# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1855_S178
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

178 Gleanings from the Periodicals of the Old Homeland

[illegible] of a disagreement in faith and doctrine that has arisen among its members, as has happened at present, were it to lay down its arms, it would soon no longer deserve that designation.

As united as people in Germany are, as has been said, in their judgment of the importance of the matter around which the present struggle within our church revolves, they differ greatly in their views of how near its goal is and of the gains already made through it. Thus, first of all, the dear Ehlers writes in his church newspaper, in the issue of February 1 of this year: “We wish to mention it” (the question of the church and the ministry) “only briefly, but believe that we may say something comforting about it. It seems to us that this question made substantial progress last year; the ropes drawn too tightly in opposite directions have yielded on both sides, and thus the truth lying between the two has gained room and come more clearly to light. The minds of those who, during this controversy, have walked faithfully before the face of the Lord and allowed themselves to be guided by the Spirit of God have come increasingly to rest concerning the disputed question; and even if they are still unable to give a fully clear answer to the question, their eyes and hearts are nevertheless refreshed by the dawn that has broken, and they confidently await the bright ray of sunlight that will bring certain light. — The Lord will continue to grant grace, and we hope that the question will soon be answered to the complete satisfaction of all those who sincerely love the truth. — We take this opportunity to draw attention here to a book that we believe sheds much light on the question, and which we also recommend as a good weapon against Roman Catholicism, namely, ‘The Nature of the Church Illuminated According to the Teaching and History of the New Testament. By Julius Köstlin, tutor at the Protestant Seminary in Tübingen. Stuttgart. Published by S. G. Liesching. 1854.’”

Gladly as we would share with this esteemed man the hope that the present year might become the year of the peace settlement concerning the question of the church and the ministry in our dear Lutheran Church, it nevertheless seems to us that Dr. Petri, alas, depicts the present state of affairs in this respect more accurately when, in the same place, he expresses himself as follows: “There can, however, be no talk of even a preliminary or partial conclusion or of any gain made. The writings of Kliefoth and Münchmeyer on the one side and Köstlin on the other still reveal little reconciliation of the opposing positions that have arisen within one and the same church; for while the former earnestly hold fast to the church’s embodied nature, the latter makes everything spiritually fluid, even, it seems, the apostles. But what lies before us is not simply a question of Lutheran doctrine and polity on which the members of this church would merely have to reach agreement among themselves; rather,