Joseph at Rajahmundry and Paulus at Muramunda, and five teachers.
That was all with which the General Council had to begin in its foreign mission field. From that mustard seed there has since grown a sturdy tree with branches spreading wide in every direction, and bearing rich fruit in the continual conversion of men, women and children, body and soul, from gross, gruesome Hinduism to repentance and faith in Christ, the divine Redeemer, the Revealer of the True God.