# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Februar 1856_S57
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

57

(From the Prussian-Lutheran Church Gazette.)
A Visit in Amsterdam.*

In view of the heartfelt fellowship which we Lutherans in Baden have for years been permitted to experience from the Dutch brethren in Amsterdam, I could not, and ought not, resist a repeated invitation to pay a visit to the brethren in Amsterdam. The visit to the Cologne Lutheran Conference on the 12th and 13th of September of this year had brought me halfway toward the Dutch brethren, and I made use of the Rhine steamboat from Cologne to Arnhem, and from there the railway, in order to reach Amsterdam. There the most heartfelt brotherly love received me, and I enjoyed it during the five days of my stay there — days of rich refreshment after long solitude and privation. Pastor Lenz labors at the great Lutheran congregation in Amsterdam, which numbered 25,000 souls, alongside which there is found a congregation of 8,000 souls of the so-called Restored Lutheran Church, which some decades ago separated from the territorial church. The separation did not take place for the sake of the confession, for the latter stands as valid law in the Dutch Lutheran Church as well; but a thorough renewal of the life of faith, on the ground of the confession, has of late been recognized by both named congregations as their most pressing need. Witness to this is the founding of a Netherlands ecclesiastical association for the Evangelical-Lutheran mission, which took place at the beginning of the year 1852, and in which members of both congregations take part. I shall first share an extract from the statutes of this association. It reads there: "Whoever holds a definite faith must and will also confess it; and no fair-minded person can hold it against him if he seeks to spread it, so far as this can be done without infringing on the rights of others. The undersigned have now found their salvation and their peace in the faith of the Evangelical-Lutheran Church, as it, in agreement with God's holy Word, is contained in the confessional writings of this Church (of which Luther's Small Catechism and the Augsburg Confession may be presumed generally known). They feel compelled, therefore, also to give factual testimony to this their faith, and have accordingly come together this day for the founding of an association, which shall bear the name 'Netherlands Association for the Evangelical-Lutheran Mission' and shall have its seat at Amsterdam. Agreement has been reached on the following provisions:

1. The general purpose of the association is: to render helping service to the mission of the Evangelical-Lutheran Church. It therefore regards as its special

* Although the following communication reaches the readers of the Kirchenblatt only long after it was written down, it will certainly not come too late to be read with pleasure. — Ed.