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CHRISTIAN FREDERICK SCHWARTZ
(1726-1798)
Early Protestant Missionary
to India
If asked who the first missionary
to India was, many
probably would say William Carey. This is hardly the case.
The Apostle Thomas took the Gospel
to India in A.D. 42
and died a martyr's death near Madras in A.D.
72.
In more recent history, Bartholomew
Zeigenbalg is thought to be the first Protestant missionary to India, having
arrived in 1705 at the age of 23. He planted a church among the Hindus in South
India and translated the Bible into the Tamil language.
But perhaps the man who, more than
any other, left his mark for the cause of Christ in India in the
1700s was Christian Frederick Schwartz. Born in Prussia in 1726,
he was sent out by the Danish mission representing the Society for the
Propagation of Christian Knowledge (SPCK). Schwartz was a man of unusual
ability and insight into the cause of Christ in foreign missions. Seeing the
need for trained leaders, he started the first Christian schools in India. He
trained national evangelists by precept, example, and in the school of prayer. A
brilliant man, he could preach fluently and effectively in English, Tamil,
Portuguese, and German and was an accomplished scholar in Hebrew and Greek.
Schwartz accurately recognized that
the enemy was not only the pagan Hindus but also the Jesuits, whom he
considered the greatest hindrance to the spread of the Gospel in his area. He
was not discouraged by little fruit in his early days but frequently called to
mind that a time for sowing precedes that of reaping.
His ministry extended beyond that
to the nationals. There were many European government officials, military
personnel, and merchants in India with whom
he had contact and extensive correspondence. To one he wrote:
My dear John, examine your heart and whatever you find in
it that is not agreeable to the will of God-and you will find much of that
sort-acknowledge it, bewail it before your God, entreat Him to wash and cleanse
you from all your sins. Rest not til you find rest to your soul.
And to
another:
When I
consider all, high and low, rulers and the ruled, I am struck with grief and a
variety of passions. What blindness, insensibility, obstinacy, greediness, and
rapaciousness. A thousand times I think with my self "Oh, my God, must all
these people die? Must they all appear before the tribunal of Jesus, the
Mediator and the Judge? How little do they mind their end and the consequences
of their lives." Still I am happy to be made the instrument of Providence to
instruct some and to warn others. Who knows but there may come a time when
others may reap what we have been sowing.
To another
he penned:
The
atonement of Jesus Christ is the foundation of my hope, peace, life, and
happiness. Though I am covered all over with sin, the blood of Jesus Christ
cleanses me from all my iniquities and sets my heart at rest. But if, instead
of trusting in Christ and in His consummate atonement, we rely on our own
virtue and consequently try to stand upon our own foundation, we shall never
enjoy one moment's peace of mind. Let us, therefore, seek for pardon, peace,
and joy in Jesus.
He was tactful and tried not to offend caste, but ministered
to all-both high and low. He said, "the glorious God and our blessed Redeemer
has commanded his apostles to preach the Gospel to all nations."
Speaking of some
who professed Christ but turned back, he wrote:
. . . that some of those who have
been instructed and baptized have abused the benefit of instruction is certain.
But all sincere servants of God, nay, even the Apostles, have experienced this
grief.
Schwartz never married, but he
loved children. He started a home and school for orphans. He was of the mind of
Paul. He wrote:
If a new missionary comes out, he
ought to be unembarrassed. His first work, besides an attention to his personal
religion, is the learning of some languages, which requires great attention and
unwearied application. I will not say that a married man is unable to learn
languages, but I know from experience in others that the work goes on very
slowly. Besides, a missionary who comes out in the married state wants many
things to maintain his family decently, which may distract him. If one should
enter into that state after he had become qualified for his office, the
difficulty would be less and even then he ought to be well-assured of her real
piety. Otherwise, she will be a sore impediment to him in the discharge of his
duties.
As I approached the time of my departure for career
missions, I began to take serious thought of what the Lord, in His sovereignty,
wrote in Genesis Chapter 2 and verse18: "And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be
alone; I will make him an help meet for
him." As I meditated upon that verse, I came up with four priorities that I
wanted to find in a helpmeet:
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I wanted a woman who was truly born again and
demonstrated the fruits of the Sprit in her life.
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I wanted a wife who had been called to missions
prior to our meeting. I did not want her to be influenced by my call to career
missions.
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I asked the Lord that, if it could please Him,
she would be a woman who was interested in and being trained in some area of
medicine that could be a real help in my ministry.
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And if it could please Him, I hoped that she
would have sensed a call, even as I had, to Africa.
As a medical student at Ohio
State University,
I had become involved in a collegiate Bible study and was very active in the
work of this ministry. My wife-to-be was a transfer student from a community
college in West Virginia near her
home, where she had majored in all the sciences that school offered. Having
completed all of those courses, she transferred to OSU for her last
undergraduate year. At the close of the first week that she was on campus, when
she was a little lonely and a bit homesick, she saw posters around campus
inviting interested students to attend an exciting collegiate Bible study. The
time and place were mentioned, and she decided to come to the meeting that
Friday evening. It was the custom of our group that any visitors, first-time
attenders, would have the opportunity to introduce themselves, state where they
were from, what school at the University they were in, what their goals were,
and, if we ascertained that they were true believers, to give a testimony to
that fact.
I came into that meeting a few minutes late and sat at the
very back of the classroom. The chairman of the meeting that evening introduced
the young lady who subsequently became my wife. All I could see as she stood
was that she was a rather petite, blond-headed, young lady. In a very clear,
concise way she gave a beautiful testimony of her salvation and of her walk
with the Lord. She mentioned the fact that, as an eight-year-old child, she had
felt the call to a full-time missionary career. Following her public school
graduation, she had attended a small college near her home and had taken all
the science courses the school had to offer. She had transferred to Ohio
State for her last undergraduate
year and, at that time, had obtained a work scholarship in nuclear physics. As
she continued her testimony, she mentioned that she felt the Lord was directing
her toward graduate studies in some area of medicine that could be used on the
mission field and concluded her testimony by saying that she felt the Lord
would have her to serve in Africa. During that
testimony, I ticked off all four of the priorities that I had placed before the
Lord for a help meet for me. I wanted to meet that young lady-and did-after the
conclusion of that Bible study. We never had a doubt but what the Lord had
intended us one for the other.
She graduated and went on to work on a graduate degree in
Bible in a seminary in New Orleans
and then entered nurse's training in a large hospital in New
Orleans. I completed my medical degree and was appointed
an intern at Gorgas Hospital,
a civilian and military hospital in the Panama Canal Zone.
After I completed my one-year internship, while serving as interim
superintendent of the American Leprosarium in the Canal Zone,
I brought her down to the Canal Zone; and we were
married there.
I have seen situations where Schwartz's comments about a
wife being an impediment were true, but that was most certainly not so in my
case. As for language learning, we worked very diligently to learn the local
tribal language; and we were able to help one another in that process. I
probably had a better ear for the nuances of tone, as the Hausa language is a
tonal language; but Bettie was much more knowledgeable about the grammar and
structure of the language. So we complemented one another in that regard. She
became very fluent in the language. In this area of language learning, she was
ever a challenger, and encourager, and a corrector to me; and I benefited
greatly from her input.
As for piety, I could not have asked for a godlier
helpmeet. She was a woman who spent time in the Word of God and in prayer, who had
a love for the Africans and a passion to see them come to faith in Jesus
Christ. The Lord gave her a rich ministry among the African women and young
people such as I could never have had because of the cultural prohibitions in a
Muslim context of a man speaking to a woman. She was a tremendous example and
blessing to me.
I pity men who labor alone without such a godly helpmeet. I
am convinced that our ministry was much more effective as a married couple than
we ever could have been if we had served as unmarried individuals. As God gave
a helpmeet to Adam, He most certainly gave a wonderful helpmeet to me; and I am
eternally grateful to Him for that.
Mr. Schwartz continued voicing his own desires:
But to win Christ and to be found
in Him in life, in death, in the day of judgment was St. Paul's wish, has been
the wish of all genuine Christians, and shall be mine as long as I breathe.
In his almost 50 years of missionary service in India,
I find no record of his ever having returned to Europe. He
died at the age of 71 in 1798, two years before William Carey baptized his
first convert at Serampore. His legacy: a large Christian community of all castes
and ethnic backgrounds. He said, "Let the cause of Christ be my heir."
A few years before his death, he wrote "Let me not flag.
May my last days be my best."
JAD
5/19/00
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