THE MENNONITE BROTHERHOOD IN RUSSIA (1789 - 1910), P. M. Friesen, 1911

ch. Vital air and warmth, food and drink were brought into the impoverished house. Revived and strengthened, we found the coinage to renew the house according to the old plan, on the old foundation. During a later period, Baptists, these “Pietists baptized on their faith”, as one could designate them in an idealistic association with Wuest and Pietism, provided very useful services in this renewal and new reorganization. Just as we placed Menno Simon’s “Ausgang aus dem Papsttum” (Withdrawal from the Catholic Church), the best of his works, at the beginning of our story of the Mennonites, so we place Wuest’s inaugural sermon at the beginning of the section on the M.B. Church. Next to God’s Word and His Spirit, Menno and Wuest have actually made the M.B. Church what it is and will be in the Church of Christ. If the joyous doctrine of justification is overly predominant in Wuest’s Christian teaching, it counterbalances Menno’s very serious, somewhat melancholy theology, which is, however, based on justifying grace, and in their amalgamation, the two streams achieve an apostolic balance. Evangelical Pietism in its wholesome essence has, like renewal, a harmonious effect on Menno nitism, just as Mennonitism is the critique and complement of Lutheranism. During their earliest period, both seemed to be mutually exclusive. In reality, together they form a whole when balanced in an apostolic arrangement. And as such a unified balance, and therefore purified whole, they were to lead the largely deteriorated and impoverished Christianity of the West during the Middle Ages, back to its source. In the meantime, they long regarded it as their duty to condemn one another absolutely. This error is to be corrected, 15 by the Alliance and fellowship movements on a broader scale and the M.B. Church on a smaller scale, each in its own way and sphere of influence. The old “Brethren,” who remained true to the M.B. Church, have always emphasized Wuest’s extremely great importance. Everyone will agree Pastor Wuest 213 with the above after reading and comparing the two pieces, “With- drawl” (1/3) and "Inaugural Sermon.” That consistent Mennonite believers, who heard Wuest's ideas about the separation of believers and unbelievers, about the chasm which God has fixed, soon thought of the church of “Brethren who were baptized on their faith,” is self-evident. Hereafter follows a verbatim rendering: INAUGURAL SERMON of Eduard Hugo Otto Wuest presently minister in the Colony Neu-Hoffnung, given on September 28, 1845 Moscow Printed by the University Printing Press 1850 “ When I count the days, when I yet lay in sin, O, how my soul shudders, because I regret every day! Do I count the days of grace since the Lord called me, I hardly know what to say: Such mercy is too deep!" Sermon 1. In the Prophet Isaiah, chapter 40:6 it is written: "A voice says, cry! And I said, what shall I cry? All flesh is grass, and all