# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1852 02 17_S100
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

100

land commenced studies in preparation for the holy Ministry. We saw in these emissaries indeed new pledges of the old faithful disposition of Pastor Löhe toward our Synod, and speaking witnesses of his already vanishing misgivings concerning the latter.

On the day following, on the 13th inst., we hastened to Verden. Though the touching scene of the reunion of mother and son after a separation of many years, of which I was now a witness here, awakened in me a deep melancholy, since it had pleased God to withdraw from me suddenly and unexpectedly, by the calling home of my aged mother, who but a few months ago was still living in Germany, this joy hoped for by me also; yet, received not as a stranger but as a second son and brother, I felt myself soon so at home in the old pastor's widow's little cottage that I could share in the joy of my dear friend Wyneken as though I too had come again to the beloved place of my childhood with its lovely memories.

Since the next day was a Sunday (the 13th after Trinity), we set out at once in the morning of the same to Arbergen, a little village lying near Bremen, in which the brother of my dear travelling companion, Carl Wyneken, is pastor. From his mouth we heard here for the first time again in Germany the Word of God in public preaching and rejoiced in the unity of faith through which we soon recognized and felt ourselves bound to him. Accompanied back to Verden by the same, we were in the evening still together with one of the Verden pastors, by the name of Böhn, and came to know in him also an upright servant of our Evangelical Lutheran Church. In general, even during the still very short stretch of our journey on German soil, we had clearly seen that in Germany there has been a great change since our absence from there, and plainly for the better. From more and more places where formerly the most wretched Rationalism had its haunt we heard that believing preachers are now at work there, and that also among these believing preachers more and more come to the conviction how necessary a faithful and decided adherence to the confession of the Church and a corresponding keeping aloof from church fellowship with the false-believing is. From many formerly obstinate champions of the Union we learned that they now recognize ever more vividly the groundlessness and ungodliness of this work, and that therefore more and more societies formerly founded on unionistic principles have either dissolved entirely or been placed more and more upon a churchly basis. As one of the most powerful and most blessed witnesses for Lutheran truth in the neighborhood of Verden, a former teacher at a Gymnasium, now pastor in Oiste, K. Münkel, was commended to us here. On the following day we therefore paid him a visit; and in truth, we could soon heartily rejoice in the acquaintance of this dear man. His speech soon betrayed to us that he must have gone to school to Luther, namely, that he must have studied the writings of this highly enlightened man of God more than, alas! many others who nevertheless make the greatest claims to genuine Lutheranism. In this good school he had of course also learned that to a good shepherd belongs not only faithful teaching and feeding but also earnest warding off and contending. We found him therefore not only much concerned how he might properly instruct, awaken, and lead to Christ his formerly spiritually neglected congregation, but also how he might keep far from it the influences of the Methodist and Anabaptist sect which had swarmed about it some time ago. In order to attain the latter, and in general to warn and to preserve the poor ignorant people in the Hanoverian lands from the poison of fanaticism which the named sects seek to scatter abroad there, Münkel collaborates on a people's paper appearing at Osnabrück, ever more decidedly outspoken, and he has also for this purpose written some quite pithy tracts in attractive, popular language. To name only a few of them, one bears the title: "What Is to Be Thought of the Methodists?" Another: "A Short Instruction on Baptism and the Doctrine of the So-called Anabaptists." A third: "Pillar and Ground of the Truth."*) The blessing which Münkel has wrought thereby is visible and great. For many who had formerly given credence to the sweet assurances of the Messrs. Methodists, and who had therefore met them with great confidence, the eyes have been opened regarding them, next to the ever more plainly self-speaking conduct of the Methodists themselves, by Münkel's writings. From the neighborhood of Oiste, where Methodists and Baptists had already rather nested themselves, they have at present almost entirely vanished again, and the Christians in and around Oiste, who by their seduction had been almost wholly stolen away and estranged from their faithful pastor and in great part spiritual father, have recognized by God's grace that they had let themselves be moved by the wind of a false spirit to seek their pasture on dangerous, spiritual heights, and have returned to the forsaken green pastures of the old Gospel, as our dear Evangelical Lutheran Church proclaims it in the writings of her godly teachers and from the pulpits of her still living faithful servants. The more Münkel was at home in Luther's writings and had drunk diligently with full draughts from this fountain, the more we met also in our conviction of faith, as we set forth to him the faith which we here confess over against the world and the erring brethren; and as faith-strengthening as the brotherly conversation of the worthy man was to us, so we also hope that in turn our testimony will not have been without blessing to him. May God let him yet further be light and salt in the circle assigned to him by God, let his light burn ever brighter and his salt salt ever more powerfully.

*) In another number I intend to communicate more from these tracts to the reader, not only that one may learn to know the conflict which our Church in Germany wages against the sects raging here also, but that we too may share in the blessing of the same.

On the 16th of September in the afternoon we left Verden. Our next goal was to be Magdeburg, where we hoped to become acquainted with an influential member of the Lutheran Church of Prussia and through him to establish and respectively to initiate a connection with the Prussian brethren. After long fruitless inquiries in this city for the "Old-Lutheran" preacher functioning here — even upon this designation we were repeatedly directed to Unionist preachers! — we learned at last that Pastor Wolf, belonging here to the separated Prussian Lutherans, was away on a journey. Having accomplished nothing, we therefore had to leave Magdeburg. From here we went to Halle, where we arrived on the 17th inst. in the afternoon. The opportunity to speak with Professor Dr. Guericke of this place we could not possibly leave unused. We sought him out therefore, and, although the Doctor was already personally known to both of us as an exceedingly affable and Christianly humble man, we nevertheless found so uncommonly kindly and hearty a reception as we had not expected. Not only was our heart so soon opened here, to pour it out with confidence and without reserve and to report on the standing of our Synod in doctrine and practice; with great joy we also heard from the mouth of the honored man that he himself had followed the development of our Church here continually with increasing sympathy and acknowledged the standpoint which our Synod has taken as the right one. As a proof of his publicly attested agreement he thereupon communicated to us several things which he had had inserted, of his own and of others', in the last quarterly number of the (Rudelbach-Guericke) Journal of last year, which had just gone to press. Among other things it said therein as follows: "In America both parties, the former Silesians, at their head Pastor Grabau, and the Saxon pastors in Missouri, are already in violent conflict. Though on both sides here much misunderstanding, harshness and aberration may have occurred, in the real focal point of the controversy, to many indeed not yet rightly discernible, the Saxons are decidedly in the right, the