The same principles apply in individual congregations.
As each Province manages its own affairs subject to the general laws of the Church, so each congregation manages its own affairs subject to the general laws of the Province. As far as its own affairs are concerned, each congregation is self-ruling. All members over eighteen years who have paid their dues are entitled to a vote. They are empowered to elect a deputy for the Provincial Synod; they elect also, once in three years, the congregation committee; and the committee, in co-operation with the minister, is expected to maintain good conduct, honesty and propriety among the members of the congregation, to administer due discipline and reproof, to consider applications for membership, to keep in order the church, Sunday-school, minister's house, and other congregation property, and to be responsible for all temporal and financial concerns.
Thus the constitution of the Moravian Church may be described as democratic. It is ruled by committees, conferences and synods; and these committees, conferences and synods all consist, to a large extent, of elected deputies. As the Moravians have Bishops, the question may be asked, what special part the Bishops play in the government of the Church? The reply may be given in the words of the Moravians themselves. At the last General Synod the old principle was reasserted, that "the office of a Bishop imparts in and by itself no manner of claim to the control of the whole Church or of any part of it; the administration of particular dioceses does therefore not belong to the Bishops." Thus Moravian Bishops are far from being prelates. They are authorized to ordain the presbyters and deacons; they examine the spiritual condition of the ordinands; and, above all, they are called to act as "intercessors in the Church of God." But they have no more ruling power as such than any other minister of the Church.
Finally, a word must be said about the use of the Lot. As long as the Lot was used at all, it interfered to some extent with the democratic principle; but during the last twenty or thirty years it had gradually fallen into disuse, and in 1889 all reference to the Lot was struck out of the Church regulations; and while the Brethren still acknowledge the living Christ as the only Lord and Elder of the Church, they seek His guidance, not in any mechanical way, but through prayer, and reliance on the illumination of the Holy Spirit.
BOOK FOUR. — THE MODERN MORAVIANS, 1857-1907.
When the Brethren made their maiden speech in the Valley of Kunwald four hundred and fifty years ago, they little thought that they were founding a Church that would spread into every quarter of the civilized globe. If this narrative, however, has been written to any purpose, it has surely taught a lesson of great moral value; and that lesson is that the smallest bodies sometimes accomplish the greatest results. At no period have the Brethren been very strong in numbers; and yet, at every stage of their story, we find them in the forefront of the battle. Of all the Protestant Churches in England, the Moravian Church is the oldest; and wherever the Brethren have raised their standard, they have acted as pioneers. They were Reformers sixty years before Martin Luther. They were the first to adopt the principle that the Bible is the only standard of faith and practice. They were among the first to issue a translation of the Bible from the original Hebrew and Greek into the language of the people. They led the way, in the Protestant movement, in the catechetical instruction of children. They published the first Hymn Book known to history. They produced in Comenius the great pioneer of modern education. They saved the Pietist movement in Germany from an early grave; they prepared the way for the English Evangelical Revival; and, above all, by example rather than by precept, they aroused in the Protestant Churches of Christendom that zeal for the cause of foreign missions which some writers have described as the crowning glory of the nineteenth century. And now we have only one further land to explore. As the Moravians are still among the least of the tribes of Israel, it is natural to ask why, despite their smallness, they maintain their separate existence, what part they are playing in the world, what share they are taking in the fight against the Canaanite, for what principles they stand, what methods they employ, what attitude they adopt towards other Churches, and what solution they offer of the social and religious problems that confront us at the opening of the twentieth century.
Section I.—MORAVIAN PRINCIPLES—If the Moravians have any
distinguishing principle at all, that principle is one which goes back to the beginnings of their history. For some years they have been accustomed to use as a motto the famous words of Rupertus Meldenius: "In necessariis unitas; in non-necessariis libertas; in utrisque caritas"—in essentials unity; in non-essentials liberty; in both, charity. But the distinction between essentials and non-essentials goes far behind Rupertus Meldenius. If he was the first to pen the saying, he was certainly not the first to lay down the principle. For four hundred and fifty years this distinction between essentials and non-essentials has been a fundamental principle of the Brethren. From whom, if from any one, they learned it we do not know. It is found in no mediæval writer, and was taught neither by Wycliffe nor by Hus. But the Brethren held it at the outset, and hold it still. It is found in the works of Peter of Chelcic;[158] it was fully expounded by Gregory the Patriarch; it was taught by the Bohemian Brethren in their catechisms; it is implied in all Moravian teaching to-day. To Moravians this word "essentials" has a definite meaning. At every stage in their history we find that in their judgment the essentials on which all Christians should agree to unite are certain spiritual truths. It was so with the Bohemian Brethren; it is so with the modern Moravians. In the early writings of Gregory the Patriarch, and in the catechisms of the Bohemian Brethren, the "essentials" are such things, and such things only, as faith, hope, love and the doctrines taught in the Apostles' Creed; and the "non-essentials," on the other hand, are such visible and concrete things as the church on earth, the ministry, the sacraments, and the other means of grace. In essentials they could allow no compromise; in non-essentials they gladly agreed to differ. For essentials they often shed their blood; but non-essentials they described as merely "useful" or "accidental."