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

in manifest sins and abo min ations and celebrated the liberty of the Christian individual as well, although their excessive emphasis upon grace never did match that of the Wuerttemberg folk and the ‘Huepfer’ living on the Mariopol Plan. I have learned the truth concerning the latter groups from trustworthy individuals, particularly from sorrowing fathers who related the misery they experienced in their own families to me, but a more detailed account of these groups I am glad to leave to the pen of another. Since Claassen of Liebenau (thus named after his place of residence) belonged to the Gnadenfeld Church district the way was already prepared for new complications and con- flicts in the Gnadenfeld congregation. This was true, although Elder Lenzmann, who was also intimately associated with Wuest, and, as he himself writes, confessed that the memory of brotherly fellowship in which he remained with dear Pastor Wuest until his transition from the 386 THE MENNONITE BRETHREN CHURCH militant to the triumphant church, will always be a blessed one, certainly did not share the errors of that member (Claassen) and his following. Elder Lenzmann himself relates how he had to refuse the demand of some of his church members to extend holy communion to them, and to such as they would designate as believers, separately and as often as they desired it, since, according to the teachings of the Scriptures and their consciences, they could not take communion together with unbelievers in the church. [Among Mennonites two Sundays a year have been designated for the public commemoration of communion. The practice of providing holy communion at the bedside of the sick is unknown in some churches.] Because this demand involved an innovation which in turn disrupted the unity of the church, Lenzmann felt obliged to regard it as inadmissible. Subsequently, these members, to whom separate communion had been denied, observed it among themselves, and in private homes, f) This report makes it very plain that Claassen, as was the case amongst his followers, did not enter the battle with carnal weapons. He had openly announced and lamented the collapse of church discipline— the Achilles heel of the church— insisting that it be practiced again, a declaration to which he also gave brief expression in a document addressed to all the elders of the Molotschna Mennonite churches on January 1860: ‘For the sake of our Lord and our conscience, we can no longer be a party to such action, for the obviously godless conduct of many cries to God in heaven.’ Therefore he [Claassen] disassociates himself from these corrupt churches and possessing the same rights as those possessed by other churches, he desires to establish his own church based on the confession of Menno, a church in which such confession would acquire form and life. He rejects the present laxity in the practice of baptism and avows that baptism should be practiced upon the