# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_November 1855_S349
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Miscellaneous Church News. 349

-ers, even though they remain, in the end, Lutheran-minded in sentiment. Pastor Haag has thus re-entered the union of the united church, and so stands again on exactly the same ground on which he stood before he was dismissed from the Baden united church. What are we to say to this? His former congregation members, who had separated from the Union, do not now rightly know where to turn. They declared on various occasions: "'they wished and desired to belong to no other church than the Evangelical Lutheran.'" They have, however, not yet applied for admission." — Should the report concerning Pastor Haag be confirmed, the step thus taken by him would at the same time cast a very unfavorable light on his whole former position.

A Disturbed Baptismal Rite. When, on Cantate Sunday of this year, Pastor M. Siedel in Tharand (Saxony), during a baptismal rite, put to the sponsors the question, "Dost thou renounce the devil," etc., one of the sponsors, a merchant from the said town, remained silent. Supposing that he had either not heard the question or did not know that an answer was required, the officiant repeated the question to him individually, and did so, in order to avoid any commotion, in a low voice. Thereupon the man answered in a loud, emphatic voice, so that it rang through the whole church: "I believe only in God." The pastor replied to this, still in a low voice: "I must then ask you to step aside." Thereupon the man answered, again very loudly: "I will not step aside. The father of the child placed me here. I cannot step aside. I will not yield until the father of the child releases me from my duty." Siedel then said in a loud voice: "But I must ask you to step aside. You ought to have said beforehand what you intended to do, since you well know how the order of holy baptism is kept among us." He retorted: "I explained to the father of the child that I would not answer." The pastor: "I ask you in the name of God whether you will not step aside, so as not to disturb the holy rite." Answer: "I will not step aside." So the holy rite was then brought to its conclusion with the exclusion of the recalcitrant sponsor, and it was afterward declared to him that he would also not be entered in the church register as a sponsor. The pastor thereupon reported the incident to the superintendency at Dresden, which has turned the matter over to the royal magistracy at Tharand. This has accordingly opened a criminal investigation, presumably on the ground that, by his refusal to step away from the baptismal font, that merchant made himself guilty of a turbatio sacrorum. The matter has furthermore been discussed in the second chamber of estates itself, in order to show the minister, face to face, where matters have already come to in Saxony through the "Old Lutherans."

Luther's Catechism in the French Language. Recently the pastors Horning and Magnus in Strasbourg have produced a wholly ex-