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

of us. With all these things in their favor, they won the hearts of all those who were unprejudiced. Schmidt was the joyfully-believing Pietist and Wuest-enthusiast (one of the few non-Mennonites who won for themselves and their descendants all the legal and civil rights of the old Mennonites who had migrated to Russia “before 1874 and subscribed to the Mennonite Confession and a subject of Russia’’ as well as the military excemptions of 1874. He was a descendant of the German wool workers’ colony at Poltava). At that time he was "our Wuest’’ in the M.B. Church, just like the Minister Bernhard Harder in the Mennonite Church, but free from all stupidities and nonsense in his teaching and general style. He was, in fact, a Methodist preacher in the best sense of that word. Janz, on the other hand, was a descendant of the first Mennonites (from amongst the Russian-Polish, probably from the “Old Flemish” Mennonites), whose somewhat melancholy, friendly personality, renewed and saturated with the happy gospel of Wuest in the M.B. Church, was typical of the best Mennonite preachers of those days. According to my personal recollections, this is a true portrait of these two brethren. 2. a) Have the hopes which warm-hearted, mild-mannered and pious Mennonites held in those days been realized? Have the "works” produced by the M.B. Church in this regard been "satisfactory in the sight of God?” Has it gone forth "in this its strength” (Judges 6:14) which it acquired at the June Reforms in 1865 and through these and related leaders given it, always to "discover” what the will of God is and to strive to fulfill that will? (See the petition to Brun.) Has it done everything in its power “according to the will of God and Christ’s prayer (John 17) to unite all believers?” (See the same Petition.) Not in §198 456 THE MENNONITE BRETHREN CHURCH our judgment, b) These two men have not yet completely matured in crystalizing their course nor in determining its direction. Even a strong man has difficulty to express his own personal position when a body has made him its mouthpiece (cf. Menno on “excommunication ”) . The concept of the “fellowship of the saints’’ was attached too much to one’s own church. And where, after the days of the original, undivided Apostolic Church, can one find an example of a corporate body that represents a true, historical, dogmatically pure “Universal Christian Church and fellowship of the saints” without spot or wrinkle? c) People found it hard to understand Nikolai Schmidt in his constant emphasis on sanctification, and at the same time his emphasis on the need for social development and improvement through the school system and other means, 246 which the M.B. Church has been putting into practice for some time now. Nor could the people readily understand the fact that Abraham Matthies and Bernhard Harder had to leave the Gnadenfeld and Ohrloff Mennonite churches respectively, and accep