# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1855_S176
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

176 Gleanings from the Journals of the Old Homeland.

Opinions on these points differ widely: some still regard the struggle conducted over them thus far as fruitless, while others cherish the hope that the dispute will soon be settled and unity in the truth achieved. In support of what has been said, we offer a few excerpts here.

Thus, among others, Dr. L. A. Petri in Hannover begins his preface to the 1855 volume of his “Journal for the Affairs of the Lutheran Church” as follows: “The past year has demonstrated through more than one development that the questions of church and ministry still remain in the foreground and intellectually dominate the ecclesiastical events of the day. Nor could it very well be otherwise. Since people everywhere are determined to improve the public condition of the church with understanding and purpose; to regain what has been lost; to rebuild what has fallen into decay; and to meet new needs, they must inevitably encounter those questions at every turn. One cannot administer the public doctrine of the church—its authority as well as its relationship to the government and constitution of the church; one cannot speak of church discipline and its restoration, its significance and its proper measure; one cannot consider the cultivation of divine worship and the restoration of dignified forms for the individual ecclesiastical rites; one cannot even undertake the work of visitations without touching upon those questions and proceeding from a more or less definite answer to them, or actually directing matters toward such an answer. If, then, the endeavors indicated above characterize the present age, the zeal with which minds are applying themselves to those questions is both explained and justified.” The Prussian Lutherans express themselves similarly. Pastor Ehlers likewise writes in the preface to this year’s volume of the “Church Gazette for the Evangelical Lutheran Congregations in Prussia”: “Having considered our relationship to the Prussian territorial church, we now turn our attention to the internal condition of our church, and the first thing we encounter is the question of church and ministry, which still occupies the Lutheran Church in every country.” Above all, we feel compelled to share with our readers an assessment made by A. Brömel, superintendent of the Duchy of Lauenburg, concerning the significance of the present controversy. In a review of Münchmeyer’s work (“The Dogma of the Visible and Invisible Church”) in this year’s second quarterly issue of the Guericke-Rudelbach journal, he writes, among other things, as follows: “For our part, we are by no means of the opinion that the controversy concerns a subordinate point, or that the doctrine of the opponents is entirely without danger. On the contrary, the controversy concerns the central point of Christianity as a whole. Whoever departs from the truth here must gradually answer many other questions differently from the way the Church has answered them until now. Whoever conceives of the Church as only visible must gradually be driven toward the Roman Church, must teach a visible ministry, and must say with the Council of Trent: Si quis dixerit, non esse in N. T. sacer-