About the Moravians

by Algernon Blackwood

The history of the Moravian Church is a history of the grand triumph of an earnest brotherhood over the effects of persecution, banishment, and many other difficulties. It tells how a little company of Christians fought, not only to keep their own particular Church and creed unspotted from the world, but how when numbering only six hundred unhappy exiles, they commenced a series of missionary efforts which have been abundantly blessed of God⁠—missions which have been so energetically carried out that they now number over seventy-six thousand converts, and which for the zeal and courage shown by the workers have won the respect of all the civilized world.

The early history of the United Brethren⁠—as the Moravians were first called⁠—is one of peculiar interest, showing as it does, from what small beginnings God can produce the mightiest results.

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries there existed a religious community to the number of, perhaps, two hundred thousand, called the “Bohemian Brethren.” They were scattered throughout Bohemia and certain parts of Poland, and were remarkable for the zeal and general purity of their lives.

In the beginning of the seventeenth century, however, they were scattered, and to all appearances ceased to exist. Yet there still existed a “hidden seed” which kept alive the tenets and usages of former years. This remnant used to hold their services with as much zeal and more prudence than ever, and in secret crypts and private houses, prayed for a reawakening of their ancient Church. This was eventually granted; and the manner in which it was brought about leads us up to the actual commencement of the so-called Moravian Church.

Let us glance at the early history of the man who was so instrumental in bringing this about.

Count Zinzendorf was the son of parents who were eminently distinguished for their piety and Christian example, and he himself as a child exhibited signs of a precocious piety which has rarely been equalled in one so young. Not only was the Saviour ever present in the events of his daily life, but the young Count even “wrote letters to Him, in which he poured out his religious feelings,” and threw these letters out of the window, “confident that the Lord would receive and read them.”

This religious fervour manifested itself still further in his school-life. At his first school we find him at the head of a society which he founded for the purpose of spreading the Gospel and cultivating personal piety amongst his schoolfellows. It was called “The Order of the Grain of Mustard Seed,” and through its means an excellent moral tone was spread throughout the school. On leaving school the Count entered the University of Wittenberg, and since his pious inclinations led him to prefer the Church as his lifework, he began to study theology. Here, however, he met with opposition from an unexpected quarter. His relatives and many of his most intimate friends strenuously opposed such a course; they would not for a moment entertain the idea of a German Count in their family becoming a preacher; it could not be.

So strong, indeed, was the feeling against it, that the Count gave up the idea of becoming that for which he was obviously most fitted, and began to study law. His course at the university ended, he started on a course of travels through Europe, which was considered part of every young nobleman’s education. Study of the law had by no means quenched the fire of religious zeal within his heart; so we find that an occurrence of no unusual magnitude was sufficient to fan it into a flame again. In a picture gallery in Düsseldorf, on the Rhine, he came across a picture that was destined to lead him again into that path whence he had allowed himself so easily to be turned aside. It was an “Ecce Homo,” with the words underneath:

“Hoc feci pro te; quid facis pro me?”

“This I did for thee. What hast thou done for Me?”

This picture had such an effect on him that he stood before it for hours, wrapt in oblivion of all else around him. It reawakened in him all his old zeal and fervour in the cause he loved so well; and from that moment he never lost an opportunity to boldly confess his Saviour.

Soon after, in the year 1722, he married, and it is at this point we find bim so wonderfully brought into contact with the persecuted remnants of the “Bohemian Church.” Just when these were almost despairing of infusing, in any successful degree, new life and vigour into their old Church, or of giving to it a public existence again, we find them mysteriously brought into contact with the man who above all others seemed best fitted to carry out and embody such a resuscitation. Count Zinzendorf was just then moving to a large estate which he had recently bought from his grandmother in Lusatia when he met two families, by name Neisser, refugees from the persecuted and suppressed sect of the Bohemian Brethren. Without entertaining any further intentions than to show kindness to devout fellow creatures in trouble, the Count at once invited them to come and settle on the broad lands of his estate, Bertholsdorf. Knowing little or nothing about their former history or creed, he had at the time no ideas of joining with them in any way; and the gradual manner in which he was brought to see that his line of work and scope for his energy lay in the reawakening of the old Church must be ascribed to the guidance of the Spirit of God.

In the meantime, that between the years 1722 and 1729, over three hundred more Brethren had migrated to the estate of the Count, and these were soon joined by the members of other Protestant communities, and under their united direction a town was built, which they called Herrnhut, or the “Watch of the Lord.” The origin of this name is thus given by Dr. Abel Stevens in his “History of Methodism”:

“Christian David, an earnest-minded carpenter, led ten persons of like mind from Schlen, in Moravia, to Bertholsdorf, in Lusatia; a domain of which Count Zinzendorf, a devout young nobleman, was then lord. He was absent, but welcomed them by Heitz, his majordomo. Heitz led the little band to a piece of land near a mound, the Hutberg, or watch-hill, where, Christian David, lifting his axe, cleaved a tree, exclaiming, ‘Here hath the sparrow found a house and the swallow a nest for herself, even Thine altars, O Lord of hosts.’ ”

Two years later, Count Zinzendorf resigned the office he then held, and deeply impressed by a certain book of one of the Bohemian Brothers, he resolved to devote all his energy to the revival of the ancient Church. He said of Herrnhut that he was convinced it was “the parish to which he had from all eternity been ordained.”

Henceforth we find the Count devoting all his time and labour to the Moravians, whose leader he thus became. As a result, in the year 1736, he was banished from Saxony. He then started on a long course of travels, everywhere preaching the Gospel and founding branches of the Moravian Church. In 1741 he visited America, and established a school at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where is still a Moravian community, as also at Letitz and Nazareth. At length the Count died peacefully in Herrnhut, in the year 1760, and on his gravestone may still be read the legend, “He was ordained to bring forth fruit,” and “that his fruit should remain.”

Such was the origin of the Moravian Church, and from this source sprung the mighty stream of mission workers and mission schemes ever associated with its name. Although the death of Count Zinzendorf deprived the Moravians of a splendid worker and an active leader, the Church was too firmly established to again fall into decline. The life in it was strong, vigorous and aggressive.

In 1738 the Moravians had crossed into Great Britain and a flourishing settlement had there been founded; and it was in this same year that John Wesley first came under the influence of the Brotherhood. In crossing from America he found himself in the same vessel with a party of Moravians, and “amid the storms of the Atlantic he had seen in them a resignation and a piety which he possessed not himself.” The man, however, who seems to have made the most lasting impression on John Wesley’s mind was Peter Böhler. They first met in 1738 in London, and Wesley says in his diary, “It was a day much to be remembered,” adding, “From this time I did not willingly lose an opportunity of conversing with him.” Again, later on he writes, “By Bühler, in the hand of the great God, I was convinced of unbelief, of the want of that faith whereby alone we are saved.” His brother, Charles Wesley, after attending one of the small assemblies of the Moravians, said, “I thought myself in a choir of angels.”

Thus it was that Moravianism played no small part in connection with the history of early Methodism, and had no inconsiderable influence on the wonderful after-lives of the two Wesleys.

At the present day, more especially in its missions, has the Moravian Church been blessed; and although these have not always been successful, the zeal and love of souls which inspired them is ever worthy of the highest admiration. From Lapland and Labrador to the Islands of the East Indies the Moravian missionaries have spent their lives and strength in spreading the Gospel they loved so well.

At the present day, the Church has four hundred and fourteen bishops or ministers, over seventy-six thousand converts, besides numerous deacons, deaconesses and assistants. Their schools, which are as much noted for the thoroughness of their education as they are for the wholesome spirit of their religious life, have been long established at several places in Europe. The head school is at Herrnhut, and others are at Neuwied, on the Rhine; Montmirail, on Lake Neuchâtel; Niesky, in Prussia; at Nyon, near Lausanne; and at Königsfeld, in the Black Forest.

To the visitor axious to see a Moravian settlement to its best advantage, no place offers greater attractions than Königsfeld. Remote from the world, it is a perfect model for its earnest, active life and at the same time its perfect peacefulness. Here the round of life goes on undisturbed from year to year. Such a thing as a lawsuit is unheard of; all the inhabitants call themselves brothers or sisters, and are indeed such in the best and truest meaning of the words. All Moravian settlements have certain institutions for the well-being of their older members; houses where, at a very nominal rate, widows and impoverished old ladies can be boarded, and at the same time furnished with work suitable for their years. For the men there is a similar establishment. Even the inn is the property of the Brotherhood, who give to a salaried man the charge of the house and guests.

At Königsfeld, where the writer lived for a year, are two schools⁠—one for boys, numbering about 80, the other for girls, 60. They are situated at opposite sides of the village, and much of the internal life of the Moravian Brotherhood may be seen from the method of conducting their schools. A long day of hard study is commenced at six o’clock with a reading out of the Bible, the same portion being read in all Moravian settlements all the world over at the same time. After a short prayer, all the boys and masters combined with great heartiness in singing a hymn of Luther or Zinzendorf’s. No day passed without a practice of an hour or so in miniature army drill⁠—though this was, perhaps, more a German than a Moravian custom, as was also the very fair orchestra maintained by the little place. The day was ended as begun, with prayer and a hymn; but most of us thought that 8:30 was a somewhat early hour for bed, and we all agreed that 5:30 was far too early an hour at which to rise in the morning.

Nothing was more conspicuous in this school, as in all their other ones, than the beautiful spirit of gentleness and merciful justice, tempered by true brotherly sympathy, with which the boys of as many temperaments as nationalities were taught to live. They learned thus to have regard for the patriotic sentiments and so on of others, and, forgetting national animosities, to live in an atmosphere of real fraternity. Occasionally the most bitter feuds would arise between the banded members of different nationalities, but these were rare and of short duration. When football or rounders were rendered impossible modes of exercise by the state of the weather, the different divisions of the school went for long tramps in the forest, and explored many a lovely glade and deep recess that everywhere surrounded the village. The inmates of the girls’ school also indulged in this form of exercise; but if ever the contingent from the one met that from the other, the boys were instantly ordered “right about,” and it became a case of “distance lending enchantment to the view.”

There are several feast days peculiar to the Church, which are of very ancient origin and of no little interest. Foremost among these is the agape, or love-feast of apostolic times. The whole community assembles in the little church-one of ultra Puritan plainness⁠—and, after certain prayers and hymns, cups of very sweet tea are handed round to each member of the congregation in turn. This is repeated to those who desire a second cup, and then, in a huge basket, are distributed large currant buns, which are supposed to be eaten outside the church. The religious exercises of the meeting consist of extempore prayers, readings from the New Testament, and short addresses from one of the “Brothers” and the “Preacher” of the community. Several hymns are sung, and as all the women sit on one side and all the men on the other side of the church, with a broad aisle between them, the musical effect is very striking. There is no inharmonious mingling of voices, but two distinct volumes of sound; on one side the rich soprano notes of the women, and on the other the deep basses of the men. Music forms a considerable feature of this service. In the organ loft, trumpets and bugles mingle with violins and an occasional flute; and the effect of the whole on a stranger must be, to say the least, surprising. After this service the boys’ school were never allowed to rise and leave the church until the last of the girls had disappeared through their door on the other side of the building. This love-feast is observed about once in two or three months. In the Catacombs of Rome the agape is also represented as a somewhat substantial meal.

Another old custom is the pedilavium, or feet washing, but this is now very rarely if ever practised, though in certain circles it used formerly to be quite common.

Just before Christmas the schools were in the custom of observing a feast called the “gift feast,” when, in commemoration of the greatest Gift the world has ever known, the schools divided into pairs, and each member presented the other with a handsome present. At Easter, too, the whole community would proceed at sunrise to the cemetery, and there, with trumpets and choir, perform an inspiriting service of praise for the resurrection of our Lord.

Another old custom, now abolished, used to be the appointment of ministers by means of the “lot;” marriages, too, were contracted in the same way.

So hurried a glimpse into the inner life of this most unworldly little Church cannot do justice to the many virtues of its members, nor depict with any degree of fullness the other interesting characteristics of the Brotherhod. A visit to one of their settlements will give the visitor an insight into the working of a Church whose record and example should be an inspiration to mankind.