# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1855 01 02_S78
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

78

and the Rev. J. R. Moser be appointed our delegate to the western division of said Synod at its next meeting.

The foregoing resolutions will convince the dear readers, and respectively the members of our Synod, that my mission to the Tennessee Synod was not without happy result. Personal acquaintance with one from our midst has contributed essentially to establishing a brotherly confidence among the members of this Synod and to removing any prejudices against us. The Tennessee Synod, though of German origin, has nevertheless in the course of time lost its German element and become purely English. The dominion of the English language, as well as its remote situation, has hitherto kept this Synod rather far from the German Lutherans. All the more does the opening of brotherly intercourse with it appear, on our side, of no small importance both for it and for us. A detailed relation of our mutual conversations, which for the greater part were not public, would not be in place. Let it suffice here to assure you that among the pastors present I perceived a faithful attachment to our common Mother Church, and also encountered no essential difference of doctrine. It was exceedingly gratifying to me to see how these men, amid the great poverty of English Lutheran literature, have preserved so vividly the consciousness of Lutheran orthodoxy and decision. Their synodical constitution, which was drawn up in 1828, has indeed adopted only the unaltered Augsburg Confession and the Small Catechism as its actual confession of faith; but I have been assured from credible lips that the pastors of the Synod are, each for his own person, all devoted to the whole Concordia. The Synod this time was not very numerously represented; it therefore seemed the more advisable to confine ourselves to the resolutions adopted. I reserve for a future time the introducing to the readers of the Lutheraner, in a special article, of the Tennessee Synod, which in a high degree deserves our earnest sympathy, with its historical origin, its constitution and other peculiarities.

Th. J. Brohm.

Something about the Turk.

Lord, thou Holy and True, how long dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth. (Rev. 6:10.)

The French and English with the Turk have won victories over the Russian army. In Paris they rang all the bells and fell on one another's necks in bacchanalian frenzy of joy when the false report arrived that Sebastopol also, the Russian fortress, had been taken. And the great majority of the newspapers exult over the loss which the army of the Emperor of Russia has suffered. And the evangelical bishop in Jerusalem prays for his "well-disposed Sultan" and his allies and against Russia. And the confusion is general in the heads and in the hearts of Christendom, so that one hardly knows any more what is right or what is wrong. Thanks, a thousand thanks be to the Preuß. Volksblatt für Stadt und Land, from whose 76th number the following facts are borrowed, that it repeatedly recalls what seems forgotten and shows with whom we have to deal, so that the eyes of everyone must be opened and overflow. Incomprehensible is the favor in which the Turks stand with nearly all the people of Christendom. Have they then forgotten, already forgotten what went through all the newspapers 10 years ago? For that men have forgotten what happened 34 years ago would perhaps be rather more excusable! that they have forgotten the Greek struggle of despair and the hair-raising, more than bestial atrocities which the Turks committed in it; how on the first holy Easter Day of 1820 the signal for the general massacre of Christians was given in Constantinople, and straightway the doors of the chief church were broken in with axes, those assembled for divine service were strangled, the venerable seventy-year-old Patriarch with three archbishops hanged at the church door, the children cut to pieces, spitted on stakes, bound together and thrown into the sea,—within four days more than 30,000 Christians murdered in the capital, and from here the insane fury of extermination spread over all the provinces, in city after city, in province after province the same tigerish, hellish horrors, on the island of Cyprus alone 10,000 innocent and defenseless Christians slaughtered, in Moldavia and Wallachia impaled, the children dashed to pieces against stones or hung up by the legs along the highway; in Chios cities, villages, olive groves burned down, 41,000 Christians slaughtered, 30,000 women and children carried off into slavery; the Janissaries (Turkish soldiers brought up from stolen Christian children) denounced to the Turkish people as secret Christians, some 8,000 burned alive in their barracks, 18,000 executed and thrown into the sea — — that men have forgotten all this, because it is already 34 years ago, that might perhaps still be forgiven our generation. But that they also no longer know what happened 10 years ago and less from the Turks — that is not to be excused. Do they then no longer know at all that 10 years ago in Darmstadt a "Relief Society for the Support of the Christians in the Orient" was formed, which issued an appeal with these words: "A cry of horror and of despair from the unhappy Christians in the Orient resounds to our ears and hearts. — Dreadful and heartrending are the reports of the persecutions and excesses which the Mohammedan population and soldiery have committed against the Christians in Adrianople, Latakia, Jerusalem, Aleppo, Diarbekir and in other places; shuddering are the nameless horrors of murder, of fire, of the violation of women and girls, which these inhuman beings perpetrate against our Christian brethren, whose only guilt is the holy Christian name which they bear in common with us. Wholly without protection and help are they, owing to the impotence of the Turkish government, given up to their cruel tormentors, and can (an entire Christian village in Albania is said actually to have purchased its deliverance in this way) defend themselves against such atrocities only by renouncing their Christian name, only by apostasy from Christianity."

A general persecution of Christians with all its accustomed atrocities had broken out.— Official reports of the Christian bishops from the most various provinces, Macedonia, Albania, Bosnia, Bulgaria, in Europe and Asia, announced how the Christian children were impaled by the Turks, the parents bound to trees and slowly roasted, the boys dishonored, and murder, fire, plunder and unspeakable satanic atrocities were committed by the Christian-flayers — for months! And no check came from the Turkish authorities. Only when the Sultan feared that the bands of murderers, which had now organized themselves for the persecution of Christians, might get a desire to rise against his own rule, did he command a halt. That is the "well-disposed Sultan" of that evangelical bishop!

These outrageous persecutions of Christians — so wrote a respected author at that time — give us once more a proof of Turkish culture and gratitude . . It is not the Turkish rabble, but the Turkish national spirit that commits these outrages; this spirit has not only remained always the same, it has become worse. Originally it was barbarously cruel, but withal heroic; now it is treacherously cruel. Because Turkish diplomats figure at the Christian courts, because Turkish officers have gone to school in Europe, many good-natured people believed that Turkey had been won for humanity, that its hatred of Christians had vanished. Now the most terrible, bloodiest proof to the contrary has been furnished. And what the Turks now commit against their Christian subjects, that they would much rather and more cruelly commit against us all. Had they the power, they would deal worse with us than at the time of their invasion of Europe . . . It takes truly a very small degree of knowledge of history and of men to perceive that the Turkish statesmen, as often as they must say a subservient flattery to the Christian powers, murmur ten curses upon the Christian dogs besides. . .

Have they then already forgotten that at that time in Constantinople itself the "Frank quarter" (the part of the city which the Christians inhabit) was set on fire by the Turks and about 300 houses burned, that under the eyes of the Sultan a general hunt of Christians was organized, — to be sure they had to release the prisoners again. Have they forgotten how in 1845 more than 80 Christian villages and towns on Lebanon were laid in ashes by the raging Druses; how the monastery at Abey was