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

facilities. Grim portraits of indifferent teachers, limited course content, and stultifying methodology have survived from the first half of the nineteenth century. 34 Many students nevetheless learned to read and write. In the end that was all that mattered. Serious seekers could now read serious books and some did. Ironically, the diffusion of reading and writing skills funded by the earthly city soon 20 resulted in a defiance of its dominance. The enlightened leaders of the Kleine Gemeinde had been ahead of their time. In part this challenge emerged from the elementary school curriculum which always included Biblische Geschichte (Bible stories). This practice of "knowing the stories" laid the foundation of a sound biblical literacy in later life. The long term impact of such classroom accumulation was significant. Among the early Brethren, knowledge of the Bible was amazingly sophisticated. In their reminiscences these men and women usually credited caring and deeply religious village school teachers for this legacy. During the first half of the nineteenth century Mennonite readers in Russia were few and far between and the materials they read relatively restricted. What books other than the Bible did the first migrants bring with them? A Tobias Voth may have immersed himself in the works of Jung-Stilling but that did not mean that such sophistication was widespread. By the mid- century Mennonite spirituality was not only nurtured through the Netherlandic legacy advocated by Kleine Gemeinde leaders, but solace for the Mennonite soul was also found in Johann Schabalies, The Journeying Soul, a German equivalent of Pilgrim's Progress, and the pietistical work, True Christianity, by Johann Arndt. The era constituted something of a watershed with regard to the availability of religious materials. In 1840 elder Benjamin Ratzlaff in Rudnerweide wrote to the Chortitza elder Jacob Hildebrandt about a proposed hymnal not yet in print. 35 No other books were mentioned. Twenty years later Jacob Martens of Tiegenhagen addressed two concerns to the same elder: he was sending copies of Das Mennonitische Blatt published in Philadelphia, the Sueddeutsche Warte, and some news appearing in Der Volksfreund printed in Koenigsberg; secondly he was enclosing some religious pamphlets left by the English Bible agent John Melville. 36 The Molotschna teacher and minister Dietrich Gaeddert provides another insight into the expanding cultural-religious awareness. When the guest speaker failed to arrive for an 1860 Sunday service in Rueckenau, Gaeddert felt it appropriate to read a sermon from the Wuerttemberg pietist Ludwig Hofacker (1 797-1 828). 37 Some years later after he had been ordained Gaeddert began to read the sermons of the Mennonite minister Jacob Denner (1659-1746). On at least one occasion he read from Spurgeon's sermons. There are only two references to books in the entire diary: in 1860 he bought a