MISSIONS, Protestant Foreign. Foreign missions were not seriously undertaken by Prot estants until more than 200 years after the Ref ormation. This curious fact is sufficiently ex plained by the circumstances that the reformers were involved at the outset in a struggle not only for liberty but for life itself ; that Chris tendom did not yet control the whole of Europe; an aggressive Mohammedan power with its foot in Hungary and its fleets in the Mediterranean being still active in its purpose of conquest; and that the state alone com manded resources sufficient for enterprises of any kind in remote regions like the Indies, Africa or America. These circumstances of life in Europe in the 16th century materially lessen the importance of the question whether Luther and his followers did or did not see that a Christian Church must die which is not actively missionary in principle.
The first Protestant missions, perhaps natu rally, were state enterprises, unless we reckon as a mission the single effort of Heiling (1634) in Abyssinia, which ended with his murder 20 years later. In 1556 the Council of Geneva sent missionaries to Brazil with Coligny's colony, who perished with the colonists. In 1635 the Duke of Gotha sent a mission to Persia, and in 1663 again a mission to Abyssinia; both impractical embassies were quickly forgotten. The Dutch government, after gaining possession of the East Indian Archipelago in 1602, made a serious effort to Christianize the Malays, and the people of Ceylon and of Formosa, producing perma nent results in Java and the adjacent islands of the East Indian Archipelago only. The Dutch government published in 1685 the New Testa ment in Malay (the second of modern transla tions of Scripture into heathen languages; Eliot's translation into Mohican in 1663 having been the first), and the whole Bible in 1701. It has also maintained a Malay Protestant Church in Java, the Moluccas and Celebes, which now has about 400 ministers and 250,000 adherents, of whom probably one-half are descendants of the 17th century converts. A similar state mis
sionary enterprise undertaken by a Protestant government of Europe was the Danish mission to South India, founded by King Frederick IV of Denmark in 1706. The king sent out as the first missionaries to Tranquebar, Ziegerrbalg and Plutschau, Germans from Francke's school at Halle. Other Germans from the same sur roundings followed, notably Schultze and his later associate, Schwartz, making this Danish mission the first serious Protestant mission in India. Ziegenbalg translated the New Testa ment into Tamil (the third of modern transla tions of Scripture into heathen language), and before the end of the century from 30,000 to 50,000 Tamils had become Christians.
Another mission maintained by Frederick IV of Denmark was that commenced by Hans Egede in Greenland in 1721, and later trans ferred to the care of the Danish Missionary Society. This mission Christianized the whole Eskimo population in the vicinity of the Danish trailing stations.
The British government showed a similar sense of responsibility for missionary work in its colonies, and the duty of preaching to the North American Indians was laid down in the charters of Virginia (1584) and Massachusetts (1628). Parliament even went so far as to con sider in 1648 the endowment of a state foreign missionary enterprise. It voted a grant in aid of the "Society for the Propagation of the Gos pel in New England," formed in 1649 and still existing under the name of the New England Company, which educates Indians in Canada with the revenues of the ancient government grant. John Eliot of Roxbury,l'honias Mayhew of Martha's Vineyard, and others through this government solicitude received state support in their missionary work for Indians. The British East India Company, moreover, was required by its charter in 1698 to maintain chaplains at its stations, and to instruct its Hindu servants in Christian doctrine.