# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1851 09 30_S17
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Der Lutheraner.
"God's Word and Luther's doctrine shall pass away now and nevermore." (Rev. John, Chap. 14, vv. 6, 7.)
Published by the German Ev. Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio and other States.
Edited by C. F. W. Walther.
Vol. 8.  St. Louis, Mo., September 30, 1851.  No. 3.
Terms: Der Lutheraner appears once every two weeks, at the yearly subscription price of One Dollar for out-of-town subscribers, who are to pay for it in advance and bear the postage. — In St. Louis each single number is sold for 5 cents.
Only those letters which contain communications for the paper are to be sent to the Editor; all others, which contain business matters, orders, cancellations, money, etc., are to be sent hither under the address Mr. F. W. Barthel, care of C. F. W. Walther, St. Louis, Mo.

Preface.

Conclusion.

Concerning our relation to the Indianapolis Synod, since it not only stands with us upon the same confessional ground, but has also more and more conformed its churchly practice accordingly, we have resolved to make it the proposal of closer church fellowship; for it would not be fitting to God's Word and to churchly custom if we, in the same State, though churchly one in essence, should nevertheless continue to exist side by side as two separate church bodies, which, moreover, would be all the less becoming to that synod, as the younger.

Since, however, it has only quite recently held its synodical convention, to which two from our midst were sent as delegates with our brotherly proffer, the reports of the result of our delegation have not yet arrived.

Finally, we should now still have to make mention of the sad discord which unhappily at present exists between the Buffalo Synod, and especially the senior of its Ministerium, Pastor Grabau at Buffalo, and us.

It would lead too far here even to resume the main outlines of the historical origin of this dissension, since, moreover, the particulars lie before every reader in a pamphlet *). Only this much be said here, that we find ourselves almost at a loss how to express our deep sorrow and at the same time our just indignation over the two synodical letters of the Buffalo Synod of the year 1850, composed by P. G.

*) The Hirtenbrief of Pastor Grabau at Buffalo of the year 1840, together with the writings exchanged between him and several Lutheran pastors of Missouri; given to the public as a protest against the assertion of hierarchical principles within the Lutheran Church. (To be had in New York of Ludwig and at the office of the Lutheraner.)

For if we look first at the disposition prevailing against us in general and as a whole, as it declares itself throughout in tone and expression, we can discover — and surely every impartial reader will find it so too — nothing other than a mind filled through and through with hatred, wrath and bitterness against us, which accordingly vents itself without cease in expressions dipped in poison and gall, so that even brethren in Germany, who up to now are in a certain respect of the same doctrinal opinion with him, call the tone of his letter "abominable." "Wolves, protectors of factions, Brother Caiaphas, Ahab's synod," and suchlike titles of honor are bestowed upon us with untiring liberality. In all the several cases cited by him, in which, in his opinion, we are evildoers, premeditated ill will against him is simply imputed to us as our ruling disposition, and in not a single case is even the faintest possibility suggested that we might have acted so out of an erring conscience. Further, when we declare ourselves against his hierarchical restriction of the spiritual priesthood of all believing Christians and of the original evangelical rights of the congregation, without thereby on the other hand violating the rights of the holy ministry, as a divine ordinance, and opening door and gate to democratic encroachments and fanatical caprice, — then he sets forth the possibility of the abuse of our doctrine, which, by the hand of God's Word, walks rightly through between the two cliffs, as a certain fact, against all truthfulness and justice even of a natural man. For as though he had ever been in a congregational meeting at St. Louis or Fort Wayne an eye- and ear-witness and were reporting true occurrences, he writes: "even in the Babylonian temples of liberty at Fort Wayne and St. Louis *), there it resounds and bellows: 'No Ge-

*) We venture confidently to invite Pastor G. to attend our congregational meetings at any time, even as an unknown person, and if it is possible for him to take off, for those hours, his blackened spectacles with which he otherwise always looks at us, he will certainly find nothing else than the dominion of God's Word, to which, in harmonious cooperation, teachers and hear-