# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1853 11 23_S54
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

54

sten, built at Harburg on the Elbe and named "Kandace"; the price, 14,000 Rth., is paid; a Hamburg merchant has loaded it with goods for the Cape of Good Hope and pays the costs of the voyage by way of freight. The ship has been consecrated by a fine sermon of Pastor Harms, and the missionaries have been examined by the Lutheran Consistory at Stade and found competent.—Hear, ye Lutherans, doth not the Lord our God preach also to you out of this story: I will provoke you to jealousy? Hear also, in particular, ye younger confessors, in the Lüneburg Heath 50 young people have just offered themselves for the mission service; could not 50 of you also be in our seminaries at Fort Wayne and St. Louis?

How gladly would I tell still more such stories; but the other news that I have is of a sad nature and ought to move us to prayer.

From the 13th to the 16th of September a Kirchentag was again held in Berlin, that is, a free assembly of Christians from all parts of Germany, at which they wished to deliberate upon the welfare of the Church. These people, at whose head stand, for example, Nitzsch, Krummacher and Julius Müller, have hitherto declared: All is ours, Lutheran and Reformed confession, and have thus helped to increase the confusion in doctrine and faith. That, however, aroused dissatisfaction and discomfort among themselves and their friends. So this time they have acknowledged as the confession of the Evangelical (that is, the mixed Lutheran and Reformed) Church the unaltered Augsburg Confession, only that with respect to the 10th Article (on the holy Supper) everyone should believe and hold as he must. As if the 10th Article did not contain the chief alteration of the altered Augsburg Confession, and as if the alteration of the 10th Article did not consist in this, that permission is thereby given to the people to confess whatever pleases them. The people of the Kirchentag therefore confess the unaltered Augsburg Confession, in so far as it is altered, that is, "professing themselves to be wise, they became fools." A superintendent declared at the Kirchentag that he was a friend of all sects.

Mr. P. Grabau was expected on the 7th of October at Waren in northern Mecklenburg, where he intended to deliver a lecture on his controversy with us.

In Germany the free congregations and revolutionary preachers will make no more headway anywhere. Wislicenus, a chief leader of the free congregations in Prussian Saxony, and Dülon, one of the worst revolutionary preachers, who had caused a dreadful scandal in Bremen and was deposed there, are on the way to the United States. Help, God, how are we poor Germans here in this country visited with the sweepings of Germany. Pray diligently that the kingdom of God may come among us!

Would you also hear something of world affairs? Of how, far away in Turkey, the peoples fall upon one another? Well, they are perhaps not yet fighting, yet the Turkish Sultan has actually declared war against the Emperor of Russia. The old Prince Paskievich at the head of the Russian troops in Moldavia and Wallachia, and Omar Pasha, the leader of the Turks, stand facing one another on the Danube, and the Russian and Turkish fleets in the Black Sea are not far from one another. The French and English fleets also are moving toward Constantinople, several ships of the latter having already earlier laid themselves before the city, in order to protect the Sultan against his own subjects, who demanded war. The poor Christians in the Turkish provinces, who are not protected by their bishops, are so exposed to the ill-treatment of the Turks that in Macedonia within 6 months 942 Christians were murdered, partly by treachery, partly in fight with the Turks. Should the war actually break out, which is still to be doubted, it will probably remain confined to the Turkish frontiers, since Austria, as little as Prussia, wishes to have anything to do with it.

In China the rebels who hold Nanking are making progress northward and southward, toward the capital Peking, and toward the chief commercial city Canton. There is not much to tell of it now.

In Germany and several other countries of Europe hard times are already come and are coming. Almost everywhere there has hardly been a middling harvest. The past winter was strange. In December and January so warm that violets and cherries blossomed in many places, it brought from February far into April such masses of snow as have not been experienced for a long time. In April it was as cold as in March, and in May as raw as in April. Besides great wetness, this summer has brought destructive hailstorms and floods, which have often destroyed the harvest for miles around, for example in Württemberg, in the region of the Harz, and in Saxony, where a thunderstorm laid waste a stretch of 40 to 50 (English) miles. Yet the Christians in Germany praise the grace of God, which has still preserved them from heavier plagues of the land, namely from the scourge of war.

(Sent in.)

Declaration.

In the Kirchliches Informatorium, Jahrg. 3, No. 6, Professor Winkler makes much ado over the fact that two years ago we laid before the President of our Synod some misgivings which our Brother Baierlein entertained concerning the much-discussed affair of the Detroit congregation. But apart from the fact that the man misuses this to distort the true state of the case: for by no means did we judge so hastily as it appears from the Informatorium, but only proposed a closer investigation; yet from all that has happened it appears only that even the best will to take up the cause of Prof. Winkler could not clear him of the reproach of having himself occasioned all that which he lays to the charge of his supposed adversaries. In order, then, that Professor Winkler may no longer boast too much of the well-meant but, as we now recognize, most unwise attempt which we made in the year 1851 to refute slanderous attacks upon our Synod even in the eyes of its enemies, we declare on this occasion that our Brother Baierlein was moved solely by letters of Prof. Winkler to raise the misgivings mentioned. We then did nothing further than to support, by a short petition to our President, the request of our Brother that it be ascertained by exact inquiry whether what Prof. Winkler lays to the charge of the congregation of Pastor Schaller had perhaps been overlooked in the first investigation, or whether this congregation was merely slandered. In this we let ourselves be guided by the point of view of doing every justice to the opponent, and were thereby unjust toward our own brethren. We have thereby, as we now learn, done harm only to an enemy and grieved brethren. We are sorry for both. Although we are conscious of having acted at that time in all simplicity, yet we should have done better to heed not only the latter but also the first half of the saying: "Be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves." Matth. 10, 16.

The Preachers' Conference in Saginaw Co., Michigan;
Frankenmuth, the 3d of Nov. 1853.

K. Röbbelen.
F. Sievers.
J. J. F. Auch.
D. Clöter.
H. Pinkepank.

(For the Lutheraner.)

(Continuation)

3.

From the Present Day.

A younger pastor once visited an older pastor. Since the former made great and big pretensions that he was quite decidedly Lutheran, the older pastor asked him what, in his opinion, one receives in the holy Supper. After some hesitation and shifting this way and that, the good man answered: "Well, there we receive the spiritual body of Christ." Thereupon the older pastor handed him the Bible and told him to look up in it the passages that treat of this. That, of course, he could not do, and then he turned the conversation to the