# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1852 02 17_S97
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Der Lutheraner.
"God's Word and Luther's doctrine shall pass away now and nevermore." (Rev. of John, ch. 14, v. 6, 7.)
Published by the German Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio and other States.
Edited by C. F. W. Walther.
Volume 8.  St. Louis, Mo., the 17th of February 1852.  No. 13.
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 the same 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, however, 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.

Report of the Editor's Journey.

Our Synod, the German Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio and other States, which at the close of its last annual convention already numbered 92 members, consists, as will probably already be known to most readers of this paper, originally chiefly of two components. The one is formed by the Saxon Lutherans who emigrated to Missouri in the year 1839; the other, by a company of Lutheran preachers who, since the year 1843, were nearly all sent over through the mediation of Pastor Löhe in Bavaria, and at least in part the congregations by which they were called here. But it is precisely the latter who have been the means by which, through their ever more numerous accession from year to year, our Synod has grown so quickly to so considerable a number of members, so that at present, after so meager a beginning, the field of its activity is already extended far over a great part of the states of our new fatherland. Next to God it is therefore Pastor Löhe to whom our Synod owes almost entirely the joyful flourishing and rapid growth which it enjoys; it must honor him quite truly as its spiritual father. It would fill the leaves of a whole book, were anyone to relate even in brief outline what that dear man has done for many years for our Lutheran Church and especially for our Synod, with untiring zeal and in the noblest, most unselfish manner.

The dearer our Synod held this blessed instrument of the hand of God for the building of our beloved Zion in this distant Western land, the more grieved it was bound to be when, in recent years, the apprehension gained ever more ground that a rupture, perhaps soon incurable, between it and Pastor Löhe was impending, and that it might therefore soon lose its most faithful friend and most powerful promoter and most eloquent intercessor, if not with God, yet with our brethren. For in this time it became more and more apparent that between Pastor Löhe and our Synod there existed a difference of doctrine, which threatened to disturb the unity of spirit that had existed until then and the fellowship in working for the cause of the Church that had been practiced until then, and finally even to dissolve it altogether. While our Synod believed it perceived with dismay from public writings as well as from written private declarations of Pastor Löhe that he was beginning to romanize in the doctrines of the Church, the Ministry, church power, church order, etc., and had adopted hierarchical principles, that is, that in these points he had become partial to the manner of teaching of the Roman Church and to a certain priestly dominion; Pastor Löhe on his part thought of our Synod that it had yielded to the dizzying craze for freedom raging here and, sacrificing the divine dignity of the holy Ministry of preaching and the blessing of a common, ordered church government, had given itself over to falsely democratic principles. While our Synod saw the evangelical liberty and the rights of the spiritual priesthood of believing Christians endangered and injured in the doctrines set forth by Pastor Löhe, he on the other hand saw our Synod on the way to surrendering many a holy ordinance of God to the caprice of the changeable multitude, and to raising here a church edifice which, resting on a swaying foundation, could be of but short duration.

To remove the difference that had emerged by way of correspondence was, as the Synod soon convinced itself after some unsuccessful attempts, impossible. Pastor Löhe was therefore repeatedly and urgently invited by it to come into its midst for some months, for personal observation of the conditions here and for mutual oral discussion; but unfortunately the man, involved in his own homeland in decisive ecclesiastical struggles, was unable to comply with the invitations received. What was the Synod now to do? — Before its eyes stood the whole series of calamitous consequences which a decided rupture between it and the man to whom it owed so much would have to have. It felt keenly