# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1857_S217
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Church and Contemporary History. 217

...the consciousness of the congregation" serves as the sole "norm" and "rule of faith"; — but that (and here let no one indulge in any friend-of-light *) illusions!) by the "spirit and consciousness of the congregation" is by no means to be understood the subjective opinion of individuals, or the religious view of the local congregations, but solely the conviction of the "great Christian congregation, the state," that is, of the political church government; that accordingly "priestcraft" does not cease at all, but merely passes over from the "hierarchy" to the bureaucracy; that the church government of the day, according to the varying circumstances of the time, dictates the religion, and that these dictates will constitute the already mentioned third edition of the Japheth Bible.

Church and Contemporary History.

I. America.

A serious Methodist relapse. For some time now we have with pleasure reported several public utterances which seemed to indicate that the Methodists are beginning to arrive at self-knowledge, that is, at a recognition of the great faults which distinguish them from other bodies. In the number of the "Apologist" of May 7 we find that the recovery is making no steady progress, but that on the contrary serious relapses are occurring. It contains the continuation of an article with the heading: "The Methodist Church — the Church of the Future." Now our expectations for the "church of the future," according to the prophecies of Scripture, are by no means very comforting; but taking the "church of the future" as the Methodists, together with all Unionists and chiliasts, allow themselves to dream of it, it does presuppose a considerable particle of arrogance when the Methodist society regards itself as the one dove and as the fairest bride of Christ, at whose feet everything will at last be laid. The Apologist holds that the greatest scholars and the most pious investigators have in their researches at last arrived at Methodist principles — for example Julius Müller, who is said to have proved conclusively that Romans 7 does not treat of the regenerate at all. It seems the writer does not know that not only nearly all Pietists but also all Arminians and thoroughgoing rationalists have arrived at that view. Droll, too, is the declaration: "It was probably the greatest good fortune that could befall Germany that Methodism made it its object and established missions there." Probably, then, the Methodist missionaries also secretly betrayed to the "greatest scholars" those great exegetical and dogmatic discoveries, and good-naturedly gave them permission to pass them off as the results of their own researches. Curiously enough, we find that the Albright people in the same way pronounce Germany blessed because they have imparted to this land, covered with darkness, some of their great lights of the church.

The General Synod met on May 14 and the following days at Reading, Pa., as-

*) Alarm and jubilation over this congregational-spirit regula fidei are equally premature. Let it be considered that the question concerns 1) the consciousness of the congregation within a state church, and 2) who, in cases that arise, is to be regarded as the canonically legitimate representative and interpreter of this state-church congregational spirit. Who, then, is the legitimated bearer of Bunsen's state-church spirit? Tom, Dick, and Harry? The limited understanding of subjects? Certainly not! The synod? But the synod of a state church is in fact never anything but the echo of the state power standing above it.