In those words he pointed to the loadstar of his life. For that holy cause of Christian fellowship he spent every breath in his body and every ducat in his possession. For that cause he laboured among the peasants of Berthelsdorf, in the streets of Berlin, in the smiling Wetterau, in the Baltic Provinces, on the shores of Lake Geneva, in the wilds of Yorkshire, by the silver Thames, on West Indian plantations, and in the wigwams of the Iroquois and the Delaware. It is not always fair to judge of men by their conduct. We must try, when possible, to find the ruling motive; and in motive Zinzendorf was always unselfish. Sometimes he was guilty of reckless driving; but his wagon was hitched to a star. No man did more to revive the Moravian Church, and no man did more, by his very ideals, to retard her later expansion. It is here that we can see most clearly the contrast between Zinzendorf and John Wesley. In genius Zinzendorf easily bore the palm; in practical wisdom the Englishman far excelled him. The one was a poet, a dreamer, a thinker, a mystic; the other a practical statesman, who added nothing to religious thought, and yet uplifted millions of his fellow men. At a Synod of the Brethren held at Herrnhut (1818), John Albertini, the eloquent preacher, described the key-note of Zinzendorf's life. "It was love to Christ," said Albertini, "that glowed in the heart of the child; the same love that burned in the young man; the same love that thrilled his middle-age; the same love that inspired his every endeavour." In action faulty, in motive pure; in judgment erring, in ideals divine; in policy wayward, in purpose unselfish and true; such was Zinzendorf, the Renewer of the Church of the Brethren.[137] BOOK THREE. -- THE RULE OF THE GERMANS. CHAPTER I. -- THE CHURCH AND HER MISSION, OR THE THREE CONSTITUTIONAL SYNODS, 1760-1775.