# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1852 02 17_S101
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

101

Silesians decidedly wrong.*) No Bible passage dealing with the election, ordination and office of Christian preachers, not the apostolic practice, not the apparent wavering of the old Lutheran Church in questions of church constitution, gives a warrant, or even so much as a pretext, for the establishment of a spiritual estate which, resting upon an interpretation of Heb. 13:17 that contradicts the Analogia fidei (the analogy of faith), and is therefore utterly false, presumes to usurp (to appropriate unlawfully) the divine prerogatives of the estate of the householder and of the magistracy. Löhe also, "'perceives here an insurmountable chasm and a sad lot for the congregations connected with Pastor Grabau.'" May this serve us for a warning and rouse us to watchfulness! Small and unnoticed, with the praising of adiaphoristic (indifferent) ceremonies, with a greater emphasis than is necessary upon subordinate points of doctrine, the papistic mischief begins; then it gradually lets the succession of the means of grace (the inheriting of the Word and of the Sacraments from the Apostles), whereby alone Christendom is built up, recede into the shadow before the succession (the unbroken line of office) of the servants of the church; afterwards, in consistent (logical) progress, it shifts the center of gravity of the Christian life from doctrine to constitution, whereby the Gospel is forgotten while human ordinances and commandments come to honor and esteem; and at last it climbs to the perfected papal system (papal doctrinal edifice) of the Middle Ages, which claims all divine and human rights for itself alone and makes them serve its own interests. Let no one say that the Christian sense of the Silesians and of their like-minded friends will by no means let it come so far. The thoughtless wanderer who with his staff scraped loose the little snowflake from the Alpine summit likewise wished nothing less than that it should bury houses and men; indeed, he did not even suspect it; yet could he afterwards stop the devastating avalanche in its fall? Whoever has at heart the blessings of Christian liberty and of the universal priesthood of all believers, regained by struggle in the Reformation, let him watch!" — Dr. Guericke told us that he had lately been drawn into a similar conflict, such as we here have to wage against the Grabau tendency, on the soil of the German Church. In the Lutheran Church of Prussia also, to which he (Dr. Guericke) belongs as a member, the existence of a party had for some time come to light which cherishes hierarchical principles and, in the doctrine of the Church and the Ministry generally, is strongly Romanizing, though certainly without being aware of it; and between some of the representatives of this tendency among the preachers of the so-called separated Prussian Lutherans and himself there had just been a hard collision.*) Dr. Guericke assured us, however, at the same time that in the Prussian Lutheran Church also there is a considerable company of men who recognize the error and danger of that tendency and with great zeal advocate the purely evangelical principles of Church, Ministry, church power, church order, and the like. To this company belongs, among others, the distinguished jurist who stands at the head of the separated Prussian Lutherans, the Privy Councillor Huschke in Breslau.

*) Unhappily some are now inclined here also to take Pastor Grabau's side and to take the field for him against the Lutheraner and our Synod, who likewise have not yet in the least understood the matter at issue. Such persons, to be sure, do not sin so grievously as those who strive against the acknowledged truth; but it is nevertheless a pitiable thing when a man publicly delivers his judgment with visible confidence upon a matter which he does not understand. It is more pitiable still when anyone lets himself be frightened by such auxiliary troops.

*) Elsewhere we heard that the Lutheran Consistorial Councillor Wedemann in Breslau, now blessedly departed, pursued the hierarchical principles which are now springing up in the Lutheran Church so consistently that he was at last close to leaving the Lutheran Church and returning to the bosom of the Roman Church, where he saw those principles carried out consistently and alone, and the idea of a visible Church, as it had become settled in him, alone realized. But God, according to His unmerited mercy, so ordered it that the dear man, fallen into great distress of conscience, was stricken with a mortal sickness, was healed here, under the pastoral care of a faithful friend, of his errors and tormenting scruples, and at last fell asleep, comforted and blessed, in the Lutheran faith and in the sheltering bosom of the Lutheran Church.

Urgently requested to do so by a member of the congregation here, we made, the day after, at the expense of this member, a side trip from Halle to Nordhausen, where his nearest relatives live. To our greatest joy and surprise we learned that here and far around in the surrounding country, which until recently was known, or rather notorious, as a hotbed of the boldest unbelief and of so-called Light-friendism, a mighty movement of Lutheran faith and life has made itself known. In Nordhausen itself we found, alongside the Union congregations, which hold all the Lutheran city churches, a little so-called Old Lutheran flock, which is visited from time to time by Pastor Wermelskirch from Erfurt, and holds its worship in a room of a private house, adorned as pleasantly as they were able, in the house of Mr. Schönau, with whom we found a most friendly reception. The city pastor Abel was described to us, indeed, as a "believing" man, but one who belongs to those who, like so many now, think they can be good Lutherans in the midst of the Union. Here we further heard the following: In June of last year a Thuringian pastoral conference had been held at Neudietendorf, at which some of those present had admitted to one another that it stood sadly with the Evangelical Lutheran Church still lawfully existing in the Saxon duchies and in the Schwarzburg lands, and that it lay prostrate not only from the devastations wrought by Rationalism, but was also leavened by the Unionist element as it had come in from Prussia. These persons therefore conceived the plan of calling together the members of the Lutheran Church of Thuringia who adhere faithfully to her Confession, to an assembly at Ilmenau, in order to strengthen one another by a closer union and to consult together, in a free and brotherly manner, concerning the furtherance of the holy cause of their Church, as well as the averting of the dangers perhaps impending over her. Some fifty clergymen and laymen from almost all parts of Thuringia followed the invitation issued by them, and under the chairmanship of Pastor Wermelskirch constituted themselves on the 14th of August a conference which has, by its own declaration, the purpose: "in view of the dangers threatening their Church, and in the afflictions into which the whole Church, or individual territorial churches, may fall, to take counsel and strengthen one another, since those dangers are not sufficiently considered in the conferences already existing in their region." At the same time the question was discussed: "How shall the clergyman who is of the Lutheran Confession, but lives in a land estranged from this Confession and from the liturgy and discipline connected with it, set about it, that he together with his congregation may also outwardly belong to the Lutheran Church and be active from that standing?" Pastor Schinzel of Lichtentanne had answered this question in writing, and his answer was now submitted to the discussion of the assembly. The particulars concerning this I intend to communicate to the dear readers on another occasion. This movement for the restoration of the Lutheran Church in Thuringia must fill us with the greater hopes, since Pastor Wermelskirch, by whose faithful service this movement has partly been awakened and is partly being guided, belongs precisely to those separated Prussian Lutherans who oppose the intrusion of hierarchical principles with great earnestness and contend with great zeal that the old, purely evangelical principles of our Church be brought again to recognition, and that the congregations be organized and governed in accordance with them.

So we returned to Halle, richly comforted and refreshed from our excursion by way of Sangerhausen and Eisleben, the birthplace of Luther. In Sangerhausen we heard that a company of a hundred Lutherans had here recently renounced the Union and united into a Lutheran congregation, brought, if I am not mistaken, likewise to the knowledge of the truth through the service of Pastor Wermelskirch.

In Halle we visited Dr. Guericke once more, in accordance with an invitation received, and were now faithfully and heartily admonished by him to hold fast to the acknowledged truth, which admonition, of course, equally