e never refused a high amount of admiration; a
society which set itself with simple zeal to lead a Christian life after
the primitive model--frugal, quiet, industrious, shunning temptation and
avoiding controversy,--a band of brethren who held out the hand of
fellowship to all in every communion who, without giving up a single
distinctive tenet, would unite with them in a union of godly
living--which sent out labourers into Christian countries to convert but
not to proselytise--whose missionaries were to be found among the
remotest heathen savages. That they should fall short of their ideal was
but human weakness; and no doubt they had their special failings. They
might be apt, in the fervency of their zeal, to speak too disdainfully
of all gifts of learning;[584] they might risk alternations of
distressing doubt by too presumptuous expectations of visible
supernatural help;[585] they might think too lightly of all outward aids
to religion.[586] Such errors might, and sometimes did, prove very
dangerous. But one who knew them well, and to whom, as his mind
expanded, their too parental discipline, their timid fears of reasoning,
their painful straining for experiences, had become intolerable, could
yet say of them, 'There is not throughout Christendom, in our day, a
form of public worship which expresses more thoroughly the spirit of
true Christian piety, than does that of the Herrnhut brotherhood.... It
is the truest Christian community, I believe, which exists in the
outward world.'[587]

The first Diaspora, or missionary colony, established by the Moravians
in England was in 1728, at the instance of a lady in that centre of
intellectual and religious activity, the Court of Queen Caroline. They
did not, however, attract much attention. Winston, ever inquisitive and
unsettled, wanted to know more about them, and began to read some of
their sermons, but 'found so much weakness and enthusiasm mixed with a
great degree of seriousness,' that he did not care to go to their
worship.[588] Their strictly organised discipline was in itself a great
impediment to success among a people so naturally attached to liberty
as the English. In the middle of the century, their missionary
enterprise secured them special privileges in the American colonies.
More than this. At the instance of Gambold, who was exceedingly anxious
that the Brotherhood should gain ground in England within the bosom of
the Anglican Church, a Moravian synod, held