Marcus Van den BERG was born at Groningen in Holland on the 15th January 1846. Being of Jewish parentage he was intended for, and educated to become a Rabbi, but having come under the influence of a Missionary of the Presbyterian Church he was convinced of the truth of the Christian faith, and at great personal sacrifice he abandoned Judaism, embraced Christianity and was received by baptism into the Presbyterian Church at Norwood in England. He was then 27 years of age.

He arrived in South Africa in 1873 and for some time laboured in connection with a Railway Mission. A Study of Methodist Literature and Doctrine led him eventually to join the Wesleyan Methodist Church. After a term of service as Catechist, at McGregor, in the Robertson Circuit, he was admitted in 1880 a Probationer for the Wesleyan Ministry, and received into Full Connexion at the Conference of 1883.

 

The whole of his active Ministry was spent in the Coloured Mission Circuits in the Cape District. During his 13 years in which he travelled in the Cape Town and Mowbray Circuit the scattered Coloured congregations in Cape Town were united in the Buitekant Street Church and the work consolidated and extended. Previous to that he had charge of the Robertson Circuit and afterwards was Superintendent of the Somerset West and Strand Circuit for a period of four years. At the Conference of 1900 he became a Supernumerary and retired to Roodepoort in the Transvaal, where, with undiminished zeal, he laboured  as opportunity offered, chiefly among the Coloured and Native population, with greatacceptance. During 1907 his health began to fail. Early in the present year it became necessary for him to undergo an operation, an on the 31st of January he passed away in Johannesburg Hospital.

He was devotedly attached to the doctrines and discipline of the Weslyan Methodist Church – a man of studios habits and possessed with a burning zeal for the salvation of souls. He laboured with untiring energy, was a master of the Dutch language (his mother tongue), had considerable linguistic skill, and his pulpit ministrations were of a high order. He was a good man, of reverent and pouis spirit and brotherly affection, and he cheerfully suffered the loss of much for the excellency of the knowledge of Jesus Christ his Lord.

Transcribed from Minutes of Wesleyan Methodist Conference 1908 Pages 6 & 7