The Link-brothers and colleagues. Standing (from left to right): Frederick
Smit, John Dirk, Peter Links, Johannes Boyse.
Sitting (from left to right): Jacom Jagers, Barnabas Shaw Links, Jan Kriel.
Jacob Links (c. 1799-1825).
More Educated Than a Boer Farmer
In 1819 in a letter to mission headquarters in London, the Evangelist Jacob
Links wrote the following:
Before our English teacher came, we were all sitting in the shadow of death. The
farmers around us told us that if we prayed they would flog us. Some of them
threatened to shoot us dead, should we Namacquas call the name of the Lord. They
said we were not men, but baboons, and that God was blasphemed by the prayers of
Namacquas, and would punish us for it. Now we thank the Lord that he has taught
us that he has also given his Son over to death for us. We hear that English
people pray for us, and hope they will not forget us. The society of all praying
people are by me saluted. An unworthy Namacqua [...]
When he wrote this letter, Jacob Links had been living with his parents and
siblings for quite some time at the Leliefontein mission station in Little
Namaqualand. He was about twenty years old and a member of a WMMS congregation.
In the congregation which was founded by the brothers Abraham and Christian
Albrecht, he heard the Christian message for the first time. In his letter, he
went on to report that out of desperation he ate the pages from an old Dutch
hymnbook to find peace, and climbed onto the roof of an old house to be closer
to God. It was only since he recognised Christ as the true way and as a friend
of sinners that he would “feel sweetness for my soul, whilst I speak about the
Gospel, and my own experience in the Lord.”
From Leliefontein, he undertook a journey lasting several weeks into the
surrounding area to preach to the people he met. In as early as 1822 he was a
“Native Assistant Missionary”. For the first time, he went on a mission journey
with WMMS missionary James Archbell to Great Namaqualand, today’s Namibia. On
another occasion, he travelled with Archbell to Cape Town and then sailed to
Walfishbay. He was still a young man, but already had a wealth of experience: he
had stood up to European settlers and endured the ridicule of his own family for
his conversion to Christianity. He could read and write (unlike many European
settlers around him), could speak several languages and, in addition to the
important city of Cape Town, had already seen much of his surroundings. At the
beginning of the 19th century, this was totally out of the ordinary for a young
man of his age.
How Jacob Links’ new mindset shaped an encounter with one of the European
farmers in his immediate vicinity was conveyed by WMMS missionary Barnabas Shaw.
(In addition to Jacob Links, the Evangelists Jan Links and Hendrik Smit also
took part in the discussion):
Farmer: What kind of singing and praying is this you have had?
Jacob Links: I think master, you only come to mock at us, as many of the farmers
say we ought not to have the gospel; but here is a chapter (Jacob Links reads
from John, Chapter 3). Say who are the persons that must be born again? (Jacob
Links hands the New Testament to the farmer).
Farmer: Myne ogen zyn niet goed (my eyes are not so good), but I suppose Jesus.
Jacob Links: No master, no such thing; Jesus Christ saves all sinners, and that
we must be born again of the Spirit, or we cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.
Jan Links: But master, you once told me that our names did not stand in the
book, and that the gospel did not, therefore, belong to us Namacaua. Will you
now tell me master, whether the name of Dutchman or Englishman, is to be found
in it?
No answer.
Jacob Links: Master, you who are called Christi menoh (Christians), call us
heathens. That is our name. Now I find the book says, that Jesus came as a light
to lighten the Heidene (Gentiles). So we read our name in the book.
The farmer keeps silent.
Hendrik Smit: That master cannot understand many things in the book, is not
strange; Paul says, “The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of
God”.
Farmer: Ik ben geen zendeling (I am not a missionary), therefore I cannot
explain scripture passages.
Jacob Links: But master, do you ever teach your slaves and servants anything of
the gospel?
Farmer: Neen, volstrekt niets (No, certainly nothing at all), for were they
taught, it would make them equally as wise as myself.
This dialogue showed the self-confidence of the Evangelists. As farm workers or
servants, they would have been exposed to the farmer and would not have allowed
themselves to speak so frankly. Perhaps in their conversation, they felt secure
and confident at the mission station and by the presence of Shaw. Regardless,
however, the Evangelists’ way of arguing showed a self-esteem that could not be
intimidated by the farmer’s aggressive demeanour. Their pride arose from their
knowledge and appropriation of the values that the farmer until then thought
were exclusively part of his identity as a “Dutchman”. With their arguments,
they beat the European at his own game and unmasked him as illiterate in his
narrow-minded stupidity. Perhaps the conversation did not “actually” take place
in this way. However, the record already reveals the profile of an Evangelist
which the sources of the next decades will reveal time and again.
What characterised Jacob Links in particular, were his experiences with his new
faith and the new worldview that accompanies it. Being prepared to accept major
disadvantages for his faith showed that his new associations are not only
motivated by material benefits. The faith of Evangelists like Jacob Links’, had
both cognitive and strong emotional elements. What the Comaroffs called a
“veritable flood [of tears]”, and was interpreted by the missionaries as the
work of the Holy Spirit, was characteristic of Christian congregations in
southern Namibia during this period. Missionaries from the beginning of the 19th
century time and again reported the strong emotional involvement of the Oorlam
and Nama during sermons and Christian rituals. The unbaptised broke out into a
“general, loud wailing and weeping” when hands were laid on the baptised after
baptism. During Sunday prayers in Jerusalem for example, many of the worshippers
were “moved so amazingly” that they often broke out into “a terrible wailing and
crying […] so that I was often unable to speak or sing because I could not hear
my own words, let alone those of others, due to the terrible crying. This began
several times when they saw me coming with the Bible and hymnbook under my arm.”
It seemed that the deepest soul of many Oorlam and Nama of the early 19th
century was made to resonate by parts of Christian songs and texts. Or as Chinua
Achebe puts it in his famous novel “Things Fall Apart”:
It was not the mad logic of the Trinity that captivated him. [...] It was the
poetry of the new religion, something felt in the marrow. The hymn about
brothers who sat in darkness and in fear seemed to answer a vague and persistent
question that haunted his young soul. [...] The words of the hymn were like the
drops of frozen rain melting on the dry palate of the panting earth.
Jacob Links travelled to Namibia for a third time, on this occasion with
Johannes Jager and the WMMS missionary William Threlfall. While attempting to
open up new mission areas, all three were deviously murdered by their companions
in August 1825 near Warmbad. Only months later did Jacob Links’ wife and family
learn of the tragedy.
The murder of two Evangelists would probably have left the outside world unmoved
had they not been accompanied by a European missionary. The event prompted the
Cape authorities to reconsider their policy towards the region. Several attempts
were made to involve willing chiefs in a peace plan in which the mission
stations and their Christian members would act as a kind of buffer. The plans
were, however, never implemented and after the European missionaries left the
region, their co-workers stayed there alone. Some of them continued to work of
their own accord.
With these few highlights of the life of Jacob Links, the Methodist Evangelist
of the 19th century, the structures within which other Evangelists would be
working in the decades to come, are becoming clear. Their confrontation with
racism, both in a personal and structural way, runs like a thread through the
history of the Evangelists. This can be shown by countless examples from the
long list of Evangelists. Only two examples (Johannes Links and Jacob Links) are
to be mentioned here. Both are Evangelists from the Links family, whose members,
75 and 100 years later respectively, and under different conditions, had similar
experiences as Jacob Links had in his conversation with the farmer as quoted
earllier.