# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_October 1856_S318
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

318 Miscellaneous Church News.

You were dissatisfied about it and did not hesitate to make his faults known, as if perfection could be found among mortals!" (A remarkable statement, this last one, from the mouth of a Methodist!)

The Formula for Administering the Lord's Supper. After the recently occurring transfer of Deacon Hoffmann in Wittenberg to a neighboring rural parish (as Kahnis's Schul- und Kirchenblatt reports in its issue of July 10 of this year), the proposal was made by the garrison command that the military chaplaincy previously also served by Hoffmann be transferred to Professor Dr. Schmieder. Dr. Schmieder, whose spiritual official duties in connection with the preachers' seminary entrusted to his direction are of only minor extent, declared himself gladly willing to take on this ecclesiastical secondary office; he also promptly received for it the approval of the Minister of Spiritual Affairs and of the Supreme Consistory. When, as the further preparatory documents were being drawn up, the order of worship and of the sacraments in the military congregation came up for discussion, it emerged that until then the united (unionist) formula of administration ("Christ says, etc.") had been in use, and its retention was requested. Dr. Schmieder, although, as is known, a warm adherent and advocate of the Union, declared that he was unable to comply with this request: having, during a long tenure of office, administered the sacrament of the altar according to the Augsburg Confession and the traditional form thoroughly corresponding to his inner conviction, he could not, in the evening of his life, change course in this regard and, for the sake of the Union, suddenly present at the holy place another view of the sacrament than the one always known to be his. — This declaration, "of the greatest significance coming from the mouth of a theologian otherwise so mild and broad-minded, and thoroughly trained philosophically and historically," led to further negotiations before the authorities concerned; in the course of these the provincial consistory is said to have recommended permitting the traditional distribution formula, but the supreme church authority is said to have refused its consent to this. It is certain that Dr. Schmieder now sees himself excluded, by the new formula, from the church office offered to him through no doing of his own, and that thus a decided and renowned unionist appears, by the Union itself, excluded from church service in the army. — From this unionist, Lutherans too may learn something here. We note this without partisanship or ill will (sine studio et ira).

University of Leipzig. For a number of years the number of theology students as such, and especially of the foreigners among them, has never been so favorably constituted as at the beginning of this summer half-year. The proportion of the latter to the former now amounts in all to a full third: among 189 students of theology there are 62 foreigners. The law faculty has, it is true, an equal number of the latter, but against a total enrollment (grounded in the tendencies of the times) of 305; the other faculties come nowhere near that number of enrolled foreigners. One may therefore assume that foreign countries place a particular confidence in the theological doctrine taught here. (Kirchen- und Schulblatt.)

The dedication of the new Lutheran mission house at Leipzig took place on June 24 of this year. After the solemn opening of the building by Professor Dr. Kahnis, Dr. Graul, the mission director, gave the opening address; thereupon Pastor Reuter of Nuremberg took the floor, then Pastor Dr. Ahlfeld, as representative of the Leipzig local society, gave an address, whereupon Professor Kahnis closed the ceremony with a prayer and M. Schneider of Leipzig with the Lord's Prayer and the blessing. The next day was the annual festival of the Lutheran mission at Leipzig, at which Pastor Münkel of Oiste in Hanover gave the festival sermon in the Nicolai Church and Director Dr. Graul delivered the annual report. The building cost about 21,000 thalers; it has been paid for in full; the income of the last 10 months has yielded almost the same sum.

Denmark. On the day of the dedication of the Lutheran mission house in Leipzig, the guests likewise ga…