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

eacher in the secondary school. He was a graduate of the secondary school in Halbstadt. (Until January 1, 1904, he was principal of the colonial school in Wohldemfuerst.) 306 After the schools were combined, the entire building was used as a church by the Mennonite Brethren congregation. Alexanderfeld (Alexandrodar) also has its own colonial school— at first with one, then two (since 1904) and three, and now four classrooms. 5. During this time the spiritual direction of the church was carried §234(2) 506 THE MENNONITE BRETHREN CHURCH on by Elder Heinrich Huebert (retired since 1877), Daniel Fast, and Christian Schmidt, minister and associate elder. He had returned in 1878 (died in 1906). Also sharing in the leadership was Abram Peters, senior deacon and member of the council. The council, under the leadership of the elders, consisted of ministers and deacons, among others the brethren Jakob Giesbrecht, Gerhard Isaak and Peter Dyck. Up to the end of this period the church continued to be weak. The ugly sectarianism had ended, but the emigration movement to America begin- ning in 1874 and the departure of a small group to Turkestan removed from the church not only the burdensome fanatics, but also a number of the best members and families. The Friends of Jerusalem, the majority of whom had formerly been some of the more intelligent brethren, were unsparing and excessive in their criticism of the shortcomings and of the evangelical but sometimes very one-sided pietism of the church. The pietism of the time could be described as a mixture of Wuestianism, parochial sentiment, and rigorous Baptistic bias. It was a pietism that was evangelical in teaching, and yet in relationship with churches from which one differed in thinking, intolerant, and in relation to social and educational improvement, culturally timid. Brother Schmidt was sound of spirit and enthusiastic about his objectives, neither vacillating nor tiring. But as a theologian and apologist, he was not always as wise as he was zealous, nor as meek as he was frank. The young people became stagnant, and the older people were not alert. The younger intellectuals (one can actually speak of intelligence in these villages) were more and more inclined toward the “Templers” and "Friends of Jerusalem” who had forsaken the Christian confession of faith as we comprehend it. For the latter the right understanding of Christian faith was related to promoting intellectual and progressive elements as a part of religion. For them the M.B. Church and obscurantism were more or less identical. In addition there was a group of religiously bankrupt people who in the years of storm and stress had either been excommunicated or had withdrawn from the church. Some of these had remained within the church context and become burdensome as foreign objects. These presented their ideal of the church again and again and complained about unjust treatment— “then and then by