Karl Gutzlaff (1801-1851) Continental Pioneer
Preparation.Karl Gutzlaff was born into a devout German family. He dedicated his life to Christ in June 1821 while studying at a mission school in Berlin, and in 1826 the Netherlands Missionary Society sent him to Indonesia. Gutzlaff was the first of many missionaries from Continental Europe to travel to China. During his career, he used tracts produced by Robert Morrison, clashed and cooperated with Elijah Bridgman, and inspired Hudson Taylor to live Chinese-style in the interior. He always attempted much, often listened little, and experienced both success and failure.
Vocational Ministry.
While in Indonesia, Gutzlaff met a British missionary working among overseas Chinese. Gutzlaff felt God’s call to China so intensely that he sought adoption into a Chinese family, mastered several Chinese dialects, and adopted Chinese styles of dressing and eating. He distributed medicines and tracts given to him by Robert Morrison on several voyages along the coast of China, often acting as a translator for opium smugglers at the same time. This role, along with his later service as a British colonial official, proved to be another unfortunate link between missions, opium and imperialism.
After the First Opium War, Gutzlaff formed the Chinese Union. Foreign missionaries were still restricted to the five treaty ports, so Gutzlaff wanted to take advantage of the new freedom that Chinese had to take the gospel into the interior of their country. Gutzlaff’s 300 Chinese evangelists soon began sending back reports of thousands of converts, at a time when most foreign missionaries counted converts on their fingers. Sadly, the reports proved to be a hoax, and the Chinese Union collapsed.
Gutzlaff left a more permanent Christian legacy among the Hakka, a linguistically distinct Han group that had migrated from north China centuries earlier. His reports inspired German missionaries to work among the Hakka in eastern Guangdong. In combination with Chinese evangelists trained by missionaries in Guangzhou, they planted a strong church among the Hakka that continues to the present day, both inside China and among overseas Chinese.
Family Ministry.In addition to Gutzlaff’s contributions to the Hakka church and to his spiritual heir, Hudson Taylor, there is a fascinating story about a blind Chinese girl cared for by the Gutzlaffs. Karl’s first wife died in Thailand in 1831, and he married Mary Wanstall in 1834. While living in Macau, they began rescuing and educating blind children. They sent four blind girls to England for further education, including a girl they named Agnes. Mary died in 1849, and Karl just two years later, with the Chinese Union scandal weighing heavily on his mind. Agnes did not return to China until 1856, but she spent the last twenty years of her life there, educating the blind, sharing the gospel and supporting herself by teaching English to wealthy Chinese. When she died, her will directed that her estate be used to found the Gutzlaff Hospital in Shanghai. How Karl and Mary must have smiled from heaven!
Quotation.Elijah Bridgman wrote of Gutzlaff, “Perhaps it is well that there are some such men in the world; & perhaps too it is equally well that they are few.”