A History of the Moravian ChurchHutton, J. E. (Joseph Edmund)
Religion
A History of the Moravian Church
Hutton, J. E. (Joseph Edmund)
Moravian Church -- History
We pass to another field. As the Count was on his visit to the Court in
Copenhagen, he saw two little Greenland boys who had been baptized by
the Danish missionary, Hans Egede; and as the story of Antony Ulrich
fired the zeal of Leonard Dober, so the story of Egede's patient labours
aroused the zeal of Matthew Stach and the redoubtable Christian David
{1733.}. In Greenland Egede had failed. In Greenland the Brethren
succeeded. As they settled down among the people they resolved at first
to be very systematic in their method of preaching the Gospel; and to
this end, like Egede before them, they expounded to the simple Eskimo
folk the whole scheme of dogmatic theology, from the fall of man to the
glorification of the saint. The result was dismal failure. At last the
Brethren struck the golden trail. The story is a classic in the history
of missions. As John Beck, one balmy evening in June, was discoursing on
things Divine to a group of Eskimos, it suddenly flashed upon his mind
that, instead of preaching dogmatic theology he would read them an
extract from the translation of the Gospels he was now preparing. He
seized his manuscript. "And being in an agony," read John Beck, "He
prayed more earnestly, and His sweat was as it were great drops of blood
falling down to the ground." At this Kajarnak, the brightest in the
group, sprang forward to the table and exclaimed, "How was that? Tell me
that again, for I, too, would be saved." The first Eskimo was touched.
The power was the story of the Cross. From that moment the Brethren
altered the whole style of their preaching. Instead of expounding
dogmatic theology, they told the vivid human story of the Via Dolorosa,
the Crown of Thorns, the Scourging, and the Wounded Side. The result was
brilliant success. The more the Brethren spoke of Christ the more eager
the Eskimos were to listen.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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