# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1857_S222
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

222 Church and Contemporary History.

...confessional circles, including those of the capital. At the great pastoral conference at Naugard, which consists of such pastors as have their congregations behind them more than elsewhere, the chairman, with an eye to our conference, has already spoken openly of the possibility of being pushed over to the separated Lutherans. If the matter is pressed further, it will be a question not of the withdrawal of tens and twenties of thousands, as has been supposed, but of quite different numerical proportions. Far more painful, however, than the numerical loss would be the fact that the loss would fall precisely and preponderantly upon the most living members and the noblest energies." — It is indeed a riddle how men who have such a knowledge of the miserable condition of the Union church nevertheless remain in it as in a powder magazine amid showering firebrands.

Absolution. The Bavarian church government intends in due time to place a newly explained catechism in the hands of the church entrusted to it. To this end preliminary work is being furnished. To this belongs, among other things, the little book: "Dr. Martin Luther's Small Catechism, explained by K. H. Caspari, Evangelical Lutheran pastor in Munich." In it we read, among other things: "Who, then, forgives sin? The triune God in the holy Christian church through Word and sacrament." This is without doubt correct. But in the question and answer immediately following it runs: "How so? Through all manner of comforting sayings of the gospel it is offered to us; through absolution and sacrament it is imparted and confirmed." — Another example that in the midst of the Lutheran church the Roman doctrine of absolution, which entirely neutralizes the gospel, has found entrance. In the Erlangen journal, however, this is censured.

Bavaria. The Pilger aus Sachsen writes: "The success which the senseless reviling and raging of the Bavarian Protestants against their faithful Supreme Consistory has had is by no means calculated to discourage the enemies of the gospel (one must say it frankly: the enemies of Christ); on the contrary, they have gained great confidence everywhere from the undeniable retreat of the Munich Supreme Consistory, and it has now been made still harder for every Lutheran church government to will an improvement of the church by way of wholesome ordinances."

Denmark. The Allgemeine Zeitung is written from Copenhagen under date of March 18: The law passed by the Diet in its last session has just been furnished with the royal sanction and published, according to which no Dane need any longer have his children baptized. The parents are, however, to be bound to have the child's name entered in the church registers (!) before the end of the first year. As it seems, the children are to be received, if not into the Christian church, at any rate into the Danish state church.

Weimar. On February 13 of this year there died the editor of the organ of the Lutheran party in this country, the "Weimarischer Sonntagsbote," which by God's grace had soon won a numerous and wide circle of readers: Pastor G. A. Thälden in Buttelstedt, a small Weimar town.

Berlin. We take the following from the "Luth. Dorfkirchenzeitung": Not long ago one read in the Kreuzzeitung that one evening a Lutheran service had been held in the cathedral. Strange as this seemed, it is not at all surprising, since the cathedral choir practices not one religion but several, and for the good thanks of princely persons also performs the Greek-Russian rite. Should it not be possible, indeed not altogether edifying, to perform a "Lutheran" service too, for once, in the united cathedral? After a few days Lutheran was declared to be a misprint and liturgical was set in its place. This correction pleased us as an honest one; if only it were acknowledged that in all Unionist acts and reports the word Lutheran has really always been nothing but a misprint, and that it should have read liturgical instead. For so-called Lutheranism in the Union is supposed to be merely something liturgical, as the deliberations