Perilous Journey: The Mennonite Brethren in Russia 1860-1910, John B. Toews, 1988

er was especially apprehensive about the popularity of Johann Bengel (1687-1752). While Mennonite readers may have sanctioned his views on biblical authority, spiritual rebirth and the life of sanctification, they should, Reimer felt, be wary of his undue eschatological speculation. Bengel saw the book of Revelation as a precise outline of future events and boldly produced a chronology which set Christ's coming for 1836. Some Mennonite ministers and elders, Reimer felt, were surely courting danger in their 12 preoccupation with Christ's thousand year reign on earth. The Kingdom had higher priorities than theological speculation. The pure church after all drank from pure waters, especially the writings of its Anabaptist-Mennonite forebears. Spiritual perimeters were best sustained by reading Menno Simons' Foundation of Christian Doctrine, the confessions of faith or the Martyrs' Mirror. Other writings like Peter Peters' Mirror of Greed or Dirk Philips' Handbook were likewise a secure guide to faith, especially on the practice of nonviolence. The Kleine Gemeinde effort to provide wholesome nurture for the Mennonite soul was not too successful. Some ministers and elders simply refused to read more broadly, others remained intrigued with the more liberal teachings of pietism and began to wonder if infant baptism, the participation in the military and the swearing of oaths really constituted apostasy. 6 The offer of purer nourish- ment was not widely accepted and the flirtation with pietism continued. In the decades to come the love affair would be both corrupting and redeeming. Kleine Gemeinde dissent left a mixed legacy. The dislocation associated with migration, the new frontier and the lack of spiritual leadership had resulted in a societal destabilization which the protesters described as "debauchery, fighting, lying and cheating." 7 Since collective reform was out of the question those with righteous aspirations left the Grosze Gemeinde. Once outside they were obligated to define both the terms of individual discipleship and the standards of the pure church. The aspirations of moderates and conservatives among the dissidents did not always harmonize. It was also difficult to forge a new peoplehood amidst the existing though admittedly deficient people of God in the larger community. Kleine Gemeinde leaders derived their model for the restitution of the church from Scripture and the Christian values and ethics contained in Anabaptist literature. In their insistence upon a separated, pure church the protesters ministered in a prophetic role to the larger Mennonite community. It was a loving confrontation which insisted that the Kingdom fared miserably when it condoned worldly values or when it allowed lax standards among its members. The sincere Mennonite pilgrim never separated faith and life. In his diary David Epp does not mention the Mennonite teacher Tobias Voth (1791-?). He had lived