1895 - Wohlers, J. F. H. Memories of the Life of J.F.H. Wohlers - CHAPTER IV. IN THE MISSION HOUSE AT HAMBURG

       
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  1895 - Wohlers, J. F. H. Memories of the Life of J.F.H. Wohlers - CHAPTER IV. IN THE MISSION HOUSE AT HAMBURG
 
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CHAPTER IV. IN THE MISSION HOUSE AT HAMBURG

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CHAPTER IV.

IN THE MISSION HOUSE AT HAMBURG.

WHEN, after some time, I again visited Pastor Kohler, he said, "I have an invitation for you. Mrs. Olmann, of Bruckhofen, would like you to call on her." "Oh," I said, "we are related." "Yes," he replied, "I have heard so. You will find there also spiritual relations. The old mother in the house just lives in the Word of God." Now, I had sometimes in my childhood visited this old mother with my grandmother. Later on, after my grandmother was dead, the visits were neglected, because the relationship was distant. When I related at home that I had received this invitation, my aunt (my mother's sister) was overjoyed that the old friendship would be renewed through me, and that by means of a spiritual relationship (I kept silence on the subject of my Christianity no longer). It was resolved that my uncle's daughter, a growing maiden, and myself should go next Sunday morning to the church at Vilsen, and hear Pastor Kohler preach (it was his Sunday), and then from there go with the Olmann family to Bruckhofen. Our aunt could describe to us exactly how we should find Olmann's cherry orchard. All happened as arranged. We knew one another yet, although we had not seen one another for many years.

Madam Olmann (not to be confused with the old mother, the particular friend of my dead grandmother) had much to tell me. First, however, I will say that I found in her and in her house living Christianity. Some Christian neighbours used to visit it.

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They had been awakened by Pastor Kohler, and were like the people I had learnt to know in Bremen--joyous, free Christians, like the pastor himself. Madam Olmann told me the pastor had told her of a young man from Hoyerhagen who intended to go to a mission school, and had the proposal made to her to collect the passage money for him. She was quite willing to give her assistance. Then she had met a lady from the district of the Vilser commonalty at Hoyerhagen, and asked if she could tell her from what house the young man came that intended to be a missionary. "Oh! don't you know?" she replied, "that is one of the sons of Ahlers Gretchen." Then she remembered me, and went at once to Pastor Kohler and besought him to make no collection. The young man might not like it (she knew the self-respect of the Ahlers and Wohlers); he came of a good family, and was not without means.

I will here confess for the first time an act of stupidity of which I was guilty a few weeks later, and upon which I always look back with disgust. One Sunday morning I went to the church at Vilsen. As it was still early I spoke to Pastor Kohler. He could not give me much attention, as he had to preach; but I had the entree to his dwelling-room. Here I met a candidate of theology, the son of the squire (amtsmann) of Bruckhausen, a village near Vilsen. He was so friendly towards me that I loved him at once. As we went to church he compelled me to go with him to his seat. Owing to a feeling of friendship, and before my head had time to reflect, I gave way to him. But as we were in the squire's place (amtsmann) and amongst the upper classes I saw at once that I was in the wrong place, and that my presence there must give offence. I would have liked to crawl under the seat. I wished I was outside, but I could not get out without attracting attention, and was obliged therefore to sit it out. The candidate kept me at his side, and let me look over his book, but I could give it no attention. Since then I was always careful, as long as I was a peasant, not to give offence by intruding myself into the society of the upper classes.

In spite of this, the friendship thus commenced between myself and the candidate (his name was Merkel) continued to

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ripen. Perhaps it was weakness on both sides that drew us together; but with this difference, that my head, although slower than my heart, always in the end (if you gave it time enough) obtained the supremacy, but with him the heart always ran away with the head.

Later on, when I went into the district in the holidays, we met at the mill, and he visited me at Hoyerhagen. And when I was not there, he visited at the house, where, as my friend and a favourite of my old aunt, he was always welcome. He became pastor (in the common of Luneberg) before I was sent out, and I have visited him in his parish; but I heard to my sorrow that his heart always overran his head, which brought him into trouble.

The winter passed, and I heard nothing from Pastor Mallet; but in the week after Easter a letter arrived, wherein I was requested to go to Bremen as soon as possible, that I might be sent to Hamburg from there. When I bid the pastor good-bye, he said: "Beware of both pride and self-abasement." This warning was of importance to me, for I was soon to come into a position where I had need of it.

I little dreamed that at this last farewell to the dear Pastor Kohler in this life I should see him no more. He died after a few months of a fever, in the midst of his most blessed labours. Soon afterwards died the superintendent--a Rationalist. When, a few years later, I went to Vilsen in the holidays, we went to the churchyard to see Pastor Kohler's grave. It was tidy, and planted with flowers; that of the superintendent was neglected and overgrown with weeds. The Kohler family was no longer there, but the faithful old servant was still there--the same who a few years before had brought the missionary tracts which gave the direction to my life to the mill, and had laid them on the table in the miller's room, where I found them. We were both overjoyed and overcome by our feelings to see one another in this life. He belonged in a certain manner to the vicarage, for whenever a pastor died or was removed he always remained in the house, and was servant to the successor. He was now old, and had not long to live.

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When I took leave in Bremen of Pastor Mallet, he said: "You will find out a great many things such as I cannot tell you, but do not allow yourself to be bewildered. Hold fast to Christ; with Him we can go through, but without him we were lost in Paradise." His farewell warning was an anchor in my later difficulties.

I must here beg attention to another important warning, even if it was given in a spirit as if it had been that of Caiaphas. He, however, did not speak of himself, but he prophesied because that year he was high priest.

The day before my departure from Bremen to Hamburg I was commended to Aldermann Haase. He asked me if I wanted money for my journey. I said No, I was amply provided. Then, said he, his servant should go with me to the post-town and furnish the money for my passage. I replied, "I shall be very glad if your servant will go with me to the post-town, because I am unacquainted with it; but you must allow me to pay for my fare myself, for if God calls me to the mission both what I have and am belong to the mission." Then he looked at me earnestly and said: "That God has called you to the mission service you must doubt no more." In later years this Alderman Haase became notorious on account of a sad defalcation, I am convinced, however, that what he said to me was uprightly spoken at the very least. He spoke to me as a member of the mission committee, and the admonition was in my later difficulties a source of strength to me.

Arrived in Hamburg, I found two pupils, with whom I was associated. As there was no domicile connected with the mission, we boarded and lodged with a Christian family. My installation with my fellow pupils, and the Christian people with whom we were on terms of intimacy, or those with whom we had any society, was different to what it had been in Bremen. There (in Bremen) Pastor Mallet had always laid it down with marked emphasis: He knows no one. I was received here, however, as still young in Christ, and my want of experience supplied in a friendly manner, and we got along very well together. In Hamburg, however, a refined Christianity was expected from me, and they

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were disappointed. I arrived in peasant's clothes, was unaccustomed to associate with townspeople, and inexperienced in Christian companionship. I do not know what the respective opinions on either side were, but I know that when I was presented in the evening to Candidate Brauer, who had most prominently undertaken the direction of our conduct, I felt I should have to call a halt here, and I was not mistaken.

One of my fellow pupils, Ochs, from the Wurtemberg country, belonged by birth to the cultivated classes, and I could well understand that he could not associate with me. The other, Trost, was of the peasantry, but had for a long time past acquired the manners of the townspeople, and was much older than myself. In his company I seemed little more than a boy. As neither thought it worth the trouble to assist me heartily, I was always afraid of committing a breach of good manners, and managed matters so much the worse and showed myself still more clownish.

But there were certain of the people of our circle who always gave the tone, and these must be considered for a time as connected with my fellow pupils. They were mostly, judged by the standard of city tone and city manners, as uncultivated as the peasantry. A young Jesus may have been the same. But I missed in them the free, joyful, Christlike life that I had found amongst the people in the Vilsen community. These people had to bear with me, but they let me understand that they neither thought me to be called to the service of a missionary nor especially adapted for it.

Candidate Brauer had especially undertaken our training, but he could only give us a small modicum of instruction, because a meeting of the General Assembly was shortly to be held in Bremen, and he had to make preparation for it; other candidates had therefore to render assistance.

I have yet a lively recollection of the impression that the first hour of instruction in the German language made upon me. For the first time I held a German grammar in my hand, and I was asked what an article was. I bethought myself that so far I had heard of no other articles than the "Three chief articles of the Christian religion." I could hardly believe these were meant, and I made answer, "No." The candidate (Moraht, later on

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Pastor at Molln) shook his head doubtfully, and as a consequence I could never forget that hour. My position became still more doubtful. At the coming General Assembly a decision had to be arrived at relative to the establishment of a missionary institute and the election of an inspector, in case the North German Missionary Society did not dissolve, which was what the people in our circle desired, and for which they prayed, on account of a separation from the Reformed Church, so that an exclusively Lutheran society might take its place. If the Candidate Brauer should be elected inspector I thought my position secure; but if a man after the hearts of the earnest Lutherans should be chosen, I thought I might take my leave; and that very nearly happened to me. I had on that account very considerable attacks of diffidence. I fought and prayed over it; but Pastor Kohler had said to me: "Beware of both pride and self-abasement." I remembered also the admonition of Alderman Haase: "We must not doubt that God has called you to missionary service." I often strengthened myself with the thought that Pastor Mallet had told me all this beforehand, although I did not understand it at the time.

Before I came to Hamburg I had never heard of religious discord. I was induced by the reading of the merciful missionary tract to take part in the conversion of the heathen, and by the same means became intimately acquainted with the dear, wide-hearted Pastor Kohler. Then, without my knowing exactly how it happened, the Spirit of God had enlightened me and converted me to Jesus Christ. Thereon I was made acquainted with the dear Pastor Mallet and other liberal Christian people in Bremen, and with just as liberal people in the community at Vilsen.

But Lutheran and Reformed differences of opinion were not taken into consideration. All were hearty loving disciples of Jesus Christ. I had lived through it myself, and it was as certain to me as the certainty that there is a Weser river, and that its waters, which I had so often gazed on with awestruck feelings, lose themselves in still greater waters, amongst which they pour themselves. Now, to convince me that the believers in the Reformed Church were less righteous disciples of Jesus Christ, or had a

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lesser part in the Kingdom of Heaven, than the believers in the Lutheran Church, was as impossible as to try to convince me that there was no water in the Weser river.

When the General Assembly, which was held in the week after Whitsuntide, at Bremen, was closed, it was resolved at once to establish a missionary institute at Bremen, and candidate Brauer was elected inspector. This choice was a great comfort and joy to me, but a great disappointment to others who had great influence on my fe]low pupils. Before a mission house could be built Brauer was to make a journey to Bremen and Basel personally to inspect the local mission houses. Dear Inspector Brauer was much misunderstood and abused. He had many enemies. He embittered the unbelievers by his blameless bearing towards infidelity (perhaps with more mildness than harshness), and the timid believers as well, because he joined himself, and with himself the Hamburg Mission Union to the Reformed North German Mission Union.

The Summer soon slipped by, while Brauer was away on his journey, and the pupils during this time were somewhat neglected. Candidates Moraht, Huber, and Reils gave us some lessons. Ochs those in the ancient languages, Trost and myself in the groundings of instruction, such as children of the upper classes have in a school for children. I learnt with eagerness, and as soon as the outer rind of my ignorance was pierced I learnt easily. I understood now what an article meant in grammar. I learnt to my satisfaction the difference between "dem" and "den," and other mistakes, over which I had formerly considerably puzzled myself. My teachers no longer shook their heads doubtfully over my unheard-of ignorance. I gained confidence again. My struggles, my wholesome disposition towards timidity, and anxiety being laid on one side, were overcome. I had enough to content me, both in Christ and in a satisfaction of my desire for learning.

At last Inspector Brauer came back from his journey, and then towards Autumn the mission house could be begun. At the same time Riemenschneider came from Berlin, and entered as a new pupil. We were soon intimate friends, for we both

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came from the committee in Bremen, were both of the Weser district, and spoke in leisure hours both the same Bremen Weser low German language. We had both great desire to learn, and both loved our inspector Brauer in our most inmost souls. Riemenschneider had had a better education than I had, and had later and better opportunities for self cultivation. But yet, by means of the instruction imparted to me in the summer in Hamburg, we both were on a level and made equal progress. In learning our lessons, so far as a matter of understanding them was concerned, I made more progress than he did, perhaps because I had greater health, and could bring greater exertion to bear on them; but in fineness of feeling, and in admiration of all that was noble and beautiful, he was my superior.

I had never been able to establish an intimate friendship with the other two pupils. The hindrance lay principally in the influences brought to bear upon them by timid Lutheran friends. One of them, Ochs, was thereby so much influenced against the inspector that it necessarily came to an open breach and division. Trost, the other, was a good-natured Christian, and less taken up with human institutions; but he was too old to be able to learn. It was impossible to him to learn a foreign language, which was unmistakeably needful for a missionary. He went, therefore, out of the mission house into the Rough house, where as overseer of the boys in their agricultural labours he was unmistakeably in his place, and it was a mistake to withdraw him later on from this occupation.

The years that I spent in the mission house--from October, 1837, till the end of 1842--were very pleasant years to me. Here I obtained in full measure, and always with a grateful heart, what in days of my peasant life, from childhood upwards, consciously and unconsciously, I had sought after with pain. Consciously I had sought an opening to obtain cultivation and knowledge; unconsciously, in my secret yearnings after something higher than knowledge, living faith in Jesus Christ and blessed communion with Him. Without this living faith opportunity for cultivation would not have given me full satisfaction. I learnt with eagerness, but I had enough sound sense to know

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that I could never become a learned man. He who begins in his six-and-twentieth year cannot possibly make up for what ought to be begun in his sixth year. And then in the schools for higher cultivation and the gymnasium, the thoughts are under control from childhood upwards, and brought into working order; but with me, my thinking faculties in the years of their quickest development had grown up wild and distorted amongst carts, ploughs and harrows, and corn waggons; at the threshing floor; at towns and villages, with dreamy thoughts in lonely woods and deserts. That could no more be altered. Wild flights of thought and contradictions to the right ones will unmarked make their appearance, even though afterwards seen through.

Pursuing the same line of thought, I must throw light in a different direction. It is not unknown to me that my present condition is a different one to what it was in earlier years. For he who has grown up to years of manhood in a natural state can only in his maturity work his way into the deeper contemplation of matters which another who has been under culture from childhood attains as a pupil in the High School. The former will therefore write differently when close on to seventy years of age than he would have done when between thirty and forty. Earlier, deeper impressions, which have been outlived, which one did not then know how to represent, obtain only in time of old age clear form and substance.

But yet I grieve in no wise that my earlier years were lived as a peasant; indeed, on no account would I have had it otherwise; for if I had been in a condition from childhood upwards to go through the proper courses, through better schools right up to the university, I should have looked upon it as a matter of course, and I should not have had the enduring consciousness of looking back with pleasure on the years of earnest seeking, ending in the joyful finding. Besides, I should have had less skill and inclination to educate these wild New Zealanders after they had first been converted and a desire for Christian manners and customs had been awakened in them, and make them into respectable members of human society, to effect which a cultivated teacher was less effective than an experienced helper. In addition, my

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youthful labours in the fresh air had given me sound health and a hardy constitution, which stood me in good stead in carrying this out. The principle instruction in the mission house was the daily Bible Lesson. The extracts from the Bible were first gone through daily in questions and answers. Our Bibles were interleaved with white paper, and the right translations and more correct readings, as well as a few annotations, were at once written down, and then learnt by heart. Then we had to work out the whole in writing and lay it before the inspector. He showed us then where we had not got the right meaning, at all events not to his satisfaction. Such a method of ground work leads to confidence in the knowledge of the Scriptures. Besides that, we had lessons in the German and English languages, geography, natural history (embracing a considerable range), algebra, drawing, trignometry, music. I could make nothing of the last subject. Later on we had special lessons, which were at once reduced to writing, of which the most important were those about world and Church history, the development of Christian life, and dogmatic religion.

In the German language our inspector began quite a new method with us, in accordance with Woerst's method of learning language; but as I had already become acquainted with the customary grammatical methods, and had found the key in them to what was to me before a sealed book, I could not adapt myself to the new method, and I always had to go back to the old one in order to understand the new one, which is what ought not to have been. The new philosophical way may have its advantages under certain circumstances, but I believe I should have been more firmly grounded in the German language if the instruction had been continued in the old-fashioned method.

As Riemenschneider and I showed a desire for it, our inspector began to give us instruction in Latin and Greek, which was a matter of great joy to us. Later on, however, it was decided at a General Assembly that instruction in the old languages must cease, because it was too much, and other necessary studies might be neglected. The General Assembly was so far right, for we had in our last years very much to make up, and it is not everybody who is strong enough

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to bear the necessary strain, and besides, we could never expect to become so accomplished in the ancient languages as to be able to do justice to the treasures of knowledge and of what is noble and beautiful preserved therein. But yet learning these languages gives one an advantage in learning other languages, so that one can fearlessly attack a quite foreign language, and that is of considerable value.

Besides, the ancient languages had become so dear to me that I could not give them up. I continued therefore the study of them in the quiet of my hours of reflection. My health was so good that I could endure prolonged exertions. This was not all. I bought an old Hebrew grammar and book from an old Jew bookseller, and began to learn Hebrew. I did not do it in secret, for that would not have been right; but I drew as little attention to it as possible, for fear that it might be forbidden. I never asked the inspector for assistance when I came to a dead stop, but wended my way to the candidates, amongst others to Candidate Valett. He had mentioned what I was doing in the city, where I had friends--for I sometimes made an excursion into the city--namely, Dr. Wyneken (lawyer), Pastor Von Hanffstengel, Rector Sattler, and others. One day at dinner the inspector said to me, "We have found out to-day what you are." Astonished, I asked what that could be. "That you are a Jew," was the answer. I noticed now that he referred to my Hebrew. After dinner he handed me a Hebrew Old Testament, grammar, and dictionary--all new books, gifts from my friends in the city. Before we were sent out I had got so far that, with some help from a dictionary, I could read easy Latin books. I could read the Greek New Testament because the translation was known to me. I nearly knew the first three chapters of the first book of Moses in Hebrew by heart, and began to read myself into the Old Testament in it. I flattered myself with the hope of becoming proficient in these languages, and to be able to make progress in them in my leisure hours in New Zealand, but that was a mistake. There were no leisure hours there, but work, always work. Later on my house and all my books were burnt. It was all over then with striving after learning; but I did not relinquish the idea without inward grief. I recognised,

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however, that I would do wrong if I desired new books in the old languages.

Outside the mission house I had no intimate friends in Hamburg. The zealots for Church doctrine were too repellant, and the evangelically inclined believer had enough sense to see that it would be ill-advised to withdraw us from our studies for the sake of friendly intercourse. It was different with more remotely dwelling missionary friends, who lived at some distance from Hamburg. We could only visit these in the holidays, or in short excursions, for the sake of recreation as at Easter time, and here real true friendship, as with family relations, could be cultivated with a few rich friends in the city I have already named. Other dear friends we had in the family of the merchant Schluter, Dr. Schatze, and Mr. Kober. Also in the castle, in the family of the squire (amtsmann) of Lindstow, we were always welcome. But what I enjoyed most of all such pleasant recreations was that with the dear pastor Luders and his dear wife, and their very dear little children, at Groden, near Ritzebuttel. The little children since then have long become big. When I was in New Zealand I learnt that Pastor Luders had received a call to the Vierlanden, near Hamburg.

It was a good regulation in our missionary institute that we were allowed to travel four weeks every Summer. Our views were widened, and we obtained confidence to move about unconstrainedly in strange places. The travelling was especially good for Riemenschneider and myself, for we had previously not been even outside our own home neighbourhood. We had seen no mountains or sea. Both mountains and sea from childhood I had earnestly wished to be allowed to see. It is true I had once or twice been in the neighbourhood of Nienburg and seen a part of the mountains near the Westphalian State as a blue streak in the far distant sky, and I had then wondered what it looked like both on and close to the mountains.

It was with high spirits that Riemenschneider and myself with a knapsack on our backs started out to see the world for the first time. We first went past Stade and Ritzebuttel, where we had a glimpse of the North Sea. But we did not find the

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impression of a flat surface, the gradually widening distant Elbe, so sublime as we had expected. Certainly we did not see the sea, but only the mouth of the Elbe. Thence we went past Bremen to my home in Hoyerhagen, where, however, we did not remain, for we wished to travel over a part of the Weser mountains. When we then came into the neighbourhood of Nienburg I could show Riemenschneider the blue streak of the mountains, the goal of our journey, in the far-away distance. At Gernsheim, on the road to Munden, we had the opportunity of seeing a glassworks and glassmaking.

The Weser mountains are small compared with other German mountains, but on us who had never seen mountains before they made a powerful impression. The wood-crowned heights with the beautiful lofty aisles of trees presented a magnificent sight. The Westphalian gate itself looks like an enormous breach in a dyke--only you must imagine a dyke five to eight hundred feet high. The Weser has here broken through a long mountain ridge in order to force its way out of the mountains into the plain, and be able to flow past the place where Bremen and Hoya stand. From the gate we mounted the mountain on the right hand (looking up the stream) 800ft. above the Weser. A metalled road led upwards through a dark avenue of trees. The soil of the wood was covered with blackberries on which the black fruit hung in quantity. Riemenschneider knew the blackberries well in baskets, as they are sold in the markets in Bremen, but he had never seen them growing naturally before. I could not get him away--he was for picking all the time. He had more pleasure in picking them than in buying them in Bremen.

A watchtower stood on the top, which we had seen already from a distance. In olden times it had been used for watching offensive operations. Arrived at the top, we found an old lady all alone sitting by the tower and spinning. She became quite lively when she saw us, and related she was a poor woman, and the authorities had given her the key of the tower to unlock it for visitors. She sat here many a day, and not a soul came up. We recompensed her at first with small silver, and then gave her a sustaining tract, with which she was overjoyed. From the top of the

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tower there was an enchanting view over the mountains into the valley of the Weser, and a wide view over the plain country, with the town and fortress, Preuss, in the neighbourhood of Munden. As the tower stands on a steep hill and overhangs the top, the feeling of standing up there all alone gave a little scope to one's imagination. It was entrancing--one seemed to sway in a starry air castle in the upper air.

We visited the old Schaumburg, the village of Buckeburg, and then went to Rinteln. We then visited the pastor of Langenholzhansen, to whom we had an introduction. I think his name was Ruckert, but I am not sure. He obliged us to take a walk with him into the mountains, for (said he) he was a child of the mountains, and it gave him great pleasure to show us dwellers in the plain the beauty of the mountains and valleys. With pleasant conversation, during which he showed us the shells embedded in the chalk cliffs, we wandered into a lively little valley--and there we were surprised. We saw living waters gushing up out of the earth--many springs only a little distance from one another. Each had a little well, out of which the clearest of water welled up, and then bubbled forth in a little channel, making a little natural river, which joined with another, and all united together made a brook, which in a short distance drove a mill. The ground between the springs was not at all swampy, but hard and dry. The water was so clear and inviting that we could not help lifting it up with our hands and drinking it.

After the description of this still lively recollection of our first holiday tour, it will not be necessary to describe the impressions experienced in other journeys. We made a journey through Holstein, where there are pleasant lakes, and went once to the Luneburg Common. It is now a wild waste common, with here and there solitary birds; and has, for one who has a feeling for the impressions of nature, something inspiring in it. Sometimes when we wished to make long journeys and had not much money, we found it advisable to part and journey alone, for then we could always reckon on hospitality. Friends of the mission, to whom it was easy to obtain introductions from place to place, were

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always overjoyed hospitably to entertain one, whereas there was not always room for two.

Accordingly I once made a journey through Mecklenburg and Pommerania to the island of Rugel, on which occasion I learnt to know and love many dear Christian friends. From the high chalk cliffs and rocks I obtained more magnificent sights of the ocean than the view the level banks of the Elbe had afforded. Once I made a long journey, mostly alone, too, through the Hartz mountains, and from there past Gottingen to Cassel, then to Thuringen and through the Thuringen forest, then back past Jena, Leipzig, Halle, and Magdeburg, and had the opportunity of seeing many cities and people. On this journey I used the privileges of hospitality, but to a small extent, for I was supplied with money from home, and I wished to exercise an independence in which I was somewhat wanting.

Good practice for practical missionary work was to be found in teaching in the Sunday School. In this way we could easily exercise ourselves, especially in teaching, and in preparation of comprehensible examples and narrations in biblical history acquired fluency of speech. Then we visited the scholars in their dwellings, and had an opportunity to become acquainted with their parents, and thus exercise ourselves in house visits in the spiritual interests of the occupants.


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