# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Mai 1857_S153
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

From and about South Australia. 153

colonies have fallen away from England; but there is nevertheless nothing but purely English life prevailing in the states of North America. Just so a great part of our missionaries and friends do not go along with us; but there is nevertheless nothing but purely Lutheran life unfolding in the congregations of our friends; the blossom is, in the end, even more beautiful than with us; and when the various factors at work over there have, through God, once become a finished product, who knows whether the Lutheran Church of North America may not then stand, amid the hastening ruin of the American world, like a bride of Jesus Christ, beautiful and great in suffering, victorious in the following of the Lamb of God.

Given this state of affairs, it would seem to me that the Lutheran mission in America, which one may call the home mission, is far better suited to be the central point of Lutheran endeavors than any other mission. But I also know that with the children of the Church, something other than what is central to God the Lord is sometimes central to them. I lay the matter in his hands; and all that I have wanted with all this praise of the American cause is nothing other than, once, to confess the truth, and then, similarly to Pastor Reuter (p. 31 of the Nuremberg Report), and no less truthfully, to close my address by saying most urgently, above all, to our dear brothers, whom I would no longer call friendly opponents, that it is likewise their sacred duty to return to us and to our wonderfully and strangely blessed American mission, just as we gladly make it our own duty to join a genuinely Lutheran-Bavarian Central Society for the heathen mission."

From and about South Australia.

We read the following in the Prussian-Lutheran "Kirchenblatt": The latest news from there contains the following reports. On April 6 of last year our fellow believers held a synod at Blumenberg, which for the first time was attended by properly elected deputies, whereas the earlier synods had depended on the arbitrary will of whatever members chose to attend. It lasted eight days and was to be attended by eight pastors and sixty-three deputies of the congregations. In fact, however, only seven pastors and fifty-eight deputies appeared, since the congregations of Portland Bay (Victoria), with their pastor Schiermann, had themselves represented at the synod by proxies from the South Australian congregations.

First there was debate over several holidays and their partial abolition. Three fast-days were abolished altogether; on the other hand, the festivals of Michaelmas, of St. John, and of Epiphany remained, at least as preaching days, whereas before they had been kept as full festivals. So too the day commemorating the establishment of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in