# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1857_S224
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

224 Church and Contemporary History.

...properly to the Vogtland: the spiritual ministry in Greiz has recently given notice by a public decree that it intends to oppose the religious mingling hitherto practiced. The city and the land are Evangelical Lutheran. The few Reformed have for many years come to the sacrament at Lutheran altars and been admitted there without further ado. That is an indifference toward pure doctrine and an irresponsible ecclesiastical disorder. The spiritual ministry will tolerate such things no longer. It requires that those Reformed who really desire the Holy Supper according to the Lutheran rite shall first declare their formal transfer to the Lutheran church; but in order that those who confess from the heart the Reformed doctrine of the Supper may have no ground of complaint, a Reformed clergyman is from time to time to come to Greiz and administer the sacrament according to the order of his own church. — The majority of the newspapers call this reaction and intolerance, but we welcome it as an honest measure which does justice to both parties and works against the ecclesiastical confusion which is gaining ever more ground and is erecting a complete Babylonian tower. We wish that the other small lands of central Germany, in which the Union has indeed not been introduced but confusion reigns instead, may follow this example.

Weimar has recently taken at least a step toward this goal. It has at last called into its highest church authority, the Grand Ducal Church Council, a man who confesses the Lutheran doctrine. Within living memory no such man has sat on the benches of this body, but a great many bitter enemies of this confession have. He is the superintendent at Weida, Nicolai, a dear, gifted, earnest and yet mild man, who seems just the right person, if not to erect something new, at least to ward off the overthrow of what still stands and to prepare a better time for the church of that land. May the Lord bless his work!

Hesse-Darmstadt. The "Freimund" gives the following statistical notes about this land: The population of the Grand Duchy of Hesse amounts, according to the census taken in December 1855: Lutherans 405,146. Reformed 29,041. Unionists (Protestants) 154,404. Roman Catholics 216,115. Mennonites, Separatists, etc. 3,469. Jews 28,249. Every seventh birth has for some years been illegitimate. The total population amounts to: 836,424.

Nearly half, then, are Lutherans. Besides, the sovereign of the land is a Lutheran, from an earnestly Lutheran princely house. Among the Unionists, too, there are many who think they are still Lutheran. In fact their forefathers were all Lutheran, as were also the forefathers of the Reformed. And in spite of all this, a Unionist supreme consistory governs the Lutherans in the name of the Lutheran sovereign, and now wants to compel them to take up collections in their services for Reformed purposes. That must certainly change, as must many another thing.