# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1855 04 10_S133
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

133

we add the famous critic Tischendorf, a polytropos theologos (a many-colored divine), and the philosopher Weise, who meddles in theology and represents a certain pantheistic-theological tendency, and Großmann, who is still the old man, then you have a picture, certainly not at all a refreshing one, of our university, this high school of the land. It is better with the gymnasia. In Grimma there is a famous Greek scholar, Wunder, who is at the same time a Christian; beside him Müller works as teacher of religion. In Plauen a believing director, Palm, likewise rules. In Zwickau, Rinck, a sturdy North German nature. The seminaries of the land also are on better paths. Only lately a decidedly believing man, Bräß, a Brunswicker by birth, has come to Freiberg. — In the church government there now sits, besides Meißner, as Kirchenrath, Langbein, formerly preacher in Chemnitz, who represents the so-called Lutheran tendency. An Oberhofprediger, a successor of our Harleß, whose departure is a true calamity for our church, has not yet been willing to be found. One may rejoice that our minister of public worship, in the deliberations of the last extraordinary Landtag, declared himself decidedly for God's Word and the Confessions of our Church. It is only a pity that things do not go forward rightly with the actual confession, since people are afraid where nothing is to be feared. The future, which, after already in the past year want of food and want of earnings, dearth, and all manner of other distresses lay upon us, stands before us in no fair light, will teach. Great blame for the wretched wavering and waiting of our government is borne by the minister von Falkenstein, who lets himself be influenced from many sides and has found no pusto (firm standpoint). My hope with regard to the churchly conditions of our land is very faint . . .

Our theological literature still lies very much in a sorry state. People want to give something new, without knowing the old, far better, and building on it further. Follies long since refuted are held for novelties and offered for sale. Books full of countless heresies appear, which proceed even from notable theologians. Philosophy reigns again, as of old, in the realm of theology. — How desirable it would be if you would put yourselves in connection with the German Lutheran Church, especially with the Prussian Lutherans. Among these is a fair number of excellent people who, even if they are in error on many points, nevertheless mean it honestly and sincerely. As it seems to me, these, by their activity, fidelity, perseverance, and by the gifts of many of their members, have a future among us in Germany, and if once the Lutheran state churches, which may easily happen, collapse together, it cannot fail that many earnest people will gather around this their banner.

How gladly would I once be with you and become acquainted with the life in your congregations. Not seldom the desire awakens in me to follow after you. I often fear for my soul under the churchly conditions here, and am often long in great temptations and doubts. What fetters me to my fatherland, you know. Were it God's plainly shown will to me, I would nevertheless, like Abraham, go out in faith from my fatherland. Perhaps I am not worthy of it. Even so, however, I am at least united with you through the One Faith in the One Church of the LORD, pray and strive with you, until we one day, if God will, come together in the gates of Jerusalem. — —

(Regular contribution of Mr. P. H....)

Affairs of the World.

On the second of March, shortly after 12 o'clock, Emperor Nicholas of Russia died. He was in the 59th year of his life and the 30th of his reign. His son Alexander, the second of this name on the Russian throne, assumed the government on the said day and on the third of March received the homage of the state officials and the great men of the realm, in particular also of his brother Constantine, who was present (the two other brothers, Michael and Nicholas, are with the army in the Crimea). Alexander II has declared that he will continue the work of his father in every way.

Less than the most important of his predecessors, Peter the Great and Catherine II, has the deceased Nicholas found, with his government, favor among the other European peoples. Those sought to instill French culture into the Russian people, and cut off from those who would not let themselves be thus cultivated the long Russian beards, the ears and noses, often also the heads: Peter the Great often with his own high hand. Nicholas sought to bring up his people so that its character and peculiarity should be preserved, the sound part of the Russian character developed, and what was useless and repulsive in it done away. In every respect standing high above his Russians, towering over them all even with his uncommonly handsome, stately figure, so that they had to look up to him outwardly as well, earnest, measured, yes cold to the appearance of insensibility, he yet placed himself toward them as a father, though a strict, often hard father; he called them nothing other than children; he stepped at once, in the first days of his rule, into the midst of them, who, stirred up by his enemies, were about to fall upon him and his house in wild rebellion, punished the ringleaders with his own hand before their eyes and sent the rest home with sharp admonition; he betook himself in times of distress, as for example when the cholera wrought dreadful devastations in St. Petersburg, among the people crowded together in terror and anguish in the street, knelt down with them and prayed. Temperate in all his enjoyments, in this the opposite of his Russians, who are only too much given to drink, industrious and of great firmness of will, he sought to keep constantly in view all parts of his household of state, embracing over 20 million people, and to direct them with his own hand. Unfaithful officials he punished unmercifully, yes cruelly; a favorite he never had, never let himself be ruled by any man. As head of the Greek Catholic Church in Russia he did not favor evangelical endeavors, and in Livonia, especially through his officials, the bishop at their head, let some thousands of Lutherans be enticed into the Greek church, yet more than this we may not reproach him with in this respect, since a multitude of other accusations of the kind have been refuted, and the two million Lutherans and Reformed who live under his rule for the most part only praised the administration of their congregational affairs. If he has expelled English missionaries or English Bible agents from Russia, this has happened because they everywhere spread their English manner of Christian life and with it the political influence of England; the distribution of the Bible among his subjects by the societies in his own country he never forbade, but rather even had New Testaments distributed to his troops under his own eyes. To spare, to bear with, to forgive was not in the character of the deceased, yet enemies as well as friends tell with pleasure of his domestic life, how he ruled with fatherly kindness and faithfulness among his own and took care to preserve the quiet and simplicity of family life even amid the splendor of the imperial court.

Emperor Nicholas desired more than the protection of the Greek Christians in the Turkish lands of Europe and Asia; he desired the overthrow of the Turkish Empire and the restoration of the Christian empire in Constantinople; not without reason he named his second son Constantine. But that he demanded protection for the seven million Greek Christians in Turkey was just as right as it is unjust and shameful of England and France that they are willing to leave those Christians to the magnanimity of the Turkish government, or, as they say, to defend religious liberty in Turkish lands. The Turk treats a Christian as other than a dog only when the bastinado or the cannonade is threatened him, and to speak of a Turkish government at all is wholly wrong: one should say Turkish maltreatment instead. Under the protection of the great powers, which before this war they let the Christians in Turkey enjoy, there was, for example, about the 13th of November 1853, a Turk in Adrianople, who declared Christ to be the true Prophet and Mohammed the false, and in proof of this assertion pointed to the horrible fruits of the Mohammedan religion, was fearfully beaten and, when he said that he was dying for Christ, beheaded.

An English colporteur relates this, and the English consul Blunt in the Turkish province of Thessaly writes to the Turkish government of an excess of maltreatments, injustices, and dreadful atrocities, which were committed by the Turks against the Christian inhabitants and which made him shudder, as often