# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Mai 1857_S155
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Church-Current-Events. 155

his section on the south side of Adelaide, where he formerly served and
where there also stands a rather handsome church building. But it was
always very empty, and even at its greatest flourishing scarcely 20
Lutherans belonged to it. For although there may be some 3000 Germans
in Adelaide, most of them belong to no church at all, and lie either in
the arms of rationalism — especially the well-to-do — or are separatists,
or mere tavern-goers. The better part holds to a preacher named
Burschel, who is said to be pious but devoid of all theological training,
and who occupies himself chiefly with the exposition of the Prophets and
the Revelation of John, so that he waxes enthusiastic over chiliasm. He
lives in Klemzig, where he preaches every Sunday morning, and in the
afternoon in an English chapel at Adelaide.

Church-Current-Events.

I. America.

A new confession of the Methodists. So writes a Methodist preacher in
the "Apologete" of Feb. 26 of this year: "Frankly stated, the lack of
preachers has, from the very beginning of our work down to this hour,
brought many a man into the preaching office who might perhaps have
become more useful and more of a blessing, both to himself and to his
contemporaries, in any other calling. The Methodist preacher finds, so
to speak, competitors in his trade nowadays. Formerly, at least in the
West, it was the Methodist preachers who first sounded the trumpet of
the Gospel clearly, crying loudly: Repent and believe in the Lord Jesus!
The times have changed. Now the preaching of repentance and faith
resounds from most German pulpits. We thank God for this, believing —
indeed knowing — that it was the Methodist church and the labor of the
despised Methodist preachers that roused other churches and preachers
from their sleep." — We readily grant the poor Methodists this comfort;
only they should also not forget that, for instance, we here in the West,
before the Methodists came here, preached repentance and faith in
earnest through God's grace, and yet that at one time the Methodist
gentlemen sought to denounce as an unconverted, security-loving
hireling anyone who merely would not approve the Methodistic errors,
even though he might proclaim repentance toward God and faith in the
Lord Jesus in self-denial, in want, and in the deepest disgrace before
the world. — — Alongside the above confession it now indeed appears
strange that the editor of the Apologete, in the same issue, says of a
submitted article by a Methodist preacher on the ban that "no professor
of theology would need be ashamed" of such an article! In this article
it says, among other things: "The bans of the popes and of the
old-Lutheran preachers, which they pronounce over the so-called
heretics, are not to be feared." Yet at the same time it says: "Among us
(Methodists) church discipline often misses its purpose, and indeed
because excommunication is somewhat too general a practice in some
(Methodist) congregations." The poor people do not consider that if they
deny the power of absolution, they naturally cannot have true
excommunication either. — We cannot forbear to communicate here the
remarkable judgment which a member of the so-called Evangelical
Association (the so-called Albright people) has passed both upon this
communion itself and upon that of the Methodists, and which the editor
of the Christliche Botschafter of Cleveland (organ of the Ev. Assoc.), in
the issue of March 11 of this year, publishes with approval. It is this:
"The Methodist church stands in danger of falling through pride, and the
Evangelical Association through avarice."