# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1852 02 17_S99
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

99

assigned me, the elaboration of a Confession of faith against the calumnies which our Synod has suffered at the hands of Pastor Grabau, intended to leave a few days later and then to meet Pastor Wyneken again in New York. But it pleased God to cast me at this time upon a bed of severe sickness and thus first to lead me into His dear holy school of the cross. While I wholly despaired of life, which I would also quite gladly have given back into the hands of my dear heavenly Father, my dear congregation besought God for the preservation of my poor life, and God heard their prayer and after some weeks graciously raised me up again, so that I, though still rather weak, was nevertheless able to set out from here as early as the evening of the 15th of August. A swift and happy journey (on the Mississippi and Illinois River to Lasalle in Illinois, thence by the canal to Chicago, where I could be together a few hours with the brethren Selle, Hoffmann and Küchle, thereupon over Lake Michigan to New Buffalo, thence by the railroad to Detroit, from here over Lake Erie to Buffalo, and from there by way of Albany) brought me in a time of five days and a few hours to New York, where Pastor Wyneken was already waiting longingly for me. Since it was the express will of the Synod that, to save time, we should not travel by a sailing vessel but should make use of the opportunity of steamship travel, we were obliged to tarry yet a few days in New York in the house of our dear brother Brohm. We thus obtained opportunity to become somewhat better acquainted with his congregation, belonging to our Synod, and rejoiced from the heart to make the acquaintance in it of a whole company of upright, zealous Christians, who form a fellowship, though not especially numerous yet all the more deeply grounded, in the great metropolis.

With the next steamship departing for Europe we put to sea. This took place on the 27th of August on the English Royal Mail steamship Africa, sailing to Liverpool in England. Here we found, although in the second cabin, everything that can serve for comfort on a sea voyage. Favored by almost constantly fair weather and a calm sea, we ran, after a happy voyage of a little more than ten days (through the North Channel between Ireland and Scotland, past the Isle of Man), into the harbor of Liverpool on Saturday the 6th of September in the evening, in the tenth hour. We had to halt in the middle of the river (Mersey), and after the customs officers had, within four hours, done their office upon the about 80 passengers, inquiring especially strictly for letters and cigars, we were brought ashore by a smaller steamboat. Meanwhile Sunday had dawned, and since on this day in England there is no travelling and the railway travel stands still, we were obliged to seek out an inn and to wait here until the next day. Not knowing that there is here a not inconsiderable Protestant congregation gathered from the Germans living in Liverpool by the thousands, which possesses a pretty church here, as we learned only later, we waited out the divine service in two English churches. Both were meeting-houses of the English High (Episcopal) Church. It was most interesting to us to see represented precisely in these the two parties now standing opposed to one another in this Church. In the one we heard, namely, a Puseyite deliver a dry lecture-room discourse to the effect that the English Church is the true Church of Jesus Christ on earth (which he sought to prove chiefly from its constitution and especially from the episcopal succession (succession of office) preserved in it); whereupon followed the administration of the holy Supper in the uncanny, mumbling manner of the Roman Church and with the employment of the Offertorium *), now so much a cause of strife in England. The preacher whom we heard on the evening of the same Sunday seemed to belong to the opposite party. His sermon, treating of the coming of the LORD to judgment, was lively and powerful and interwoven with testimonies of the Holy Scripture of the Old and New Testament; unfortunately, however, it lacked, in keeping with the character of most English sermons, the clear exposition how a poor, awakened conscience can become certain of its salvation on the ground of the comforting doctrine of the justification of a poor sinner before God by faith alone. Yet we rejoiced in the hope that, since in the awakening sermon this comfort was nevertheless not wholly passed over in silence, the numerous, most attentive hearers, to a great extent surely, did not go out of the church without a seed-corn of the divine regenerating truth having fallen into their hearts.

*) The collection of the so-called offering money.

On the day following, at noon, we now travelled by the first railway train from Liverpool by way of Manchester and Selby to Hull, in order to depart from this port-town of the English east coast with the first opportunity for Germany. Unfortunately, here too such an opportunity did not present itself at once; we had therefore to endure until Wednesday morning (the 10th of September) in this place, which offers all the disagreeableness of seaports in an especially rich measure, and where almost nothing attracted us but the sight of the, to be sure, incomparably splendid and mighty Minster, whereupon we betook ourselves to the English steamship "Hamburg," with which, after a two days' restless voyage amid storm and rain, we arrived happily on the 12th of the same month in the forenoon.

The first thing we had to do here was to inquire of some Lutherans already known to Pastor Wyneken whether and when this year the Synod of the Prussian separated Lutherans, assembling from time to time in Breslau, would be held; for if this, as a rumor had told us, were really to be held in the next few days, we wished first to attend it and only then to turn to South Germany, the chief goal of our journey. To our regret we learned that this year no synodical convention of the said body takes place. In making this inquiry it became known to us that now, a short time since, after many years of fruitless efforts, a small Lutheran congregation had gathered in Hamburg, which has separated itself from the Ministerium of the city there, calling itself Lutheran indeed but false-believing, and through the mediation of Pastor Löhe has received a true-believing candidate, by the name of Meinel, as its preacher, indeed in spite of all petitions not yet officially recognized by the magistracy, but nevertheless now tolerated without being molested in its divine service. The members of the congregation with whom we became more closely acquainted, together with their dear zealous pastor, appeared to us as Lutherans of the most upright disposition, with whom we soon felt ourselves brotherly united. To their friendly, urgent invitation to tarry some days with them we could, alas! not accede. Dismissed by them with the heartfelt wish that God would grant us grace for complete union with their beloved Löhe, we now set out on our way, by way of Harburg to Verden, a Hanoverian town lying some miles south of Bremen, where Pastor Wyneken's aged mother, a pastor's widow, still lives, and where we thought to recover from the exertions of the sea voyage and to strengthen ourselves for work, since especially the writer of this was still suffering somewhat from the after-effects of his last severe illness. In Harburg we passed the night. Here, namely, we found the friendliest brotherly reception at the house of Mr. Stürje, harbor-master, formerly a sea captain, who belongs to the few of that region who have for some time already, by God's grace, unwound themselves from the net of the Union and have come to a living consciousness of what they have in their old Evangelical Lutheran Church. Here we found at the same time the like-minded friend of the said gentleman, Lieutenant-Colonel von Platen, and Consistorial Counsellor Dr. von Hanffstängel of Stade, both of whom took the keenest interest in our American Lutheran Church, wherefore the latter also urgently invited us to visit Stade on our return journey. To our great joy we met here also several new laborers, sent again to our Church through the mediation of Pastor Löhe from Germany, the missionary K. Diehlmann and Pastor Deindörfer, destined for Frankenhilf in the State of Michigan, together with two young men who in the Seminary at Fort Wayne their already in German-