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Updated: May 23, 2025
He was the instrument whereby it pleased God to preserve the Lutheran Church in America from complete deterioration and disintegration and from the imminent danger of apostasy through Zinzendorf. In 1738 he graduated from Goettingen. He spent one year teaching in the Orphan Home at Halle, and served a congregation in Upper Lusatia from 1739 to 1741.
The difference between him and Zinzendorf was enormous. At St. Croix, a couple of years before, a band of Moravian Missionaries had died of fever; and while Zinzendorf immortalized their exploits in a hymn, the practical Spangenberg calmly considered how such heroic tragedies could be prevented in the future. In political matters he was equally far-seeing.
But history hardly justifies this generous eulogy; and Spangenberg afterwards admitted himself that Zinzendorf had two sides to his character. "It may seem a paradox," he wrote, "but it really does seem a fact that a man cannot have great virtues without also having great faults." The case of Zinzendorf is a case in point.
Thus did Spangenberg, in a difficult situation, act with consummate wisdom; and thus did he set an example of loyalty for Moravian missionaries to follow in days to come. And yet, despite his wisdom and zeal, the Moravian Church at this period did not spread rapidly in America. For this, Zinzendorf was largely to blame.
He declared that Zinzendorf was £40,000 in debt; that there was little hope that he would ever pay; that his allies were not much better; and that the Brethren had deceived the Parliamentary Committee by representing themselves as men of means.
He was so afraid of causing offence that, Greek scholar though he was, he felt bound to adhere to the Authorised Version. If Zinzendorf had used his own translation his enemies would have accused him of tampering with the Word of God. The book appeared. It was entitled, Statutes: or the General Principles of Practical Christianity, extracted out of the New Testament.
We must not, however, give the missionaries too much credit. As Zinzendorf himself was a firm believer in slavery, we need not be surprised to find that the Brethren never came forward as champions of liberty. They never pleaded for emancipation. They never encouraged their converts to expect it. They never talked about the horrors of slavery. They never appealed, like Wilberforce, to Parliament.
"Blessed be the Lord who has had mercy upon me." We have now to notice, step by step, how Zinzendorf, despite his theories, restored the Moravian Church to vigorous life. His first move was dramatic. As he strolled one day on the shore of the Baltic Sea, he bethought him that the time had come to revive the Brethren's Episcopal Orders in Germany. He wished to give his Brethren a legal standing.
The first move had the promise of good. At the spot the Lehigh and the Monocany meet the Brethren had purchased a plot of ground ; they all lived together in one log-house; they proposed to build a settlement like Herrnhut; and there, one immortal Christmas Eve, Count Zinzendorf conducted a consecration service.
"What a severe sentence," exclaimed Count Zinzendorf, the emperor's ambassador, "have you passed on the emperor. No malefactor was ever carried with so hard a doom to the gibbet." The armies again took the field. Eugene, again, though with great reluctance, assumed the command of the imperial forces. France had assembled one hundred thousand men upon the Rhine.
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