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��OUR HYMNS :
��than renounce his Lutheran principles. Zinzenclorf was remark able for his early piety. As a child, he used to gather children to pray with him, and he even wrote letters to his beloved Saviour. Keferring back to his childhood, he writes thus in 1740: "It is more than thirty years since I received a deep impression of Divine grace, through the preaching of the cross. The desire to bring souls to Jesus took possession of me, and my heart became fixed on the Lamb. It is true that I have not always taken the same road to come to Him, for at Halle I went to Him directly, at Wittemberg through morality, at Dresden through philosophy, and after that through an endeavour to follow His steps. It was not till after the happy establishment of the community at Herrnhut, and since the affair with Dippel, that I came to Him through the simple doctrine of His suffer ings and His death." He then goes on to say, "I have uni formly acted from love to Jesus, and without any secondary motive," and he urges others to spare themselves the needless fears he had allowed to trouble him in his spiritual course.
From his eleventh to his sixteenth year, Zinzeudorf studied ,at Halle under A. H. Franke, the celebrated pietist, and the founder of the world-renowned orphan school. At Halle the same love to Jesus ruled in the young count s heart, and he formed himself and his companions into a religious order, with its mottoes and insignia ; and, while still a youth, he began writing those hymns which afterwards formed so important a part in the spiritual agency he employed. In 1716, his uncle, General Zinzendorf, who was his guardian, sent him to Wittem berg University, where Lutheran orthodoxy was preferred to pietism. There the young count was to study law, but the change of place and purpose did not turn him from his religious pursuits. He continued to hold religious meetings, and resolved to be a Christian minister. At first he went to extremes in the practice of the ascetic pietism of the school he had been compelled to leave, but at length he learned that there was good at Wittem- berg also, and he took the good of each aspect of truth without
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