# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1848 09 12_S5
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

5

and pleasant house of God, but especially also because in it was restored to us what we had lost through a mishap two years before. For the first little church which this congregation, founded in the year 1842, had built, burned down on the 4th of December of the year 1846, after it had enjoyed its possession for only two years.

The prospects for a new church were very gloomy at that time, for the congregation was weak and small; early on, through the withdrawal of the United Evangelicals, it had lost more than half of its members, and at the time of the first church building it consisted of only nine families.

As severe, then, as the trial was when it lost its first church, so great is now its joy that it has recovered what at first seemed so difficult, given the poverty and the small number of its members. Meanwhile God increased them, and so by His help it became possible for them to build the new church house without any outside assistance. It is a handsome frame house, 30 feet long and 18 wide, with a pulpit and altar. The dedication itself was celebrated with three services, twice on the first day and once on the other day, before a numerous assembly. Besides the two dear brethren who took part, namely Pastor P. C. Strasen of Horse Prairie, who preached on Sunday afternoon, and Candidate Rud. Lange, of St. Louis, who preached on Monday, several visitors, friends and fellow believers from elsewhere had come to take part in the celebration. May God let this little church be commended to His gracious protection, and may the honor of His name dwell in it.

G. A. Schieferdecker, P.

An Appeal.

Herewith we communicate the appeal of Dr. Guericke of Halle to the Lutherans in Germany, particularly in Prussia, which was promised in the last number. It reads as follows:

“The injustice against the Lutheran Church, whose right has been trampled underfoot under pious phrases, was a ban upon the conscience of the Prussian state, which could bring forth nothing else than a judgment. The undersigned has declared this for years, privately in the highest quarters and publicly; and the judgment has come. Prussia appears, in the fateful moment of the present, struck far more terribly than any other land. Not as though the Church, which teaches obedience to the authorities, had brought this about; but the revolution in the Church, which made the supreme power of the State, has punished itself through a revolution in the State, which the unchained spirit of the age has made, for every revolution from above has one from below as its consequence. The revolution is now a fact, and it is for us, for us Christians and theologians, to adapt ourselves to the times. The State has in principle ceased to be a confessional, a Christian one. Therefore there can also, in principle, no longer be any talk of a State Church. Even though the temporal interest of the clergy in their majority still drives them now to kick against this goad, a final and perhaps speedy complete and also actual separation of Church and State is the unavoidable and in any case still the most salutary result of this transformation of the State. — The State Church will be the carcass about which the eagles gather. A number of Prussian pastors and congregations have already for years, and especially in the last year, left the State Church, in order to take the meager morsel of a concession which had been granted to the Lutheran Church. For my part, I would rather starve than feed on the crumbs that fall from an unlawful table. The good right of the Lutheran Church in Prussia and in Germany, guaranteed in every conceivable way, was unprescribed; I would rather be buried beneath its ruins than, by giving it up, be partly to blame that the most fully entitled and spiritually freest and mightiest Church should be pressed down and lowered to a sect. But now there can be no more talk of this. The State has stepped onto another basis, which, if unfortunately not putting right in the place of arbitrariness, yet puts freedom in the place of bondage. Let us, fellow believers in Prussia, make use of this freedom before it is too late! Make use of it, naturally not in an unlawful way, but in a thoroughly lawful way. Let us trust our people and its representation to have the justice and fairness, that, if now the desire and aspiration of those must find full satisfaction who unfortunately have gone astray altogether from the Christian faith, and if also those must have full freedom of existence and development who in the hitherto state-church Union or similar ecclesiastical creations of thought, feeling and fancy, although these might easily soon appear as a soap bubble reduced to a dirty drop, also in future wish to find their full satisfaction (they will surely not hereafter want to realize it in lust for dominion), — let us trust our people to have the justice that then also our way, the way of us few, will not be obstructed, who with the strength of the most inward conviction, on the ground of the divine Word, wish to hold fast to the old Church of Luther, to the Church which has a firm foundation in history and among the people, which has been proved in fire and in blood, and whose right the year 1648 in particular once attested so far-shiningly! So let us then, dear Lutheran fellow believers in Prussia, all of us, whatever coloring and names we may have, put away from us everything that amalgamates us, whether with the state-church Union or with sectarian narrowness and pettiness of heart; let us, clergy and congregations, rally around the old venerable German banner of the unaltered Augsburg Confession, and build together upon our most holy faith in all spiritual sobriety and scholarly power; let us, singly and together, bear open and respectful witness of this mind before our high authorities, responsible to the representation of the people; and let us thus arm ourselves in good time against the streams of distress and suffering which a surely coming time of still heavier judgments will let break in upon us! Blessed is he who in such boundless confusion, in such inextricable tangle of misery has then a steadfast heart, and has built his own house and that of his children upon a rock! I have spoken these unpretentious words because for conscience’ sake I could not keep silent. I have waited long, and now especially keep waiting for better and more capable men to take the matter into their hand, and I place myself at its service as one of the least of helpers.

Halle, the 9th of April 1848.

Prof. Dr. Guericke.”

The Weyl’sche Kirchenbote

reports in its last number, under the heading: “Back into the Old Night of Popery,” the news “that the Lutherans in Detroit, Ann Arbor, Monroe and other places have set up a large wooden cross, a crucifix and lights on the altars,” and adds the remark: “We wonder that in this land of America, free of compulsion of conscience, there are still Lutherans who let themselves be led by such popish priests back again into the old night of popery.”

We really do not know whether we should pity the silliness more, or be horrified more at the wickedness which Mr. Weyl has here once again brought to light. What a notion this man must have of popery, since he believes that its essence, that is, the antichristian element, the “mystery of iniquity,” against which Scripture already warns beforehand, lies in the setting up of a wooden cross, a crucifix and a few lights on the altar tables! God, how has it come to this, that a man who is a Lutheran preacher, and indeed an enlightened and liberal one among them, yes, a spokesman in the American Lutheran Church, wants to be, can write such judgments out into the world? Whoever does not recognize from this that a great part of this Church has sunk into the most stupid enthusiasm of fanaticism, must surely be the disciple of such a master as Mr. Weyl is. Yet, if he had only again revealed his ignorance with that unsurpassed audacity which is always so peculiar to thorough ignorance, one could indeed only pity him. But we ask: what a degree of wickedness it takes to brand Evangelical Lutheran preachers, whom Mr. Weyl, at least in part, does not himself know, therefore immediately as “popish priests” before all the world to brand-