# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_April 1857_S128
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

128 Ecclesiastical-Contemporary Affairs.

...able to obey, he wanted to arrest me, from which he was dissuaded only by my pointing out that he would then be acting unlawfully, that I would not follow him either, since he could show me no higher order for such an act of violence, as he would have to under the law, and that besides, his subordinates, my parishioners, could bear witness that I had committed no criminal act, and would also vouch for my person, whereby an arrest would become entirely unlawful. After a long negotiation, in which I did not yield, we then came to a peaceful agreement that he should report to the office that he had forbidden me the baptism, but that I had refused obedience, and that we would thus wait and see what would come of it. Thereupon I baptized undisturbed, and now we wait to see what will happen. May the Lord God grant only that this rotten peace be broken once and for all — a peace that lasts only as long as it pleases the mayor or the unionist pastor, for even in this case the mayor would have kept silent had not the unionist pastor incited him and ordered him to proceed against me, as he also showed me that man's letter. We would rather fight and suffer honestly, for in this way we shall the sooner attain to an honest, open peace." (Pr. Kirchenblatt.)

Denmark. We read the following in the "Freimund": In the "Experiences of a Schleswig Preacher in the Years of Peace 1837–1850," etc., by Fr. Petersen, there is found, according to W. Menzel's literary journal, the following description of ecclesiastical conditions in Denmark, with a side-glance at Mecklenburg not to be overlooked. Petersen describes the Danish clergy, with few exceptions, as a wretched mixture of English high-churchism and German rationalist shallowness. This clergy, namely, has the wealth and the arrogance of the episcopal church, but without orthodoxy, and has sunk into the deepest baseness. The author relates a great many anecdotes concerning them. The wealthy Danish bishops and pastors play cards, dance, hunt, drink, and carouse quite openly; and among the common people, no longer kept in check by the clergy, there is likewise found, as among the higher classes, sensuality and love of pleasure widely spread. "The immorality which still permeates the masses there, which in particular loosens the bonds of marriage, so that a moral, faithful married couple can almost be counted among the rarities; the low state of intellectual education among the people; the open love of pleasure of all classes; the meager state of instruction in the public schools; the dry state of religious teaching in the churches, and other things — none of this had remained hidden from me. In no country of Europe, with the exception of Mecklenburg, where things stand even worse, are so many illegitimate children born, are there so many marriages lacking marital fidelity, as in Denmark. When the Superior Consistorial Councillor Kliefoth of Schwerin says in his synodal sermon of the year 1851 that in Mecklenburg every fourth child is illegitimate, every twelfth marriage a wild [common-law] one, every hundredth person an imprisoned criminal; further, that in a district of twenty churches, worship had in one year had to be suspended 228 times for lack of hearers — then the parallel to this is found again only in Denmark."

The Saxon Church and School Gazette. A certain Saxon pastor, M. Gehe, has published a little pamphlet in which he raises all sorts of complaints against the "Orthodox" in Saxony. To this the "Saxon Church and School Gazette" gives a brief reply, in which it says, among other things: "Mr. Gehe also exaggerates in that he accuses us of an inclination toward the Catholic hierarchy. If this reproach were indeed applicable to a certain doctrine of the [ministerial] office, our opponent ought also to have known that Höfling — whom one would certainly not count among Mr. Gehe's like-minded fellows — has combated this doctrine of the church and the office, and that in the Saxon Church and School Gazette, if we are not mistaken, this view was disputed, and that in any case, in the affairs of the Buffalo Synod, an opinion of the matter directed against it was championed. Is it, then, not exaggeration when Mr. Gehe foists upon all of us the views of certain orthodox theologians, which are expressly disputed by other orthodox theologians, and draws from this conclusions casting suspicion upon us?" — In Germany, then, our brethren too must experience what we experience here. For here also, especially by the sects, everything is charged to our account that the so-called Old Lutherans teach, even when it belongs to those very points which we in all earnestness combat.

Christian Phil. Heinr. Brandt, royal Bavarian Church Councillor and former Dean at Windsbach, has, according to a report made in the "Luth. Herold," fallen asleep blessedly on the 9th of January of this year, at the age of 66. His memory will live on in blessing among all who knew him. In the most sorrowful time of the full dominion of rationalism in Germany, he was an equally faithful and undaunted, as well as blessed, witness of the Gospel of salvation in Christ alone.