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

of advocating persecution. He was the only elder who was asked by the Brethren to celebrate a special communion service in their circle before 1860, and who during that time was mocked as the ‘elder of the Stundists and bigots’ by the ignorant and spiritually dead masses. c) “For a while, especially during 1865, I 66 myself attended the Gnadenfeld church services as well as a number of houses. At that time I vacillated considerably as to which congregation, the Gnadenfeld or Mennonite Brethren, I should join through holy baptism. The forms in the M.B. Church [cf. further XVIII: ‘The June Reform’ of 1865] led me Difficulties and Victory 261 to consider baptism by immersion and thus led me into the latter church. During my first visits to the Gnadenfeld congregation I was quite astonished to hear the very things being preached and enunciated in the pastoral prayers in that ‘apostate’ congregation (as it was called in the religious sphere where I was influenced) which I considered and still consider to be the central concern of the M.B. Church both before and after its withdrawal: conversion to God through repentance and faith in the reconciling grace in Jesus Christ and a life of sanctification according to the rules of the gospel through the gift of grace of the spirit of Christ. The private conversations, however, even those in Lenzmann’s 67 presence, repulsed me because of the hostile tone they assumed as soon as talk centered on the M.B. Church, whose central concern, especially the attempt to cleanse and discipline itself, they seemed unable or refused to understand. I was especially disturbed by a conversation concerning the persecution in the then new Baptist movement 68 among the Lutherans in the Province of Kherson, in which Elder Lenzmann’s sympathy was quite obviously on the side of the persecutor, Provost Fletnitzer (Odessa). I nevertheless have recollections and impressions of Gnadenfeld’s spiritual life 69 from my early youth, before the divisions, impressions which I can only compare with the wafting of a Pentecost breeze and the promises of spring. Hence, I have never lost my love and my fondest hopes and wishes for Gnadenfeld. These impressions of Gnadenfeld’s spiritual life in the ’60s (left with me by my later mother and her friends, 70 as well as by my older sisters) are confirmed by the materials I have copied, as well as others, and are a guarantee to me of an even more beautiful future for Gnadenfeld. That which is alive in Gnadenfeld, and that which is alive in Rueckenau (the center of the M.B. Church) must unite in a spontaneous handskake of brotherly love above the grave of the old quarrels and old resentments. And this shaking of hands must take place between all vital Christians in all Mennonite congregations— and in all Christian confessions— even while faithfully adhering to one’s own peculiar insights and duties. I believe that if Lenzmann and Nikolai Schmidt had— un