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

ging episcopal powers, began solemnly to depart from the foundation of a positive Christian confession, which all Bible-believing evangelical Christians, and with them the newly organized M.B. Church, have always adhered to, and openly began to move in the direction of what has been called the "new and higher criticism” or neology. At this point the last ties between Hoffmann and the brethren were severed. 21 7. a) Wuest died believing in his “Christ the crucified” on July 13, 1859, in the forty-second year of his life. Even though the extremists among the “Joyous” would deny him salvation, as Pastor Dobbert writes, this was not the case among those who were soon to establish the “Brethren Church” (M.B. Church). “The righteous perisheth, and no man layeth it to heart; and merciful men are taken away, none considering that the righteous is taken away from the evil to come. He shall enter into peace: they shall rest in their beds, each one walking in his uprightness,” Isaiah 57:1-2. That is how they assessed his death in the latter circle. 22 For the formal separation from the church, that is, the establishment of a new church, was already underway, and one could not imagine how the “pastor,” who was, after all, a pastor, should choose between August Lenzmann, Nickolas Schmidt (then still belonging to the “Church”), Leonhard Sudermann and his comrades, the “rational” or “ecclesiastical” group on the one hand, and Johann Claassen, Jakob Reimer, Wilhelm Bartel, etc., the “simple ones,” “children of grace” (as they liked to call themselves) or “Joyous,” on the other hand. No matter how independent the criticism of Wuest or the actions of the brethren, the reverential love for Wuest within our brotherhood circle did not die out. “God did not lead the pastor any further (in regard to congregational order, etc.) and has now called this faithful servant to his rest.” Wuest, the spotless, highly gifted, lovable father of the faith, was not forgotten, and we name him, along with Menno Simons, among the first of “the congregation of the first-born of the spirits of the perfected righteous, whose name is inscribed in heaven, as one of our teachers who has told us the Word of God,” and we worshipfully thank Him who gave him to us and who will always remain, in the first and last instance, our only great “teacher,” Jesus, the mediator of the New Testament. In His grace. He gave us Menno and Wuest, Spener and Tersteegen, Zinzendorf and Spurgeon, among many other greater or lesser characters of church history as teachers of righteousness (Daniel 12:3; Hebrews 12:23, 13:7). b) The widow of Pastor Wuest, who died in Wuerttemberg in 1902, writes to the Rev. A. Kroeker regarding her husband’s 226 THE MENNONITE BRETHREN CHURCH last days and death: “You seem to read out of Prinz’s book [Die Kolonien der Bruedergemeinde by Jakob Prinz (The Colonies of the Brotherhood Church)] that my husband finally began to vacillate