# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1854 11 21_S55
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

55

Finally we call upon the God of peace, that He would bless and govern the brethren of both synods in America by His Spirit, the Spirit of truth, of humility and meekness, and make them perfect in every good work to do His will, that the wicked enemy, who is busy laying waste the Church, may everywhere be checked, and the name of our God be glorified in His congregation! Amen.

Breslau, the 9th of March 1854.

The Supreme Church Council of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Prussia.

E. Huschke.

From Electoral Hesse.

In a recent circular of the Superintendent at Kassel, Dr. Vilmar, we read the following:

"When complaints loud and just are raised over the disappearance of Christian household order, over the visible decline of Christian discipline and training of the children of the house, over increasing impiety and wickedness among not insignificant strata of the growing youth, even in the country, among the comparatively well-to-do peasantry, over a troubling and in part appalling ignorance of the so-called educated classes in the first elements of Christian and churchly doctrine, and thus over the threatening irruption of an antichristian wildness, we, the shepherds of this flock gone astray, may well consider that the guilt of these shattered conditions, prophesying a future of terror, lies, not to say wholly, yet for the greater, yes for the greatest part, upon us. Not only that the preaching of the Law and Gospel has been much neglected, and a worldly moral teaching, clothed in worldly rhetoric, put in their place: the discipline of the congregations and of their individual members has been given up, the orders, the institutions of the Church have been abandoned.

To these institutions belongs the admonition, instruction and examination of betrothed couples, and it takes among these orders almost the first rank. A Christian household is impossible unless at least the foundations of church life, above all the contents of the Catechism, are so present to the father and mother of the house from the first, and so ready to hand for immediate application, that they can bring up children and household members upon them and at any time refer them to them. On our side an understanding is impossible with those strata of our people which are falling prey to a Christianity of feelings and phrases, and so to an inner desolation growing at an appalling rate, especially the higher ones, unless there can be a going back with confidence to unchangeably fixed elements of Christian knowledge and exercises of church life belonging in wholly equal manner to the whole of the people. In particular it must be pointed out that a fruitful household devotion, serving not only the present generation for spiritual refreshment but also propagating itself with certainty to coming generations, is possible not upon the ground of arbitrarily chosen prayers and other forms of edification, but in every station, be it what it may, and on every level of worldly education and Christian knowledge, solely and alone upon the ground of the Lord's Prayer, the Articles of the Christian faith and the Ten Commandments. The reintroduction of the aforesaid instruction and examination of betrothed couples, according to the prescription of the Church Order of the 13th of July 1657, Chap. 12. 1, is therefore hereby ordered, and the strictest observance of this prescription is laid most earnestly and urgently upon the hearts of our brethren in office. To this end, in those parishes in which the said order has not at all, or not according to the direction of the Church Order, been reintroduced, the reintroduction of it is to be announced from the pulpit, and the content of the instruction and examination to be undergone by the betrothed is to be set forth and explained; also it will be very expedient, if the order, the discipline and the blessing of a household and family life founded upon the knowledge and skills required in the church law be made the subject of one or several sermons. The brethren in office will above all endeavor, in the reintroduction of this indispensable church institution, to show the greatest firmness and an unyielding spirit not to be broken against the resisting and opposing demands of the unbelieving and unchurchly world, and make it their special concern to allow no exceptions in the fulfilling of this duty, as against the so-called educated and higher classes who in their own opinion have outgrown the Church and her order. The leniency formerly allowed toward these classes rests on presuppositions which are not only no longer present, but have turned directly into the opposite, and will no longer take place in future. At the same time, however, it is recalled that the fulfilling of this duty is done for the sake of the salvation of the souls entrusted to the shepherds, and is not a work of external commanding and ordering, but of the love of the Lord Jesus Christ toward those for whom He gave His life upon the cross. It is therefore a task of pastoral wisdom that, alongside that unshakable firmness, there be shown also the ability to win the insight and good will of the members of the congregation for this order by an earnest, faithful testimony of Jesus Christ, the Head of the congregation, and in this respect neither admonition nor entreaty and hearty pleading must be spared. Above all the prejudice against the Catechism, existing in modern times as once before the times of the Reformation, as if it were only a school book and children's book, and indeed only for the "uneducated," must be met by this: that, attaching oneself to Luther's words in the Preface to the Large Catechism, one set forth most circumstantially and impressively the indispensableness of just these simplest foundations for every stage of Christian knowledge and experience. It is here indeed a matter of renewing the traditions of the school in all directness and literalness, of preserving them from being forgotten, and of carrying them over into the application of real life. Never, however, is one to content oneself with the assurance, "one knows the Catechism," but its recitation is to be required in a fitting manner, and this then to be used for a pastoral conversation going into the depths of the heart, as the Church Order prescribes. May the Lord Jesus Christ enlighten us, that we may wisely govern His congregation, and strengthen our hearts by His power, which has overcome sin, death and hell, that we may not only ourselves persevere in a good confession and faithful testimony, but also so plant and ground the same in our congregations, that the Christian people of the coming centuries also may persevere in the same unto their salvation." —

(Braunschw. Kirchenblatt.)

Notices of Death.

We have just learned that Mr. Georg Gottlob Heid, late schoolteacher of the Ev. Luth. congregation at Columbia in Illinois, after a ten days' illness in consequence of an inflammation of the windpipe, on the 31st of October, in the faith and confession of his LORD and Saviour JESUS Christ, gently and blessedly fell asleep. The departed was born on the 13th of July 1815 at Haiterbach in the Kingdom of Würtemberg. For a number of years a faithful member of the Lutheran congregation here, he took over in the autumn of the year 1849 the office of teacher in the congregational school of the said city. It is true that he had not specially prepared himself for this office; yet by faithful use of the instruction received in his youth and by continued private diligence he had acquired such fine knowledge and skills, in particular an extraordinary knowledge of the history and doctrine of salvation, that with his excellent natural gifts and exemplary faithfulness he administered the office entrusted to him with as much capability as under visible divine blessing, while by his upright walk in love and humility, as well as by imparting from the treasure of his Christian experience, he was at once a teacher and example to the