# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1856_S222
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

222 Correspondence from Germany.

—furthest advanced in popular education, and so they will have the sourest and heaviest way back. Well for us, if the coming visitation takes hold here. When my turn comes, I will, with God's help, sing a proper litany, pour out my heart, and take the visitation for what it ought to be. Now also a little about some spiritual forces in the pastoral office whom the Lord has raised up and who hold authority over the Saxons. First there stands Alfeld of Leipzig, who fled the confusion of the Union and is active in Leipzig, richly blessed with spiritual gifts. In Rudelbach's place at Glauchau a man from the Union has recently also been called — the head of the Lutherans within the Union in Pomerania. At Hohenstein, Closter, an Oldenburger, formerly at Wangerode, then at Rötha as deacon, has after many struggles found a nest. Among the older pastors, from your own years, I would name Schubart at Hohenstädt, Winter at Schwarzenberg, Lehmann at Chemnitz; already younger are Sidel at Tharand, who has had hard struggles with the materialistic professors of the forestry academy in that town (Prof. Stöckhardt excepted), Rüling at Bautzen, Zehme at Lengefeld. The younger men, too, from the blessed period of Harleß's work in Leipzig are gradually coming in one by one; there is Naumann at Störenthal, Schmidt at Ernstthal, Engel at Lugau. To be sure, only a little leaven as against the great mass that is to be leavened through! Yet still not a band to be despised.

Our ecclesiastical organ is the Sächsisches Kirchen- und Schulblatt, which, until recently still an official paper, has now become a private one. Since it is no longer supported out of the church treasuries, it eked out only a wretched existence, and since, in part, it is no longer being subscribed to, and in part is only meagerly provided with contributions, it is to be feared that it must perish. It corresponds, indeed, only little to our Saxon type, which would rather call for a paper like the old Sächsische Kirchenzeitung — full of articles from the outward official life of pastors, on minute points of church law, together with detailed reports on the examinations, with no dogmatics at all, at most short exegetical studies, contributions from the field of church antiquities, etc. Whether, should the Kirchenblatt perish, another will take its place — perhaps, as has often been discussed, one calculated for the Lutheran Church as a whole — remains as yet uncertain.

So much the more gladdening it is for me to hear from America. Der Lutheraner and Lehre und Wehre were a real refreshment to me. Sihler's essay on the education of Lutheran congregations is a masterpiece. Your reply to the accusations of the Erlangen men was delightful; only in the exegetical treatment of 1 Corinthians 10 do I have — though it otherwise pleased me very much — one thing to object to. It seemed to me as though the author held the view, so much emphasized and misused here in our Germany, that even unworthy communicants permanently receive the body and blood of the Lord into themselves, and that the Lord only on the day of death or of judgment takes back these