Contemporaries and Immediate Successors Of
Chapter III CONTEMPORARIES AND IMMEDIATE SUCCESSORS OF THE PIONEERS "Reformers whose names are ever dear unto us" The evangelical preaching of our pioneers resulted in many con verts. Numerous of these converts naturally joined their fellowship. Some of them were previously non-professors; others were of Mennonite, Amish, Reformed, Moravian, or other denominational adherence. By far the greater number were of Mennonite lineage. The quotation at .the head of this chapter is from a quarterly con".' ference record of the Salem Church, Lebanon, Pennsylvania. Several years after 1845 when the new Salem Church edifice had been erected someone wrote a brief account of the: "Origin and Rise of the Church of the United Brethren in Christ at Lebanon and Vicinity." A fuller statement embodying this quotation is as follows:, It is generally known that we as a Society are mostly an Order. From fifty to sixty years ago when darkness covered the earth and gross darkness the minds of the people of this sect as well as of many others. It pleased the Lord, in the order of his Providence, to bless the people of this place by the ministry 'of a few evangelical reformers whose names are ever dear unto us. Such were Boehm, Grosch, J. Neidig, A. Troxel, M. Kreider, and H. Landis. Soon after followed Zentmeir, Ellenberger; and our worthy father Felix Light, whose ministerial labors extended up to as late as 1842. All these men of God were of the Men nonite Order and Mennonite Reformers except father Troxel.1 But these worthy fathers were not without opposition, especially when they preached the unadulterated Word of God and spiritual life to their brethren (Mennonists) for they re jected their counsel, misconstrued the Word to the dead letter and ceremony, despised their holy zeal, and pronounced it, Ein Ehrgeist und iibertreibenheit, (a spirit of self-esteem and 'excessiveness), until these reformers, impartially and without attachment to any denomination, except fathers M.
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