# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1853 09 23_S22
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

22

Episcopal constitution, we unanimously sought, in the conviction that so important and far-reaching a change, and one not absolutely necessary, in the Church constitution, amid a strife that follows and is therefore by no means decided, would be premature and dangerous, to preserve what exists. Our constitution, a permanently elected High Church Board with spiritual and secular councillors and superintendents, will be known to you.—By laying too great weight on the question of the Office, by emphasizing the doctrine of the Sacraments, some of our brethren in the ministry have fallen into temptations toward Romanism, like the late Church Councillor Wedemann in Breslau...... A Pastor Hafert in Bunzlau fell away to the Roman Church during the synod, without this or any similar steps having followed in his congregation. The strife over the question of the Office is growing calmer and beginning to clear. That Höfling, as Upper Consistorial Councillor in Munich, died suddenly of heart failure, will doubtless be known to you. Walther's book on Church and Office I too have read, though hastily. I do not venture to give a judgment on the result, because I have not read it carefully enough; in the main I can well agree.

With our congregations things no longer want to go forward. The Union Church makes every possible concession in order to keep the clergymen and congregations inclining toward the Lutheran Church; hence the conversion last year of Pastor Haver in Rade vorm Wald, who, as is known, was treacherously shot last autumn, was the last. Yet the growth of zeal for the Lutheran confession among the clergy is a very gratifying sign of the victory of Lutheran truth. In regions where Lutheran congregations exist, they seek to appoint only such clergymen as incline toward the Lutheran confession, also to reintroduce the old Lutheran liturgy in divine service, and the name "Evangelical-Lutheran" is given back to the congregations and clergymen who desire it, without the Union being abolished or any other essential change introduced.

Union government and Union church fellowship remain as before. My Union colleagues of Lutheran coloring are increasing, and in our whole district and in the neighborhood the old Lutheran Agende has been reintroduced. With some I am on friendly terms and try to speak with them about their false position. The conversions in our congregation and in Silesia generally are only single souls. It is possible that perhaps later, when Union Lutheranism no longer satisfies, more may come to the knowledge of the pure Church. Yet the sole cause of the stagnation is not the conduct of the Union Church toward the Lutheran stirrings within itself, but chiefly the decline of spiritual life in the congregations, the decay of brotherly love, the striving after earthly things, the worldliness, which have set in since the cessation of the persecutions, by which the Church was greatly purified, and which, having become loud in general complaints at the last synod, have occasioned a penitential letter to all the congregations. A general repentance, however, has followed this letter as little as the penitential letters urgently issued by all the clergy; the condition of the Church in this land offers only sad prospects for the future; I can expect nothing else than severe judgments of God, which in the end will terminate in the complete downfall of the true Church in this land. The youthful dreams, cherished everywhere at the awakening of church feeling, of a beginning new age of bloom for the Lutheran Church seem gradually to vanish; she will have to go on her way in the form of a servant. The State Churches, the Bavarian also, are in a hopeless condition, and the corruption of the whole Church, the great masses of unbelievers and enemies who stand within the Church, will frustrate all attempts at improvement, even if Harleß and many faithful clergymen and laymen exert all diligence.

I believe that surely the State Churches also must go to ruin, and that the Church everywhere will assume the garb which she has with us. Meanwhile the Roman Church is making herself ever broader; she employs every means to reconquer Prussia for the Papacy. Jesuit missions are continually being held everywhere. She makes many proselytes especially in Breslau, though not precisely among the most believing. Great cunning and alluring subsidies are the nets of the papal draught of fishes. Worldly-minded people and unpractical educated persons, living in ideas and inexperienced in faith, are their prey. The Roman Church has also, in the past year, wrested from the Lutheran congregation in Breslau a few members, though of little importance.... Our Church is indeed recognized, yet still under much oppression. The fixed tithe must everywhere still be paid to Union clergymen, and in many places other dues also, where even Romans are obliged to them, and it often costs lawsuits to get free of burdens that have been laid upon the Lutherans without right. Union clergymen are commissioned with the inspection of our schools, and when our schools are attended by children from elsewhere, these too are obliged to pay the fixed school fee to their local school.—If with us the distresses are so great, and I have not yet described them from all sides, we should gladly look with confidence toward America. But all news from America shows that things stand no better there than here, and I suppose that brotherly love in your congregations is still much less, and the striving after earthly things still much greater, than with us. For when I must hear that people from there, even from the Lutheran congregation, dissatisfied with the livelihood offered them, are migrating to the gold mines of California and Brazil, that is indeed a striving after perishable riches still incomprehensible to us Germans. †

†) O that we here in America might be heartily alarmed at the evil name which we have [illegible] in Germany, and repent! D. R.

---- And so I commend myself to your further love, greet your congregation in spirit and all the dear brethren in the ministry in Wisconsin, and remain, through the bond of One faith and in common service to One Church, with the prayer that the LORD may bless you and all the brethren across the Ocean, Yours, etc.

The Pious Woman and the Good Cup.

The late Pastor Schöner in Nürnberg was once called to a woman of his acquaintance who was near death without feeling it. The woman had belonged in her life to the self-righteous, had indeed diligently attended church and the Lord's Supper, and with this had done, in her opinion, everything that was needful for being saved. For that reason she had never liked to hear the sermons of Pastor Schöner, for he, she said, really preached only for sinners, not for pious people, and she knew also of many who went to his preaching that they, at least formerly, had not been exactly strict about virtue. She always thought that whoever could let himself be called a sinner in every sermon and be admonished to repentance must also have committed great sins.

When Schöner now came to the sick woman, she addressed him at once: "Above all things, Herr Pfarrer, I must beg you not to look upon me as a sinner, and not to speak to me much of sin and repentance. For I did not send for you for that reason. I have committed no sin in my life, I was brought up in the fear of God, have almost never missed a church service, and am also always charitable to the poor. Rather tell me something comforting in my sickness."—"Happy woman," said Schöner, "who has never committed a sin! Until now I knew only One who knew nothing of sin, and that was our Savior, Jesus Christ. I must also confess before God that I am a poor sinner, that I know nothing good to boast of in myself." The woman was somewhat startled at this speech, but turned the conversation to something else.

Meanwhile she ordered her little foster-daughter to bring a cloth and spread it on the table at which the Herr Pfarrer was to drink coffee. But the child, out of forwardness, wanted also to reach the cup down from the little cupboard and let it fall, so that it broke. At this the sick woman grew so angry that her face was distorted and that she broke out into very unseemly abuse against the child. "Everything," she said at last, "she does clumsily and does one damage after another." The child, unwilling to be so humbled in the presence of the Herr Pfarrer, said that it was not so, that she otherwise did everything skillfully and had never yet done any damage. "Behold the liar," said the woman, "who even wants to whitewash herself. Had you not lied, it would have been forgiven you, but as it is, go out at once, get out of my sight. The Herr Pfarrer will excuse my being so angry. It was the good cup. Could not the wicked child have asked someone to reach it down for her! But forwardness always thinks it alone is good."

"Dear woman," said the pastor, "should that, too, be right before God's eyes and no sin, that you are so angry