§ 167.8. The Christian Life and Devotional Literature.—Pietism led to a powerful revival of religious life among the people, which it sustained by zealous preaching and the publication of devotional works. A similar activity displayed itself among the orthodox. Francke began his charitable labours with seven florins; but with undaunted faith he started his Orphanage, writing over its door the words of Isaiah xl. 31. In faith and benevolence Woltersdorff was a worthy successor of Francke; and Baron von Canstein applied his whole means to the founding of the Bible Institute of Halle. Missions too were now prosecuted with a zeal and success which witnessed to the new life that had arisen in the Lutheran church.—A remarkable manifestation of the pietistic spirit of this age is seen in The Praying Children in Silesia, A.D. 1707. Children of four years old and upward gathered in open fields for singing and prayer, and called for the restoration of churches taken away by the Catholics. The movement spread over the whole land. In vain was it denounced from the pulpits and forbidden by the authorities. Opposition only excited more and more the zeal of the children. At last the churches were opened for their services. The excitement then gradually subsided. It was, however, long a subject of discussion between the pietists and the orthodox; the latter denouncing it as the work of the devil, the former regarding it as a wonderful awakening of God’s grace.—Best remembered of the many devotional writers of this period are Bogatsky of Halle, died A.D. 1774, whose “Golden Treasury” is still highly esteemed;[503] and Von Moser, died A.D. 1785, who lived a noble and exemplary life at Stuttgart amid much sore persecution. The great need of simple explanation of Scripture appears from the great sale of such popular commentaries as those of Pfaff at Tübingen, 1730, Starke at Leipzig, 1741, and the Halle Bible of S. J. Baumgarten, 1748.

§ 167.9. Missions to the Heathen.—The quickening of religious life by pietism bore fruit in new missionary activity. Frederick IV. of Denmark founded in his East Indian possessions the Tranquebar mission in A.D. 1706, under Ziegenbalg and Plutschau. Ziegenbalg, who translated the New Testament into Tamil, died in A.D. 1719. From the Danish possessions this mission carried its work over into the English Indian territories. Able and zealous workers were sent out from the Halle Institute, of whom the greatest was Chr. Fr. Schwartz, who died in A.D. 1798, after nearly fifty years of noble service in the mission field. In the last quarter of the century, however, under the influence of rationalism, zeal for missions declined, the Halle society broke up, and the English were allowed to reap the harvest sown by the Lutherans. The Halle professor Callenberg founded in A.D. 1728 a society for the conversion of the Jews, in the interests of which Stephen Schultz travelled over Europe, Asia, and Africa, preaching the Cross among the Jews. Christianity had been introduced among the Eskimos in Greenland in the eleventh century (§ 93, 5), but the Scandinavian colony there had been forgotten, and no trace of the religion which it had taught any longer remained. This reproach to Christianity lay sore on the heart of Hans Egede, a Norwegian pastor, and he found no rest till, supported by a Danish-Norwegian trading house, he sailed with his family in A.D. 1721 for these frozen and inhospitable shores. Amid almost inconceivable hardships, and with at first but little success, he continued to labour unweariedly, and even after the trading company abandoned the field he remained. In A.D. 1733 he had the unexpected joy of welcoming three Moravian missionaries, Christian David and the brothers Stach. His joy was too soon dashed by the spiritual pride of the new arrivals, who insisted on modelling everything after their own Moravian principles, and separated themselves from the noble Egede, when he refused to yield, as an unspiritual and unconverted man. Egede, on the other hand, though deeply offended at their confounding justification and sanctification, their contempt of pure doctrine, and their unscriptural views and mode of speech, was ready to attribute all this to their defective theological training. He rewarded their unkindness, when they were stricken down in sore sickness, with unwearied, loving care.In A.D. 1736 he returned to Denmark, leaving his son Paul to carry on his work, and continued director of the Greenland Mission Seminary in Copenhagen till his death in A.D. 1758.[504]—Continuation, § [171, 5].

§ 168. The Church of the Moravian Brethren.[505]

The highly gifted Count Zinzendorf, inspired even as a boy, out of fervent love to the Saviour, with the idea of gathering together the lovers of Jesus, took occasion of the visit of some Moravian Exultants to his estate to realize his cherished project. On the Hutberg he dropped the mustard seed of the dream of his youth into fertile soil, where, under his fervent care, it soon grew into a stately tree, whose branches spread over all European lands, and thence through all parts of the habitable globe. The society which he founded was called “The Society of the United Brethren.” The fact that this society was not overwhelmed by the extravagances to which for a time it gave way, that its fraternising with the fanatics, the extravagant talk in which its members indulged about a special covenant with the Saviour, and their not over-modest claims to a peculiar rank in the kingdom of God, did not lead to its utter overthrow in the abyss of fanaticism, and that on the slippery paths of its mystical marriage theory it was able to keep its feet, presents a phenomenon, which stands alone in church history, and more than anything else proves how deeply rooted founder and followers were in the saving truths of the gospel. The count himself laid aside many of his extravagances, and what still remained was abandoned by his sensible and prudent successor Spangenberg, so far as it was not necessarily involved in the fundamental idea of a special covenant with the Saviour. The special service rendered by the society was the protest which it raised against the generally prevailing apostasy. During this period of declension it saved the faith of many pious souls, affording them a welcome refuge, with rich spiritual nourishment and nurture. With the reawakening of the religious life in the nineteenth century, however, its adherents lost ground in Europe more and more, by maintaining their old onesidedness in life and doctrine, their depreciatory estimate of theological science, and the quarrelsome spirit which they generally manifested. But in one province, that of missions to the heathen, their energy and success have never yet been equalled. Their thorough and well-organized system of education also deserves particular mention. At present the Society of the Brethren numbers half a million, distributed among 100 settlements or thereabout.

§ 168.1. The Founder of the Moravian Brotherhood, Nic. Ludwig Count von Zinzendorf and Pottendorf, was born in Dresden in A.D. 1700. Spener was one of his sponsors at baptism. His father dying early, and his mother marrying a second time, the boy, richly endowed with gifts of head and heart, was brought up by his godly pietistic grandmother, the Baroness von Gersdorf. There in his earliest youth he learned to seek his happiness in the closest personal fellowship with the Lord, and the tendency of his whole future life to yield to the impulses of pious feeling already began to assert itself. In his tenth year he entered the Halle Institute under Francke, where the pietistic idea of the need of the ecclesiolæ in ecclesia took firm possession of his heart. Even in his fifteenth year he sought its realization by founding among his fellow students “The Order of the Grain of Mustard Seed” (Matt. xiii. 31). After completing his school course, his uncle and guardian, in order to put an end to his pietistic extravagances, sent him to study law at the orthodox University of Wittenberg. Here he had at first to suffer a sort of martyrdom as a rigid pietist swimming against the orthodox current. His residence at Wittenberg, however, was beneficial to him in freeing him unconsciously of the Halle pietism, which had restrained his spiritual development. He did indeed firmly maintain the fundamental idea of pietism, ecclesiolæ in ecclesia, but in his mind it gained a wider significance than pietism had given it. His endeavours to secure a personal conference, and where possible a union, between the Halle and Wittenberg leaders were unsuccessful. In A.D. 1719 he left Wittenberg and travelled for two years, visiting the most distinguished representatives of all confessions and sects. This too fostered his idea of a grand gathering of all who love the Lord Jesus. On his return home, in A.D. 1721, at the wish of his relatives he entered the service of the Saxon government. But a religious genius like Zinzendorf could find no satisfaction in such employment.And soon an opportunity presented itself for carrying out the plan to which his thoughts and longings were directed.[506]

§ 168.2. The Founding of the Brotherhood, A.D. 1722-1727. The Schmalcald, and still more the Thirty Years’ War, had brought frightful suffering and persecution upon the Bohemian and Moravian Brethren. Many of them sought refuge in Poland and Prussia. One of the refugees was the famous educationist J. Amos Comenius, who died in A.D. 1671, after having been bishop of the Moravians at Lissa in Posen from 1648. Those who remained behind were, even after the Peace of Westphalia, subjected to the cruellest oppression! Only secretly in their houses and at the risk of their lives could they worship God according to the faith of their fathers; and they were obliged publicly to profess their adherence to the Romish church. Thus gradually the light of the gospel was extinguished in the homes of their descendants, and only a tradition, becoming ever more and more faint, remained as a memory of their ancestral faith. A Moravian carpenter, Christian David, born and reared in the Romish church, but converted by evangelical preaching, succeeded in the beginning of the eighteenth century in fanning into a flame again in some families the light that had been quenched. This little band of believers, under David’s leading, went forth in A.D. 1722 and sought refuge on Zinzendorf’s estate in Lusatia. The count was then absent, but the steward, with the hearty concurrence of the count’s grandmother, gave them the Hutberg at Berthelsdorf as a settlement. With the words of Psalm lxxxiv. 4 on his lips, Christian David struck the axe into the tree for building the first house. Soon the little town of Herrnhut had arisen, as the centre of that Christian society which Zinzendorf now sought with all his heart and strength to develop and promote. Gradually other Moravians dropped in, but a yet greater number from far and near streamed in, of all sorts of religious revivalists, pietists, separatists, followers of Schwenckfeld, etc. Zinzendorf had no thought of separation from the Lutheran church.The settlers were therefore put under the pastoral care of Rothe, the worthy pastor of Berthelsdorf (§ [167, 6]). To organize such a mixed multitude was no easy task. Only Zinzendorf’s glorious enthusiasm for the idea of a congregation of saints, his eminent organizing talents, the wonderful elasticity and tenacity of his will, the extraordinary prudence, circumspection, and wisdom of his management, made it possible to cement the incongruous elements and avoid an open breach. The Moravians insisted upon restoring their old constitution and discipline, and of the others, each wished to have prominence given to whatever he thought specially important. Only on one point were they all agreed, the duty of refusing to conform to the Lutheran church and its pastor Rothe. The count, therefore, felt obliged to form a new and separatist society. Personally he had no special liking for the old Moravian constitution; but the lot decided in its favour, while the idea of continuing a pre-Reformation martyr church was not without a certain charm. Thus Zinzendorf drew up a constitution with old Moravian forms and names, on the basis of which the colony was established, August 13th, A.D. 1727, under the name of the United Brotherhood.

§ 168.3. The Development of the Brotherhood down to Zinzendorf’s Death, A.D. 1727-1760.—With great energy the new society proceeded to found settlements in Germany, Holland, England, Ireland, Denmark, Norway, and North America, as well as among German residents in other lands. In A.D. 1734, Zinzendorf submitted to examination at Tübingen as candidate for license, and in A.D. 1737 received episcopal consecration from the Berlin court preacher, Jablonsky, who was at the same time bishop of the Moravian Brethren, which the same prelate had two years previously granted to Dr. Nitschmann, another member of the society. The efforts of the Brethren to spread their cause now attracted attention. The Saxon government in A.D. 1736 sent to Herrnhut a commission, of which Löscher was a member. But in A.D. 1736, before it submitted its report, which on the whole was favourable, Zinzendorf quitted the country, probably by the elector’s command at the instigation of the Austrian government, which objected to the harbouring of so many Bohemian and Moravian emigrants. Like all those at this time persecuted on account of religion he took refuge in Wetterau (§ [170, 2]). With his little family of pilgrims he settled at Ronneburg near Büdingen, founded the prosperous churches of Marienborn and Herrnhaag, and travelled extensively in Europe and America. This period of exile was the period when the society was most successful in spreading outwardly, but it was also the period when it suffered most from troubles and dissensions within. It was bitterly attacked by Lutheran theologians, and much more venomously by apostates from its own fold. The Brethren at this time afforded only too much ground for misunderstanding and reproach. To this period belongs the famous fiction of a special covenant, the Pandora-box of all other absurdities; the development of the count’s own theological views and peculiar form of expression in his numerous works; the composition and introduction of unsavoury spiritual songs, with their silly conceits and many blasphemous and even obscene pictures and analogies; the market-crier laudations of their church, the not always pure methods of propaganda, the introduction of a marriage discipline fitted to break down all modest restraints; and, finally, the so-called Niedlichkeiten, or boisterous festivals. Even the pietists opposed these antinomian excesses. Tersteegen, too (§ [169, 1]), whose mystic tendency inclined him strongly toward pietist views, reproached the Herrnhuters with frivolity. This polemic, disagreeable as it was, exercised a wholesome influence upon the society. The count became more guarded in his language, and more prudent in his behaviour, while he set aside the most objectionable excrescences of doctrine and practice that had begun to show themselves in the community. At last, in A.D. 1747, the Saxon government repeated the edict of banishment so far as the person of the founder was concerned, and when, two years later, the society expressly accepted the Augsburg Confession, it was formally recognised in Saxony. In this same year, A.D. 1749, an English act of parliament recognised it as a church with a pure episcopal succession on equal terms with the Anglican episcopal church.—Zinzendorf continued down to his death to direct the affairs of this church, which hung upon him with childlike affection, reflecting his personality, not only in its excellences, but also in all its extravagances. He died in A.D. 1760 in the full enjoyment of that blessedness which his fervent love for the Saviour had brought him.

§ 168.4. Zinzendorf’s Plan and Work.—While Zinzendorf received his first impulse from pietism, he soon perceived its onesidedness and narrowness. He would have no conventicle, but one organized community; no ideal invisible, but a real visible church; no narrow methodism, but a rich, free administration of the Christian spirit. He did not, in the first instance, aim at the conversion of the world, nor even at the reformation of the church, but at gathering and preserving those belonging to the Saviour. He hoped, however, to erect a reservoir in which he might collect every little brooklet of living water, from which he might again water the whole world. And when he succeeded in organizing a community, he was quite convinced that it was the Philadelphia of the Apocalypse (iii. 7 ff.), that it introduced “the Philadelphian period” of church history, of which all prophets and apostles had prophesied. His plan had originally reference to all Christendom, and he even took a step toward realizing this universal idea. In order to build a bridge between the Catholic church and his own community, he issued, in A.D. 1727, a Christo-Catholic hymn-book and prayer-book, and had even sketched out a letter to the pope to accompany a copy of his book. He also attempted, by a letter to the patriarchs and then to Elizabeth, empress of Russia, to interest the Greek church in his scheme, dwelling upon the Greek extraction of the church of the Moravian Brethren (§ 79, 2). His gathering of members, however, was practically limited to the Protestant churches. All confessions and sects afforded him contingents. He was himself heartily attached to the distinctive doctrines of the Lutheran church. But in a society whose distinctive characteristic it was to be the gathering point for the pious of all nationalities, doctrine and confession could not be the uniting bond. It could be only a fellowship of love and not of creed, and the bond a community of loving sentiment and loving deeds. The inmost principle of Lutheranism, reconciliation by the blood of Christ, was saved, indeed was made the characteristic and vital doctrine, the one point of union between Moravians, Lutherans, and Reformed. Over the three parties stood the count himself as ordinarius; but this gave an external and not a confessional unity. The subsequent acceptance of the Augsburg Confession, in A.D. 1749, was a political act, so as to receive a civil status, and had otherwise no influence. Instead then of the confession, Zinzendorf made the constitution the bond of union. Its forms were borrowed from the old Moravian church order, but dominated and inspired by Zinzendorf’s own spirit. The old Moravian constitution was episcopal and clerical, and proceeded from the idea of the church; while the new constitution of Herrnhut was essentially presbyterial, and proceeded from the idea of the community, and that as a communion of saints. The Herrnhut bishops were only titular bishops; they had no diocese, no jurisdiction, no power of excommunication. All these prerogatives belonged to the united eldership, in which the lay element was distinctly predominant. Herrnhut had no pastors, but only preaching brothers; the pastoral care devolved upon the elders and their assistants. But beside these half-Lutheran and pseudo-Moravian peculiarities, there was also a Donatist element at the basis of the constitution. This lay in the fundamental idea of absolutely true and pure children of God, and reached full expression in the concluding of a special covenant with the Saviour at London on Sept. 16th, A.D. 1741. Leonard Dober for some years administered the office of an elder-general. But at the London synod it was declared that he had not the requisite gifts for that office. Dober now wished to resign. While in confusion as to whom they could appoint, it flashed into the minds of all to appoint the Saviour Himself. “Our feeling and heart conviction was, that He made a special covenant with His little flock, taking us as His peculiar treasure, watching over us in a special way, personally interesting Himself in every member of our community, and doing that for us perfectly which our previous elders could only do imperfectly.”

§ 168.5. Among the numerous extravagances which Zinzendorf countenanced for a time, the following may be mentioned.

  1. The notion of the motherhood of the Holy Spirit. Zinzendorf described the holy Trinity as “man, woman, and child.” The Spirit is the mother in three respects: the eternal generation of the Son of God, the conception of the Man Jesus, and the second birth of believers.
  2. The notion of the fatherhood of Jesus Christ (Isa. ix. 6). Creation is ascribed solely to the Son, hence Christ is our special, direct Father. The Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is only, “in the language of men, our father-in-law or grandfather.”
  3. In reference to our Lord’s life on earth, Zinzendorf delighted in using terms of contempt, in order to emphasize the depths of His humiliation.
  4. In like manner he uses reproachful terms in speaking of the style of the sacred Scriptures, and the inspired community prefers a living Bible.
  5. The theory and practice of mystical marriage, according to Ephesians v. 32. The community and each member of it are spiritual brides of Christ, and the marriage relation and begetting of children were set forth and spiritualized in a singularly indelicate manner.