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

ord over and over again today, that He may make this day, in which we have made this covenant with one another, a veritable day of blessing and joy for all eternity. And Thou, O Lord, bestow on us Thy grace, O Lord, grant success! Amen. 4. "The “false movement,” as it was captioned by Elder Heinrich Huebert and referred to by the others in the above reports, made its appearance during the second half of Wuest’s fourteen-year ministry. Consisting of extremists, these more fanatical than pious people interpreted Wuest’s bold ideas and his naively joyous and energetic manner in a distorted way, and when he began to oppose them, at first in a friendly manner, then more earnestly and finally quite decisively, they called him a pharisee who had denied his own gospel. In the fall of 1868, at a conference in connection with a mission festival in Rosenfeld (in Wuest’s parish), these “joyous brethren,” with a certain Kappes, a former school teacher in the Mariupol colonies (on the “Plan”), at their head, left the church amidst singing and shouts of joy. Kappes was endowed with an excellent memory, was a gifted speaker, possessed a rich imagination and wit, and was a good singer. He became the ugliest caricature of Wuest and his worst rod of correction. He was finally destroyed by his own viciousness after Wuest’s death (according to the handwritten jubilee history of the M.B. Church of 1886). Unfortunately, Kappes also deceived some of the better people for a longer or shorter period of time. One of these was Joseph Hottmann among the Wuerttembergers who died in 1900 in the Crimea as one “disappointed.” We would also apply the same term to him and many others who ended their lives in a s imil ar manner as the “Friends” or half-“Friends of Jerusalem.” Morally, Hottmann was a thoroughly irreproachable character; he was also a great benefactor. Long before Hottmann appeared on the scene, Kappes’ special friend Wilhelm Bartel from Gnadenfeld, then Berdiansk, who died on the “Plan,” was in a similar position among the Mennonites for a considerable period of time. Even Johann Claassen of Liebenau, that noble and deeply pious man with a Zinzendorf-like love of the Savior, allowed himself to be strongly influenced by this movement of excessive exuberance for quite some time, even though never as much as Hottmann (according to the testimony of Pastor Dobbert in the document cited in XXV) nor as strongly as Wilhelm Bartel. Thus, as Elder Huebert narrates, a Mennonite wing of the “joyous brethren” was formed. It became Claassen’s great and honorable duty to subdue this movement in the organized M.B. Church and to place the congregation, through the grace of God, onto the road to health and sanity, which it had fundamentally 224 THE MENNONITE BRETHREN CHURCH always desired and on which it has, through the grace of God, been concerned to travel for the past fifty years. Claassen was saved from the same “disappointmen