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

the 446 THE MENNONITE BRETHREN CHURCH release of our minister, H. Huebert, who was being held in detention, Your Excellency was so cordial and affable as to ask them about the present state of our fellowship, because a schism had occurred in our fellowship through the craftiness of the enemy of our souls. At that time these brethren shared some things orally with Your Excellency, and mentioned that for the sake of unity and general peace, a number of rules had been formulated and agreed upon, which were being preserved in writing by the church, and were being put into practice in life. As always, Your Excellency again took special Christian interest in our struggles and triumphs, and wished to obtain some written statements regarding the most recent occurrences in our midst. Since we have the liberty to entrust ourselves and our concerns to you, because we thankfully recognize how in your hands, these concerns serve to promote God’s Kingdom, we feel free to expound the following to Your Excellency: I. In His counsel, God, through the will of His only beloved Son, our Lord and Savior, succeeded in calling us out of a dead Christendom into a church which was to evidence true Christian freedom in word and deed before the whole world. As a light which is not put under a bushel or table, but is set on the table so that it will illuminate the house, so the good works of the divinely called church should shine in order that the world recognize that God is truly with us, and thereby the Father in heaven be praised. The church that had seceded from the world and separated itself from her set this as its goal from the beginning: to experience its calling from the Word of God and then not to discuss the fulfillment of God’s truth with flesh and blood, but to proceed forthrightly— even if she were ridiculed and hated by everyone— to fulfill the recognized will of the holy triune God with as much understanding and strength as had been given her. Persecution by those who hated them started as soon as the church began to serve as salt in the world, and reveal the divine pleasure in the salvation of the whole human race, which had fallen into sin. Their contemporaries falsely accused them of scandalous, sinful transgressions, so that the authorities called on them to answer the charges, and inflicted corporal punishment on some church members without cause. On such occasions brethren commissioned by the church were granted numerous opportunities to express orally and in writing the reasons for the hope that lay within them. Thus when the church sent Johann Claassen of Liebenau to the Ministry of Crown Lands to justify her in the face of false slander by private and government personnel, he had occasion, during his stay in St. Petersburg, to present the complete Confession of Faith of the Rudnerweide 225 Mennonite Church here. These confessions, regardless of the fact that no Mennonite clergy could refute them