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

copy of the new choral book while in 1862 he records that the local school "society has 21 obtained twelve books for us school teachers to examine." 38 There was one reference to periodic literature. Gaeddert subscribed to the Volksbote and Sonntagsblatt early in 1871. 39 The expansion of Gaeddert's intellectual and religious horizon was enhanced by two other influences. First, he regularly attended the mission conferences held annually at Gnadenfeld. The second involved the 1868 preacher at that festival, Heinrich Dirks, the first missionary sent out by the Russian Mennonites under the Dutch Mennonite Board of Missions. Dirks studied at the Missionshaus Barmen, Germany, between 1862-66. On August 19, 1869, over 3,000 people attended the Gnadenfeld church for Dirks's ordination as elder and missionary. 40 The presence of Dirks introduced Gaeddert to a new preaching style which he greatly admired and possibly to a new theology related to missions and eschatology. 41 When the two had shared the pulpit two weeks earlier, Gaeddert was amazed how Dirks sketched "the course of the Kingdom of God since Adam" and pointed to the culmination of God's plan — the millenium, the anti-Christ, Gog and Magog, the destruction of the earth. 42 Dirks preached on "the marriage of the Lamb" and the "new Jerusalem" on August 24. On the same evening Gaeddert went to visit elder Buller and was surprised to find Dirks present. It was a pleasant visit during which Dirks "drew me a chart of the plan of God's kingdom." 43 Mennonite Brethren beginnings cannot be separated from a broad-based cultural ferment involving schools, books, periodic mission festivals and visiting speakers. It constituted a formative force in the emergence of the movement and permeated all of Mennonite society in the decades which followed. Dietrich Gaeddert's theological growth not only included his exposure to Dirks' emphasis on missions and eschatology but the frequent readings of Hofacker's and Denner's salvation-oriented sermons. Men like Dirks and Gaeddert remained in the old church. For them new wine could be poured into old wineskins. The increased circulation of the printed word became a formidable threat to a community inclined to celebrate the values of earthly paradise. Most of the available material was religious in character. By focusing passionately on the City of God the reading pilgrim deliberately or inadvertently challenged the prevailing structure and values. 22 NOTES 1 David Epp Diary (Mennonite Heritage Centre, Winnipeg, Manitoba), February 2, 1839. 2 Many of the documents relating to the emergence of the Kleine Gemeinde have recently been published for the first time in Delbert Plett, The Golden Years: The Mennonite Kleine Gemeinde in Russial812-1849, (Steinbach, Manitoba, 1985). 3 Ibid. * Ibid., 223. 5 Ibid., 225. 6 Ibid., 280. 7 Ibid., 196. 8 P.M. Friesen, Die Alt-Evangelische Mennonitische Brudersc