# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1852 02 17_S98
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

98

the whole weight of the responsibility which it would take upon itself if it should shrink from any sacrifice by the offering of which it could hope to forestall the threatening rupture. "Endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace" (Eph. 4, 3.): this Word of God convinced it that here it was not merely a question of a laudable work which it might perhaps also leave undone, but of a holy duty of Christian brotherly love. It called to mind the blessing which would surely rest upon a sincere and honest concern for the peace of the Church. To this was added that Pastor Löhe was not only almost the only one through whom, until then, the connection of our Synod with the Church of the old fatherland had been mediated, so that a rupture with him would at the same time have as its consequence a being cut off from the latter; the questionable utterances which Pastor Löhe had published concerning the direction of our Synod had also, as had already become known to it several times, awakened throughout all Germany the most unfavorable impressions and most serious misgivings concerning its ecclesiastical standing. It was therefore a matter of our Synod's winning back the confidence of its brethren in Germany, which had been not a little shaken, and of lifting a grave suspicion which had fallen, before the eyes of the whole Church in Germany, upon our doctrine and practice and upon our faithfulness toward our Church. It was thus a matter of God's honor itself; for instead of our brethren in the homeland praising God with us that He, according to His great mercy and out of undeserved grace, has brought us out of many former errors to the knowledge of the pure, unadulterated evangelical truth, has led us back to the old good ways of our fathers (Jer. 6, 16.), and has granted to our Church here, in the midst of the hundreds of fanatical sects springing up luxuriantly and amid the raging and rampaging of atheistic communities, a sound and joyful prosperity: instead of this, the reproach lay upon the work of God among us, as though it were an impure work of men and as though God had given us over to a reprobate mind.

So our Synod held that it was high time to do something by which God's honor might be rescued, His work among us made manifest, our Church here reconciled with that of the mother country, and thus also the full blessing of fellowship with it regained for us. It resolved, therefore, to send two from its midst to Germany, who were above all to confer orally with Pastor Löhe and, with God's help, to attempt to win back this dear man, but also elsewhere, here and there in the various ecclesiastical communions of Germany, to bear witness before our brethren of our doctrine and practice, and so to establish a more general and more intimate connection with the German mother Church.

For the carrying out of this work, blessed indeed, but weighty and responsible, there were unanimously chosen by the Synod, at its last annual convention, held in June of last year at Milwaukie, Pastor Wyneken of this place and the writer of this. Beyond expectation, joyfully and abundantly, the congregations of the Synodical body, at a friendly presentation of the matter, had contributed toward covering the necessary considerable travelling expenses, so that a not altogether insignificant sum could be laid aside as a surplus. Great as the misgivings at first were which the congregation here had at having to spare even two of its pastors for a considerable time for the purpose of the delegation, these nevertheless vanished when Professor Dr. Sihler of Fort Wayne was to be ceded to it by the congregation there, though with a heavy heart, yet with brotherly willingness, as the representative of both. A unity within our Synodical congregation was thereby made manifest which filled all with great joy and strengthened each in the childlike confidence that the undertaking was not a human contrivance but a work of God, and that God must have wrought it, that so many thousands in this work had so soon become of one heart and one soul and stood and acted as one man.

So then we delegates also, dismissed by our congregations and families, though often with tears yet with their most fervent wishes of blessing, went to the holy work of peace in the name of the LORD, indeed in the most lively humbling sense of our utter unfitness for a high work, yet joyfully and confidently assured of our calling thereto by the Lord of the Church. And behold! our confidence, which — we must confess it with deep shame — often threatened to waver in us, God has not put to shame; it has not come to confusion. Of this we can certainly tell nothing, how cleverly we set about it and what great things we thereby accomplished. Rather must we confess that in all things, so far as we are concerned, we have only experienced how weak, how helpless, how unskilful we are. Yea, we confess it with sincere heart: whatever has been spoiled in this whole work is our fault, and whatever good has been accomplished, in that we have no share, but it is the gracious hand of God which, even where our unskilfulness had bungled something, seized us, led us out like helpless children, and turned it to good. When we therefore look upon what God has done in this, we must exclaim: Ye dear brethren and sisters in Christ Jesus, near and far, praise and laud and give thanks with us to our God, for He, the LORD, hath done great things for us, whereof we are glad.

Before I begin my report, I cannot therefore omit assuring you, dear ones, immediately beforehand at least so much in general, that the real purpose of our journey has been attained by God's help and grace. The faithful servant and warrior of God, the old, most faithful friend of our Church in America beyond the ocean, who for years already, day and night, with truly Pauline care has cared for our forsaken congregations here in need of help, has become wholly our own again; his misgivings about us have vanished from his sincere heart, and his heart, open to the old eternal truth of God, seeking nothing of its own, and beating warmly toward the salvation and peace of the Church on this side and on that, has on the other hand been made manifest to us. We have in him again the old intercessor, not only before God but also before men; yea, had God before bound him and us together with a bond of unity in faith and love, which the enemy of the Church, perceiving the blessing flowing therefrom and begrudging it to the Church, would gladly have cut asunder, and which he has now almost succeeded in cutting asunder: so God has now drawn the bond tighter and tighter, so that it shall now, if God will, not succeed even for Satan with all his craft and his wiles ever to loosen the same. Besides, God has helped so that almost everywhere in our old fatherland where our brethren, especially in the last years, have followed our way with great misgivings, these misgivings have been changed, if not always into perfect agreement, yet into full confidence in the unobjectionableness of our direction and in the sincerity of our disposition, and the joyful conviction has been awakened that God has a great work of blessing here among us. Societies in Germany formerly lively and active for our orphaned American Lutheran Church, which had in part been paralyzed more and more in their zeal in recent times by the unfavorable reports received about us, have been revived again with new love for the work here and with new hopes that their labor of love will not be in vain. Thousands again stretch out their gentle hands to provide relief for our needs here by abundant gifts. Whole crowds of new friends have been won for us again over there, who feel themselves fraternally bound to us and feel our distress with us as members of one and the same body, and bear it upon their hearts and before God.

After these general preliminary remarks I now proceed to communicate to the dear readers a brief history of our journey in its particulars, wherein, for the sake of completeness, I shall also include the little that has already been communicated to the readers of these pages.

From the Synod we had received the instruction to begin our journey as soon as possible after the close of the convention. Pastor Wyneken, who had been urgently invited by his former congregation to use his journey through the eastern states for a visit as visiting President of the Synod, also set out from here thither as early as the 28th of July of last year; I, with the completion of what had been committed to me by the Synod