--_Phillips Brooks_
THE MISSIONARY'S DEFENSE
The following occurrence was related by Missionary von Asselt, a Rhenish
missionary in Sumatra from 1856-76, when on a visit to Lubeck:--
"When I first went to Sumatra, in the year 1856 I was the first European
missionary to go among the wild Battas, although twenty years prior, two
American missionaries had come to them with the gospel; but they had been
killed and eaten. Since then no effort had been made to bring the gospel to
these people, and naturally they had remained the same cruel savages.
"What it means for one to stand alone among a savage people, unable to make
himself understood, not understanding a single sound of their language, but
whose suspicious, hostile looks and gestures speak only a
too-well-understood language,--yes, it is hard for one to realize that. The
first two years that I spent among the Battas, at first all alone and
afterward with my wife, were so hard that it makes me shudder even now when
I think of them. Often it seemed as if we were not only encompassed by
hostile men, but also by hostile powers of darkness; for often an
inexplicable, unutterable fear would come over us, so that we had to get up
at night, and go on our knees to pray or read the Word of God, in order to
find relief.
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