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"A stranger visited my class one day," says Spener. "The next day he called to see me and expressed his great pleasure with my instruction. 'But, said he, 'this instruction is for the head. The question is how to bring the head to the heart. And these words he repeated three times. I will not deny that they made such an impression upon me that for the rest of my days I shall not forget them."
As the religious brotherhoods of the Pythagoreans rose in spiritual revolt against the lax mythology and careless living of the Sybarites in Sicily; as in the third century of the Christian era Neoplatonism concentrated within itself whatever remains of faith and piety lingered in the creeds and philosophies of paganism; as in the Middle Ages devout men, wearied with forms and controversies, and scholastic reasoners seeking refuge from the logical and metaphysical problems with which they had perplexed theology, sought more direct communion with God in the mystic devotion of Anselm and Bernard, of Hugo and Bonaventura; as Bertholdt and Nicolas, Eckhart and Tauler, organised their new societies throughout Germany to meet great spiritual needs which established systems had wholly ceased to satisfy; as Arndt and Spener and Francke in the seventeenth century breathed new life into the Lutheran Church, and set on foot their 'collegia pietatis, their systematised prayer-meetings, to supplement the deficiencies of the time so in the England of the eighteenth century, when the force of religion was chilled by drowsiness and indifference in some quarters, by stiffness and formality and over-cautious orthodoxy in others, when the aspirations of the soul were being ever bidden rest satisfied with the calculations of sober reason, when proofs and evidences and demonstrations were offered, and still offered, to meet the cry of those who called for light, how else should religion stem the swelling tide of profligacy but by some such inward spiritual revival as those by which it had heretofore renewed its strength?
The whole movement at Herrnhut was free, spontaneous, original. It was not an imitation of the past. It was not an attempt to revive the Church of the Brethren. It was simply the result of Zinzendorf's attempt to apply the ideals of the Pietist Spener to the needs of the settlers on his estate. The second question is, what was the ecclesiastical standing of the Brethren at this time?
"Something must be going wrong somewhere. So you see it can't be Miss Elise, according to my judgment." Spener laughed when this conclusion was reached. "Come here again within a month and see if she can talk and sing," said he with eyes flashing. "Perhaps you have found that it is as easy to frighten a bugbear out of the way as to be frightened by one.
"If you wonder less how you can stay, remain of course," said Spener with no great cordiality: he owed this stranger nothing, after all. "It will only be to prove that I am really music-mad, as they have been telling me ever since I was born. If that is the case, from the evidences I have had since I came here I think I shall recover." "What do you mean?" asked Spener.
"There is no man alive to be compared with Albert Spener." "I know of one but one." "Not one," he said with an emphasis which sternly rebuked the ill-timed, and, as he deemed, untruthful flattery. "There is not his like, go where you will."
She arose to perform it, but Spener, as we know, had gone away the day before. This Spenersberg, about which Leonhard was not a little eager to know more when he shut the door of the apartment into which his host had ushered him for he must remain all night what was it? A colony, or a brotherhood, or a community, six years old.
In his prosperity he thought that he should never be moved, but he would not basely use that conviction and forget the source of all his satisfaction. He remembered that it was when he repented of his misdeeds that Spener came to him and drew him from the pit.
The Moravian brethren, though dating in the first instance from the time of Huss, owed their resuscitation to that wave of mystic pietism which passed through Germany in the seventeenth century, showing its early power in the writings of Behmen, and reaching its full tide in the new vigour of spiritual life inspired into the Lutheran Church by the activity of Arndt and Spener.
He interfered in many a duel, and rebuked his fellow students for drinking hard; and for this he was not beloved. As he had come to Wittenberg to study law, he was not, of course, allowed to attend the regular theological lectures; but, all the same, he spent his leisure in studying the works of Luther and Spener, and cultivated the personal friendship of many of the theological professors.
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