# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1855 05 22_S155
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

155

taken." Also I am glad to this day to have been one of the very few who (although they had to let themselves be looked at oddly for it) abstained from voting for and agreeing to the propositions put forward by Grabau at that Leipzig Conference. Whether those of Missouri have spoken rightly and acted rightly in all points I likewise do not know. It is indeed a lamentable thing that the truth and the knowledge of it can be found, won, proved and preserved only through struggle, and that we cannot fight without at the same time erring in many ways."

(From Ehler's Kirchenblatt.)

Church News.

From Nassau

We take the following from the Prussian "Kirchenblatt":

News from Nassau makes a mixed impression, is partly more pleasing, partly of a saddening kind. Most gratifying is the report that our Lutheran brethren there are at present actually tolerated, in that neither Pastor Brunn nor Pastor Hein is in any way hindered from serving the congregations with Word and Sacrament. Pastor Brunn has even married a military person in the garrison there, without anything happening to him on that account. Thus Pastor Hein regularly holds divine service every four weeks in Anspach and visits the members of the congregation there and in the surrounding region, without being disturbed in this activity. Thus the persecution of our brethren has actually ceased, and though the Lutheran Church in Nassau is not yet formally recognized, yet God the LORD is to be praised that the congregations there can henceforth be served undisturbed with Word and Sacrament. Yes, thanks be to the LORD, who hears prayer, that He has helped so far and has inclined the heart of the sovereign to let justice be done to his Lutheran subjects. For, as it seems, the persecution has been checked by the personal will of the Duke himself, and the improvement of conditions has proceeded from him. May the LORD bless this prince and his land for it and strengthen him further to exercise justice toward his Lutheran subjects, who without doubt adhere to him faithfully, and soon to grant and secure to them full ecclesiastical freedom by law. — Saddening is it that Past. Brunn has again been ailing for some time, so that he has been able to be little active in his office. But God is to be thanked for this, that Past. Brunn willingly humbles himself under God's hand. He writes in regard to his illness: "Yet I find full peace in the consciousness for Whom and for what I have spent my strength, and wait confidently for the time when, according to God's counsel, it will again be a matter of walking and not growing weary." — Saddening also is it that an appointment of Past. Hein as pastor of a particular congregation still has not been able to be carried out. The chief reason for it is the lack of means of the congregation in Usingen and vicinity, where Past. Hein otherwise would be appointed pastor and would be able to take up his residence there (in Anspach). (At present he lives with his family still in Steden, together with Past. Brunn in the parsonage there, where however the room does not suffice, so that Past. Hein sees himself compelled to let his family move in with his parents-in-law for the winter months). —

From the Palatinate.

The "Pilger aus Sachsen" reports the following in its issue of January 13 of this year:

In the Bavarian Palatinate the president of the Evangelical Consistory, Dr. Ebrard, is raging against the Lutheran Church. In the year of the revolution the Palatinate church government had contrived to free itself from the Supreme Consistory at Munich and to procure for itself an independent position as a separate Consistory, which stands directly under the Ministry of Worship in Munich. Whenever complaints about Ebrard's high-handedness now go thither, he has up to now always been given the wrong. That does not hinder him, however, from always devising something new in order to suppress and root out the Lutheran Confession. Thus he has issued a new official instruction for the Palatinate clergy, according to which he binds them to the "altered Augsburg Confession," but at the same time has them swear to refrain in their teaching activity from the points of difference removed by § 4 of the Union document. This new instruction has not, however, been published to the clergy in general; it comes into use for the present only with the clergy to be newly appointed, and was applied for the first time to the newly named pastor K. Redel at Reichenbach. Only on the evening before the day of installation did he get to see the new instruction; at once it was clear to him that he could not swear to it without reservation; reservation, however, was not allowed, and the installation was postponed, to no small scandal in the congregation and the region. Pastor Redel fell ill and, the only son of a very poor widow, died after severe sufferings, but comforted in heart and joyful in faith. — It is believed that this new instruction also lacks the recognition of the royal government. The Lutheran doctrine of the Lord's Supper as well as the Calvinistic Dr. Ebrard has forbidden, and permitted only the Reformed! — Preserve us, Lord, by Thy Word, and restrain —.

Hasert.

We read the following in the Prussian "Kirchenblatt" of the 1st and 15th of January of this year:

1. News from the Parish of Löwenberg-Bunzlau. Unfortunately the former Pastor Hasert, who two and a quarter years ago saddened us by his apostasy to the Roman Church, has, through a writing which appeared recently in Bunzlau under the title: "Whether I Was Possessed by the Devil When I Became Catholic?", and which was at once — not to our joy, for we wish for our opponents in the church conflict, as for ourselves, the free, unhindered expression of their faith — seized by the authorities, shown how little hope there is that he will come back from his error and rise from his fall. Yet it will gladden all faithful members of our Church to learn that, apart from his minor children, no soul in the congregation has followed the former shepherd; also the wife of the fallen brother stands faithful and firm in the faith of her fathers, especially also, as she herself is convinced, supported and borne by the intercession of many believers. She is more inwardly convinced than ever before that the Roman Church is a false one, but the Evangelical Lutheran the true Church of the Lord.

2. On the 2nd of January of this year the public trial took place before the royal District Court at Bunzlau concerning the writing, mentioned in No. 1, p. 10, of the former Pastor Hasert, whose title (thus somewhat different from what was given loc. cit.) reads: "Was I Blinded by Satan When I Became Catholic?" An ear-witness reports on this trial as follows: "The trial lasted fully four hours and was interesting. The book has very strong passages against Protestantism and against the state which has come into being through the Reformation. The red thread which runs through the whole writing is, as it seemed to me, this: through the Reformation the way has been prepared for the anti-Christianity which in our time manifests itself in rationalism, atheism, democracy, socialism, and so forth. Protestantism forms the transition to it from Catholicism. — Hasert defended himself, or rather his book, with the assistance of an advocate. His chief grounds of defense were: the position of the Catholic Church and of the Protestant to one another is once for all so hostile that they cannot speak otherwise than thus against each other, and he had not spoken in a manner exciting hatred; he had been attacked and had had to defend himself, and Huschke, who had expressed himself against the Catholic Church not so fully but similar in tendency as he had against Protestantism, had been freely acquitted; finally, he had not meant the Prussian state, but the state in abstracto (in general). His defender merely invoked the right of freedom of the press, and admonished the court not to make itself a court of faith. After the plea of the public prosecutor, which was very Protestant, Hasert took the word once more: he had by Protestantism by no means meant and designated the Evangelical Church, but the old-Protestant, old-orthodox, which is still to be found among the Old Lutherans. That, however, did him no good. I could not indeed wait for the pronouncement of the verdict, but N. N. stayed there and told me that not indeed the whole book, but eight passages were condemned to destruction, — probably on account of the vilification of the Evangelical Church and of the state and the excitement of hatred against fellow-citizens. That was at least the charge. It is almost comical, however, that among the condemned passages there is also one on which the charge of contempt for the Catholic Church and excitement of hatred against Catholics is based. It is a passage in a letter (probably