p. 5 | Count Zinzendorf and the Sabbath

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Apr 2, 1908

Count Zinzendorf and the Sabbath

By William Ambrose Spicer

THE biographers of the famous leader of the Moravian missionary movement represent him as holding decidedly to the view that the seventh day of the week was the day of Sabbath rest for Christians. Thus, in the life of Zinzendorf, by Bishop Spangenberg, one of his closest associates, we are told of the agitation of the Sabbath question in Pennsylvania, during the count’s visit to America, in 1741:—

As a special circumstance it is to be remarked that he determined, with the church in Bethlehem, to celebrate the seventh day as a rest day. The matter was previously fully gone into in the church council, with consideration of all the reasons for and against it, when the unanimous agreement was reached to observe the day Sabbatically. . . . The count had already long held the seventh day of the week in special honor.— “Zinzendorf’s Leben,” Band V., pages 1421, 1422.

Another biographer, Barnhagen von Ense, gives the Bethlehem incident in very nearly the same words:—

Here he determined also, after thorough consideration and unanimous conclusion regarding the matter in the church council, to celebrate the seventh day of the week as a rest day. He had already long especially honored this day, which alone appeared to correspond to the divine institution of the Sabbath.— “Biographische Denkmale.”

It appears that Zinzendorf saw the importance of the Sabbath sufficiently to keep it himself, and to call the attention of others to the fact that it was the only divinely ordained day of rest. In that early time he evidently failed to see that the final test in the great controversy was to come over that same Sabbath truth which he was agitating as he met with the Moravian believers.

It may be that it was his agitation of the Sabbath question in the Pennsylvania colony that drew upon him the attention of the officers charged with enforcing the colonial Sunday law. A French biographer, Felix Bovet, says:—

It was a habit with Zinzendorf to set apart the Saturday as a day of rest and prayer,— not out of conformity to the Mosaic law, but because of the blessing that God pronounced on that day when he had completed the work of creation. While, however, he was careful to let it be understood that he considered all persons free to do as they thought fit in this matter, he observed the Lord’s day in common with the Christian church at large. But though he thus kept two Sabbaths instead of one, this was not enough to satisfy the rigid notions peculiar to American Puritanism; and one Sunday evening, when he was engaged with his daughter in composing some hymns, the justice of the peace made his appearance, and ordered them, in the king’s name to cease writing. The next day they were summoned to answer for their crime, and were fined six shillings each for profaning the sabbath.— The Banished Count, Translated by John Gill, pages 223, 224.

Thus, a century and more before the time of special Sabbath reformation came under the advent movement, Zinzendorf, the pioneer of missionary leaders, was teaching the Sabbath truth as he moved about the world. W. A. S.