# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1850 05 14_S150
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

150

succeeded, especially with us in Bavaria. To be sure, there are German-Catholic congregations everywhere, in Nuremberg, Erlangen, Fürth, Wunsiedel, Schwabach, etc.; but that is certainly not in the least to be lamented; rather all faithful members of the church wish from the heart that still more such congregations may come together, so that the unbelievers who have hitherto lived in the midst of our church and led many astray may at last have occasion to withdraw and to keep to their own kind. In Saxony German Catholicism seems to be doing better business, yet there too it is not vehement; likewise in Prussia and Württemberg. Neither a Protestant nor the Catholic church has need so far to fear it. But you must know much better than I, in your present home, the land of sects, that a sect can do the church no harm, but only good — even if at times it looks otherwise before our eyes.

For the third time I now sit down to this letter, having been hindered twice from finishing it; but I hope to reach the end this time. What I should still like to tell you is a few words about the “inner mission.” Presumably you have also heard of it already, and have perhaps also wondered already at this strange, self-contradicting expression. So you will also know already that this work, which has for its aim a “permeating with Christian elements of the masses living within the Christian church but fallen away from the faith,” and at the same time also bodily help for the poor and the sick, is brought on the carpet and most zealously promoted chiefly by Wichern, the superintendent and founder of the institution in the “rauhes Haus” at Horn near Hamburg. I named Wichern's name to you before, on the occasion of the Wittenberg confederation, and from that you will conclude — even if you have not already heard it — that this work of the inner mission is the chief work of love by which those gentlemen wish to couple the various churches together, and so it is. A central committee for inner mission has been constituted in Wittenberg, around which a great number of individual societies are now gathering. For about a year and a half all Germany has been filled with the cry of the inner mission, which cry since the last Nuremberg mission festival has found a very mighty echo in Bavaria also. For Wichern was present at that festival, who by his amiable personality, as well as by his ravishing eloquence, won the hearts of all for his cause. Then there was a running and racing, a talking and writing and collecting of money and holding of conferences and taking of counsel, so that one had to wonder how it is that all spiritual and bodily need in Bavaria has not been removed already, if one did not know what is written in Rom. 9, 16. Yet one must say that it was not mere talk, but that they also took to deeds: not far from here, in the county of Castell, the first rescue house for neglected children was founded — or more exactly, is being founded, for it is not yet finished — then in Erlangen, in Naila, in Weissenburg and (if I mistake not) in Fürth, — in short, inner mission has now become the fashion, and whoever wishes to pass for “Christian,” that is, Pietistically Christian, must speak and work for inner mission, unless his Christianity is to be gravely doubted. Then Pastor Löhe thought it good that we, who do not approve this Pietistic, work-righteous pursuit of the inner mission, to say nothing of its servitude to the confederation, should nevertheless join together in a “Society for Inner Mission,” but “in the spirit of the Lutheran church,” and carry on somewhat more systematically what has hitherto already been done singly, so that those among clergy and laity who have been set a little in motion and life by the general cry of inner mission might not fall straightway into that perverse way of pursuing it, and perhaps even be drawn along into the whirlpool of the confederation, but might recognize by our society how this cause too can be pursued in a good Lutheran manner, and so that everyone may see that the orthodoxy of the Lutheran church is not a dead one, as men are otherwise so fond of charging against it. This society then actually came into being, and its work is now making good progress. The plan of it and its sphere of work I reserve for communicating to you in a next letter, where I may perhaps also write at once of some success. —

What you write me of the indifferent doings and conduct of the members of the General Synod does not surprise me at all, for with us it goes not a hair better. But to be sure, it hurts a faithful heart to see one's dear mother struck so in the face by those who wish to be held her own children. It is not a misery for the church when she is plagued and persecuted by her enemies with writing and word and deed, but it is a great heartache for her when her children themselves fall out with one another, and Babel enters into her midst — and so it is with us in Bavaria. How good Lutherans the Nuremberg and Fürth pastors and the Erlangen professors want to be — and behold, they have a greater malice against us than any Reformed pastor. Ah, that the Lord would look to it, and take away from the hearts of us all all pride and everything else that hinders true unity in the Spirit! Let us pray, one for the other, you for the Bavarian, I for the American Lutheran church, that He may help, for the help of man is of no avail here.

With hearty love

Your faithful friend and brother:

G. M........

May this letter, which I have communicated in full, so far as it bears on the churchly conditions of Germany, move all faithful members of our Lutheran church in this land diligently to remember their brethren, yea, the whole church beyond the ocean, when they cast themselves down before the throne of God, clothed in Christ's righteousness, in petition, prayer, thanksgiving and intercession; this wishes, begs and implores one who joins himself with all his heart to them in their prayer, a lowly fellow-pilgrim to the city of the living God

J. Seidel.

(Sent in.)

The Weyl Kirchenbote.*)

In No. 6 of the Weyl Kirchenbote a Mr. Theophilus has again broken a lance against the Old Lutherans, and has boastfully promised victory beforehand, that he will convict us of inconsistency, let us answer as we will. His infallible dilemma is: either we must accept the proposition that not the Holy Scripture alone, but the Holy Scripture and tradition together are God's Word and the sole rule and standard by which at the same time all doctrines are to be judged and decided, — or the Holy Scripture alone is the sole rule and standard of doctrines, etc. How we Lutherans are now supposed to fall, with our answer to this, into the great embarrassment that we, turn and twist as we will, must plead guilty to inconsistency and confess: doctrine and practice do not agree with us, no simple one among us will indeed be able to imagine. And so I must again bore you, dear readers, once more, and set before you the fine Theophilian proofs themselves, about which I would rather have kept silent, had I not had to speak in support of the truth. Mr. Theophilus namely thinks: If one has, like the Lutherans, so turned and sharply trimmed a dogmatics as stands in the Formula of Concord (he calls it, in supposed wit, the “Knabendreiformel,” and holds it, as you see, for a kind of dogmatics), then it takes not much, like the Romans, to pronounce ex cathedra: Whoso says, etc., let him be under the ban. Now we would indeed be dreadfully consistent in accusing the united and Reformed churches of this country of heresy, in so far as they depart in their doctrines from the understanding of the Book of Concord, but we would be inconsistent in that we do not at once also exalt the Book of Concord expressly to the authority of Holy Scripture. In this we could learn from the Romans, who yet in their catechism say straight out: the Word of God is divided into the Holy Scripture and tradition; a Roman Catholic Christian must therefore believe all that the

*) The last number of this excellent paper which has reached us is the fourth, from the middle of February of this year. Probably Mr. Weyl's world-famous Christian love moves him to spare us, by not sending the numbers in which we are attacked, an injury and the trouble of having to write a rejoinder. The faithful dear heart! Ed.