# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_December 1857_S381
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Church-Historical Notes of the Present. 381

learn the Danish questions and answers by heart at confirmation without understanding them, so long only as the act be performed in Danish words; that the children sing out of hymnals whose language they do not understand, so long only as they be Danish hymnals; that the pulpit be misused as a political tribune and the Gospel of the kingdom of Christ as an occasion for treating the theme of the kingdom of Denmark, and so forth — then these are sins and injustices which will call down the vengeance of God from heaven. May God strengthen that people, that its admirable tenacity may not slacken, and may He awaken and direct the hearts of the Protestant princes of Germany, that they may at last come to their senses and vigorously take up the cause of the oppressed!

Church-Historical Notes of the Present.

I. America.

The German Reformed. At its annual meeting on October 1 the Miami Classis adopted the resolution that the German Reformed Synod be induced to resume the „old“ name „Evangelical Reformed“ instead of „German Reformed“. Would to God the Classis had rather moved that the Synod become evangelical and reformed, not merely that it call itself so; that, to be sure, would have been nothing else than a motion to become Lutheran, for, whatever one may say, a true evangelical Reformation was only the Lutheran one, wherefore it also originally called itself in part the evangelical, in part the reformed, in part the protestant church. These names have indeed been taken from her, but she has kept the substance, as once the name catholic was taken from the ancient church.

Ohio Synod. This synod has received a new English district synod, which held its first annual meeting from the 26th to the 28th of August and was formed of seven former members of the Western District and two of the Tennessee Synod. In the constitution of this new synod the Augustana and Luther's Small Catechism are acknowledged; that not the whole Book of Concord was laid as the foundation is surprising.

Why the Reformed church no longer wants union. In the „Weekly Report on Ecclesiastical Movements in Germany“ in the (Reformed) „Evangelist“ of November 18 it is said, among other things: „All influential men of the Reformed church desired a complete union in doctrine as well. But since the strict Lutheran party in the state church has grown so much that all the high offices have been filled with strict Lutherans“ (it is not as bad as it looks), „the Reformed are beginning to fear that out of the intended united church a Lutheran church might perhaps be made, and many of the most influential Reformed henceforth want not one united church, but two allied churches, a Lutheran and a Reformed.“

The Roman church in the United States of North America. Concerning it the „Katholische Kirchen-Zeitung“ gives the following statistical notices: „In the year 1808, that is, 50 years ago, there were to be found in the whole Union only 1 diocese, 2 bishops, 28 priests, 80 churches, 2 ecclesiastical institutes, and 1 college. According to the report of the „„Metropolitan Catholic Almanac““ of 1857, there were counted in the Union at the close of last year already 41 dioceses, 2 apostolic vicariates, 39 bishops, 1872 priests, 2053 churches, 829 station churches, 35 ecclesiastical institutions (seminaries), and 29 colleges. The