Publisher's Preface to the English Printing of 1950

THE PUBLISHER.

Publisher's Preface to the English Printing of 1950

It was in the year 1742 that the Mennonites of eastern Pennsylvania wrote to their brothers and sisters in the Netherlands, reporting that their numbers were growing in the New World and that they feared war was near. Three years later they wrote again, repeating what their first letter had said and making a special appeal for help in publishing a German edition of van Braght's Bloody Theater, or Martyrs' Mirror. The six Skippack ministers who signed the letter said that they wrote at the request of the other congregations. They wanted to prepare their people for the cross of testing and suffering that war would bring with it. They said simply that "it is fitting for us to strengthen ourselves for such circumstances with patience and endurance, and to make every preparation for steadfast constancy in our faith." They had a special concern for the generation of young men in their congregations who could not read the Dutch Martyrs' Mirror. The story of how a German Martyrs' Mirror was finally published at Ephrata in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, in 1748 to 1749 is too well known to need retelling here.

Two centuries after the first American edition of this sixteenth-century Dutch Mennonite classic, we again find the Mennonite brotherhood laboring to strengthen its young people in the nonresistant faith of the fathers by publishing another English edition of the Martyrs' Mirror of T. J. van Braght, 1625 to 1664. Indeed, the loyalty of the Mennonite brotherhood to its historic peace principles has been tested more severely in the First and Second World Wars than at any time since the sixteenth century. The pressures of today's culture on the group to give up this historic principle are strong. It is clear that vigorous efforts must be made to win the loyalty of our youth if the Biblical doctrine of nonresistance is to be preserved. May God add His blessing to this effort to glorify His name.

September 20, 1949

MENNONITE PUBLISHING HOUSE

J. C. WENGER, Secretary of the

Historical Committee of the Mennonite

General Conference