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

the personal quest for a knowledge of the evangelical truth, . . . and were content to let the ministers present them with their faith in the sermons. This practice quickly introduced conflicting concepts and opinions concerning God’s Prussia 73 Word because the ministers, who lacked the correct understanding due to the absence of mutual correction, began to draw their sermons from the writings of other confessions rather than immediately from God’s Word (Jer. 2:13). . . . Christ directs his contempories, and thus us also, in John 6:45, to the prophetic word of the Old Testament in Jer. 31:33, 44, where it is written that all the believers of the new covenant will be taught by God directly. . . . This will not be achieved merely by listenin g to a sermon on a Sunday morning, however. c) “A famous Mennonite minister, Hans de Ries, who died in 1619, about 60 years after Menno’s death, contributes his education in preparation for the ministry, without having studied at the university, to these Bible and mutual edification meetings held in the Mennonite congregations. At that time ministers were not yet content to read a sermon they had copied from some educated theologian, for the ministers had, even in the Mennonite congregations, to draw the living water from its living, original source. Another man, S. F. Rues, reports on these Bible studies in his published report (1743) on the Mennonite congregations in the United Netherlands and asserts that many people were encouraged by them to study the Bible diligently, in accordance with John 5:39, thereby gaining the freedom to stand before the congregation and testify to the evangelical Truth, in accordance with I Thess. 5:11. Thus when they were pressed into service to make known God’s great love and mercy for their own and everyman’s salvation they could, like Paul, teach from their own experience, in accordance with Titus 3:5-7: ‘He has saved us. . . .’ And this man designates these Bible and mutual edification meetings as the only right way to prepare a person for the ministry. Another man, G. J. Ryswyck, declared, as late as 1825, that he had been prepared for the ministry in these Bible and mutual edification meetings of the Mennonites in the United Netherlands, and calls them the real school of the elected ministers 53 ! According to Isaak Peters, the children of the Anabaptists of old were told children’s stories and the more mature young people were taught religion by means of a thorough study of God’s Word by the ministers.] Now, however, the practice of mutual edification in accordance with Apostolic teaching is an innovation in many [West Prussian, Russian?] of our Mennonite congregations; but at all times the reintroduc- tion of abandoned religious practices has been condemned as an innovation and opposed, in accordance with Luke 11:52. Isaak Peters, Henderson, Nebraska.” [Freely abbreviated.] d) Thus the Mennonites did not adopt the bi