MISCELLANEOUS REMARKS.
An acquaintance said to me in Lancaster, “The people of Bethlehem are not Pennsylvania Dutch. They speak the high German.” I think, however, that the younger people have acquired the Pennsylvania dialect. An elderly gentleman of Bethlehem, to whom mention was made of a work upon the “Pennsylvania Dutch,” etc., replied in this manner (with a German accent): “We don’t want to know anything about the Pennsylvania Dutch. We know enough about them already. We see enough of them on our farms.”
It may be inferred from what has been said that the Moravians are persons of very considerable culture. I may go further, and speak of the thoughtful, spiritual expression of many faces.
As agriculture may be called the vocation of the Pennsylvania Germans in general, so education may be called the vocation of the Moravians. To the support of the parochial school at Bethlehem I heard that about nine thousand dollars are annually appropriated from the income of the church property there. This enables those who have charge to put the terms of instruction very low. These are four dollars, or four to six, annually, for Moravian children.
The daughters of Moravian preachers are entitled to four years’ tuition in one of the young ladies’ schools, either at the celebrated one at Bethlehem, that at Litiz, Pennsylvania, at Salem, North Carolina, or at Hope, Indiana.[114] Besides these institutions, there is a flourishing boys’ school at Nazareth, and a college and divinity school at Bethlehem.
Very few of the Moravians here are engaged in agriculture. They have remained in towns, as it seems, and rarely or never become large and wealthy farmers; a circumstance that I do not comprehend. That religious scruples against the acquisition of wealth, or of individual property, have influenced their actions, I have not been able to discover.
I have not in my reports of aged citizens repeated some of the “orthodox” expressions which they used.
“The distinguishing feature of Moravian theology,” says Appleton’s Cyclopædia, “is the prominence given to the person and atonement of Christ.”
I noticed at Bethlehem a sweet simplicity in speaking to or of the preachers.
A young man told me that Brother W. had sent him, and one of the sisters unaffectedly addressed a venerable bishop as Brother S. One of these gentlemen said to a person, not a member of his church, “Call me brother.”
I have never heard Moravians call themselves Herrnhutters. The favorite name of their churchmen for their organization is Unitas Fratrum, or Unity of Brethren. A venerable preacher tells me that they have been called the Johannische Gemein, or community like St. John; or their view the Johannische Auffassung, or John-like expression, of the spirit of the gospel, especially as we read in the seventeenth chapter of John the prayer of Christ, “That they, Father, may be one, as we are one.”[115]
I conclude this sketch with an abridged passage from the Mission Report of 1872, an extract which may be interesting to thoughtful minds:
“The celebration of the centenary of the Labrador mission took place at all the six stations on the 5th and 6th of January, 1871. Some of the people assisted in decorating the chapels by fetching fir-tree branches and making festoons. A number of welcome jubilee presents from the Ladies’ Association in London, and other sisters, were distributed, and the services closed with the celebration of the Lord’s Supper; a love-feast, at which printed odes were used; and a thanksgiving service. The brethren of Okak remark, ‘Stillness, not unusually a feature of festive seasons in Labrador, prevailed in a striking degree, and was to our minds more valuable as a proof of spiritual blessings enjoyed than the finest words could have been, especially as the Esquimaux have great readiness in using religious phrases.’”
Note.—Christianity was introduced into Bohemia and Moravia in the ninth century. It is claimed that the people of these countries, for several centuries, manifested in matters of faith the spirit of what was afterwards Protestantism. The most celebrated of their reformers was John Huss, who was burned, by order of the Council of Constance, in 1415. The Hussites separated into two parties, of whom the Taborites were defeated by the Calixtines in 1434, and the latter became the national church of Bohemia. A party among the remnant of the Taborites, dissatisfied with what they thought corrupt practices in this church, removed more and more from the Calixtine communion, and at length were permitted to settle on the barony of Lititz. It is claimed that some, if not all, of these were men of God, who had not taken up arms during the war. They afterwards adopted the name Unitas Fratrum, or Unity of the Brethren. Their pastors were Calixtine priests who had joined the society. Such was the beginning of the Moravian Church. They obtained the episcopal succession from a colony of Waldenses, on the confines of Bohemia and Austria. Toward the year 1500 they had more than two hundred churches in Moravia and Bohemia, and had published a Bohemian Bible and several confessions of faith.
Their numbers and influence increased very much, and gradually the Unitas Fratrum was composed of three provinces, the Bohemian, Moravian, and Polish. But, in 1621, Ferdinand II. began a series of persecutions of all the Protestant denominations in Bohemia and Moravia, known as the anti-reformation. Protestantism was totally overthrown here, more than fifty thousand of the inhabitants having emigrated. In Poland, the Brethren’s Church became united with the Reformed, and the Unitas Fratrum disappeared from the eyes of men, and remained as a “hidden seed” for ninety-four years. In Moravia many families remained, who secretly entertained the views of their fathers, and among these an awakening took place in the early part of the eighteenth century, through the instrumentality of a Moravian exile named Christian David. The desire to live in a Protestant country was felt more and more, and two families escaped in the night, and after eleven days safely reached Berthelsdorf, an estate in Saxony belonging to Count Zinzendorf, a pious young nobleman, who had offered them a refuge. Other Moravians joined them, and in a few years a colony of three hundred persons lived on Count Zinzendorf’s estate. He himself soon relinquished all worldly honors, became a bishop of the brethren, and devoted himself entirely to their service.
Nicolaus Ludwig, Count of Zinzendorf and Pottendorf, descended from a noble Austrian family, was born in Dresden in 1700. His father dying soon after his birth, his education was confided to his grandmother, the Baroness de Gersdorf, who had adopted the idea of Spener, the founder of the Pietists, of little churches within the church, having for their aim the promotion of piety and the purifying and sanctifying of the whole church.
The mind of Zinzendorf, when he was a mere child, took an enthusiastic direction, and he used to write letters to the Saviour and throw them out of the window, hoping that the Saviour might find them. At the university of Wittenberg, he applied himself, without direction or aid, to the study of theology, fully resolved to become a minister of the gospel. In 1722 he married, and about the same time gave some emigrant Moravian brethren permission to settle upon his estate of Berthelsdorf. In connection with some others, he labored to instruct them and their children. But it would seem, from subsequent circumstances, that he himself became, in some degree, their pupil.
They were not all agreed in religious opinions, and, with a view to unity, he formed statutes for their government. He was also appointed a warden of the congregation. In 1734 he went, under an assumed name, to Stralsund, and passed an examination as a theological candidate. The same year he received holy orders at Tübingen. On returning from Switzerland, in 1736, he met an edict forbidding his return to his native country, and repaired to Berlin, where, under sanction of the King of Prussia, he was consecrated bishop of the Moravian congregation, and from that time was always called the Ordinary of the Brethren. The order of banishment was repealed after eleven years.
Within this period he visited the islands of St. Thomas and St. Croix, where the Brethren had already established missions. He also came to Pennsylvania in 1741. He remained in this country two years, during which he was very diligently and successfully occupied. He also made several visits to Holland and England. He spent his latter years at Herrnhut, where he died. His remains were borne to the grave by thirty-two preachers and missionaries whom he had reared, from Holland, England, Ireland, and North America, including Greenland. He wrote more than one hundred books. His son, who was an elder of the single brethren, died before his father. His son-in-law, the Baron de Watteville, was a bishop of the Moravian Church.
On the continent of Europe the Moravian system of the time of Zinzendorf is kept up in every respect. The governing board for the whole “Unity,” or whole Moravian Church, meets at Berthelsdorf, in Saxony, in the castle once inhabited by Count Zinzendorf, who devoted his entire property to the good of the church.
A community of goods never existed at any time in a Moravian institution. The Economie, or Economische Haushaltung (Economical Household, or Common Housekeeping), seems to have existed for about twenty years, during the Indian wars, when the settlements of the Brethren at Bethlehem, etc., were feeble and exposed to attack.
The numerical force of the Moravians is not great. The number of communicants—home-communicants, if I may call them so—is 12,947 (estimate of 1859?), and over 53,000 mission converts, including baptized children. There are also, as I understand, 80,000 “Diaspora members” on the continent of Europe; for which remarkable movement see the article Moravians, in Appleton’s Cyclopædia. See, also, the Moravian Manual. This historical sketch is drawn principally from these sources, and from the articles Zinzendorf and German Theology of the same Cyclopædia.