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

perturbed by Heinrich Franz and Johann Schmidt and similar harsh and one-sided men in the Mennonite Church and ‘Templers’— been able to hold together with a Johann Claassen and Jakob Reimer — uninfluenced by the extremists in their camp— as they should have, since all four of them were Christians— held together in spite of and for all that!— the story of our spiritual and intellectual development would have taken a different and more beautiful course.” (Thus far the note of 1890.) d) Postscript of 1904. In order to do justice to Elder August Lenzmann, one must read the following chapter on the “exuberant and liberated movement” in the M.B. Church and realize the kind of 262 THE MENNONITE BRETHREN CHURCH §114 impressions which these aberrations would make upon a man strongly inclined to conservatism and strict orthodoxy, a man who, moreover, had been made apprehensive by the many incidents which had earlier shaken the congregation entrusted to his care, who had become minister and elder under very difficult congregational circumstances, and who, furthermore, had experienced a great deal of personal friction with brethren of the movement who later formed the M.B. Church; thus, for example, in the “Brotherhood School Dispute,” in which these brethren, though (as we believe) essentially in the right, most certainly did not prove themselves to be angels, and caused Lenzmann, in his role of referee resulting from his position as elder, to be not a little plagued by Claassen’s group on the one hand and Johann Schmidt's on the other (if If 51 & 52). At the same time, one should remember the harsh treatment to which Ohrloff (B. Fast) had subjected Gnadenfeld in those bitter times, and which the old inhabitants of Gnadenfeld could not forget or forgive for many years (049). And now Ohrloff stood there as the defender of the brethren but at the same time found itself embroiled in a dispute with the “five elders,” that is to say, their congregations, concerning other questions of law (the “Halbstadt Church— Building and Barley Dispute” 71 —052[ 2]), where, once again, absolute justice was not on one or the other side— even though there may have been more on Ohrloff ’s side— something we cannot deal with here specifically for reasons of space and purpose. Although all of this may not justify the position Lenzmann espoused after 1860— with his great intelligence and much broader perspective, which placed him above all the other “five elders,” with the long and very instructive history of his congregation, which he knew. With his more tranquil and dignified temperament, he should have stood above the parties and partisanship— if all of this does not justify him, it does go a long way toward excusing him. What would the M.B. Church in Russia and America say today if people were once again to be found in her midst who wished to resurrect the “movement of excessive exuberance?”! Uncompromising excommuni- cati