# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1851 12 09_S63
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

63

hard put, so that they saw themselves obliged to add to the letter the remark:

"We the undersigned understand the above thus, that you are to write us an answer within three days whether you will do something in the matter or not."

Already on the following day the people replied and assured Winkler that they too were already settled about their choice. The letter closes with the words: "Be assured that you will be informed forthwith on our side, as soon as the desired date is indicated to us. For the rest, our wish remains the same, and shall, according to your wish, be left to the committee to be appointed for settlement."

How, then, can Winkler after this assert that the people for weeks let nothing be seen or heard that they were doing anything in the matter? Admittedly he had now to wait patiently till my arrival, which was drawn out so undeservedly. But far from this delay having been welcome to the people, in order to continue their raging in the congregation, as Winkler represents it, their displeasure at it is as clear as the sun from a letter of the 23rd of April, which the writer of this received from them only a few days after the letter of the President. Therein they report to him that they had already had in their hands for ten days a letter of our President, composed on the 5th of April, in which he made known to them that he had appointed the undersigned as their committee member and had already notified him thereof. They were now waiting painfully for his arrival, seeing that they had hitherto found themselves unable to name to Pastor Winkler the suitable date. That under such circumstances the undersigned did not delay to put the matter into effect with the utmost speed, one will readily believe. So he also wrote at once that he would come in the next week, whereof they should notify Pastor Winkler. On the 29th of April, however, he set out, in company with his colleague, Pastor Gräbner, on the way to Detroit, where, in accordance with an invitation, he put up with one of the people who had been known to him for many years. Unfortunately his letter to them had remained lying in the post, and so they had known nothing yet of his arrival, and therefore had not been able to inform Pastor Winkler of it. Moreover, he himself was not at home at all, but returned only the following day, the 2nd of May, from his country congregation. When we at last got to speak with him, he had to be convinced, after a faithful presentation of all the circumstances, that neither the delay thus far nor the silence about our arrival was our fault, and he also expressed this conviction at that time. But that is all now forgotten, it seems. Yes, he is bold enough to say further in his report: the appearance of the undersigned was not only unexpected, but also highly striking; he had come not like a fellow minister, but like a country judge, had sharply censured Winkler on account of his proceeding, which was yet first to be investigated, indeed had held an assembly on the very evening of his arrival, and in general represents the matter as though one had merely said so, that one had come by the President's commission, without properly legitimating oneself. Of what gross untruths the poor man thereby makes himself guilty, against his better knowledge and conscience. God knows that it was hard for the undersigned to go to Detroit in this affair, since he owed Winkler only thanks for so many a service rendered to the Mission and to his congregation. God knows with what troubled heart we both, Gräbner and the writer of this, went to Winkler. That he could also see in our faces and hear in our voices. So it is also a fact that the undersigned amply legitimated himself by showing the Presidential letter of the 5th of April. Yes, when Winkler had to be convinced, by inspecting the cover of that letter, that it had really gone astray to Bridgewater, he could not himself refrain from exclaiming: Well, then, for once we are all innocent. Only when he began to represent his opponents in the blackest light and to assert that they were not worth making such a journey on their account, the undersigned felt constrained to remark to him that he, as a pastor, even if the people were ever so bad, could only rejoice that they were willing to have the matter investigated by a regular church court and decided according to God's Word. In so doing he could not conceal from him that his last lines, which he had written to the people on the 9th of April, had pained him from the heart, since they were written not in a pastoral but in a country-judge's tone. If now Winkler, to whom we related in all simplicity that on the very evening of our arrival most of the complainants had sought us out, is moreover capable of calling that holding an assembly, we truly do not know what to say to it. May he soon retract this, that he may not stand there quite so much as a malicious slanderer. Indeed the presentation that now follows, with respect to the bringing about of a committee, is no less false. Winkler says: the undersigned demanded the immediate procuring of his part of the committee, and since that was impossible, he demanded that the committee should be in Detroit on Whit-Tuesday or on the Thursday after the second Sunday after Trinity, when he should return from the Synod. — It is indeed remarkable how briefly he puts it here, and how cleverly, by omission of important attendant circumstances and by falsification of the facts, he presents the matter as though one had not done everything to make the procuring of his committee member possible. Does Pastor Winkler not remember at all how sorry we were that the letter which was to announce our arrival was found only after it? Does he not know any more how much we — not demanded — but begged him to do everything possible with us, that at last, after so much delay and hindrance, a committee might come about, and how we finally agreed that he should write at once to his part, and, because that one, according to Winkler's own declaration, could be there in four to five days, meanwhile went to Monroe, whither a duty of love drove us, firmly hoping to meet Winkler's committee member on our return. And has he then forgotten that he, going again to his country congregation, left behind for us a letter which was to move us to travel home without having accomplished anything, before his part had given word whether he would come or not?

When we nevertheless, to avoid any new delay, awaited the answer, when in it a refusal for this time was given and our synodical sessions came in the way, did he find it in the least unreasonable that we asked for a date immediately before or after the time of the Synod, because our way then led us through Detroit in any case? And what is one to say, finally, to the big-printed lie about Whit-Tuesday as the date, since Winkler knows full well that we expressed ourselves on his scruples concerning Whitsun week, that since the matter had now dragged on so long, his part could surely manage to set out from home at least on Whit-Tuesday, if indeed the settlement of the matter lay so urgently at his heart as was boasted? —

The heart of the undersigned in truth bleeds that Winkler himself compels him to charge him with lie upon lie. Gladly would he rather believe that his memory deceived him, only so as not thus, as a support of the truth and from holy duty of love, to be obliged to rebuke publicly his neighbor's sin. But that this is not the case is, alas, only too indubitably certain, since all these facts are not only still painfully in his memory, but were also at that time at once recorded in writing by him, for the sake of the report which he had to send in to the President about it, and which was signed by Pastor Gräbner, as eye- and ear-witness, with the remark that not only did everything occur exactly thus, but that yet quite a bit of what is hateful, which one could have cited of Winkler, was passed over in silence. — How very different reasons would we thus have to call upon God for vengeance for all these untruths. But that would become a terrible judgment, and therefore we have only one prayer to God, that He would, for Christ's sake, grant repentance to the blinded man.

(Conclusion to follow)