# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_October 1855_S306
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

306 Kingdom of Saxony.

only wish that the high state government would refrain from any so-called middle path."

After Mayor Koch replied that, while he shared the opinion expressed by the previous speaker, he must nevertheless complain "that a tone of harsh and zealot-like condemnation has now become customary in Saxony," a certain Herr v. Welck expressed his complete agreement with Mayor Starke and added: "I therefore thank the honored speaker, however insignificant this thanks from my side may perhaps appear, for these words, from the bottom of my heart, and agree with him especially in this, that in this highly important matter there can be no talk of a middle path. Holy Scripture and the symbolical books, which are the sole foundation of our confession, know no middle way; they prescribe definitely and clearly the way we are to walk, and God grant that we may always do so firmly and faithfully to our confession." Thereupon Vice-President Herr v. Friesen likewise declared "that everything Starke had said agreed entirely with his own conviction." He added further: "In matters of faith I know no middle path; I know only One path, which leads to salvation, namely that which is marked out in Holy Scripture and by the doctrine contained in it. Our faith, however, is expressed in the symbolical books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church; that is our path; there is no direction to the right and no direction to the left, there is only One direction and only One path, and on this, for my part, I intend to remain." In the same vein Herr v. Heynitz-Heynitz then spoke, as did State Minister Dr. v. Falkenstein, who further declared: "that the Ministry, in keeping with its duty, governs its actions by what Scripture and the confession of our Church demand, and that this is precisely the only direction we have to hold to. I repeat this," he continued, "only because, in my opinion, it is precisely in this holding fast to Scripture and this holding fast to the confession that the one powerful weapon lies — on the one hand against the stale rationalism that points only to self-deification, and on the other against that zealot spirit which condemns everyone of a different faith. In this respect it is beyond doubt that holding fast to Scripture and holding fast to the confession is itself the true middle path."

After laymen had in this way taken up so weighty a question and made such deeply searching confessions, the superintendent and professor Dr. Großmann of Leipzig finally rose, declared that he could not make every expression of Mayor Starke's speech his own, and praised it as a great merit of the Ministry of Worship "that it takes precisely the true middle path and holds its ground above the parties; an identification with parties would lead to such conditions as Paul, in the first epistle to the Corinthians, with all