rethren is famous for two things: its
missionary zeal and its love for church music. It owes both of these
distinguishing characteristics to its great founder and patron leader,
Nicolaus Ludwig, Count von Zinzendorf. Not only was this very unusual man
a gifted writer of hymns, but he was also an ardent exponent of foreign
missions.

Zinzendorf was only ten years old when his soul was fired with a
passionate desire to do something to help win the world for Christ. He
was a pupil at the famous Pietist school of Francke at Halle, Germany, at
the time, and through his endeavors a mission society known as "The Order
of the Grain of Mustard Seed," was organized among the lads of his own
age.

A few years later he chanced to see a copy of Sternberg's masterpiece,
"Ecce Homo," depicting Christ wearing His crown of thorns before Pilate
and the Jewish mob. Beneath the famous picture were inscribed the words:

This have I done for thee;
What hast thou done for Me?

From that moment Zinzendorf took as his life motto: "I have but one
passion, and that is He and only He." On his wedding day, in 1722, he and
his young bride decided to renounce their rank and to dedicate their
lives to the task of winning souls for Christ.

The Lord took them at their word. In that same year a number of
Protestant refugees from Moravia, who had been compelled to leave their
homes because of Roman Catholic persecution, arrived in Saxony and found
refuge on Zinzendorf's large estate. They were a remnant of the Bohemian
Brethren, a heroic religious communion which dated back to the days of
the noble martyr, John Huss. Though relentlessly hunted and persecuted
for more than three centuries, this early evangelical body had continued
to maintain its existence in the form of secret religious circles known
as "the hidden seed."

Under the protection of Count Zinzendorf, the little band of Moravian
refugees established a religious center which they called "Herrnhut."
Zinzendorf, who was a Lutheran, induced them to adopt the Augsburg
Confession as a statement of their doctrine, but they continued to exist
as an independent church body. People from all over Europe, hearing that
religious freedom was enjoyed on the Zinzendorf estates, flocked to
Herrnhut in large numbers to escape persecution, and it soon became a
flourishing colony.

In 1737 Zinzendorf accepted ordination as a bishop of the Brethren, and
thus became the real leader of the organiz