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. Bohlen 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 caned 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 loo houses, built on a rising ground, with evergreen woods on two sides gardens and cornfields 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 jewelry, 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.
Having told you what was mistaken amongst the Moravians, it is pleasant to be able to say, on the other hand, that there seems to have been amongst them a great deal of true, earnest love to Christ, and of devotedness to His service. John Wesley talked a good deal to many of them, and was very glad that one, whose name was Christian David, came back to Herrnhuth for a time just after he arrived. He had heard before of Christian David, whose history was a remarkable one. He had lived as a child in Moravia, and had, when very young, read a great many religious books. These books convinced him that Papists were wrong, but he could not make out what was right. He disliked the Lutherans, because they talked so much about Christ. What a sad tale that tells of the heart of man! He did not then believe that Christ was God. Strange to say, he became persuaded that Christ is God by meeting with some Jews, who told him the New Testament was not true. This led him to read the Old Testament carefully, and compare it with the New, to see whether the prophecies about the Messiah came true in the case of Jesus. He could no longer doubt after doing this, who and what Jesus is. He was still by name a Roman Catholic, but soon after this he openly gave up the Popish religion, and called himself a Protestant. But he had no peace in his soul, and tried in vain to get it by reading, praying, and “doing his best.” He became a soldier, thinking he should have time when going about the country to read the Testament and hymn-book he kept in his pocket. But his books were stolen, and then he had a dangerous illness, and could neither read, nor do anything else. It was then that God sent one of His servants to visit him, and through the teaching of this good man he learned the blessed news that Christ saves the ungodly, and believing it, he was saved.
When he got well he went about preaching Christ, and it was then that Count Zinzendorf heard of him, and sent for him to his castle in Saxony. Christian David was the first Moravian who went there, and it was he who began the building of Herrnhuth. After this he went to preach in Greenland, then a heathen country; and later, after John Wesley’s visit to Herrnhuth, he sold himself as a slave in the West Indies to preach to the negroes. Other Moravians had also gone to preach in Greenland, and in other parts of the world.
Christian David preached several times during the fortnight that Wesley spent at Herrnhuth. Wesley was willing to learn from this poor carpenter, as he then was, and has told us about his sermons. Perhaps you would like to hear a little of one of them, it helped Wesley much, and if God gives His blessing, it may help you. I suppose it was preached in the chapel, which was, you remember, the upper room in the orphan house. Perhaps you can imagine the large plain room, with the open windows looking out on the green hills, and the fir-woods, and the rip, corn-fields. The quiet, orderly Moravians all in their places, the men and boys on one side, thy women and girls on the other, looking like beds of flowers with their various colored ribbons, Christian David standing up in his plain work man’s dress. No doubt many peasants around him from the neighboring villages. John Wesley, who never forgot to dress himself like an English clergyman, sitting amongst them, taking notes.
Christian said: “The word of reconciliation which the Apostles preached, as the foundation of all they taught was, that we are reconciled to God, not by our own works, nor by our own righteousness, but wholly and solely by the blood of Christ. But you will say, Must I not grieve and mourn for my sins? Is not this just and right? ‘Must not first do this before I can expect God to be reconciled to me?’ I answer, it is just and right You must have a broken and contrite heart. But then observe, this is not your own work― this is the work of the Holy Ghost. Observe again, this is not the foundation. It is not this by which you are justified; this is not the righteousness; this is no part of the righteousness by which you are reconciled unto God. The remission of your sins is not owing to this cause, either in whole or in part. Your humiliation and contrition have no influence on that. Nay, observe farther, that it may hinder your justification: that is, if you build anything upon it―if you think, ‘I must be so or so contrite; I must grieve more before I can be justified.’ To think this, is to lay you, contrition, your grief, your humiliation, for the foundation of your being justified; at least, for a part of the foundation. Therefore it hinders you, justification, and a hindrance it is which must be removed. The right foundation is not your Contrition (though that is not your own), not your righteousness―nothing of your own―nothing that is wrought in you by the Holy Ghost, but it is something outside of you―the blood of Christ. For this is the word, ‘To him that believeth or God that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.’ See ye not that the foundation is nothing in us? There is no connection between God and the ungodly. They are altogether separate from each other. They have nothing in common. There is nothing, less or more, in the ungodly, to join them to God. Works, righteousness, repentance? No, ungodliness only. This, then, do― go straight to Christ with all your ungodliness. Tell Him, ‘Thou, whose eyes are as a flame of fire searching my heart, seest that I am ungodly. I plead nothing else. I do not say I am humble or contrite, but I am ungodly; therefore, bring me to Him that justifieth the ungodly: let it be Thy blood that saves me; for there is nothing in me but ungodliness.’ Here the wise men of the world and the learned fail to understand. It is foolishness to them. Sin is the only thing that divides men from God. Sin is also the only plea the sinner has―the only reason he can give why the Lamb of God should have compassion on him, and by His blood bring him near to the Father. This is the foundation which can never be moved. By faith we are built upon this foundation, and this faith also is the gift of God.”
As Christian preached these blessed words, John wrote them down, thankful and glad to have heard them. Never amongst the learned men who had preached at Oxford had he heard words which so helped and cheered him as those of this poor German carpenter. Several others helped him, too, by their conversation and example. “I would gladly,” he says, “have spent my life here, but my Master calling me to labor in another part of His vineyard, I was constrained to take my leave of this happy place.” So he said good-bye to dear old Christian David, and his other Herrnhuth friends.
He went from place to place till he again reached Marienborn. He found in Germany that the laws were in some states even stricter than those in England against Meetings for prayer or reading the Word. In one place any number exceeding three were forbidden to read together or to worship God, and, sad to say, the Lutheran clergymen were those who chiefly objected to it.
The Count was not at home when Wesley returned to Marienborn. He only saw the countess and her children, and after a short stay returned to England. He landed in London on Saturday, September 16. F. B.