# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1857_S208
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

208 On Bunsen's Idea of Freedom of Conscience, of Religion, and of the Church.

...moves, when it longs for unity with the unquestionably Lutheran Church in the land. It was this longing above all which, amid great temptation and much faltering, nevertheless bade us say to our own soul: "Just plunge in boldly, it will not be so deep!" With this longing we comforted ourselves in Him who was to die for this, "that He might gather together in one the children of God that were scattered abroad"; and grateful for what His grace has done for us up to this hour, we call upon Him today for help, that He would send the spirit of that same longing for reunion with the Lutheran Church into the hearts of many. How we would praise Him if we should yet see the day when we kneel at one altar with those who, though still churchly separated from us, nevertheless bow their knees in the name of their Savior and ours, Jesus Christ!

Now may He who is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or understand, according to the power that works in us, Himself carry this matter through gloriously, as the cause of His kingdom, to the honor of His great name and the joy of His people! Amen.

On Bunsen's Idea of Freedom of Conscience, of Religion, and
of the Church.

In a review of Bunsen's treatise "Die Zeichen der Zeit"; of Stahl's "Wider Bunsen"; and of Schenkel's "Für Bunsen wider Stahl," the licentiate K. Ströbel writes, among other things, the following in the Rudelbach-Guericke journal (2nd number of the current volume):

Everywhere the "Confession" is rising with fresh and wholly unexpected power; its own children are disowning their united mother and seeking to burst her apart; if she is to be preserved, a bold step must be taken. This step still hides itself, to be sure, barely under the cover of the "confession-union" which Stahl combats as decidedly as Bunsen demands it, and both combatants seem to shudder at its unveiling; but the character of our age has fully provided that the cover must fall, and then Bunsen's "confession-union" will be recognized and received as what it is: a sharply defined apostasy, a falling away from Christianity to the "Mameluke" religion (as our fathers used to express it with unsurpassable pointedness) and to its Koran, the Bible of Japheth. Does Bunsen perhaps hope to bring about this change of religion by amicable and peaceful means? Hardly! He has already had to convince himself, in the Union disputes hitherto, how strong the vital power of the Lutheran confession still is; a religious change such as the "confession-union" in question, which in magnitude yields nothing at all to a transition to Islam, has not the remotest prospect of being smuggled in secretly or of being amicably accepted. Such a thing was possible only...