The Moravians at Herrnhut

In 1722 a few families who had left Moravia for the sake of their faith were given leave to build on the estate of Count Nikolaus von Zinzendorf in Upper Lusatia (Memorial-Days of the Renewed Church of the Brethren, pp. 20–32). The carpenter Christian David, who had led them out, and his companions felled the first tree for the first house on 17 June, on a wild slope below the hill called the Hutberg, and the count’s steward named the place Herrnhut, “the Lord’s Watch” (Memorial-Days of the Renewed Church of the Brethren, pp. 20–32). The church that grew there holds that these settlers were the descendants and survivors of the ancient Church of the Brethren (Memorial-Days of the Renewed Church of the Brethren, preface).

The settlement drew people of different opinions, and by 1727 it was divided. Zinzendorf drew up statutes, which the Lutheran pastor of the parish and the leading inhabitants approved. On 12 May 1727 he spoke to the whole community for three hours, the statutes were read, and each inhabitant gave his hand in pledge (Memorial-Days of the Renewed Church of the Brethren, pp. 86–90). The statutes declare that Herrnhut is to remain in love with the children of God in all religious persuasions and to judge none. They count as a genuine brother one who confesses that he owes his awakening and salvation wholly to the mercy of God in Christ and who shows by his whole life that he is determined to be delivered from sin, and they say that such a person is not to be despised for holding sectarian or defective opinions (Herrnhut Statutes of 1727, arts. 1–3).

On 13 August the congregation walked to the parish church at Berthelsdorf for the Lord’s Supper. The Herrnhut diary, as the church’s history quotes it, says that on the way those who had been estranged embraced one another, that during the hymns it could hardly be told whether the people were singing or weeping, and that they went home at noon “with feelings of holy extacy” and spent the following days “learning the lesson of love” (Memorial-Days of the Renewed Church of the Brethren, pp. 101–105). Two weeks later twenty-four men and twenty-four women agreed to divide the hours of day and night among them by lot, so that prayer should not cease (Memorial-Days of the Renewed Church of the Brethren, p. 133).

The same history traces the missions to Zinzendorf’s schooldays at Halle, where he heard of the Tranquebar mission in Francke’s house, and to his visit to Copenhagen in 1731, where Brethren of his household met Anthony, a black servant from St Thomas in the West Indies who had been baptized in Denmark and who described the condition of the slaves on the island (Memorial-Days of the Renewed Church of the Brethren, pp. 134–137). Leonard Dober offered himself, writing to the congregation that he was ready to become a slave in order to tell them of the Saviour. He set out on foot with David Nitschmann on 21 August 1732 (Memorial-Days of the Renewed Church of the Brethren, pp. 140–143), and they reached St Thomas on 13 December (Memorial-Days of the Renewed Church of the Brethren, p. 148).