# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1854 07 29_S185
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Der Lutheraner.

"God's Word and Luther's doctrine pass away now and nevermore."

Published by the German Ev. Luth. Synod of Missouri, Ohio and other States.

Edited by C. F. W. Walther.

Volume 10.  St. Louis, Mo., July 29, 1854.  No. 24 and 25.

Terms: The Lutheraner appears once every two weeks, at the yearly subscription price of One Dollar for out-of-town subscribers, who are to pay the same in advance and bear the postage. — In St. Louis each single number is sold for 5 cents. Only the letters which contain communications for the paper are to be sent to the editor; all others, which contain business matters, orders, cancellations, money, etc., are to be sent hither under the address Mr. F. W. Barthel, care of C. F. W. Walther, St. Louis, Mo.

Answer
to the Admonition addressed to the Synod of Missouri, Ohio and other States by the Leipzig Conference. *)

Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father, in truth and love! Amen.

Reverend, dear Brethren in the Lord!

Your brotherly letter of the 21st of October, 1853, has duly come into our hands, and we have not failed to recognize the sincere good will and hearty sympathy for the welfare of our dear Church in this country which it expresses; it has also been pleasing and precious to us to gather from it that the brethren over there have turned their loving attention to our struggle here with the Buffalo Synod, namely Pastor Grabau, as indeed it accords with the love and mind of Christ, as it is written: "If one member suffer, all the members suffer with it."

Nevertheless we cannot but feel it to be no slight burden that, although the Reverend Conference declares that it does not presume "to make any decision in our controversies in doctrine here," it yet in substance pronounces us in the wrong and gives a corresponding reproof, whereas our whole practice in our conduct toward the Synod of Buffalo stands in the closest connection with our doctrine; and further, it is no less burdensome to us that the Reverend Conference arrived at such a conclusion without having heard our defense; for the presence of Missionary Baierlein, formerly a member of our Synodical Union, was, in the first place, merely accidental, and, secondly, he was here removed, more or less, from an oversight of the connection of this affair, partly through the isolation of his dwelling place, partly through the peculiarity of his particular vocational circumstances; indeed, finally, at the Synod at Milwaukee in the year 1851, through a hasty sympathy with Mr. P. Winkler of Detroit, a member of the Buffalo Synod, he had even allowed himself to be misled into placing our Synod under accusation and charging it with unjust conduct, which, however, he withdrew again after his several points of complaint had been shown him, on the basis of the documents at hand, to be unfounded.

In sum, it will be sufficiently evident to the Reverend Conference from this that we can hardly regard Missionary Baierlein, over against the two delegates of the Synod of Buffalo, as our representative, although it would rightly surprise us if he, as it appears, had been so completely silent and had known nothing to say in our defense, since he expressly declared himself here to several brethren to the effect that he was fully in agreement with us in doctrine and practice.

We could therefore, from the legal standpoint, well content ourselves with rejecting as unfounded your decision that we are in the wrong in substance against the Synod of Buffalo in the points of complaint concerned, and with leaving it to the Conference whether it would desire a more detailed report on our part.

But lest it have the appearance that we were offended in a human way over it, or that we wished to assert the juridical standpoint against the reproving brethren, we will, for the sake of love, but at the same time for the sake of truth and justice, do everything, even unasked, to put the dear brethren in a position, after they have heard both parties, to pronounce a just judgment.

The deputies of the Synod of Buffalo have therefore complained to you that we "receive without further ado the sinners excommunicated by them in the order of Christ, and are willing to go on receiving them until the present doctrinal controversy shall at some time be ended; that we have sent factious preachers into their congregations and parishes, and have set up rival altars there." (Compare the 2nd question of Pastors Grabau and v. Rohr at the Leipzig Conference.) To this

*) This admonition was communicated in No. 10 of this volume of the "Lutheraner." The Ed. of the L.