56^' ~~ K ow, p S.v,, A. 
 
 r* 
 
 Mouayian Missions. 
 
 1732 - 1882 . 
 
Jubilee Address 
 
 BY 
 
 THE REV. A. C. THOMPSON, D.D., 
 
 OF BOSTON, MASS., 
 
 DBL1VRRF.D AT BETHLEHEM, PA , ON THE OCCASION OP 
 
 The 150th Anniversary of the Foreign Missions 
 ofthe Moravian Church, 
 
 AUGUST 21, 1882. 
 
 BETHLEHEM: 
 
 MORAVIAN PUBLICATION OFFICE. 
 
 1882. 
 
PRINTED FOR 
 
 THE SOCIETY OF THE UNITED BRETHREN 
 
 FOR PROPAGATING THE GOSPEL AMONG THE HEATHEN. 
 
ADDRESS. 
 
 cj| I' X a suburb of Constance, near where the Rhine emerges from 
 ij I the lake which bears that name, stands one of the most appro- 
 priate monuments in Europe. It is a rude, massive boulder 
 which has been placed upon the spot where, more than four and a 
 half centuries ago, John Hus and Jerome of Prague were burned 
 at the stake. Perhaps no incident of foreign travel ever impressed 
 me more than to find, on the morning of an anniversary of the 
 martyrdom of Hus, that a Protestant gentleman from Prague in 
 Bohemia, had climbed, before daybreak, over the high iron fence 
 which encloses the monument, and with a wreath of fresh immor- 
 telle. s had crowned the memorial -rock. 
 
 John Hus, true-hearted, with a noble simplicity and a conscien- 
 tious firmness, never rendered giddy by applause nor despondent 
 by persecution, a reformer before the Reformation, and a Bohemian 
 Brother before the Unitas Fratrum, supplied an impulse and a tvpe 
 of that movement which issued in the colony at Herrnhut and in 
 the foreign missionary enterprise of which this day is the third 
 Jubilee. Would that I were able to bring a wreath worthy of the 
 occasion — a wreath that shall harmonize with the beautiful decora- 
 tions of this place at this time ! 
 
 Happily I have to climb no denominational iron pickets. It is 
 at your kind invitation, friends of the Society for Propagating the 
 
4 
 
 Gospel, that I appear here. I come simply as one who has, to some 
 extent, studied the missions of the Unitas Fratrum, but has nothing 
 to communicate except impressions, the impressions of one from 
 outside and at a distance. Least of all will anything so preposterous 
 be attempted as to give information concerning Moravian missions, 
 to an audience at this focus of the American Province of the United 
 Brethren, this Herrnhut of America. It is presumed that all 
 present are familiar with the history of that evangelistic work as 
 carried on for the last one hundred and fifty years. 
 
 Between the martyrdom of Hus in July, 1415, and the present 
 hour, there. lie two great eras in the history of the Unitas Fratrum 
 — the one a testimony of endurance under cruel oppression ; the 
 other a testimony of signal evangelism. These, however, are by 
 no means disconnected ; in the evident design of Providence they 
 form a coherent whole. The roots of the present are hid deep in 
 the past. 
 
 One of two results usually flows from severe trial; individuals 
 or communities either enfeeble their spiritual life by pitying them- 
 selves and by nursing an expectation of pity from others ; or else 
 a self-forgetful benevolence is stimulated. Suffering that fails to 
 make a man or a church more enterprising in the way of Christian 
 philanthropy, to ennoble and expand character, fails of its chief end. 
 If a self-indulgent inactivity follow, decay will ensue. 
 
 Seldom is any one called to notable service in behalf of fellow- 
 men without some severity of previous discipline. 
 
 In the pit and in prison Joseph qualifies to become the best 
 governor Egypt ever had. The oppression of Puritans in England, 
 their early hardships on the rugged shores of New England, and 
 their subsequent experiences in war, contributed to that character 
 which has revealed itself in missionary movements now entering 
 into the true glory of our age. Embarrassments under which 
 John Eliot and others like him, labored in the mother country, and 
 the condition of self-exile to a wilderness, made them all the more 
 
o 
 
 ready for Christian efforts in behalf of the Indian. It was during 
 tlie period of the first French revolution and the Napoleonic wars 
 — a period of wild commotion, of unexampled sacrifice of life, of 
 unutterable distress among the nations of Europe — that most of the 
 great evangelistic movements of modern times took their rise. 
 Not unfrequent lv docs the baptism of fire and blood seal a conse- 
 cration to high and far-reaching aims; on the anvil and under the 
 hammer character grows broad. W as it not the divine thought 
 that both king and queen of the Iberians should be converted, when 
 a Christian female in the fourth century was carried away captive 
 into Asiatic Georgia? Was it not in order to the planting of 
 Christianity in Abyssinia that God allowed the capture, by fierce 
 natives, of two Christian youths, one of whom became the first 
 bishop in that country? During all the Moravian experience of 
 poverty, oppression and bloodshed, He who seetli the end from the 
 beginning, had in mind salvation for Eskimos in Arctic regions, for 
 African slaves in tropical West Indies, and for Hottentots in South 
 Africa. 
 
 Something more than long harrowing is needful ; seed, and the 
 right seed must be in the soil. It is ideas that govern the world ; 
 ideas that give form and character to the Church ; and any church 
 to fulfill the aim of its Adorable Head must apprehend clearly 
 His chief thoughts in its establishment. 
 
 Quite superfluous would it be to pause here for the utterance of 
 such a truism as that gospel-promulgation is one grand design of - 
 the Founder, were it not that scarcely had three centuries gone by 
 after our Lord gave His final command, before that idea had very 
 much faded from the mind of Christendom ; and were it not that 
 only to a limited extent has it since been restored. All along the 
 ages the thought of believers — the very best of them — has been 
 disproportionately fastened on the great concern of personal salva- 
 tion ; and to a wide extent the duty of evangelizing the heathen 
 has been regarded as, at most, something incidental, exceptional, 
 
6 
 
 extraneous, instead of being co-ordinate with the other, and no less 
 imperative. 
 
 Hence partly it is that in Christian communities there has been 
 so much that seems narrow, so much that wears the aspect of self- 
 indulgence; hence so little of primitive power, and so much of 
 division, decay, torpor, death. 
 
 Time was when a Pope of Rome said that the oue thing which 
 satisfied him that the Church of England lacked the mark of 
 catholicity was her having no missions among the heathen. A sad 
 fact it is that when at length the Church Missionary Society came 
 into being it had to struggle on for sixteen years before winning 
 the countenance of a single dignitary of that venerable body. 
 Substantially the same lias been true in the experience of most 
 Protestant foreign missionary organizations which have sprung up 
 within the last hundred years. At the present hour one of the 
 chief needs of Christendom is education into the policy and spirit 
 of our divine Master, into an apprehension of the chief aim of His 
 kingdom in this world. The words, the example of our Lord, and 
 the whole genius of His special economy on earth, go to show that 
 expansion was contemplated and provided for; that evangelization 
 is the Church’s business; that it is not something optional, not a 
 mere appendage, without which she is tolerably complete, but an 
 integral part of her obligation ; no more fitting, no more urgent 
 in apostolic times than to-day. 
 
 The Great Teacher dwelt less on the personal experience of dis- 
 ciples than on the claims and scope of His kingdom. The 
 underlying idea of theological seminaries and of all Christian 
 training, which shall give type and tone to religious character and 
 to the spirit of the Christian ministry, should be, should ever have 
 been the Pauline “ Necessity is laid upon me,” “ Woe is unto me if 
 I preach not the gospel ;” this sentiment made effective, that the 
 missionary spirit is not a peculiar but a characteristic element; that 
 going or helping others to go is tin* only legitimate alternative; 
 
that ceasing to be aggressive the Church ceases to be fully Christian. 
 The conviction must become deep, pervasive and abiding that to 
 prepare one’s self for eternity is neither the sole, nor the chief end 
 of probation. No country will ever be saved by an army that is 
 mainly bent on saving itself. 
 
 M issions are the expression of the Church regarding the world 
 that sitteth in darkness; a test of loyalty to Messiah. No missions, 
 little fealty. For fifteen hundred years there has l>een a crying 
 want of appreciation of the most patent fact and feature of genuine 
 Christianity — that it is something to he communicated, not simply 
 enjoyed; and that cosmopolitan evangelism was contemplated in all 
 its provisions and precepts. The general mind has by no means 
 caught the burden of angelic tidings of great joy that “all people” 
 were to have a share; nor that, in the midst of temple solemnities, 
 the first herald, filled with the Holy Ghost, the infant Jesus in his 
 arms, gave the exegesis of Heaven, that there was the salvation 
 “prepared before the face of all peoples.” While the centuries 
 have gone by, a voice has been sounding, “Go ye therefore, and 
 make disciples of all the nations,” and while words the plainest 
 and most emphatic, have been recalling the Church to her true, 
 primitive function, is it not astonishing that there should have 
 been only here and there an ear to hear; that even the blessed 
 Reformation of the sixteenth century left Protestants, for the time, 
 heedless of the claims of the heathen? That was a reformation 
 which stopped midway in its career, stopped at the terms of 
 personal salvation, ecclesiastical regimen, and various local interests, 
 instead of moving on to the broad and glorious work of the world’s 
 evangelization. 
 
 The merit of a revived, collective comprehension of the grand 
 aim of Jesus Christ in His kingdom on earth belongs to the Re- 
 newed Church of the United Brethren. What Wittenberg was to 
 Rome, Herrnhut became to Protestant Christendom. In modern 
 times the Moravian Church was the first, as a Church and at the 
 
8 
 
 outset of her career, to render practical in her life a just conception 
 of what Christianity has to do for our world. 
 
 Individual and sporadic efforts, governmental and colonial move- 
 ments in the line of foreign evangelization had taken place; yet 
 none of them proceeded upon the basis of a generally recognized 
 duty to give the gospel to the heathen as heathen, and because such 
 is the command of Him who died for all. The middle of the six- 
 teenth century (1556) witnessed a Swiss Mission to South America; 
 but the chief motive was the hope of providing an asylum for 
 endangered Protestants, especially Protestants in France; and 
 through the treachery of the leader, Villegagnon, it proved worse 
 than a failure. 
 
 The endeavors of Gustavus Vasa of Sweden about the same time, 
 and then half a century later the endeavors of Gustavus Adolphus 
 in behalf of Laplanders, were entered upon because the people were 
 Swedish subjects; the movement falls strictly to the sphere of home 
 missions; and besides was a governmental affair; the collection of 
 annual tribute as a part of the proceeding in Lapland, and the 
 enforcement of penalties for the neglect of religious observances, 
 show how defective was the evangelistic policy of those excellent 
 monarehs. 
 
 We turn to Holland. Commendation is due to Anthony Wal- 
 Iteus for his attempt to found a seminary at Leyden, where young 
 men might be trained as missionaries, an institution which the 
 Dutch East India Company patronized. That same commercial 
 corporation had more or less of laudable intent in supporting 
 ministers of the gospel in the East India possessions of Holland — 
 Formosa, Amboyna, Java and Ceylon. The main impulse, how- 
 ever, proceeded from the circumstance that Hollanders — govern- 
 ment servants and merchants — were settled in those islands, and 
 that by conquest in the first half of the seventeenth century, 
 natives had come under Dutch rule. The method of evangelization 
 was superficial and unsatisfactory ; not a little of coercion came to 
 
0 
 
 be used. Christianity, instead of being introduced into the heart 
 or even into the head, was imposed upon the people; and it is to 
 be feared that more hypocrites than converts were made. It need 
 hard I v l>e said that the Reformed Church of the Netherlands was 
 far, very far, from being leavened with a missionary spirit. 
 
 In England, too, societies like that for the Propagation of the 
 Gospel in Foreign Parts, whose charter bears the date of 1701, 
 sprang primarily from a desire to supply British Colonies with 
 clergymen, catechists and school masters. Labor in behalf of 
 heathen in the colonies was a subordinate, an incidental consider- 
 ation ; only a few, exceedingly few, here and there in the Church 
 of England and among Dissenters, had dreamed of what was due 
 from them to the outside pagan world. 
 
 The Congregational Churches of New England in the last half 
 of the seventeenth century, came nearer than anv others of that 
 period, to a prevailing appreciation of the great duty owed by 
 Christian men to those who sit in the region and shadow of death. 
 Their sense of obligation began to find expression during the decade 
 from 1640-1650 in labors commenced by the Mavhews and John 
 Eliot, labors into which others also entered heartily then and later. 
 But the two men who led off in that example remained pastors of 
 churches composed of English colonists ; so were others who fol- 
 lowed their example. Exclusive devotion by any one to Christian 
 work among the Indians in that century was scarcely known. 
 
 Honorable mention should be made of Denmark; yet, like so 
 many other initial Protestant endeavors of the same kind, her 
 foreign missions, beginning in 1705, sprang out of a colonial in- 
 terest. That little kingdom had acquired possessions on the Coro- 
 mandel coast of India, and hence King Frederick IV proposed a 
 mission to Tranquebar. The originating motive of Hans Egede’s 
 expedition to Greenland was the hope of finding and ministering 
 to supposed descendants of Christian Scandinavians who, centuries 
 before, had settled in that region of ice. Those associated with him 
 
to 
 
 in the enterprise, excepting his noble wife Gertrude, were at the 
 outset chiefly influenced by the prospect of a lucrative trade. But 
 those early Danish missions had only a feeble hold upon the 
 Lutheran Church of Denmark, and occasioned only a ripple in the 
 current of her life. Regarding the operation in Tranquebar, no 
 inconsiderable portion of the funds, nearly all the men, and almost 
 the entire management proceeded from Germany. 
 
 A foreign mission, as we now understand that term — a move- 
 ment, simple and pure, of Christian men with the primary purpose 
 of carrying the gospel to the heathen because they are heathen — 
 was unknown in the Protestant world till 1732. Just eleven years 
 after Egede, the Norwegian, sailed from Bergen, and just eleven 
 years before David Brainerd betook himself to Kaunaumeek, such 
 an undertaking originated at Herrnhut. 
 
 The severe discipline to which Bohemian and Moravian exiles 
 had been subjected — a discipline which, in the counsels of Heaven 
 had respect, no doubt, to the future of the Renewed Church — has 
 already been alluded to. 
 
 Another antecedent in the all-wise Providence of God appears to 
 be no less note-worthy. As, for the refugees from ancient Egypt 
 there was needed a counsellor and law-giver of eminent piety, 
 breadth of culture, the superior qualities of a statesman and prophet, 
 one educated elsewhere than in a servile condition, so the refugees 
 in Upper Lusatia needed an organizer and leader with far different 
 training from what could be had among persecuted artizans of Bo- 
 hemia. Such a leader was in preparation. Of noble birth, bv 
 marriage connections related to several royal families on the conti- 
 nent, with superior endowments, of precocious piety, from boyhood 
 onward moved to a consecration of time, talents and treasures to the 
 promotion of evangelical interests at home and abroad, Count 
 Zinzendorf rises to our view as one of (lie most remarkable 
 characters of the last century, indeed one of the most remarkable 
 in all Church history. W hat other name is known to ecclesiastical 
 
11 
 
 annals, of a man in such high social position, who, at an early period 
 of life, became possessed with a grand Christian idea so foreign to 
 his rank, and so in advance of his age; who in the sanctified ardor 
 of youth, entered into covenant to do all possible for the cause of 
 evangelization, and that too among those most neglected by others — 
 a covenant from which he never swerved till, at threescore, death 
 closed his earthly activities? Gross Hennersdorf, German Uni- 
 versities and the Saxon Court, furnished Herrnhut with a Moses. 
 
 Hut what of the period? 
 
 In Germane it is, to a sad extent, a period of scholasticism in 
 both the Lutheran and Reformed Churches; a period of bitter 
 theological contests; a period of sheer orthodoxy — evangelical 
 feeling and life having largely evaporated. The spurious illuminism 
 of later years is just becoming visible in its murky dawn ; the 
 philosophy which brought on rationalism is making its early essays 
 to dominate revelation. In the person of Frederick William I there 
 sits on the throne of Prussia the strangest compound of religiosity 
 and violent passion that ever wore a crown ; and there will soon be 
 a reaction in favor of French tinsel and French infidelity. A 
 leaven is at work which will prepare for the sentiment of Frederick 
 the Great : “ Every one shall be saved in his own fashion.” 
 
 Pietism, distressed by the petrifying condition of the religious 
 world, has for many years been striving — and with a measure of 
 success — to infuse life, to throw off the stiff bands of confessionalism, 
 and revive a Biblical piety. It insisted upon a new heart, a new 
 creature in Christ Jesus as the primary need of every man, savage 
 or cultured, and then of a warm Christian fellowship. But in its 
 reaction from torpor Pietism had in turn somewhat deteriorated ; it 
 was becoming narrow, concentrated within itself, and censorious. 
 Some good men of the Halle School thought Zinzendorf could not 
 be a child of God because he had not been through the penitential 
 struggle after their pattern. The excellent men who gave in their 
 adhesion to that form of revived religion, kept themselves unduly 
 
apart from the rest of society ; they lacked breadth ; their theology 
 was too much a theology of feeling and frames. 
 
 There was required a forth-putting spirit, a spirit of enterprise 
 in behalf of others, an element which did enter into the life of 
 Moravianism. Herrnhut became indeed a tropical island in a polar 
 ocean ; but her fruit trees were destined to be transplanted. The 
 two leading Scriptural ideas of Church existence — personal culture 
 and aggression, growth intensively and extensively, each an auxiliary 
 to the other — harmonized in the spiritual temperament of the 
 United Brethren. 
 
 This will appear all the more noticeable when it is considered 
 what the regimen was which Zinzendorf introduced — an isolated 
 community, whose municipal, industrial and social affairs were 
 administered by Church authorities, no outsider to hold real estate 
 or to have residence within corporate limits. Such a system — con- 
 tinuing still in Great Britain and on the continent of Europe, 
 though relinquished in this country — was not of itself, as a polity, 
 suited to enlargement or perpetuity. Were it not for the evan- 
 gelistic movement outward to the farthest lines, local and social, of 
 our race, — arctic latitude and the savage state — Herrnhut might 
 before this have become an entity of the past alone. The restora- 
 tion, well-defined, of a primitive missionary element, supplied the 
 required conserving and vital force. 
 
 The main question evermore confronts us: What is a man, what 
 is a communion worth for the kingdom of God, that progressive 
 kingdom which is to fill the earth? Every people, as well as every 
 individual, has, by divine appointment, an office to perform, a niche 
 to fill. The function of Moravianism has been to embody and 
 illustrate in the eyes of Protestants (lie harmony of holy living at 
 home centers and evangelistic energy abroad. 
 
 In every great undertaking or discovery chief merit pertains to 
 driority. To Herrnhut belongs the credit of having taken the lead 
 in this line of things, and of having persisted therein amidst the 
 
religious apathy and growing rationalism of the last century, and 
 the early part of the present century. Seventeen hundred and 
 thirty-two was the year in which Voltaire published his Lettres 
 Philosophic ues ; and the grinning infidel had only too mueh occa- 
 sion to chuckle over the fact that Vernct, a Protestant minister at 
 Geneva, was insisting, not upon the necessity, but the utility of our 
 holy religion. 
 
 It will be remembered, too, that besides Moravianism there was 
 another remarkable manifestation of the spiritual revival which 
 began with Spcncr’s Collegia pietatis two hundred years ago. It 
 was Weslevanism ; for the Pietistie wave struck Great Britain, and 
 its marvellous result is second only to the Reformation of the six- 
 teenth century. That, however, in its organization and its foreign 
 missionary movement, was later bv a generation than Herrnhut, 
 and was, in some measure, an outgrowth of Herrnhut. 
 
 A jubilee retrospect, such as that of to-dav, would come far short 
 of what the occasion demands, if it failed to portray the distinctive 
 element, out of which sprang the movement that makes a 
 
 red-letter year in missionary annals. That element was an unusu- 
 ally fervent attachment to the Saviour. 
 
 T will not pause to speak of infelicities in the poetic imagery of 
 the earlier Moravian era, particularly in the Sifting Period. Of 
 what account are mere aesthetic blemishes, as against the substantial 
 and most important feature of vital piety? Why should they even 
 be alluded to, as is often done — and sometimes discreditably — when 
 the denomination has sloughed them off, and repudiated them ? 
 
 I repeat ; one marked characteristic of the Brethren’s Church, 
 and the fountain of her remarkable missionary zeal, is warmth of 
 love and loyalty to Him who is Head of the Church. I am not 
 aware that since primitive days any communion of believers have, 
 as a body, in such marked manner and so uniformly kept the eye 
 upon the Lamb of God who taketh away the sin of the world. 
 Thence has come the inspiration which makes a Moravian com- 
 
14 
 
 munity, in its best days, so free from pomp, noise and worldliness, 
 from the greed of gain and of honor ; which sheds the charm 
 of simplicity and cheerfulness over social life, over religious 
 worship, over death anti the resting-place of the dead — a charm 
 restful and refreshing, that abides even in the most repulsive 
 regions of foreign missionary toil. 
 
 Every evangelical church possesses in some measure, of course, 
 a genuine affection for our Lord ; but, as Faraday has shown that 
 a dormant magnetism exists in all metals which will become 
 apparent only at a certain temperature, so in some Christian bodies 
 there is required a degree of rare religious fervor to make it 
 apparent that charity abides there. It must be said that this 
 virtue, with some alternations of vigor, has been eminently culti- 
 vated by the United Bretln-en, among whom there is never found 
 a Christless Christianity, nor Christ without the cross, nor the 
 cross without the resurrection. 
 
 Not less truly than daylight from the sun, do spiritual illumina- 
 tion, and life, and strength come from Immanuel. That great 
 work wrought eighteen hundred years ago — the only work in all 
 time that is truly great — being appropriated by faith, produces a 
 mighty inworking upon the heart, moulds into union with the 
 Redeemer, and stimulates to the holy activities of His kingdom. 
 “Abide in me” — not “ under me,” as subject to my sway alone; 
 nor “with me” as Elder Brother for fellowship simply — but “in 
 me,” by conjunction most intimate and vital, effected from on high, 
 and bringing alliance with Heaven. The lighthouse is indeed 
 built upon the rock, but at the outset also built into the rock, sunk 
 therein, so that oneness results. Thus, too, believers are “ built 
 upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ 
 Himself being the chief corner stone, in whom they are also budded 
 together for an habitation of Cod through the Spirit.” 
 
 Philosophy undertakes no foreign missions; she will never quit 
 her groves of Acaderaus ; little would it avail if she did. Mere 
 
15 
 
 philanthropy will not take men into unevangelized regions. No 
 reliance for reclaiming the race can he had save upon those who 
 discover that on the cross justice and mercy harmonize, who become 
 so penetrated by the love of God in Christ Jesus that they “can- 
 not but speak the things which they have seen and heard.” The 
 place where they shall witness is a matter of comparative indiffer- 
 ence — whether among kindred at home, or among heathen at the 
 ends of the earth — so the Master make His pleasure plain. 
 
 The excellent Charles Simeon, of Cambridge, kept a portrait of 
 Henry Martvn in his study, which seemed to be all the while 
 saving, “Be earnest; be earnest; don’t trifle, don’t trifle;” and 
 Simeon would say, “ Yes, I will be earnest; 1 will be earnest; I 
 will not trifle, for souls are perishing, and Jesus must be glorified.” 
 Missionaries of the United Brethren have, for the most part, kept 
 the eye on a countenance more commanding, more lovely, “ looking 
 unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith.” As a class, if I 
 mistake not, they seem to have done this not less habitually, and 
 with perhaps greater earnestness than the foreign laborers of any 
 other Church. 
 
 Such being the case, what might be expected of Moravian mis- 
 sionaries with regard to their fields of remote and arduous labor? 
 
 Just what we find — that they go forth, not so much in the service 
 of the Unitas Fratrum as from personal obedience to the Lord 
 Jesus, because His express command brings to them an intransfer- 
 able duty ; and because the pledge of His perpetual presence they 
 know will be redeemed ; just what we find — that in their peculiarly 
 trying experiences they are kept hopeful and cheerful by the lively 
 consciousness of that union just spoken of, which is so intimate 
 that if a member be wounded here on earth, the Head in Heaven 
 feels it ; and that they glory only in the cross of Christ, making 
 that evermore the chief theme of teaching and preaching. By 
 experience, as well as by the word of God, are they taught that 
 spiritual life does not spring up out of native depths in man’s soul, 
 
16 
 
 but comes down into individual hearts ; that saving knowledge 
 is not revealed by flesh and blood, but is something divinely im- 
 parted, which finds its way to the centre of one’s being, and there 
 masters the man ; and how can they do otherwise than lift up 
 the cross to the gaze of sin-smitten man ? Thanks that Zinzendorf 
 inculcated the “Theology of Blood;” thanks that Franke, his 
 teacher, taught : “A drop of faith is more noble than a whole sea 
 of science, though it he the historical science of the divine word.” 
 There are, there can be only two systems of salvation — every 
 man his own Saviour, or no man saved hv himself alone. Heathen- 
 ism, Mohammedanism, nominal Christianity, leave man in utter 
 moral impoteucy. What other ground of peace and hope for the 
 guilty is there besides Calvary, that focus of the universe? The 
 expiatory and propitiatory cross is the appointed place for friendly 
 meeting between God and man, Heaven and earth. Only from 
 the cross waves the white flag of truce. 
 
 Deeply penetrated with a conviction of this truth, missionaries 
 of the United Brethren have started out, never questioning the 
 universal need or the universal adaptation of the gospel. They 
 have held, and with peculiar distinctness, that the Greek is no 
 better fitted to receive the gospel and to enter Heaven, by his specu- 
 lation, and that the barbarian is no less fitted by his rudeness ; that 
 there is no aristocratic salvation; that Christianity is no more 
 designed for Philemon, the wealthy master, than for Onesimus, 
 the bond-servant; that it is suited to man as man, whatever his 
 language, color, kindred or country ; suited to every existing, every 
 conceivable type and grade of civilization and of degradation. 
 
 “ What’s hallowed ground? Has earth a clod 
 Its Maker meant not should be trod 
 By man, the image of his God, 
 
 Erect and free, 
 
 Unscourged by superstition’s rod, 
 
 To bow the knee?” 
 
Hence, believing assuredly that, for spiritual vision, the Sun of 
 Righteousness is equally indispensable and equally adapted to 
 every eye, whether that organ he blue or black, or whatever its 
 shade, Moravian missionaries have, gone to Gentiles in regions of 
 densest moral night, “ to open their eyes, and to turn them from 
 darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God.” 
 
 “God hangs great weights on small wires,” — so says an Oriental 
 proverb. The truth thus homely expressed has been most obviously 
 illustrated in Moravian Missions. It is a principle which has been 
 maintained by the Supreme Ruler from the first; it shows His 
 wisdom; it suggests the care with which He guards His own 
 honor. “God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound 
 the things which are mighty, that no flesh should glory in His 
 presence.” 
 
 Objects, places and instruments for the accomplishment of pur- 
 poses more intimately relating to His spiritual kingdom, have 
 usually been chosen with apparent reference to staining the pride 
 of human glory. Is the Angel-Jehovah to appear signally to 
 Moses? It will not be in the tall cedar or terebinth, but in a 
 burning bush. By the vision of a barley loaf prostrating a tent 
 among the host of Midian, there is foreshadowed what the little 
 band under Gideon will accomplish. Would we behold the 
 Eternal Word made flesh, and come to dwell among us ? Shep- 
 herds will be our guides, and we must look into a stable. The 
 first to announce His ceremonial presence at the temple will be an 
 aged widow; the first to herald His resurrection will be a humble 
 woman. 
 
 This law, of which we are so often reminded in the history of 
 the Church as well as iq secular history, and to which there are so 
 many things in nature analogous, is one which our countrymen 
 have particular need to ponder. 
 
 We are addicted to an idolatry of bulk. We boast of great 
 lakes, great rivers, great spaces, as if these things would make a 
 
18 
 
 nation great ; whereas the aggregate of little things is usually 
 greater than the aggregate of great ones. It would probably 
 require a larger chasm to hold all the coral insects of our world 
 than all the elephants; and what those animalcules accomplish 
 is of more importance in the economy of nature, than the huge 
 quadrupeds of Asia and Africa together. A frequent blemish in 
 American sentiment has been the pride of bigness — not considering 
 that to dwell among superior magnitudes only makes individual 
 conceit and collective vanity all the more glaring. Is it not time 
 for us to give thought rather to the busy bee than to the spread 
 eagle? Go to the ant — architect, soldier, political economist — 
 consider her ways and be wise. 
 
 Was it the vast territory of Scythia and Mongolia, or little Attica 
 that furnished statesmen, philosophers, poets, and historians, who 
 have been models to the rest of the world? Was it in populous 
 Pekin, or in Bethlehem Ephratah, “little among the thousands of 
 Judah,” where the Lord of Glory appeared in human form ? It is 
 great and good ideas, associated with energy, that make a man 
 or a people truly great. That alone which reveals the divine, that 
 which is knit to a noble future, knit to eternity, ranks really high. 
 Humble instrumentalities and grand ultimate consequences disclose 
 the strength and skill of the Mighty One of Israel. Was the size 
 of Moses’ rod wherewith he brought water from tin* rock of any 
 account? The human following and force of our Lord at first were 
 only a few fishermen, a few women, and perhaps a few children. 
 
 We now travel back one hundred and fifty years to the Hutbcrg. 
 Casting an eye at the neighboring hamlet, we see no imposing archi- 
 tecture, nor in society or worship any imposing forms. The place has 
 had existence for only ten years; and its growth has been consider- 
 ably less than at the rate of one hundred souls a year. A majority 
 of the inhabitants are exiles, poor, not highly educated, with two or 
 three exceptions not high-born, planted and permitted on this spot 
 rather by sufferance than with the good will of any government. 
 
10 
 
 Among them is a young man from Suabia, twenty-seven years of 
 age, a potter by trade. One night in July, 1731, he is sleepless. 
 Is it the heat that keeps him awake ? There was onee a young 
 man at Athens who said the trophy of Miltiades would not let 
 him sleep ; is any such ambition at work here V A thought from 
 on high has been reeeived ; a holy ardor is kindled in his soul. 
 No such little affair as that of Marathon fills his mind ; personal 
 aggrandizement has no place. Amidst night watches his heart 
 turns toward benighted slaves in the West Indies, and his purpose 
 is formed ; he will carry the news of salvation to Africans in 
 bondage. 
 
 There has for some time been a prayer-meeting at Herrnhut 
 every evening, and he is always there. A remarkable season of 
 refreshing from on high four years ago (1727) stood evidently con- 
 nected with his prayers and those of his immediate associates. The 
 memorable August thirteenth precedes August twenty-first. He 
 was at the meeting when Count Zinzendorf spoke of the condition 
 of West India slaves; also when Anthony, the black man from St. 
 Thomas, told the story of his dark-minded countrymen, and of his 
 sister who had some desire to know the way of life. The thought 
 of saving one soul prepares this young Brother for any sacrifice. 
 The cross of Christ is the trophy that will not let Leonhard Dober 
 sleep that night. The next day he finds that his friend Tobias 
 Leupold was similarly affected at the same time with himself, bv 
 the same circumstances, and has been moved to the same resolution. 
 
 In missionary annals similar coincidences have not been wholly 
 unknown, and such a coincidence usually marks an epoch. 
 
 Sixteen hundred and forty-four furnishes an example. John 
 Eliot began his study of the Indian language, and Thomas Mayhew, 
 encouraged by the conversion of Hiacoomes, was preparing for 
 Christian labors in the vernacular of Martha’s Vineyard, and the 
 undertakings of those two devout men were quite independent of 
 each other. 
 
20 
 
 Seventeen hundred and ninety-five supplies an illustration. Dr. 
 Bogne was supplying the pulpit of the Tabernacle in Bristol, 
 England ; Dr. By land of that city received letters from the Baptist 
 missionaries in Bengal, and sends for Dr. Bogne, who belongs to a 
 different denomination, to hear them read. Then they kneel and 
 pray together; and the thought occurs to Dr. Bogne that it was 
 most desirable, and might be practicable to unite Christians of 
 different denominations for Missionary purposes ; that was the germ 
 of the London Missionary Society. 
 
 It was in a prayer-meeting, led by Samuel J. Mills, under the 
 shelter of a hay-stack at Williamstown, in the Summer of 1806, 
 that the thought of missions from this country to the heathen had 
 its origin, the seed-thought of the American Board, the oldest 
 Society of the kind this side the Atlantic. 
 
 We return to Herrnhut. Leupold writes a letter to the con- 
 gregation, communicating the desire of himself and Dober to 
 become missionaries. By the public reading of that letter two 
 more young men, Matthew Staeh and Frederick Bohnisch, are 
 simultaneously impressed, resolve to offer themselves for service in 
 Greenland, and next year will be on their way thither. The very 
 atmosphere of Herrnhut is becoming quick with a true evangelistic 
 element. The delay of a twelve-month only confirms the resolution 
 of Dober. It has taken time — though far less time than is usual — 
 to convince the Moravian Church that the scheme is neither a wild 
 one nor premature. 
 
 Martin Dinner, the worthy Chief Elder of the congregation, an 
 invalid, has set his heart on having Dober succeed him in office, 
 and cannot bear to have him leave. Generally, the men best 
 suited for foreign service are most needed at home. It did not, 
 however, avail to intimate to the young workman in clay that 
 special gifts and attainments m ight 1 >e required for the contem- 
 plated enterprise. “ I would offer myself to be a slave,” said he, 
 “ in order to tell these poor beings what I knew and had experi- 
 
enced of’ the love and grace of our blessed Saviour; for I am fully 
 persuaded that the Word of the Cross, though preached by the 
 weakest and poorest of His followers, must have a divine influence 
 upon the souls that hear it.” 
 
 The day for departure is at hand. David Xitschmann — who 
 after a while will be ordained as the first Bishop of the Renewed 
 Church of the Tinted Brethren, and chiefly with a view to further- 
 in'; the cause of Missions — has been selected to accompany Dobcr. 
 Leave-taking, with prayer and singing, is over. No laudatory 
 speeches, no torch-light processions are made. The morning of 
 August 21, 1732, dawns. No; it has hardly dawned ; at 3 o’clock 
 they start northward, Count Zinzendorf taking them some miles on 
 their way, to Bautzen. Thence they set out — a potter and a car- 
 penter — with a small bundle in hand, and less than four dollars 
 each in the pocket — for a journey of six hundred miles on foot; 
 and at the end of that journey they will still be four thousand miles 
 from the place of destination. 
 
 Chimerical, preposterous! exclaim the unthinking. 
 
 Pause a moment. Into the soul of that man whose trade is to 
 work in clay, there has come, as already remarked, a spark from 
 heaven. It has kindled a dame, clear, calm, steady. Since primi- 
 tive times he is the Hrst Missionary to Africans, to slaves. He is 
 the first Protestant Missionary to the heathen of tropical America. 
 At Herrnhut he has not been argued out of his convictions; at 
 Copenhagen stories of cannibalism will not frighten him out of his 
 purpose, nor will he be wearied out of it by the refusal of every 
 Danish shipmaster to take him to St. Thomas. On the long 
 pedestrian journey from Lusatia to Denmark all professing 
 Christians, save one, laugh at the potter and the carpenter, or 
 else pity them ; and that one, the appreciative Countess von 
 Stolberg, represents just about the proportion of persons then on 
 the Continent who would be likely to estimate aright the motives 
 and aim of these men. 
 
22 
 
 There are some who can declaim well on the subject of universal 
 brotherhood ; there always have been such. Even heathen poets 
 could get off fine sentiment now and then, Seneca saying, Non sum 
 uno angulo flatus ; patria mea totus hie est mundus — (‘‘I was not 
 born for one corner; this whole world is my country”); Lucan 
 professing, Nee sibi, sed toil gentium se credere mundo — (“ to believe 
 that he was born not for himself solely, but for all mankind”). Yet 
 which of them ever lifted so much as a finger for philanthropic 
 purposes? And of all the thousands in evangelical Europe on the 
 21st of August, 1732, how many were actually moving toward the 
 heathen world in obedience to Christ’s command ? Just two men, 
 who have bidden good-bye to Herrnlnit long before sunrise, men 
 who have taken in the full, simple, distinctive idea of evangeliza- 
 tion ; in whom that idea is operative; to whom the command “Go 
 ve,” means something else than stay at home. They head a long 
 line of quiet, unostentatious laborers of the Unitas Fratrum, who 
 have knocked at frozen doors for permission to proclaim the love 
 of Jesus; who have traversed regions where the sun shineth in his 
 strength — following in tracks most familiar to the tornado and to 
 the pestilence that walketh in darkness; who, in face of the brand 
 and the tomahawk, have gone with a song in the heart and on the 
 lips, not pitched to the minor key ; for a century and a half have 
 they, in various languages, made cultivated plantations, primeval 
 forests, and dreary wastes vocal with the hymn of Zinzendorf : 
 
 “Jesus, Thy blood and righteousness,” 
 
 and Paul Gerhardt’s : 
 
 “ O Head, so full of bruises! ” 
 
 Chiefly it is to men on the very verge of moral and social 
 hopelessness that they have gone; yet not primarily to civilize 
 them ; not so much to make Moravians as to make Christians ; not 
 mere reformation but salvation is their great aim. The burden of 
 their teaching and preaching, like the motto now conspicuously 
 before the eyes of this assembly, is “ The Everlasting Gospel.” 
 
Civilization never saves, may fail altogether of preparing for 
 Christianity; Christianity never fails to bring civilization in its 
 train. The United Brethren have indeed everywhere introduced 
 schools and industrial arts, but the hiding of their missionary 
 power is in the cross of Christ. Studiously and wisely have they 
 abstained from intermeddling with political affaire; theirs is not the 
 gospel of intrigue. Largely toiling for self-support, they have yet 
 seldom become secularized. Most courageously have they, as a 
 general thing, kept to their work. Purloining the fruit of other 
 men’s labor, welcoming the disciplined members and employing the 
 rejected native helpers of neighboring Missions, is not chargeable 
 upon them. 
 
 What though physical science has not been their forte; what 
 though no great invention or discovery, no epic poem, or popular 
 romance has emanated from them ; theirs is a work unspeakably 
 higher on the scale of the spiritual kingdom, and the results infi- 
 nitely more important — winning souls to Christ, and fitting them for 
 glory. 
 
 With rare persistence they have clung to their purpose. Does 
 a backslidden Indian leave the mission-settlement, and wander into 
 the wilderness? A youthful Moravian follows him into the forest; 
 finds him at length ; tells him it is in vain he flees; were he to go 
 hundreds of miles he would still pursue him. The Indian’s heart 
 melts: “Do the Brethren remember me still ? Are you come 
 
 merely to seek me ! ” — and he weeps in bitter contrition. Thousands 
 upon thousands of converts are the more than golden reward of 
 such perseverance. Numberless are the witnesses like a dying 
 Eskimo girl : “O Redeemer ! ” she exclaims, raising her wasted 
 
 hands toward heaven, “O Redeemer! how is it that when I hear 
 of Thee I ean not refrain from tears ? As the eider fowl to the 
 rock, so cleaveth my soul to Thee !” 
 
 August twenty-first, seventeen hundred and thirty-two ! Not 
 Yorktown or Waterloo; not Aboukir or Trafalgar; not the 
 
24 
 
 birthday of king or empress, but the birthday of a movement which 
 has grandeur in that only kingdom which shall flourish forever. 
 W as Magellan the first European to conduct a ship into the Pacific 
 Ocean, on a voyage that proved to be the circumnavigation of our 
 globe? Honor to his name; but do not angels place a far higher 
 estimate on the journey and voyage of the two humble Moravians 
 who set out from Herrnlmt, August 21, 1732? 
 
 Within seven consecutive years from that date, Herrnhut sent 
 about ten different Missions. From that obscure radiating-point 
 in Central Europe, Missions have been established in each of the 
 five other Continents; yet to the present day Herrnhut is a settle- 
 ment of only one thousand souls. If other Protestant Churches — 
 the older and the younger — had been equally prompt, and in pro- 
 portion to numbers, equally devoted to this cause; if instead of 
 sleeping on, oblivious to what is due to the unevangelized, equipped 
 with so small an amount of information and so large a supply of 
 objections, then would Zion be seen to have arisen, her light being 
 come and the glory of the Lord being risen upon her; Jesuits 
 would not be glorying in their priority of missionary zeal ; nor 
 would the heathen world be now flinging back reproaches upon 
 Christendom for her unpardonable tardiness; Sechele, chief of the 
 Back wains, could not have said to Livingstone, “Since it is true 
 that all who die unforgiven are lost for ever, why did not your 
 nation come to tell us of it before now ? My ancestors are all gone, 
 and none of them knew anything of what you tell me; how is 
 this?” nor would the New Zealand mother have held up her last 
 living child to the missionary, exclaiming, “ If you had come before, 
 and brought me the Gospel, 1 should not have murdered my twelve 
 other children ! ” 
 
 Of the more than two thousand Moravian Brethren and Sisters 
 “who have hazarded their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ,” time would fail to mention even conspicuous worthies 
 besides those already named — George Schmidt, the pioneer in South 
 
25 
 
 Africa; John Beck, serving over two-score years in Greenland; 
 Peter Braun in the English West Indies; Frederick Martin, the 
 well-known Missionary Bishop in the Danish West Indies; Schu- 
 mann, the Apostle of the Arawak Indians in South America; and 
 not least, Marie Lobach Hartmann, a missionary and a mother of 
 missionaries, and, in her widowhood of eighteen years, a heroine 
 among the Bush-Negroes of Surinam. Well might we spend more 
 than one hour in contemplating the sixty-three years’ service of 
 David Zeisberger, now present to the eye on glowing canvas and in 
 the midst of a sylvan reality — David Zeisberger, second to no 
 Christian man who has yet labored among North American Indians 
 — portrayed in a volume of rare excellence by the one who presides 
 on this occasion. 
 
 I need not say that here in your own beautiful cemetery of Beth- 
 lehem, beside the remains of Tschoop and many another Christian 
 Indian, rest those of Jungmann and Luekenbaoh, as well as the 
 remains of the amiable John Heckewelder, a man who commanded 
 the respect and confidence of Washington, and who, in negotiating 
 treaties of peace with native tribes, was honorably associated with 
 men like Col. Timothy Pickering, Gen. Putnam, and Gen. Lincoln. 
 I esteem it an honor to have for my own birthplace a county of 
 Connecticut, in which and near which are monuments to the memory 
 of Christian Henry Rauch, Gottlob Biittner, Joseph Powell and 
 David Bruce, whose labors at Indian settlements in that region — 
 commenced only ten years after the Mission to St. Thomas — should 
 be held in everlasting remembrance. 
 
 “ More sweet than odors caught by him who sails 
 Near spicy shores of Araby the blest, 
 
 A thousand times more exquisitely sweet. 
 
 The freight of holy feeling which we meet, 
 
 In thoughtful moments, wafted by the gales 
 From fields where good men walk, or bowers 
 wherein they rest.” 
 
26 
 
 Beloved Brethren of the Moravian Church, to voitr ancestors 
 “was it given, in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on Him, 
 but” — in the line of high promotion — “also to suffer for His sake.” 
 Gladly indeed do we place a wreath on the monument of John 
 Hus, on the monument of every martyr and every faithful Mis- 
 sionary ; yet will we never forget that in the burning fiery furnace 
 of Bohemia there was One, and under scorching rays of the tropics 
 there now is One like unto the Son of God ; that amidst the long- 
 winter of Greenland and Labrador, near by those humble mis- 
 ionarv dwellings, are footsteps which leave no print on the snow. 
 
 Before Him will we cast all crowns, saying, “Thou art worthy, 
 O Lord, to receive glory, and honor, and power ! ”