# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1854 10 10_S29
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

29

The Saxons founded at Altenburg, 30 hours south of St. Louis, a theological institution for the training of preachers of their own; just as a similar one had previously been maintained by Wynecken and his friends at Fort Wayne. The separation of Wynecken*) and his fellow believers from the Ohio Synod became the occasion for their seeking a union with the Saxons on the ground of the unabridged Confessions of our Lutheran Church. The same also came about in the following year. In July of the year 1846 they united on both sides, 22 pastors in all with their congregations, into the "German Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio and Other States." Their first synodical assembly they held at Chicago from the 26th of April to the 7th of May, 1847. With the common constitution a good hymnal (of 437 hymns) and good textbooks for the schools were introduced; the old unadulterated Agenda had already been in use before. "Der Lutheraner," until then the church periodical of the Saxons, was raised to be the general organ of the Synod. The seminary at Fort Wayne for practical churchly training, and the theological institution at Altenburg for the scholarly training of preachers, received an enlargement. For the scattered Germans the Synod appointed a special traveling preacher; and in the year 1849 it also took over from the Evangelical Lutheran Missions-Collegium at Leipzig the direction of the heathen mission among the red Indians.

This Synod has since then found a good name among friend and foe. The accession of pastors there together with their congregations, the immigration of German (especially Hanoverian) candidates, the sending of new pupils from the Nuremberg missionary institution, and the training of preachers of its own gave it such an extension that already in the year 1849 it numbered nearly 100 congregations with 71 pastors; a compass which has grown by the year 1852 to 150 larger and smaller congregations with 80 preachers and 12 teachers.

Of special importance, however, is it that the theological seminary was transferred from Altenburg to St. Louis and considerably enlarged. For the request addressed to Lutheran Germany for candidates of theology found but scanty fulfillment. Mindful therefore of the word of Luther: "As dear as the Gospel is to us, so earnestly let us hold to the languages," the Synod founded in the year 1849 at St. Louis the Concordia-Collegium, which unites in itself a gymnasium (under Rector Gönner) and a theological faculty (with the Professors Walther and Biewend*). The congregation in St. Louis, 1500 souls strong, among whom are about 280 contributing members, has by itself given for this purpose a piece of ground of 2000 dollars in value and besides 2300 dollars in contributions. And yet it has a pastor, two assistant pastors, five schoolteachers, two sextons, etc., to support, without being rich. For the majority live by the labor of their hands; the rich despise the fellowship of a church which offers no other than heavenly goods. In this connection one should consider that in American cities the cost of living and of building comes much dearer than with us. Hence it was possible only through a like willingness to sacrifice on the part of the other congregations to build up the one wing of the Concordia-Collegium at once. Soon, however, the increase of gymnasium pupils and students, who at the same time live in this Collegium, made the further building necessary. And so at the end of the year 1852, in God's name, the building of the central building and of the other wing was begun. For this, however, the Synod has had to borrow 8000 dollars, because it shrank from straining the love of the congregations beyond their means by new collecting.**)

The love of the Lutheran Church of Germany ought in fairness to show itself not only willing but also joyful to help our American fellow believers bear this debt. Above all it became the Saxon fellow believers to be zealous in this service of love. For our brethren after the flesh, the Saxons who emigrated in the year 1839, are the ones who from the beginning, through all difficulties, have persisted in upholding theological learning***), who also now chiefly promote the Concordia-Collegium. Thereby they prove themselves true sons of Luther and of our Lutheran Church.

Now and then one still hears our country named as a nursery of classical as well as churchly learning. But hand on heart: we live on the remnants of the fame of our fathers. So let the helping sympathy in the work of our brethren beyond the sea be at least a sign that we have begun to turn again to the mind of the fathers.

Besides, if we had a tender conscience, yet another spur must drive us. It cannot indeed be denied that chiefly our falling away from the faith formerly drove our brethren from the homeland across the sea. Whom God's grace has meanwhile turned to the faith of our Church, he should rejoice to be able to attest this by love toward the emigrated brethren.

Mecklenburg is not so closely bound to them by ties, but how it has bestirred itself to provoke us! In consequence of a collection about Easter 1852 it has sent them over 2337½ florins.

And indeed the whole Lutheran Church of Germany has to regard the Concordia-Collegium at St. Louis as a precious jewel. The same will, if the Lord gives further blessing, one day become the German Lutheran university of North America. — In the midst of the foreign and motley elements of that continent to preserve Lutheran as well as German character, that is without doubt the calling of the German Lutheran Church there. But how shall it be able to do this without a firm center of its churchly and spiritual life? But if the Concordia-Collegium thrives into a sturdy German Lutheran university and German Lutheran gymnasium, then it possesses therein not only a shining light of the pure testimony of the Gospel of God and a strong bulwark of German language and culture; but it also receives from there constantly fresh forces, which secure its territory at all points, so that it be not swallowed up by foreign character, nor leavened with false-Christian life.

It is still to be noted how St. Louis, by its situation, is favorable to such activity. . .

Or shall our Church let the masses of German emigrants languish unconcerned in spiritual misery? Certainly the less, the more it has made itself guilty toward them in the homeland. — Indeed it is a fact that many wantonly turn their backs on the church of their homeland; but it is equally a fact that by "the dreadful roaring of the waves of the water" on the passage and by the hundredfold distress over there the defiance of many is broken, the levity of many chastened, the dullness of many startled. Should we let those whom the Lord's merciful judgments have called to earnest repentance go without the comfort of His Word and Sacrament? With right it would then be said, as it has been said: "The care for the heathen is a fashionable hypocrisy, when one the fellow believers-

*) Should read: Dr. Sihler's. Note of the Editor of the Lutheraner.

*) They are already contemplating calling a third theological teacher from Germany.

**) The readers know that these statements are not entirely correct. Our Synod, as is known here, has hitherto, in order to avoid debts, built only the second wing. The erection of the central building is to begin only next spring. Note of the Editor of the Lutheraner.

***) "Recognizing the necessity of such a more properly learned institution, the Saxons who emigrated about 13 years ago to the State of Missouri were intent upon founding one at Altenburg, and however small, indeed ridiculous, it may seem to many here in this country, when one hears of a little wretched log hut in which a few preachers and candidates direct the learned education of young men for the Church, yet it is a touching example, well worthy of record in the annals of church history, of the self-sacrificing love and fidelity of these brethren and of the congregations that supported them in their undertaking, when one considers that they, while in oppressive poverty they themselves often suffered the very bitterest want, nevertheless right at the beginning of their settlement in this remote corner of the world, in the midst of the then sparsely inhabited primeval forests of the Mississippi, laid the foundation of a learned institution of education for the Lutheran Church and for the propagation of its most holy faith." Wynecken and Walther in their address to the fellow believers in Germany, see the Kirchl. Mitth. über N. Amerika 1852, 3.