and he said, “It (mission) will be better taken care of than it has hitherto been.”³⁰ Rhenius took over and before long his energetic labours produced abundant fruit. The Old Mission was placed under him. By the time his connections with the Church Mission Society terminated after almost sixteen years, he and the various allied agencies he had founded, had converted nearly ten thousand people.

Rhenius was Lutheran, both by birth and education. His views on Church, government and administration were chiefly those of the English Dissenters. After his death, his connections with the Church Missionary Society were dissolved. Later, the Mission, he founded was reorganised in some important ways.

The Tirunelvely Mission for which he laboured is perpetually indebted to him for its progressive views. His system of working outshone earlier ones.

Caldwell believes that he was, “The first Missionary connected with the Church of England Mission in India, by whom caste was in any degree practically repressed, female education systematically promoted, or societies established amongst Native Christians for religious and charitable purposes.³¹

The custom - still prevalent to a certain degree in the Church of England at Tirunelvely - of assembling the Christians of every Christian village, every morning and evening for group prayer was started by Rhenius.

Of Rhenius’ early history, nothing much is known and our knowledge is scrappy. He was born in Germany, in 1789 and occupied some government post till 1802.

Sometime in 1810, he joined the Lutheran Mission at Berlin. Two years later, in 1812, he was ordained. Later, he proceeded to England and for a year and a half was working for the

30. Records of the Early History of the Tirunelvely Mission of The S.P.C.K. & S.P. G.F.P. By Rev. R. Caldwell, 1881, P. 200.

31. Ibid, Pp. 226-227.