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

t” and retained his “connection 18 with the dear Savior” to the end. Even Jakob Reimer of Gnadenfeld in spite of his very different character, belonged to the movement of the “joyous,” though never without some reservations, and even before Claassen he decisively opposed the movement. §78 5. The disharmony, which also entered into the relationship between Wuest and the Mennonite brethren as a consequence, is most certainly stubbornly suppressed not only in all of their reminiscences intended for the public but also in their most private correspondence because of a feeling of shame and repentance. “Before the separation” and— "when the pastor and all the others were still together”— is all that one can find in the unusually numerous, detailed and intimate letters of Claassen and Reimer. Love and a touching respect are visible in all of the places where the “pastor,” as Wuest was generally called, is mentioned, as can be seen from Refiner’s “reports,” whose house, “until the separation” in 1858, was the pastor-prophet’s quarters. §79 6. With this separation, or, at the very least, this alienation of a large number of brethren, among whom were many of his special favorites, such as Hottmann, Claassen, Reimer and Bartel, there came a time for Wuest in which he witnessed the burning of all that which he had built of wood and straw on Jesus Christ, the one foundation, aside from the gold and precious stones. Now he was “flailed with the very rods 19 he had planted,” as he used to say according to a letter of his widow to the Rev. Abram Kroeker of 1900. But it is wrong to conclude, as the Privy Councillor Prinz (a child of Neu-Hoffnung and Advanced Secondary School teacher in Berdiansk) does at the end of his wonderfully written, lively and trustworthy description of the pastor that Wuest— in the last years of his life when he became sickly— took spiritual stock of his life, began to exercise self-criticism, adopted the position embodied in the “Temple” 20 (movement) of Christoph Hoffmann and Christoph Paulus. That would not have been criticism of his former activity; that would have been a fall from the faith which he had preached throughout his ministry in Wuerttemberg (three to four years) and in Russia (fourteen years). Even his widow protested against this assumption with counter-evidence. If Wuest did indeed listen to Kirschenhardthoff and Hoffmann during the last years of his life, one must remember that Hoffmann then still energetically wrote and spoke in an “orthodox” fashion, orthodox in the good evangelical sense of the term. Even the elder brethren, who had long since left the Church, Huebert, Claassen, Reimer and others, still listened to Hoffmann Pastor Wuest 225 for a long time, until well into the 1870s, when Hoffmann, through his "circular” (“Sendschreiben”), which he sent out as the official doctrinal statement in his capacity as the “Head of the Temple Congregation” with wide-ran