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We call easily see what such a sentence means. It means that the Brethren were afraid of new ideas, and resolved to stifle them in their birth. The new policy produced strange results. At the Theological Seminary in Niesky the professors found themselves in a strange position.
They should have been the bond of sympathy. The son, a sorrowful little motherless boy, was sent to the Moravian school at Niesky, and then to Barby. He was to escape the contamination of the universities, and the woes through which his father had passed. Even there the spirit of the age pursued him. The precocious lad, in his loneliness, raised every question which the race was wrestling with.
He had visited the Brethren both at Herrnhut and Niesky; he admired the Moravian type of teaching; and now he requested the U.E.C. to admit both his sons as pupils to the Pædagogium at Niesky. But the U.E.C. objected. The Pædagogium, they said, was meant for Moravian students only.
At the age of seven he was sent to the Moravian school at Kleinwelke; he then entered the Pædagogium at Barby, and completed his education by studying theology at Niesky.
For the first time they now resolved that, instead of shutting themselves up in settlements, they would try, where possible, to establish town and country congregations. For the first time they now agreed that, in the English and American congregations, new members might be received without the sanction of the Lot. Meanwhile, the boys awakened at Niesky were already in harness.
In Lusatia the Brethren had centres of work at Herrnhut, Niesky and Kleinwelke; in Silesia, at Gnadenfrei, Gnadenberg, Gnadenfeld and Neusalz; in Pomerania, at Rügen and Mecklenburg; in East Prussia, at Danzig, Königsberg and Elbing; in Thuringia, at Neudietendorf; in the Palatinate and the Wetterau; at Neuwied; in Brandenburg, at Berlin and Potsdam; in Denmark, at Christiansfeld, Schleswig, Fühnen, and Copenhagen; in Norway, at Christiana, Drammen and Bergen; in Sweden, at Stockholm and Gothenburg; in Switzerland, at Basel, Bern, Zürich and Montmirail; and finally, in Livonia and Esthonia, they employed about a hundred preachers and ministered to about six thousand souls.
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.
It was Germans, not Czechs, who began the foreign missionary work; Germans who came to England, and Germans who renewed the Brethren's Church in America. In due time pure Czechs from Bohemia came and settled at Rixdorf and Niesky; but, speaking broadly, the Renewed Church of the Brethren was revived by German men with German ideas.
He attempted for the Germans of the eighteenth century what many theologians are attempting for us to-day. He endeavoured to make a "lasting treaty between living Christian faith and the spirit of free inquiry." He found that treaty existing already at Niesky.
For more advanced students they have a Pædagogium at Niesky; and the classical education there corresponds to that imparted at our Universities. At Gnadenfeld they have a Theological Seminary, open to students from other churches. Fourth, there is the Brethren's medical work, conducted by a Diakonissen-Verband, or Nurses' Union. It was begun in 1866 by Dr. Hermann Plitt.
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