Not only Luther but other reformers in other lands were concerned chiefly with the heathenized Church about them. For it they labored and prayed. The business of laying a sound foundation absorbed them. That the foundation was well laid, the missions of later centuries will show. In the words of Doctor Gustav Warneck: “_The Reformation not only restored the true substance of missionary preaching by its earnest proclamation of the Gospel, but also brought back the whole work of missions to Apostolic lines._” [Sidenote: The Beginnings.] There is always a difference of opinion about the actual beginnings of a great work. Modern missions offer no exception to this rule. General historians are unwilling to find any indication that even in the Seventeenth Century the Church of the Reformation felt an obligation to heathen nations. Lutheran historians, searching the matter more thoroughly and with a less prejudiced spirit, have discovered various individuals to whom missions were a matter of deep concern. [Sidenote: In Europe and Asia.] As early as 1557, _Primus Truber_ translated into the language of the Croats and Wends to the east of Germany the Gospel, Luther’s Catechism and a book of spiritual songs. In 1559, Gustavus Vasa, King of Sweden, and later Gustavus Adolphus, endeavored to bring into the Lutheran Church the Lapps, who, though nominally Roman Catholic, had been in reality heathen, but the effort was not successful. Denmark, which had acquired possessions in India, provided for a minister to the colony, whose chief concern should be the spiritual needs of the natives. The creditable undertaking was brought to naught by the wickedness of the appointed ministers. In 1658, _Eric Bredal_, a Norwegian bishop, began preaching to the Lapps. Some of his assistants were killed; he died and his work came to no earthly fruitage. But the missionary spirit was none the less clearly exhibited. [Sidenote: In Africa.] In 1634 _Peter Heiling_ of Lübeck journeyed to Abyssinia to try to rouse once more the churches of the East whose spiritual life had almost ceased. There, after translating the New Testament into Amharic, he died a martyr.