# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1853 09 13_S11
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

11

The Lutheran gymnasium should be turned into an ordinary school, because propositions are defended in it which the papal chair rejects, and the monastery given to the Bernardines. The two preachers of Thorn, Dr. Geret and Olof, should be deposed and removed, because the former in his speech at the wedding of the burgomaster Meißner had uttered offensive passages against the dominion of the Pope, and the latter because he had wished to hold back the arrested Heyder from conversion to the Catholic Church. The speech of Geret should also be publicly burned.

For five hours Nagrodski spoke, or rather raged and snorted. Then the advocate of the city of Thorn rose and asked for a respite of four days to answer the accusations. It was granted him after some resistance. On the 31st of October there appeared before the assembly a councilman, an alderman and two members of the third order, and with them their advocate Bohußewski. The advocate set forth the following against the plaintiff's accusation: 1) Many of the commissioners lived in enmity with the city of Thorn and even in lawsuits. Their opinion therefore could not be accepted as impartial; 2) the members were Catholic and therefore partial in a religious dispute; 3) no confrontation of the witnesses had taken place; 4) witnesses had been accepted who on account of their ill repute were altogether objectionable; 5) every commissioner had demanded, besides the costs of subsistence, a present of two hundred ducats. At the last point Prince Lubomirski, who felt himself hit, broke out in anger, and bade the advocate be silent in the bitterest words. A tumult of the most violent kind arose, after the allaying of which Bohußewski moved that a new investigation be ordered according to right and the valid laws. Nagrodski answered that the commissioners were wrongly charged with an unlawful procedure. In general, in the case of such a crime as lay before them, the outward form of the administration of justice did not matter so much. Now the chaplain of the Primate, a Jesuit full of cunning and fluency, thought he must deliver a speech which he had studied beforehand. Since this speech is still extant, it may be permitted to communicate some of it. The liar and murderer from the beginning, as Christ calls him, sees through everything.

(To be continued.)

The German Ev. Lutheran Central Bible Society of the West

holds its Bible festival this year on the 22nd of this month, as the day of the completion of the Lutheran translation of the New Testament, in the Immanuel church of the German Ev. Luth. congregation u. a. C. at St. Louis, by a solemn public divine service with sermon. This for the information of our dear brethren in the neighborhood.

(Contributed.)

Further Particulars of the Persecution of the Lutherans of Baden, especially of Pastor Eichhorn.

From the periodical of Dr. Petri in Hanover for the affairs of the Lutheran Church, of the 24th of April 1852.

In Baden there seems now to be about to be repeated what was gone through twenty years ago in Prussia, a struggle of the Lutheran Church for the maintenance of its existence against the devouring Union. It will therefore be needful for us to take note of the beginnings; for however small they are, yet it cannot be said whither they will lead. Concerning the occurrences, the newspapers report in part, and in part the chief person concerned, Pastor Eichhorn himself, in the "Kirchenblatt" of Ehlers. The said pastor, as is known, about two years ago withdrew from the United Church of Baden and returned to the ground of the Luth. Church and joined himself to the Lutheran Church in Prussia. He gathered a few like-minded persons about him in the villages of Ihringen and Nußloch, who called him as their pastor. Application was now made to the authorities and finally to the Estates of the land for recognition, with the addition of a legal opinion of Prof. Scheuerl at Erlangen, but in all instances, as was to be foreseen, received a refusal, for the Baden deed of union had declared that in Baden there should be in all eternity no Lutheran and Reformed, but only one united Church. The appeal of the petitioners (suppliants) to the constitution of the land, the German Federal Act and the Peace of Westphalia was refuted with this proposition and also otherwise as invalid, especially in a little writing of the chief of the united church authority, to which Dr. Scheuerl has already replied. The matter now stands so that the question whether a Lutheran Church is to continue to exist in Baden or not seems to be decided solely by the way of conflict. Concerning the latest occurrences Pastor Eichhorn reports in No. 6 of the Kirchenblatt the following:

"After the two congregations of Ihringen and Nußloch had been granted peace for a short time, and I also was able to visit them in turn, a new persecution arose just about the holy Christmas feast.—For quite a time previously I had not been permitted to enter these places; from Ihringen I had been banished in May, from Nußloch in November, under the severest threats, whereupon I each time declared: I would submit to the expulsions so far as it could be done without harm to the souls entrusted to me, but reserved to myself by divine right the liberty, in cases of need, especially when the weak and those under temptation were to be visited, to enter the places.—So we came together for our regular divine services in neighboring places, often quite near by, belonging to other districts, and I could report quite wonderful leadings, how we were never in embarrassment, but always had a quiet little place prepared by the Lord of the Church, often in quite singular places, but I reserve this narrative for later times. This, however, I must mention here, that these hidden services, and yet so manifest before God, were celebrated with uncommon devotion and uplifting, and that the participants often said: 'We shall never forget these poor and yet so rich services!' Several times we received additions, and in the middle of the night, in the greatest stillness and secrecy, some newly entering persons let themselves be received. More often we could not sing, because spies were all around, and I had then to read aloud the hymns and songs. Ps. 65, 2.

But the enemy did not tarry; we were, especially in the Upper Country in and around Ihringen, at last so hemmed in and watched that in the days of Advent we did not know whether and where we could call out together to the Christ-child in the manger, 'Be welcome, thou noble guest!' yet we parted again with the customary farewell: 'The Lord will surely find a little chamber for us again!'

On the 23rd of December further severe measures were taken by the Ministry of the Interior: I was to be banished also from the districts of Freiburg and Emmendingen, lying nearest around Ihringen and the Breisach district, and the gendarmerie were to be instructed to search for me formally in these upper districts. At the same time the district office in Durlach, my present place of residence, received the instruction to announce to me the banishment to my birthplace Kembach near Werthheim in the lowest (northernmost) part of the Grand Duchy.

Of all this I knew nothing yet when, on the first festival day, the 25th of December, after a well attended divine service in the Lower Country, I set out at noon, covered some 40 hours on the railway, and then by night walked 4 hours into the mountains, to the neighborhood of Ihringen, to seek out the little flock. Three messengers came to meet me with the glad tidings: 'The Lord has prepared a little chamber for us!' In the morning they had not yet been able to find any place for our meeting. Then two heads of families from the neighborhood had come to them, with the words: 'We will go with you!' The dwelling of one of them had just been fitted up for divine service when I arrived in the neighborhood. In the Himmelsburg, situated in the Kaiserstuhl, we celebrated our Christmas services. We were assembled the whole night through from the first to the second festival day; the little room was crowded full; there were 45 communicants alone. It was a blessed assembling; but immediately afterward the enemy got his power. In the freshly fallen snow the tracks of the nocturnal wanderers were discovered; it became known that I was in the neighborhood.—

Before I had departed, word came that a child of 1½ years from the congregation, severely