# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Januar 1857_S32
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

32 Church-Contemporary-History.

binding doctrinal directive, but rather that the clergy of the united church were obligated
to conscientiously refrain from all confessional polemics in their sermons."

This supreme decree certainly caused most of the signers of that petition considerable
distress at first; some even entertained thoughts of resigning their office, but now all
have calmed down. The members of the congregations, insofar as they otherwise diverge
in religious respects, agree almost without exception on this: that they want one church, that the Union
is not to be touched, that there is to be no renewed split into "Reformed" and "Lutheran."
That is, for many, the sole remaining article of faith; and those who are truly believing
Christians are almost without exception colored by Pietism or Herrnhut influence, or have at least come
to faith by that route.

Apart from one member of the separated Lutheran church living at Zweibrücken
(who converted to it in Berlin and now holds to the church near Saarbrücken in Prussian territory),
a truly confessional spirit can in fact be found only as a very faint trace in a single village near
Landau: the last small remnants of a vigorous opposition
to the closing of the Union in 1818. A young man from this village,
at first in the Basel Mission House, then later released from it on account of ill health,
went to America and has become there a decidedly Lutheran preacher. The few
somewhat confessionally minded souls have emigrated to America to follow him,
or will do so, or are near death. And even here (or wherever a few
scattered, still weaker remnants may exist), the matter has more a Pietist
than a Lutheran character (as, for example, that Zweibrücker mentioned above
also found it). But that there are many Lutheran-minded church members — of that I know
nothing." — —

The Prussian Lutheran Church's General Synod of last year
was opened on September 18 of that year in Breslau. Pastor E. Wolf of Mag-
deburg delivered the synodal sermon on Revelation 2:1–7 and developed the theme: "Only
if we return to our first love will the Synod help to ensure that God's threatening
judgments pass us by," and showed "1. that we must convince ourselves how we
have forsaken our first love; 2. what means we must adopt in order to return to this first
love; 3. what the consequences of such a return will be." At the opening
of the Synod there were present 34 pastors and 23 deputies; the director of the Supreme Church
Board, Dr. Huschke, was elected president, and the church councilors Nagel and Besius were elected vice-
presidents.

Nassau. After Pastor Herrmann Ebert (now pastor at Cologne on the Rhine)
was in 1853 driven out of Nassau as a foreigner, God awakened Pastor Julius Hein,
who had formerly served the united territorial church, to recognize
the Lutheran truth, and he now took the former's place as pastor of the Lutherans in and around Anspach.
In the Pilger aus Sachsen, Hein reports with joy that the Lutherans at Anspach have at last
come into possession of their own little church, and continues thus: "Right next
to the little church the master of the house has fitted up a room for my lodging, which also
serves for holding private confessions, consultations, and the like, and thus so much has now been
granted to us at Anspach by the Lord as we, even with our boldest hopes, so
far as they were sober, could have expected, especially since, along with the move into this little church at
this place, our congregation was granted yet another noble gift of God, namely outward
peace. Every 2 to 3 weeks I hold divine service there; I was undisturbed for weeks
in Anspach for confirmation instruction and gathered daily the children from the
various localities around me; amid the concourse of all the world we held, after 5 years,
once again there the first confirmation festival, on the 3rd Sunday after Trinity, and no one looks askance at us. So
we live there as in a year of jubilee, while elsewhere authorities and mob still
vie with one another to make it impossible for us to preach the pure Word of God and to administer the holy
Sacraments."