# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1855_S191
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Rationalist Consistency. 191

Catechisms—on this point, the address of the High Ministry to the Evangelical Lutheran clergy, published in No. 2, leaves no doubt, for the Ministry declares that it desires nothing more earnestly “than that everywhere in the church of the fatherland God’s Word, as contained in Holy Scripture and set forth and reiterated in the confessions of our church, be preached clearly and purely, in all simplicity and love, but also with power and resolution.”

Rationalist Consistency.

During the deliberations of the free congregation in Magdeburg concerning new bylaws it wished to adopt, a violent clash arose between the congregation’s two “spokesmen.” Uhlich proposed that they call themselves a free “Christian” congregation, while Sachse objected—according to the report in the Kreuzzeitung: “After stating in the introduction to our new bylaws that we acknowledge nothing but the absolute freedom of the human spirit, are we then to add, ‘and call ourselves a free Christian congregation’? That would be the most glaring contradiction, a handcuff, a shackle that we would be placing upon ourselves. Often enough I have declared loudly and clearly in our assembly: I am not a Christian—I am an atheist—and now I am supposed to continue holding office in a Christian congregation? Never! I have remained in my office until today only on the assumption that the designation ‘Christian’ would be dropped during today’s revision of the bylaws, and in the knowledge that what is Christian has long since disappeared from the congregation. Uhlich has often told me: I do not think that far; only up to a certain limit. This seems to me like someone who, on the road to his intended destination, comes to a ditch and, merely because it is wide, does not jump across. I shall jump across; whoever wishes to follow me must jump with me. Under our bylaws, anyone may join us, whether he is a Jew or a Muslim; is he then supposed to call himself a Christian? It has been said that we do, after all, baptize, celebrate the Lord’s Supper, and perform marriages; to that I must reply: from this hour onward I will no longer baptize, perform marriages, or celebrate the Lord’s Supper.” In these two “spokesmen” we have before us a vivid picture of rationalism. Tame rationalism shrinks from taking the final step into the great empty nothingness, either because it still truly feels a bond of conscience tying it to God, or because it lacks [illegible], or because it lacks personal courage; wild rationalism no longer fears anything because it no longer hopes for anything either; it jumps across the ditch. What the police will do with the man who has jumped across