Nicolaus Zinzendorf - Call To God

Call To God

Zinzendorf seems to have considered this disappointment as a call to some special work for God. He had previously, in deference to his family, who wished him to become a diplomat, rejected the invitation of August Hermann Francke to take Baron von Canstein's place in the Halle orphanage; and he now resolved to settle down as a landowner, spending his life on behalf of his tenantry. He bought Berthelsdorf from his grandmother, Baroness von Gersdorf and called Johann Andreas Rothe for pastor and John George Heiz for factor; he married Erdmuthe Dorothea, sister of Count Heinrich XXIX of Reuss-Ebersdorf, and began building on his home.

His intention was to carry out into practice the Pietist ideas of Spener. He did not mean to found a new church or religious organization distinct from the Lutheranism of the land, but to create a Christian association the members of which by preaching, by tract and book distribution and by practical benevolence might awaken the somewhat torpid religion of the Lutheran Church. The "band of four brothers" (Rothe, pastor at Berthelsdorf; Melchior Schäffer, pastor at Görlitz; Friedrich von Watteville, a friend from boyhood; and himself) set themselves by sermons, books, journeys and correspondence to create a revival of religion, and by frequent meetings for prayer to preserve in their own hearts the warmth of personal trust in Christ. From the printing-house at Ebersdorf, now in Thuringia, large quantities of books and tracts, catechisms, collections of hymns and cheap Bibles were issued; and a translation of Johann Arndt's True Christianity was published for circulation in France.