History the inner mission in all church terri-
of the tories of Evangelical Germany as well
Society, as among the Germans in foreign countries. Its design was not to control the work, but to give suggestions and impulses for organized effort in different parts of the land. It instituted and superintended congresses for the inner mission (the thirty-first held in 1901) in various parts of Germany, which became the centers
RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Inner Austria Innere Mission
and starting-points for all efforts relating to this sphere. Independently not a little was contributed to the development of the inner mission by new interest in the circulation of Christian literature early in the nineteenth century; by the zeal for the erection of asylums for children awakened by Johann Daniel Falk and Christian Heinrich Zeller (qq.v.); by the efforts of Pastor Theodor Fliedner (q.v.); by the organization of the Gustav-Adolf-Verein (q.v.) in 1832; and by the impulse given to Christian womanhood by Amalie Wilhelmine Sieveking (q.v.). The growth of the inner mission was favored also by the peculiar development of history: the rising forces of anarchism and social democracy called forth the energies of a countermovement to rechristianize the masses; and phenomena like the portentous increase of crime, the growing demoralization of youth, and the spread of suicide confirmed the conviction of its need, even in circles which, in their zeal for orthodoxy, in the beginning had opposed the new movement. The name was due to Wichern. He refused to turn the Rauhes Haus at Hamburg into an institution for training missionaries for the heathen, realizing that there was a large field at home, and that the home and foreign agencies were of sufficient importance to be kept separate. The " inner mission " naturally occurred to him as the designation for this peculiar domestic work. The phrase had also been used' by Dr. Friedrich Lticke in a publication entitled Die zwiefache, innere und aussere, Mission der evangelischen Kirche (Hamburg, 1843), but with him it referred principally to the service which the Evangelical Church owes to its members in the Diaspora (q.v.).
The inner mission is essentially the continuation or resumption of the original missionary activity of the Church within the Christian world 3. Its in order to conquer the remaining non- Objects and Christian or anti-Christian elements.
Agencies. Its basis is faith in Jesus Christ, and the love of one's neighbor as the outgrowth of that faith. Its aim is to reclaim those who have gone astray and fallen from Christ, to strengthen the weak, to nurse the sick, to conquer the powers which in the midst of Christianity obstruct the building up of Christ's kingdom in individual souls as well as in the family, congregation, Church, State, and society. The means through which the inner mission works is attestation of the seeking, admonishing, punishing, and pitying love of God through the testimony of Christ in law and Gospel, by preaching, circulating literature, and charitable work. In so far as spiritual distress is connected with disease or similar evils, the cure of bodily defects belongs to the work of the inner mission. But it is a wide-spread error to identify the inner mission with the great complex of associations and institutions which occupy themselves with works of Christian charity. Such associations and institutions are indispensable for the economy of the inner mission, but they in no way exhaust its content. All purely philanthropic and humane efforts are different from the activity of the inner mission in so far as they are not determined by the motives of Christian salvation and
the aims of the kingdom of God. The institution of Deacons and Deaconesses (q.v.) is also to be distinguished from the inner mission in so far as their charitable work is necessary and justified under all circumstances and at all times, as long as there are individual members in need of bodily and spiritual nurture, and in so far as it belongs to the church organization, while the inner mission aims at the life of the people and its temporary defects which can not be reached by the church organization.
As soon as professional workers especially trained
for the duties of the inner mission came forth under
Wichern's influence, the demand in-
4. History creased for house-fathers of asylums to 1870. and educational institutions, and new
spheres of activity opened, such as city missions (1848); the Herbergen zur Heimat (1854) ; the service of overseers in Prussian prisons (1856); the care of the sick, mentally defective, and epileptics (1860); and the service of field deacons in the Danish and later wars (see City Missions; Herbergen zur Heimat; Prison Reform; War). Beside the institution for missionaries in Hamburg, others arose in Duisburg (1845), Zullcher and Neinstedt (1850), Berlin (1858), and elsewhere. Other agencies which received attention were young men's societies (1838), the church care of the poor, and Sunday-schools (at Hamburg as early as 1825, further expansion especially since 1862) . Of special efforts of the central committee before the death of Wichern (1872) may be mentioned: the provision of pastoral care for the laborers who built the great railroads in the fifties; care of emigrants and Evangelical Germans in foreign countries; efforts to promote Sunday observance; the organization of prison associations and asylums for dismissed prisoners; the attack on gambling-houses (1854-67) ; the sifting of Christian literature and the attack on secular literature hostile to Christianity in the beginning of the sixties; and the organization of numerous provincial and state societies for the inner mission ( Rhenish- Westphalian Society 1849; others like the Southwest German Conference between 1864 and 1868).
Since 1870 it has been especially the moral and social conditions caused by the development of
industry and the extraordinary growth
5. History of cities that have called forth the since 1870. efforts of the inner mission. A memorial address of the central committee
in 1869 opened the battle against public immorality. The cooperation of the Evangelical Church and its inner mission in the solution of the labor question was discussed at the Stuttgart conference in 1869, and at other conferences. The social question was debated at Dresden in 1875, at Danzig in 1876, and in other cities. The efforts of the inner mission have been directed against the allurements of social democracy and its theoretical and practical materialism, which began to flourish toward the end of the seventies. Among the Christian friends of the people Adolf Stocker, the court preacher of Berlin, especially, by the effective reorganization of the Berlin city mission and his energetic measures beginning in 1878, rendered great services to the
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