Moravian Church

“ It is doubtful how far his Brethren understood him. They listened, admired, wondered, gasped and quietly went their own way.
At the second Synod, held at the Moor Hotel in Gotha, the Count explained his projects still more clearly {1740.}, and made the most astounding speech that had yet fallen from his lips. "It is," he declared, "the duty of our Bishops to defend the rights of the Protestant Moravian Church, and the duty of all the congregation to be loyal to that Church. It is absolutely necessary, for the sake of Christ's work, that our Church be recognized as a true Church. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He would never try to draw a man from his tropus. And now he set a grand task before the Brethren. As the Brethren had no distinctive creed, and taught the original religion of Christ, they must now, he said, regard it as their Divine mission to find room within their broad bosom for men from all the tropuses. They were not merely to restore the Moravian Church; they were to establish a broader, comprehensive Church, to be known as the "Church of the Brethren"; and that Church would be composed of men from every tropus under heaven. ”

“ No wonder the German Brethren were excited. No wonder they felt that a crisis in the Church had arrived. For all loyal Moravians the question now was whether the Moravian Church could stand the strain; and, in order to preserve the true spirit of unity, some Brethren at Gnadenfeld prepared and issued an "Appeal for United Prayer." "At this very time," they declared, "when the Church is favoured with an unusual degree of outward prosperity, the enemy of souls is striving to deal a blow at our spiritual union by sowing among us the seeds of discord and confusion" ”

“ Thus the German Moravians have nothing corresponding to the "prayer meetings" held in England in Nonconformist churches. In some congregations there are "prayer unions," in which laymen take part; but these are of a private and unofficial character.
Meanwhile, a good many of the old stern rules are still strictly enforced, and the Brethren are still cautious in welcoming new recruits. If a person not born in a Moravian family desires to join the Moravian Church, he has generally to exercise a considerable amount of patience. He must first have lived some time in the congregation ”

“ If it leads to selfish dreaming, it is clay; if it leads to life-long sacrifice, it is gold; and well the awakening at Niesky stood the test.
At the next General Synod all present could see that the Moravian Church was now restored to full life, and the American deputies, who had come to see her decently interrred, were amazed at her hopefulness and vigour. At that Synod the signs of vigorous life were many {1848.}. For the first time the Brethren opened their meetings to the public, allowed reporters to be present, and had the results of their proceedings printed and sold. ”

“ 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. ”

“ She is a true Church of God; she is in the world to further the Saviour's cause; and people can belong to her just as much as to any other." If these words meant anything at all, they meant, of course, that Zinzendorf, like the Moravians themselves, insisted on the independent existence of the Moravian Church; and, to prove that he really did mean this, he had Polycarp Müller consecrated a Bishop. And yet, at the same time, the Count insisted that the Brethren were not to value their Church for her own sake. ”

“ We are left largely to conjecture. My own personal impression is, however, that the Brethren feared that if Wesley took Communion with them he might be tempted to leave the Church of England and join the Moravian Church. ”

“ In Germany Church extension is almost unknown; in England it is still in its infancy; in America it is practically an annual event; and thus there are now more Moravians in America than in England and Germany combined. In Germany the number of Moravians is about 8,000; in Great Britain about 6,000; in North America about 20,000.
From this fact a curious conclusion has been drawn. As the American Moravians have spread so rapidly, the suspicion has arisen in certain quarters that they are not so loyal as the Germans and British to the best ideals of the Moravian Church ”

“ At the Sacraments, at weddings and at ordinations, the Moravian minister generally wears a surplice; and yet there is no reference to vestments in the regulations of the Church. In some congregations they use the wafer at the Sacrament, in others ordinary bread; and this fact alone is enough to show that they have no ruling on the subject. Again, the Moravians observe what is called the Church year. They observe, that is, the seasons of Advent, Lent, Easter, Whitsuntide, and Trinity; and yet they do not condemn as heretics those who differ from them on this point. ”

“ Thus the shepherds lived in one world, and the wandering sheep in another; and thus the bond of sympathy between pastor and people was broken. For this reason the Moravian Church in Germany began now to show signs of decay in moral and spiritual power; and the only encouraging signs of progress were the establishment of the new settlement of Königsfeld in the Black Forest, the Diaspora work in the Baltic Provinces, officially recognized by the Czar, the growth of the boarding-schools, and the extension of foreign missions. In the boarding-schools the Brethren were at their best. ”

“ In 1760 they had eight fields of labour, 1,000 communicants, and 7,000 heathen under their care; in 1834, thirteen fields of labour, 15,000 communicants, and 46,000 under their care; in 1901, twenty fields of labour, 32,000 communicants, and 96,000 under their care. As the historian traces the history of the Moravian Church, he often finds much to criticize and sometimes much to blame ”

“ They believed neither in building churches, nor in saying masses, nor in the adoration of pictures, nor in the singing of hymns at public worship. For all practical intents and purposes they rejected entirely the orthodox Catholic distinction between things secular and things sacred, and held that a man could worship God just as well in a field as in a church, and that it did not matter in the least whether a man's body was buried in consecrated or unconsecrated ground. ”

“ It is hard to mention a nobler instance of broad-minded charity. For some years the secretary of this Association has generally been an Anglican clergyman; he pleads for Moravian Missions in parish churches; the annual sermon is preached in St. Paul's Cathedral; and thus the Brethren are indebted to Anglican friends for many thousands of pounds. Another proof of interest in Moravian Missions was the publication of books on the subject by non-Moravian writers. At Edinburgh an anonymous writer published "The Moravians in Greenland" (1830) and "The Moravians in Labrador" (1833) . ”

“ They practise Confirmation; [159] and yet they do not insist on confirmation as an absolute condition, in all cases, of church membership. If the candidate, for example, is advanced in years, and shrinks from the ordeal of confirmation, he may be admitted to the Moravian Church by reception; and members coming from other churches are admitted in the same way. They practise episcopal ordination, but do not condemn all other ordinations as invalid; and a minister of another Protestant Church may be accepted as a Moravian minister without being episcopally ordained. ”

“ He frequently stayed at Gnadenfrei, Barby, and Ebersdorf. He chatted with Albertini at Berthelsdorf. He described the Brethren's singing meetings as models. "They make a deep religious impression," he said, "which is often of greater value than many sermons." He loved their celebration of Passion Week, their triumphant Easter Morning service, and their beautiful Holy Communion. "There is no Communion to compare with theirs," he said; and many a non-Moravian has said the same. He admired the Moravian Church because she was free ”

“ Subscribing with almost childlike simplicity to the evangelical faith of the Church of her fathers, the Moravian Church, treasuring with jealous affection the memorials of its heroic past, and aiding in its works of present usefulness, her attitude towards other religious bodies, Jewish and Christian, was broadly Catholic, a brotherhood of faith seeming to be an integral part of a character whose leading impulse was the brotherhood of man. ”

“ No Church can expect to make much progress unless its institutions are in tune with the institutions of the country. For good or for evil, England was growing democratic; and, therefore, the Moravian Church should have been democratic too. But in those days the Moravian Church was the reverse of democratic. In theory each congregation had the power to elect its own committee; in fact, no election was valid unless ratified by the Lot. In theory each congregation had the power to send a deputy to the Provincial Synod ”

“ In the first place, it is well to note what we mean by Moravian ideals. If Moravian ideals are Zinzendorf's ideals, the criticism is true. In Germany, the Brethren still pursue Zinzendorf's policy; in England and America that policy has been rejected. In Germany the Moravians still act as a "Church within the Church"; in England and America such work has been found impossible. But Zinzendorf's "Church within the Church" idea is no Moravian "essential." It was never one of the ideals of the Bohemian Brethren; it sprang, not from the Moravian Church, but from German Pietism ”

“ If you don't, the whole cause will be ruined. To do without priests is no sin against God; but it is a sin against your fellow-men." As they pondered on the fateful question, the very light of Heaven itself seemed to flash upon their souls. It was they who possessed the unity of the spirit; and therefore it was they who were called to renew the Church of the Apostles. They had now become a powerful body; they were founding settlements all over the land; they stood, they said, for the truth as it was in Jesus ”

“ Not a cheek was blanched, not a voice faltered as the dread hour drew near. One and all they had fortified themselves to look the waiting angel of death in the face. As they sat in their rooms the evening before—a sabbath evening it was—they had all, in one way or another, drawn nigh to God in prayer. In one room the prisoners had taken the Communion together, in another they joined in singing psalms and hymns; in another they had feasted in a last feast of love. Among these were various shades of faith—Lutherans, Calvinists, Utraquists, Brethren ”

“ Some of the Popes were heretics; some of the clergy were villains, foredoomed to torment in Hell; and, therefore, all in search of the truth must turn, not to the Pope and the clergy, but to the Bible and the law of Christ. God alone had the power of the keys; God alone must be obeyed; and the Holy Catholic Church consisted, not of the Pope, the Cardinals, the Priests, and so many baptized members, but "of all those that had been chosen by God." It is hard to imagine a doctrine more Protestant than this. ”

“ It was now exactly fourteen years since Christian David had felled the first tree at Herrnhut; and now for another fourteen years these crumbling walls were to be the home of Moravian life. What the members of the Pilgrim Band were we may know from the very name. They were a travelling Church. They were a body of Christians called to the task, in Zinzendorf's own words, "to proclaim the Saviour to the world"; and the Count's noble motto was: "The earth is the Lord's; all souls are His; I am debtor to all." ”

“ Missionary zeal continued to flourish among the Moravians, and the little colony of Herrnhut became known as one of the most famous missionary centers of Christendom. Every one of its members felt that he possessed no permanent habitation in this world, and was prepared every day to be sent to any part of the globe.
Though still a small organization today, the Moravian Church has never lost its missionary spirit. It is claimed that for every fifty-eight members of the Church at home, there is one missionary in foreign lands. ”

“ They believe that their Church was born of God in Bohemia, that God restored her to the light of day when only the stars were shining, that God has opened the door in the past to many a field of labour, and that God has preserved her to the present day for some great purpose of his own. ”