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

eld in private homes and of Stunden lasting until midnight. Wuest's deviations were worse than suspected. He aroused "hate or love" in his preaching; he taught that custom was not an adequate reason for participating in the Lord's Supper; he demanded a decisive conversion; he failed to separate the sexes in his private meetings; he greeted people after the church service. 26 It seemed Wuest was a radical exponent of certain practices associated with Wuerttemberg piety in earlier decades. Christian Gottlob Pregizer (1751-1824) had insisted that a subjective emotionalism characterized by an assurance of sins forgiven and a profound continuous joy was a necessary proof of new life in Christ. Some groups within his circle exceeded his guidelines and held lively meetings which not only featured popularized hymn tunes accompanied by the zither, but ecstatic shouting as well. 27 Wuest may have been imitating Pregizer's style. Lutheran observers expressed concern about his excessive dramatics in the pulpit while a Wuerttemberg sympathizer urged him to "work more quietly." 28 Little wonder that Wuest's first sermon in Russia shocked some of his listeners. 29 He spoke categorically of sin and grace, death and judgement, of Christ the Lamb who brought deliverance. Wuest apparently felt that many of his brothers on the steppes had succumbed to dead form and orthodoxy and needed to know the way of salvation. For the Wuerttemberg preacher the process involved a deep consciousness of sin and a dramatic struggle climaxing in an inner knowledge of divine 31 indwelling. The new birth was a decisive, overwhelming experience expressing itself in a continuous, deeply felt joy. Happiness soon became the mark of an authentic rebirth. For almost a decade the fervor of the Wuestian revivals was sustained by evangelistic preaching, fellowship meals featuring personal snaring and prayer as well as ecumenical mission festivals. By 1 852 Wuest rediscovered another aspect of his pietistic heritage — its concern with sanctification. He found that the more one celebrated salvation the more difficult it was to sustain its original vibrancy. The Cross not only brought joy to the repenting sinner but demanded discipleship from the newly created saint. Wuest found support for his new insights in the German periodical Die Warte, published by Christoff and Paulus Hoffmann. Those who still wished to celebrate grace accused Wuest and his church of strait-laced Pharisaism and dead eccle- siasticism. These so-called Munteren (joyful ones) now left Wuest's congregations. In the last years of his life Wuest confronted the recurring dilemma of pietism: the balance between experience and discipleship. An overemphasis on one produced superficiality while an unmitigated zeal for holiness catapulted the pilgrim back into the realm of law and orthodoxy against which he initially revolted. Wuest appears to have come in contact with the Chor