# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1855_S223
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Death Notices. 223

[Illegible] had had read aloud to her before her end. At two o’clock in the morning, he called the young woman who had stood faithfully and lovingly by his side during his final years. He complained to her of tightness in his chest; she sent for the physician, sat down by the bed, and took the sufferer’s hand; and when the physician arrived, he found Harms dead, without tender love having noticed the slightest thing. — He now rests from his labor within sight of the old tower of St. Nicholas, under whose shelter he had so often caused his mighty word to resound, within sight of the dear, beautiful city of Kiel, which he had been unwilling to exchange for either an imperial or a royal capital.*) Many far away will greet and bless his resting place in spirit, and many nearby will quietly approach it and wet it with their tears.”

This account is taken from the “Memorial to Claus Harms,” which Professor Baumgarten in Rostock has erected to his teacher in a small publication. We read with pleasure what this publication says about Harms himself, his Christian and ecclesiastical character and significance; what the author adds by way of his own reflections on the course and development of ecclesiastical affairs, by contrast, has validity and truth only for those who share the author’s principles. In the main, these hold that the Church’s history up to this point must be broken with and new ground must be plowed, the dawn of which is found in Schleiermacher. “Precisely where Paul was assigned his standpoint from heaven for all time—namely, in the Spirit, who is the Lord’s and who is the Lord Himself (2 Corinthians 3:17)—there Schleiermacher also took his standpoint, as Luther had before him. — Insofar as Schleiermacher, even more consciously and energetically than Luther, always penetrates to the innermost, most hidden foundation of life in all religious and ecclesiastical questions, his standpoint is purer still and more Pauline than Luther’s. For however powerfully and thoroughly Luther insists upon the fundamental relation of faith to objective fact, he did not always resist the doctrinaire and abstract manner of traditional doctrinal development so steadfastly as never at times to put doctrine directly in the place of faith, and thus, for his part, to give the impetus to the later disastrous confusion in this sphere.” From this standpoint, the position the author believes should be taken toward the Union is understandable; but those who do not share his standpoint may reject his criticism with perfect right.
(Petri’s Zeitblatt.)

On April 22 of this year, the Sunday Misericordias Domini, Missionary Speer, known to many readers and beloved by all who knew him more closely, completed his earthly course at the age of thirty-one in his parents’ home in Hohndorf near Zobten am Bober, 1½ miles from Löwenberg.

*) As is well known, Harms received a call to serve as General Superintendent in St. Petersburg and later in Berlin as Schleiermacher’s successor.