VANDERKEMP, John T

[s. 786] : Born in 1747 at Rotter dam, Holland, where his father was pastor of the Dutch Reformed Church; studied at the University in Leyden; spent 16 years in the army, where he was captain of horse and lieutenant of dragoons. After leaving the army he went to Edinburgh, where he became distinguished for his attainments in the natural sciences and modern languages. He then returned to Holland and practised medicine with great succe . He was converted as a result of ike death of his wife and child by a shocking accident. He then offered himself to the LMS for service In 769 South Africa, was ordained, and in 1798 he sailed with three others for Africa, in a convict ship. On the voyage he and his companions ministered to the spiritual as well as the temporal wants of Arriving at Cape Town in March, the convicts. 1799, Dr. Vanderkemp commenced at once to labor among the natives while at the same time he awakened a deep interest in mi ions among In May he left Cape Town for the Europe ans. After some weeks he reached the the interior. Great Fish River, where he obtained permi ion from the native king Geiha to open a school. The king ordered him to leave a year later, and with some 60 followers he retired to Graaf Reinet, arriving there early in 1801. His work was especially among the Hottentots, of whom he soon collected a congregation of over 200. His efforts in behalf of this despised race aroused the enmity of the colonists, but by his wise conciliatory policy they were pacified, and he continued his work unmolested. Buildings were erected and Graaf Reinet was made a permanent station, but the privileges afforded to the natives at that station bade fair to stir up another rebellion, and Dr. Vanderkemp saw the nece ity of removing the Hottentots to a place of safety, where they would form a colony by themselves. The governor gave the mi ion a grant of land near Algoa Bay, to which the mi ionaries removed in 1802. The station of Bethels dorp was founded in 1803, and in 1810 the number of people who a embled there for worship was fully a you sand. The cruelties which the Hottentots had so often suffered at the hands of their Boer masters excited the deepest pity in the heart of the doctor, and it is said that in the course of three years he paid no le than 85,000 for the redemption ^ from bondage, and by his exertions, with the help of other mi ionaries, the Hot ten Almost the last public tots were finally set free. service which the doctor was able to render that people was in testifying in the courts at the Cape to the wrongs practised upon the Hottentots. He died on the 15th of December, 1811, in the midst of active preparation to enter upon a new field of work in Madagascar. It was said of him that as combining natural talents, extensive learning, elevated piety, ardent zeal, disinterested benevolence, unshaken perseverance, unfeigned humility, and primitive simplicity, Dr. Vanderkemp has perhaps never been equaled since the days of the Apostles. As Mr. Moffat wrote about him: “He came from a university to teach the alphabet to the poor, naked Hottentot and Kafir; from the society of nobles to a ociate with beings of the lowest grade of humanity; from stately mansions to the filthy hovel of the greasy African; from the army to instruct the fierce savage in the tactics of a heavenly warfare under the banner of the Prince of Peace; from the study of medicine to become a guide to the Balm of Gilead and the Physician there; and, finally, from a life of earthly honor and ease to be exposed to perils of waters, of robbers, of his own countrymen, of the heathen, in the city, in the wilderne .” His work His period of service was short. was the most difficult sort of pioneer’s work, for its enemies were nominal Christians quite as often as heathen savages. But his work remained. Those who later built on the foundations prepared by Vanderkemp were the first to acknowledge the value r,i the influence of this devoted man. of slaves VAN DYCK, 49 Cornel i us Van Alan: Born in Van DycU Kinder hook, Columbia County, New York, August 13, 1818. Died Novembei 13, 1895. He secured a medical education at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, and at the age of twenty one was appointed medical mi ionary of the in Syria. Only one medical mi ionary, Dr. Asa Dodge, had preceded him in Syria, and Dr. Dodge, who arrived in February, 1833, died in Jerusalem January, 1835, so that for five years, until the arrival of Dr. Van Dyck, there was no American physician in this land. Dr. Van Dyck arrived in Beirut April 2, 1840, and spent the month of May in a tour in Northern Syria with Me rs. Thomson and Beadle, going to Tripoli, Hums, Hamath, Antioch, Latakia and ABCFM Aleppo. In July he went to Jerusalem with three of the mi ionary families, and in his absence Beirut was bombarded by the allied English and Austrian fleets. In January, 1841, he returned to Beirut and spent the summer in Deir el Komr, with Dr. Eli Smith and Mr. Wolcott, opening a school for the sons of the Druze chiefs. In June, 1843, he removed to Abeih, with Dr. Thomson, remaining there for eight years, teaching in the newly-founded Abeih Seminary, making journeys to Southern Lebanon, Merj Aiyun, and Hasbeiya, attending the sick in all parts of the field, translating and writing text-books for the schools in Arabic, and studying the Arabic language with constant a iduity and enthusiasm. In the wars of 1840 and 1845 he was called to attend the wounded and suffering. On January 14, 1846, he was ordained in Abeih to the Christian ministry. During the year 1847 a committee on behalf of the mi ion prepared and sent to the United States an appeal in behalf of undertaking the translation of the Bible in the Arabic language, the work to be entrusted to Dr. Eli Smith. The document is long, and now of great historical value. The work of Bible translation was begun in 1848-49 by Dr. Eli Smith, who continued the preparatory work for eight years, until his death, January 11, 1857, but stated before his decease that he was only willing to be responsible for the translation of the first ten chapters of Genesis, which had been corrected and printed under his own direction. In 1851 Drs. Thomson and Van Dyck were transferred to the Sidon station, having the care Dr. Van of the Hasbeiya and Tyre districts. Dyck stated that he wished to “give himself now For more fully to the ministry of the Word.” the following six years his labors were abundant, and Dr. Thomson stated that their “station was on horseback.” A church was organized in Hasbeij’a, a Bible cla was maintained in Sidon, attended by large numbers of the people. At this time his well-known Arabic geography was published. In 1853 he visited the United States with his In July, 1854, he returned to Syria, and family. on the decease of Dr. Eli Smith, in January, 1857, he was called by the unanimous vote of his mi ion and the Mi ionary Board to take up the great work of the Arabic translation of the Scriptures. God, in His wise providence, had been preparing him for seventeen years for this work. He had read and mastered a whole library of Arabic books, poetry, grammar, rhetoric, logic, history, geography and medicine; had published Arabic Vaniyaiubadi Vinton books on algebra, geometry, higher mathematics, geography, logic and prosody, besides religious tracts and sermons; and in the colloquial Arabic he was without an equal. Using Dr. Smith’s work as a basis he began the work de novo, and after two and a half years of labor the Reference New Testament was printed, March 29, 1860. The printing of the Old Testament was finished on August 22, 1864, and the printing of the whole Arabic Bible was finished in March, 1865. The event was celebrated in the old American Pre building, and in the upper room where Dr. Smith had labored on the translation eight years, and Dr. Van Dyck eight years more, the a embled mi ionaries gave thanks to God for the completion of this arduous work. The printing of the Arabic Scriptures was now carried on, but the pre could not keep up with the demand, and Dr. Van Dyck went to New York in 1865 and spent two years in electrotyping the royal octavo edition of the Bible, and during his stay gave instruction in Hebrew in the Union Theological Seminary. On his return to Beirut, in the fall of 1867, he superintended the electrotyping of various editions of the Arabic Bible, conducted the weekly Arabic journal, and entered upon his duties as profe or in the medical department of the Syrian Protestant College, continuing his connection with it in abundant labors, in teaching the theory and practise of medicine and chemistry, founding the Astronomical Observatory, and witne ing the growth and development of the institution, and the graduation of 12 medical cla es, until his resignation. His labors in the St. John’s and the Greek hospitals are too well known to need more than mere mention here. He labored in Syria over 55 years. 788