John’s new plan was to go to Germany and see Count Zinzendorf, and the Moravians at Herrnhuth. He thought he might learn more from them than from anyone in England. He went first to Salisbury, to say good-bye to his mother, who was still living there with Patty and her husband. John and Charles had both told their mother of the great change that had happened to them. Mrs. Wesley thought they spoke very oddly, but as she did not quite understand what they meant, she told John she was glad he was now so happy in the knowledge of Christ. And when John read her a paper in which he had written what he now believed, she said she agreed with it. She did not, however, really understand it, for when Samuel showed her the same paper after John was gone to Germany, and explained to her that it was quite wrong, she believed what Samuel said, and became unhappy about John and Charles, thinking them much mistaken. Mr. Ingham went with John to Germany. Charles stayed in England, as he had become curate to a good man in Islington, and he found that great numbers of people came to hear the gospel preached. One reason why so many people were ready to listen was that George Whitefield had been preaching in London before he sailed for America, and many had become anxious to be saved.
We see how God orders all the plans of His servants. He sowed the seed by George Whitefield, and now He sent Charles Wesley to reap the harvest.
You will like to hear what happened to John in Germany. On the 15th of June, 1738, he and Mr. Ingham landed at Rotterdam. The next day they arrived at Ysselstein, where they were taken in by a friend of Count Zinzendorf’s, Baron Frederick Watteville.
Baron Frederick had seemed when he was a boy at school to have a desire to love and serve God. He was at that time a friend and companion of Count Zinzendorf, who was about his own age. But when he grew older and went into the world he became careless and ungodly. He was led, through the means of his old friend Count Zinzendorf, to think of his soul, and was brought to repentance and to faith in Christ. He was now a very earnest servant of God. Wesley spent a very pleasant day with Baron Frederick and a number of Moravians. They told him of the work which God was doing in many parts of the world; they all joined together in prayer, and in praise, and it was a very happy time. After this they went to many other places along the Rhine, and at last arrived at Frankfort, where Mr. Böhler, Peter’s father, gave them a warm welcome. The next day they went on to Marienborn, to pay a visit to Count Zinzendorf. The Count’s home was, you know, in Saxony, close to the village of Herrnhuth, but he had been banished from his country by the King, who did not like him to receive strangers from other countries, especially from Austria. He had been sentenced to lose all his property; but he seems to have foreseen this, and had therefore ten years before sold his estates to his wife, so that he now had nothing to lose. He had been at Marienborn only a little while when Wesley came there. He had taken the castle as a home for his family, intending himself to go as a missionary to the West Indies, and shortly after Wesley’s visit he went there, having first seen a little settlement of Moravians formed near Marienborn. This new settlement was called Herrnhaag.
John was very much pleased with all he saw at Marienborn. He wrote to Samuel: “God has given me at length the desire of my heart. I am with a church whose conversation is in heaven, in whom is the mind that was in Christ, and who so walk as He walked.” This was saying a great deal, and he found afterward that he had said too much, for we must have very low thoughts of what it is to walk as Christ walked, if we are satisfied about any set of Christians, that they are doing so. The more nearly they are truly doing so, the more will they see and own what is wanting in their obedience to God, because they will the better know and understand how wonderfully perfect was the walk of Christ; but God gives us no lower standard, so that besides having a perfect example, we have something which ought always to keep us from being satisfied with ourselves.
John and Mr. Ingham spent a fortnight at Marienborn, and then went on to Herrnhuth. You will like to know what sort of place it was. There were about 100 houses, built on a rising ground, with evergreen woods on two sides, gardens and corn-fields on the other, and high hills quite near. There was one long street, in the middle of which stood the orphan-house. The lower part of this house was an apothecary’s shop. The upper part was a chapel, so the orphans lived in the middle. Every day there were two or three meetings for reading the Bible, praying, or singing hymns. Some were in houses or in the chapel, others out of doors, in the woods and on the hills. The first meeting was in the summer, at four o’clock in the morning; in the winter at five o’clock. Even the little children would go out in parties on the hills to pray and sing hymns. On Sundays they had meetings from morning to night. People came from a long way off, bringing a crust of bread in their pockets, and spent the day in the meetings.
It must have been a happy thing to see so many people who all found pleasure in praying and reading the Bible; and no doubt God really worked amongst them, and made Herrnhuth a place from whence the light of the gospel shone into the darkness around. But it would have been better if the Count had had faith to trust God to order all the prayer and praise, by leaving the people to meet together simply following the rules given in His word. Instead of this, all things at Herrnhuth were arranged as if for children in a school. There were rules for worshipping God, rules for prayer, and, besides this, rules for dress, rules for the spending of every hour of the day and night, rules as to which of the people might be special companions for one another, rules for the employment of each person, rules as to how long each might sleep, and even rules as to the choice of a wife, if any one wished to be married. All the people were divided into classes, like school-children, and dressed accordingly. Every class amongst the women were forbidden to use jewelery, lace, parasols, or fans. They were all to wear white straw bonnets with plain ribbon. The widows wore white ribbon, the married women blue, the unmarried pink, the girls, between 14 and 18, red. All were to pray in turns, besides the prayer at the meetings, so that there should be always some praying both all day and all night. The little children, the middle children, and the great children were all kept in separate classes; the boys apart from the girls. So everything went on in excellent order, but, alas! not in God’s order. God has His own order for everything, but men often think they can improve upon it. God sets people in families of different ages, because it is good for the old to learn to care for the young, and for the young to submit themselves to the older. God would have our outward conduct ordered by a motive from within, which is much stronger than a rule outside. No doubt, in our own affairs, rules are often useful for the sake of order; but in the service of God He must direct us, and for this purpose He has given us His own rules in His word, which must be received into our hearts by the power of the Holy Ghost, and obeyed by that power working in us to will and to do of His good pleasure.