# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Mai 1856_S158
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

158 Miscellaneous Church News.

—undertakings had been begun by Christians for similar reasons, one would be tempted to hold the whole thing a fable, for it seems impossible that a Christian who knows the Scripture and believes it — in particular passages such as these: John 18:33–37; 19–24; Matt. 24:23–26; Luke 17:20–24; 21:24; Dan. 9:27 — could entertain the hope of such a gathering of the people of God in Palestine with a temple in its midst. At the end of the year 1521 Luther wrote: "As to the grave in which the Lord lay, which the Saracens hold, God cares as much about that as about all the cows in Switzerland." (At the end of the treatise "On the Abuse of the Mass," XIX, 1435.) We wish that these dear people, who have fallen upon such perverse ideas, might rather be healed of them before they undertake the journey to the grave of Christ, and that they would apply themselves all the more zealously to obtaining a share in the "gathering of the people of God" in the new Jerusalem upon the new earth. Rev. 21:1–4. Then they will return with us to the old "way of rescue," which is the preaching of the Gospel and faith in it.
(Communicated.)

Invocation of Saints. The "Semaine Religieuse" contains the following: "Tuscany, like all wine-growing lands, has for several years suffered much distress on account of the vine disease. To subdue this plague, the Archbishop of Florence has composed a collection of eighty-five prayers. As regards the object to which these prayers are addressed, it is not God but Noah who is addressed in them. "Most holy Patriarch Noah," it says among other things in one of them, "who during your long life occupied yourself with the planting of the vine and with the enjoyment men take in the delightful drink that quenches our thirst and nourishes and gladdens all, turn your eyes upon our vineyards, which we have tended after your example down to this time, and let yourself, at the sight of their withering from the ravaging plague which destroys their fruit before it ripens, be moved to compassion toward us for the severe punishment of so many blasphemies and other dreadful sins which we have committed — and pray to God for us in deep humility before his throne, since he has promised his children fruitfulness of the earth and abundance of grain and wine; promise him in our name that, through his gracious aid, we will forsake the path of vice and of sin and keep faithfully the holy commandments and those of our holy mother, the Catholic Church.""

The ninth prayer is addressed to the holy Virgin: "O Mary, turn to your beloved Son, Jesus Christ, and repeat to him the words you spoke at the wedding at Cana: They have no wine;" and may he who, at your bidding, worked that great miracle and turned water into wine, renew this miracle by healing our vines of the consuming disease," etc. The prayer book is adorned with a vignette depicting Noah as chief of a grape harvest, and contains the grant of a forty days' indulgence for those who devoutly pray the prayers concerned. — O Antichrist!

The Lutheran Church of France. The Lutheran Church of France is confined mostly to the departments along the Rhine and is mostly German. It has 200 parishes; 266 pastors; 30 or 40 schools with 4000 pupils, and a Collegium in Strasbourg. Like the Reformed Church, it enjoys the protection of the State. Together the two cost the state treasury annually one and a quarter million francs, and stand, as regards national support, on the same footing as the Catholic Church.

Enormous Expenditure of Some Fashionable Churches in New York. In one New York congregation the salary of the pastor is $4000; that of his assistant, $500. The annual gifts made to the pastor average $500; those made to his assistant, about $5. The choir, the organist's salary, repairs to the organ, and the bellows-treader's wage together cost about $1600. For cleaning, together with the sexton's salary, on average $900. The annual depreciation in the value of the building