# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Mai 1857_S151
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Bavaria. 151

and it proves this, among other things, by the fact that it gladly supported a forward outpost of the churchly movement which up to now has met with little notice, and here and there even hostility, but which nevertheless, as it seems to me, looks out beyond the horizon of most movements so far. This outpost is the Zion congregation in Hamburg, which in its modest, quiet, beautiful inner and outer building has planted a banner, on which stands a truth for whose utterance both it and I, its advocate, will still take blows a while longer — namely the genuinely Protestant truth that in one and the same city two rightly-believing congregations of wholly different governance and constitution can flourish, stand, remain, and love one another, without merging into one another in church government. — It may indeed happen that all the Lutheran congregations of the world, if their episcopal authorities permit, unite themselves somehow into one church-governmental whole; but it need not be so, not much depends on it, it is not necessary for unity. What is far more necessary is to lift up and build up the individual congregations, and to unite them through the wonderful harmony of the common free confession and the shared celebration of the Sacrament.

From what has been said so far it is clear to the honored assembly what my view of state and territorial churches is. I am no eulogist of them; I do not see in their forms the best that could be; but neither do I reject them; I recognize the conservative and pedagogical element in them, grant it to the congregations as they are, and wish above all one thing: that from the free churches they might learn the right way to build up the individual congregation, its uplifting and advancement, and, where it can be done, surpass the free churches in this.

Pastor Reuter assures us a friendly reception if we wish to return to the Central Society. Some of us were never members of the Central Society and would have to join it fresh; they will do so gladly, however, and the rest will return gladly, now that the Central Society has been more purged confessionally and has itself returned to the principles of the Lutheran Church. They will also gladly go along to Leipzig and be zealous for the East Indian mission. But will our hitherto so-called friendly opponents also unite with us for home missions? Will they, now that the fear of secession is gone, not shrink from going along with us? *) Our own activity too, like that of Leipzig, is not bound to any single secular territory; not only in the East Indies, but also in America, children of the Bavarian territorial church are at work, and indeed in America far more than in

*) Compare from here on the Reuter address. Twelfth Annual Report of the Evangelical Lutheran Mission Society in Bavaria, p. 31 f.