In this century there was a remarkable revival of a tiny remnant of those believers of whom an account has already been given in chapter 20, the scattered remains of the old Bohemian Church. It was through the instrumentality of Count Zinzendorf that this little company was revived and became the nucleus of what was afterwards called the Moravian Church. Among this body were many devoted men who counted not their lives dear for the Lord’s sake and contributed not a little to the revival of the eighteenth century.
Zinzendorf was born at Dresden in 1700. When six weeks old, his godly father, then on his deathbed, took his child in his feeble arms and consecrated him to Christ. God took account of it, and His work began early in the child’s heart. In an account of his early years, Zinzendorf said, “I loved the Saviour and had abundant communion with Him. In my fourth year, I began to seek God earnestly and to become a true servant of Jesus Christ.”
At ten years of age he was sent to the Pietist school at Halle, then under the control of Professor Franke, then to Wittenberg University, finishing his education with the customary period of foreign travel. While still a lad at school, he sought to bring others to Jesus and began to hold meetings for prayer and fellowship with those who were like-minded. He greatly desired to be a preacher of the gospel, but that was considered to be below the dignity of a count. He became King’s Counsellor at Dresden, and as he could not preach, he invited people to weekly meetings in his own rooms. Like Wesley, later, he had no intention of drawing people away from the Church but of providing for that fellowship with fellow-believers which is instinctive in the heart of the true Christian and which was not satisfied by the formal round of religious services in the Lutheran Church. He did not see that the established Churches, being an alliance between the Church and the world, could never provide the conditions in which the Holy Spirit unquenched and ungrieved can unfold in their fullness “the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him” (1 Cor. 2:99But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. (1 Corinthians 2:9)). Yet God in His grace gives help to all who desire to serve Him according to their understanding and with a pure heart, although their methods may contain much that is of the human mind.
His desire to help the poor and preach the gospel to them led him to buy an estate at Berthelsdorf. He resolved that, with the help of a pastor he brought with him, he would convert the village into a “garden of God.” “I bought the estate,” he said, “because I wanted to spend my life among the peasants and win their souls for Christ.” He succeeded in a large degree in this laudable desire.
About this time he came into touch with a remarkable man named Christian David, born in 1690, whose career lasted only thirty-two years. He was a native of Senftleben in Moravia. Brought up as a zealous Roman Catholic, he passed through deep exercise of soul. He studied the Scriptures but did not find peace. Going to Berlin, he joined the Lutheran Church, but he found it very stiff and formal. The cold, orthodox Protestants had only mockery for the spiritual longings of a thirsty soul. He next joined the army, and in Silesia he was brought into touch with a Pietist clergyman through whom he was led to find the Saviour. Among the Pietists he found the spirit of practical fellowship. At the risk of his life, he made his way back to his native Moravia and preached to the secret Protestants in that Papist country. His services were greatly blessed.
At Fulneck in Moravia, there was a colony of German Waldenses, descendants of some who settled there as far back as 1480. He asked Count Zinzendorf’s permission to bring some of this persecuted body of Christians to his estate. They came and founded a little colony on a poor piece of land near Berthelsdorf. Others followed, and among them were descendants of some of the old Bohemian brethren who had been all but destroyed in the middle of the seventeenth century. One of the last of their leaders, Comenius, had prayed that God would raise them up again, and what followed did indeed seem like a resurrection. Thus began the famous settlement of Herrnhut. At first they were simply refugees from persecution who had settled as tenants on the Count’s estate, but difficulties arising, the Count was forced to intervene and insist on regulating the colony. The inhabitants accepted this intervention with good grace, and they became a quiet, well-ordered Christian community.
Among this little community, where all were professing Christians, discipline was very strict. No dances, no wedding breakfasts, no christening bumpers, no drinking parties, no funeral feasts, and no games were permitted. An evildoer, such as a drunkard, a thief or an adulterer, was expelled unless he gave evidence of true repentance. The whole population of the village had to obey their leaders as well as the law of the land. But they were compelled to attend the Lutheran Church, to take Holy Communion there, and to have their children baptized there. They lived, however, as a distinct Christian community, enjoying fellowship together in many ways. The whole of Sunday was occupied with religious services of one kind or another, beside the daily meetings. Like the early Methodists, who were to appear a few years later in England, they remained, for the time being, while retaining their own distinctive features, associated with the national Church, and Zinzendorf had himself ordained as a Lutheran minister. Opposition arose, and though no fault could be found by the authorities with the settlement at Herrnhut, the Count was banished from Saxony.
Nothing daunted, this extraordinary man, whose mind was ever active to devise ways and means of furthering the kingdom of God, began to plan more extensive operations. Settlements after the style of Herrnhut were established in other places. Moreover, these fervent believers began to turn their thoughts to the conversion of the heathen, and a remarkable missionary work began, which has continued to the present time.
Some went out and worked among the Negroes on the sugar plantations of the West Indies, others went to the frozen shores of Greenland or the frigid wastes of Labrador, others evangelized the Red Indians, and others took the gospel to the Kaffirs and Hottentots of South Africa whose Boer masters regarded them simply as cattle. Egypt, Persia, Mesopotamia, Ceylon, the Nicobar Islands, Surinam and other distant lands were visited by these ardent evangelists.
In 1740 a conference was held at Gotha, when a plan of operations was decided upon. They decided as a free body of Christians to work in conjunction with other Churches and care for scattered believers everywhere. Their plan was to begin what was called diaspora work, proclaim the gospel and unite believers in meetings for prayer and praise, working solely for the kingdom of Christ, without attempting to proselytize or interfere with the work of other Churches. These societies were to be separate from the Brethren’s Church. A society, of which there were many in those days, met in the house of a London bookseller named Hutton. Its members belonged to the Church of England. It became well-known because Wesley and others attended it when it met in 1738 in Fetter Lane. In 1742, for reasons which will appear later, it became a Moravian society in union with the Church of England. Of seventy-two members of this society, sixty-five went abroad later as missionaries.
The enemy, however, was busy sowing tares and in 1743, both in Germany and in England, a strange wave of fanaticism seems to have infected the body. Zinzendorf himself was carried away by it. Extravagant and unseemly expressions found their way into their hymns, and curious features of a ritualistic type invaded their meetings. This discredited the whole body, and many were scandalized by it. Wesley and others, who had been connected with them at first, broke away. Later, a purging process seems to have taken place and a measure of recovery. The inevitable trend towards a sectarian position took place. Zinzendorf’s idea of a Church within the Church did not please many of his followers. The refugees from Bohemia and Moravia, proud of their ancient traditions, insisted on establishing themselves as an independent Protestant denomination. A link still existed with the ancient Bohemian Church in Bishop Daniel Jablonsky, nephew of Comenius, the last of their old bishops. He ordained another bishop, and Zinzendorf himself became a bishop of the Church. In 1749 they were recognized by Act of Parliament in England and America. In the early days of the eighteenth-century gospel revival, three or four hundred little societies on the Moravian pattern were established in various parts of England, Wales and Ireland. Later, many of these meeting places and preaching halls passed into other hands.
A settlement on the Herrnhut plan was set up in Yorkshire at Fulneck, and similar settlements were founded in America, which were named Bethlehem, Nazareth, Salem and Lilitz. There were societies, too, in other places.
When rationalism was sweeping the Continent at the end of the eighteenth century, the gospel lamp was kept burning in many little societies of this character in which the Scriptures were read in various parts of Germany, France, Switzerland and Scandinavia. It has been claimed that they saved the Lutheran Church from sinking completely into atheism. In spite of all, they declined in power themselves and needed to be revived again in the nineteenth century. But at the beginning of the nineteenth century, there was hardly a breath of life anywhere on the Continent of Europe.