# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1849 12 27_S68
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

68

what His poor children on earth need. The remaining little flocks gathered themselves into Lutheran congregations, the congregations into a Lutheran Church. But heavy was the trial of faith which those who had remained faithful had to endure, and great and crushing the burden which was thereby laid on their shoulders. They had to raise their church needs out of their own means. Besides this they were to help maintain, as before, the Union church and its institutions and servants. And because they refused this, in order not to deny, indirectly, their Church and its rights, there followed executions and distraints, which have made many families poor and driven thousands over the ocean to America and Australia. The small Lutziner congregation, for example, had to pay 2000 Thaler in distrained fines, which were used for the building of a road. There are colonists in the congregation of Hakenwalde (in Pomerania) who through those years of persecution were put in debt to the amount of 1000 Thaler, from whom all cattle, all sheep, even the seed-corn was distrained, so that they with their families, who had formerly been in comfortable circumstances, had at last to be positively supported by the love of their fellow-believers. Add to this that our pastors were persecuted and often kept imprisoned for years; that, when they were free, the long journeys which they had to make in order to visit and strengthen the Lutherans living scattered through the whole country caused great expense; that we were regarded by everyone, even by well-disposed persons, as obstinate disturbers of the peace and restless heads, and our writings, in which we wished to defend ourselves, were forbidden, so that we either remained wholly unknown to our fellow-believers abroad, or were painted by the brush of our enemies as a new sect and faction of Lutheran Separatists; that finally, although the number of those returning from the Union into the Church of the fathers grew from year to year, our joy was thereby indeed increased, but always at the same time our distress also, since all who returned, clergy as well as laity, had to abandon and sacrifice the church and parsonage properties seized by the Union church, and their dispersion and isolation could only increase the claims which were made upon us to provide them also with churchly care and the services of worship. Take all this together, and you have the whole fiery furnace of affliction into which God cast us for our sins, but into which He cast us only, as we firmly trust, to make us chosen in the same.

It is true that since the accession of our dear King much in our situation has been changed and improved. We now have again free exercise of religion and can build up our congregations and our Church in quiet and peace. Our number has by God's mercy risen to 27,000, and the inner history of our Church reminds (we may confess it in all humility, since nothing of it is our work, but all is God's!) of the most flourishing times of the Christian Church. Also, we are at least free from the personal parochial burdens to the pastors of the Evangelical State Church. But because nevertheless all the land-dues to them continue to be borne by us as before, and we thus, besides our own, must always also help to maintain the Union church, because we must build and endow churches and schools, because our parishes are exceedingly large in area and for the most part exceedingly small in number of souls, because for the most part only the poor belong to us, because many of our congregations are still burdened with heavy debts from former times: therefore we almost break down under this load. Our hearts often grow faint, our knees stumble and our feet will no longer run. We often lack the barest necessities, to say nothing of our having been able to lay hand to that which becomes ever more necessary to us, the founding of teachers' or preachers' seminaries. In many a region of our fatherland the fields are white for harvest, but there is a lack of new laborers, yea often of bread for those already at hand.

(Conclusion to follow.)

(Communicated.)

Continuation of the Extract from the Minutes of the Quarterly Conference held on the 26th and 27th of September at Fort Wayne, of the Conference District of Fort Wayne.

2. The Chairman communicated to the Conference a letter which, addressed to him, had lately reached him, directed by the Conference of the Lutheran Mission and Church "in the Tamil Country" (East India) to the "Lutheran Brethren in North America." In this letter is reported the origin of the Lutheran congregations in and about Tranquebar and Madras, their growth and flourishing amid manifold conflicts and sufferings, thereafter their decline and languishing, and their latest condition, which is said to be one very promising for a sound churchly development. The sister church there desires, finally, that the one here may let them have also a greeting, address and report in a letter, in order that thereby also, visibly and for mutual strengthening of faith, the unity in the Spirit between the two may be testified and confirmed.

The Conference resolved that this letter be published in the Lutheraner, and at the same time that the St. Louis Conference be requested to answer it,*) and expressed its hearty joy over the following points:

*) This has already been done. Ed.

1. That the LORD in the various regions of the earth and among many kinds of peoples, languages and tongues make the Lutheran Church alive again, and at the same time send her forth, as for example to Australia, as a mission congregation;

2. that in so many places and corners the need of living association and of churchly fellowship is stirring in her;

3. that it appears as if under the gracious guidance and blessing of the faithful God a time is in prospect in which the orthodox Church, at present called Lutheran, shall shine bright again in all lands, in the adornment of the pure Word and Sacrament, gather to herself and unite in herself the more earnest souls seeking truth out of various parties of faith into true Union, and combine pure love, as well in testifying and defending the divine truth as in the doing of works well-pleasing to God, with pure doctrine. —

3. How is one to proceed where people, in spite of all "patience and doctrine" applied, have nevertheless separated from an orthodox congregation, because they will not have an article of the congregational constitution which is directed against the temporary hiring and engaging of the preacher and insists on regular call, such as is agreeable to the Word of God — how is one to proceed, is the question, when such Separatists receive a so-called licensed candidate of the ministry of another Synod, and he also is willing thereto, if his President permits it?

First the pastor of the congregation concerned is to hold a meeting with the candidate, if the latter is honest enough to desire it or not to refuse the same. If it should then be found, as is usual, that those people have besides defamed and slandered the pastor, the latter has first to propose to the candidate that a disputation of the Separatists and of the congregation, together with the pastor and the candidate, should take place somewhere and at some time, where the truth will indeed come out.

But the candidate is to be warned beforehand not to engage with those people if they decline this meeting; for then he must justly put distrust in them and rather assume that they have separated from the congregation without lawful ground. Should this be the case, and he accept a call among them afterward, he makes himself a partaker of their sins, strengthens and confirms their separatistic ways, and is a factionist preacher; for people who have separated from an orthodox congregation without any legal ground, yea against the Holy Scripture, are no special congregation, but a faction.

If the candidate, after having learned that the Separatists persist in a separation contrary to Scripture, wishes to act toward them as a Christian, he can do nothing else than earnestly to admonish them to repent toward