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

d as pleasing to God; the opposite would be regarded as the way of heathen and publicans, in the words of the Savior. f) With praise and thanks to God it was attested that the “so-called doctrine of freedom” had not had any adherents in the church for three years and that those who had been guilty of adhering to it had repented. NB. The Chortitza-Einlage congregation proceeded in full harmony with the Molotschna congregation in this reform. See “Documentary Supplements,” #194. §122 9. In September 1865, the essence of these resolutions was submitted in writing to the representative of the government, Privy Councillor Brun, as a confession of the church, by Brother Huebert (who Free and Exuberant Movement 277 was released from prison in November) and two other brethren who had been called to the ministry, Christian Schmidt (now minister and associate-elder) in the Kuban 64 and Jakob Jantz (now, in 1910, elder in Friedensfeld). 10. In the beginning of the winter of 1865 the same two brethren §123 took a tour 85 (see #196) through all the Molotschna villages, and indeed wherever they found a welcome with ministers and Christian friends (such as ministers Franz Klassen, Ladekopp; Bernhard Harder, Halbstadt; Jakob Martens, Tiegenhagen; Elder Harder, Blumstein), they shared the current attitude of the church and its repentance in respect to earlier heresies. At the anniversary meeting of the M.B. Church on January 6, 1885, in Rueckenau, Molotschna, the above-mentioned material was read to approximately 1,000 persons in the form of a short, handwritten “History of our M.B. Church" authored by the late ministering brethren, Johann Wieler 86 and Johann J. Fast, Rueckenau. 11. The M.B. Church of today, by the grace of God, has no part in §124 these aberrations of its childhood and is free of guilt. The best record in this case are the men who since 1865 and later have stood and are standing in various church positions as spiritual shepherds and servants, like Heinrich Huebert, Christian Schmidt, Jakob Jantz, Abram Unger, Aron Lepp, Daniel Fast, Johann J. Fast, Abram Schellenberg, and their co-workers and followers during the past forty-five years. These men are known in the entire Mennonite community in Russia and America as naturally incapable of participating in such ridiculous errors. This author was baptized in the summer of 1866 and became a member of the M.B. Church in the Molotschna. He cannot recall a single instance that in any way resembles the above proceedings. 12. These resolutions were also accepted in the Chortitza-Einlage §125 and the Kuban congregations. However, the ideas of the period before 1865 caused sporadic unrest in the Kuban for a while longer because most of their extreme promoters lived there and many of the latter were not members of the church. The Einlage congregation had other difficulties to overcome before it could come to rest. These matters will be descr