# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_August 1857_S256
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

256 Church and Contemporary History.

Hesse legally no union carried through everywhere, still the practice hitherto has proceeded as though it existed, although without any contradiction (now also, as we may assume, conceded by the authorities) a Lutheran church legally still continues to exist in Hesse and comprises almost three quarters of the "'evangelical'" congregations of the land. It is reported that several professors and pastors — and indeed not of the dominant rationalistic tendency — have founded a Union Society; further particulars we do not know. But there is scarcely a doubt that whatever in Hesse out of the dominant sphere still has any livelier and more vigorous interest will find in this society a welcome camp for the struggle against the faith and confession of the church, and that under circumstances a great train will attach itself to it. Its statutes will be clear enough for that, since one of the founders is himself a Protestant church-newspaper man. And when it is added that the Residence congregation, and that in it also the church government, belongs in deed and disposition to the union, and further that our neighboring land Baden holds up before such a disposition so charming and seductive a goal: then this is surely reason, and more, compelling occasion enough to lift up again the slack hands and the weary knees, and to take sure steps, for those who care to hold, or rather to win back again, what they have. The "'Church Paper for the Grand Duchy of Hesse,'" hindered as it is in many ways, may complain audibly enough to everyone who stands near: "'Still there are here and there people who have a voice in ecclesiastical matters who do not even prove by attendance at the services that they are inwardly connected with the church, that they have an interest in and understanding of her affairs. Still the recovery of one of the dearest ecclesiastical possessions, the glorious hymns of the church, depends in part upon such as do not sing them at all.'" Still, we add more plainly, our Lutheran confession and church is in its most important affairs given over to the doctrinal indifference of a unionistic bureaucracy, or, as the Church Paper expresses it: to the most lamentable — we will not even say confessional, but open lack of principle in those who precisely here ought to stand most firmly; to the wretched want of clear, firm aims and principles, to a policy of waiting, of balancing between so-called extremes, that is, of irresolution."

Dr. Carl Hase. Of the spirit fostered in Jena and implanted in the young generation nothing testifies more plainly than what professors like Hase never tire of publishing abroad. But most hearers of the "theologus Jenensis" can also tell of his lecture-room jokes, which on occasion do not spare the holiest things. An example of the fine manner in which he closes his hour-long, contorted lecture with a labored point and brilliant emphasis: The chapter on the incarnation of Christ is being treated. After various opinions of believing and unbelieving scholars on the subject have been reported — in which it remains wholly problematic whether the student is not to regard the biblical predicate "Son of God" as a poetic phrase, quite ingeniously chosen for the ideal man — the worthy teacher crowns his ambiguous talk about the actual begetter of JEsus by making the joke, with a smiling face and in an ingratiating voice satirically mimicking childlike naïveté: "Gentlemen, Shakespeare would say of this that only the mother can know!" Amid neighing laughter he leaves the auditorium in triumph, like a hero of comedy leaving the stage. Probatum est — the lecture course fills up; even medical students and economists attend as visitors. (Pilger a. S.)

The Doctrine of the Ministry. In the Erlangen Journal for Protestantism and the Church, in the April number, we read the following: In the recently published January number of the ecclesiastical journal edited by Dr. Kliefoth and Dr. Mejer there is found an essay entitled: "The Doctrine of Justification and the Doctrine of the Church," in which on page 21 it reads: "Precisely because the Lutheran knows of no finished Christian life before justification; precisely because before it he knows no other faith than the seeking faith and no other grace than the grace that is far from him: for that very reason he can receive grace in no other way than through actual means of grace, and again the means of grace in no other way than in a divinely accredited manner, and thus in no other way than by means of an office instituted by God." Will it not, if this is correct, necessarily come to this, that he who seeks forgiveness of his sins must before everything else ask where the office instituted by God is, in order that through it he may receive the means of grace in a divinely accredited manner? and is then, on this showing, that recte of the 7th Article of the Augsburg Confession: "Est autem ecclesia congregatio sanctorum, in qua evangelium recte docetur et recte administrantur sacramenta" as much as to say "by means of an office instituted by God"? Do I recognize the means of grace, whether they are the divinely accredited ones, by the office through which I receive them, or do I recognize the office, whether it is the one instituted by God, by the scripturalness of its administration of the means of grace? Is it obedience toward the office instituted by God that God requires, or faith in the Word of God?