# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1857_S223
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Church and Contemporary History. 223

...about the latest General Synod openly declare. Have the churches not been cured since 1808, when they were placed on a level with the theaters? Yes, liturgy is indeed made again, but not religion. Old Fritz already noticed that. Woe to our age. — The Supreme Church Council has just gained a member from abroad, the well-known orator at all the Kirchentage, Dr. Wichern. Formerly a Lutheran candidate, he was shamefully treated and neglected by the nominally Lutheran church of Hamburg; and so, since he was not admitted to the spiritual office, he founded on his own the Rauhes Haus for neglected children. His church, itself neglected, always left him standing so. Gradually he came into closer proximity with the Union of Prussia, which does indeed go about with great zeal in new works. Long since allied with the enemies of the Lutheran church, he has by this step fallen away from it outwardly as well. We must be sorry for a man with such gifts. How he might have served the church of his fathers, if at the right time he had received the right care! —

Erlangen and Rostock. Thus writes the Pilger aus Sachsen: Dr. v. Hofmann, professor at Erlangen, believes he has discovered "a new way of teaching old truth," and yet his way is nothing else than to deny the old truth. For he denies that the blood of the Son of God was paid as a ransom to the wrath of God, that our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ took upon himself the guilt and punishment of our sins and atoned for them in his death, and that accordingly forgiveness of sins or justification comes to us only by our grasping in faith the most holy, fully valid merit of our Lord. — Professor v. Hofmann has always passed for an orthodox theologian, until now Professor Dr. Philippi in Rostock has held up to him his deviations from the old truth of the Lutheran church and of Holy Scripture; this Professor Hofmann has taken ill, and has not shrunk from scolding him with bitter words without warrant; this comes of the fact that Professor Hofmann would probably rather not be an apostate — he would gladly retain and confess the old truth if a certain learned perversity permitted it. Now the theological faculty of the University of Dorpat, to which Dr. Philippi formerly belonged, has issued a declaration in Dr. Kliefoth's church journal, in which it covers Dr. Philippi against Hofmann's scolding words, gives him the testimony of a faithful servant who in richly blessed activity has shown himself a thoroughly Lutheran theologian, has abundantly furthered and kindled spiritual life and love for the Lutheran church and confession, and has led great throngs to justifying faith in the grace of God in Christ. At the same time those five Dorpat professors admonish Dr. Hofmann to reflection with a view to the true peace of the church, whose preservation rests above all upon the teachers of the church. And Dr. Hengstenberg too warns: In our time the ruling worldly principle is rationalism. Out of this the churchly theology has laboriously wrestled its way up; this makes ever renewed attempts to force its way back into it, and if these attempts are not vigorously met, the sad consequence is that the end returns to the beginning and that the true proverb in 2 Peter 2:22 befalls us!

Thuringia. The "Freimund" accordingly reports the following: One may search through whole annual volumes of the newspapers from earlier decades without coming upon any hint as to whether religion and church exist among a people or not — the church resembled a field of the dead. — Things have, God be thanked, become different; wherever we look in German lands, church life is to be felt, ecclesiastical interests come to the fore, so that even the political papers are compelled at times to take on the appearance of church papers. The bones of the dead have come alive — God grant that they may very soon be clothed with sinews and flesh! Even in Thuringia, which was recently called in the Evangelische Kirchenzeitung, with some exaggeration, "the heathen Galilee of Germany," things are stirring in every corner.

To begin with the outermost corner, which scarcely belongs to Thuringia any longer, but