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The great hero of the work was David Zeisberger. He was, like most of these early missionaries, a German. He was born at Zauchtenthal, in Moravia; had come with his parents to Herrnhut; had followed them later to Georgia; and was now a student at Spangenberg's College at Bethlehem.
If the Count had been a good business man, and if he had realized the importance of the American work, he would have left the management of that work entirely in Spangenberg's hands. But his treatment of Spangenberg was peculiar. He was still there when Zinzendorf died.
There lay the secret of Spangenberg's power; and there the secret of the services rendered by the Brethren when pious evangelicals in Germany trembled at the onslaught of the new theologians. For these services the Brethren have been both blamed and praised. According to that eminent historian, Ritschl, such men as Spangenberg were the bane of the Lutheran Church.
If a man joins the volunteers he is generally prepared, for the time being, to forego the comforts of family life, and these gallant toilers of the "Economy" were volunteers for God. Another feature of Spangenberg's work was his loyalty as a British citizen.
It is an ingenious performance, which fell into my hands many years after I had gone forth to see and to feel what war was like. In Spangenberg's Grammatical War the nouns and the verbs are the contending parties. Poeta is king of the nouns, and Amo king of the verbs. There is a regular debate between the two sovereigns.
There we have Spangenberg's theology in a sentence; there shines the Brethren's experimental religion. The doctrine of the Trinity stood upon the same basis.
But there is no military science in Bunyan's Holy War nor in Spangenberg's Grammatical War: why should there be? Practical warfare is rough work. To frighten, to wound, to kill, these three abide under all forms of military doctrine, and the greatest of these is frightening. Ares, the god of war, has two satellites, Terror and Affright. Fear is the Gorgon's head.
"A great philosopher at our University," he wrote to Spangenberg, "complained to me about our modern theologians; and then added: 'I am just reading Spangenberg's Idea. It is certain that our successors will have to recover their Christian theology from the Moravian Brethren." But the keenest criticism was passed by Caspar Lavater. His mixture of praise and blame was highly instructive.
Skirmishes precede the great engagement, in which the nouns are worsted, though they have come off with some of the spoils of war; and peace is made on terms dictated by Priscian, Servius, and Donatus. Spangenberg's Grammatical War is a not uninteresting, not uninstructive squib, and the salt of it, or saltpetre of it, has not all evaporated after the lapse of some three centuries.
He wrote a "Succinct View of the Missions" of the Brethren , and thus brought the subject of foreign missions before the Christian public; and in order to let inquirers know what sort of people the Moravians really were, he translated and published Spangenberg's "Idea of Faith," Spangenberg's "Concise Account of the Present Constitution of the Unitas Fratrum," and David Cranz's "History of the Brethren."
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