# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Januar 1856_S30
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Miscellaneous Church News. 30

believing one without change, were told: "You are only strengthening the Lutheran
separation! You are only driving people to withdraw from the united Church!" (A
reliable man, who was in a position to know, told me this himself!) — By this many a
member of the synod was made to take fright, and gave up his resistance with a "for all
I care!" —

And yet, with all these arts and means, nothing more could be achieved than the
above. And what, then, is this? What are these three points, when we consider them
more closely? They (?!) only really strengthen and consolidate the Union, and make it
so little Lutheran that every Lutheran-minded person should now, more than ever, become
uneasy about remaining in this Union! The Reformed and the Lutheran confession are
once again set side by side as two masters, whom one is to serve at once, whom one is to
love equally and to whom one is to adhere. And indeed more bindingly than before, when
the confessions were presented merely as historical monuments of a bygone age. — If, now,
no distress of conscience for a sincerely Lutheran-minded conscience arises from this
within the Union, then there is no distress of conscience left at all!
(Freimund.)

Eichhorn writes in the Pilger from Saxony, among other things, as follows: "We have
before our eyes the uplifting example, which must arouse and strengthen every Lutheran
heart far and wide, that against a little band of hundreds of Lutherans the manifold
means of suppression were applied by the power of the state and the state church — for
five years running — and yet the little band could not be suppressed, but has grown,
in the midst of pressure and persecution, and is spread throughout the whole land,
though in small numbers, from the Main to the border crossing into Switzerland near
Basel — namely in Lindelbach near Wertheim, in Nußloch near Heidelberg, in Bretten and
Pforzheim, in Durlach and Karlsruhe, in Ichenheim near Strasbourg, in Ihringen near
Freiburg, and in Lörrach near Basel itself; Lutherans in Basel and in Zurich have also
joined it. — Pastor Ludwig was continually hindered from residing in Söllingen, his
own parish, where several had withdrawn together with him, so that the withdrawals
might not spread! Difficulties were likewise placed in the way of his residing in
neighboring Karlsruhe, and for this reason he has now, with the express approval of
the Lutheran Supreme Church College in Breslau, taken up his residence in Freiburg im
Breisgau, in order to minister spiritually from there to the Lutherans in Ihringen,
Lörrach, and Basel, while Pastor Eichhorn, from Durlach, officially serves the little
congregations in Karlsruhe, Durlach, in Diedelsheim, Bretten, and Rußbaum, in
Söllingen and Berghausen, in Nußloch and Lindelbach."

Conference at Stade. On August 29 the annual conference of Lutheran
preachers was again held at Stade, at which 70 to 80 participants had gathered.
This conference pursues chiefly practical purposes. On the evening of the 28th a
preliminary discussion was already held, in which several petitions to the higher
authorities, in the first place to the Royal Consistory, were presented and approved.

A motion was also brought forward and approved that negotiations be opened with the
brethren at Hanover concerning a Lutheran Gustav Adolf Society, in the first place for
our kingdom, in which, to enliven the cause, larger public assemblies are to be held
and deliberations undertaken, etc. Statutes for this purpose are already being drafted.

The following morning, at 8 o'clock, deliberation was held on the union of the
Lutheran mission society, which had until now sent its contributions to Leipzig, with
the Stade mission society, which had until now formed a branch of the North German
mission society. The union has been set in motion and will, God willing, come into
being next year on a purely Lutheran basis.

At a quarter past nine the actual conference began. After the hymn, "Come, Holy
Spirit, Lord God," Pastor Mühlenstedt gave an address on a liturgy to be introduced in
our province, for the preparation and composition of which the three members of the
presidium, Superintendent Ruperti, Pastor Zeidler, and Pastor Mühlenstedt, had been
commissioned the previous year. The last-named had, drawing on older sources, worked
out a liturgy for the Sunday service with the required collects and prayers. The
musical portion had previously been printed