# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_November 1857_S351
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Church and Contemporary History.   351

and of its president von Harless: then the believing members of the evangelical Lutheran Church of Bavaria would have no cause to complain that no more has happened or is happening, but rather abundant occasion for the warmest thanks to God, who in wretched times has done such great things for us.

The reporter closes his account here, not with the notion of having exhausted the subject even historically. He would gladly have drawn the events in Augsburg into his presentation as well. But although he followed them with sympathetic attention, he did not credit himself with so reliable a knowledge of them as to be able to report on them accurately. He therefore confined himself chiefly to Nuremberg: first, because he knows exactly what happened there; then, because it was from Nuremberg that the movement in the congregations chiefly proceeded; and finally, because the spirit by which men let themselves be driven, the means they employed, the ends they strove after, were and are everywhere the same as in Nuremberg. (Ev. Kirchen-Z.)

Church and Contemporary History.

I. America.

The Catechism is coming back into honor. In the number of the "Lutheran Observer" of September 25 of this year there is found, in a report under the heading Home Mission Bureau, the following: "6. The Rev. W. K. Wynn of Hamilton makes the following noteworthy remarks in his report: 'I am making arrangements to begin an unusually large class of catechumens. You will permit me to say that this method of instruction appears to me indeed indispensable in the great and difficult work of founding a congregation in a land such as this (and perhaps in every other land), where the heart of the ripened and hardened sinner is so firmly entangled in the embrace of the world, and where the weeds of unbelief grow rank about the unsuspecting youth. I believe the churches have committed a great error which have held it sufficient to rely exclusively upon the revivalistic methods in the spread of the Redeemer's kingdom, and the ruinous consequences of this exclusive procedure make themselves known everywhere in the history of all the evangelical churches in the West, which in their zeal have relied more upon the measure than upon the Spirit of the truth. I call it exclusive, and mean by that, that as a means by which men are brought under the influence of the Spirit of truth it is very one-sided and insufficient; for in the absence of that religious instruction which is best enjoyed through catechizations in early youth, a person cannot possibly have any but very indistinct conceptions of the doctrines of the divine Word, and hence the occasions for a thorough conversion of the heart are proportionally few, and the examples of a firm religious character and of growing Christian uprightness proportionally rare. And I believe I am not mistaken when I state it as the result of impartial observation that in the majority of our churches the most enduring and firmest pillars of the truth are men who have come down to us from an earlier generation, whose zeal and spiritual bearing are regulated and ennobled by the spiritual knowledge that distinguishes them, and which they gained from the Catechism during the years of their childhood and youth. I remark only further, that I am a very great friend of this method of instruction, and now have a crowd of little ones about me who, even if they never join our church fellowship, will at least carry with them into manhood and to the grave impressions of the LORD and His Word which are able to make them blessed.'"

The ev. Luth. (?) Synod of Southern Illinois, during its sessions of this year on the 3rd to the 6th of October, unanimously adopted the Definite Platform as its synodical doctrinal basis. In an extract of the synodical report, which the Observer communicates, it is said: "Since there were no differences of opinion in regard to the crafty ten-