# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_December 1857_S382
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

382 Church-Historical Notes of the Present.

But the total number of all Catholics (who have their children baptized and commune at Easter) amounts at present to at least three millions. This year again we have received several new bishops; the number of priests too has increased this year by at least 150; likewise over 100 new churches have been built since last winter.“

United church. In the „Hausfreund“, an organ of the „German United Evangelical Synod in North America“ appearing at Sandusky, O., in the number of December 1 of last year we read the following admission: „The United Church, especially as it exists here in practice (!), still lacks in so many ways a clear doctrinal confession and a clear liturgy conformed to doctrine; from the opposing side it is often called, and not without justice, the confessionless church, and its existence is regarded as merely transitory, one that will in the end fall back, in preachers as in laity, into the Lutheran or Reformed“ (it should read: rationalistic) „character. It is unfortunately true: the United Church does not yet present unity in the Spirit, but only as an outward accident that inspires little confidence.. There exists thus a quasi-bond, which in most cases lacks all the consecration of inward union.“ The writer does indeed hope for the result of a dogmatic fixation for his church, to which he nevertheless issues so shameful a certificate of poverty; but we fear that in this church, if one is willing to call it a church at all, the apostolic verdict will be verified: „Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.“ 1 Timothy 2:4.

„Jugendfreund.“ The Reformirte Kirchen-Zeitung of Chambersburg, Pa., in its number of December 15 of this year, goes at the Allentown Jugendfreund hard because it first announced and commended itself as a common paper belonging to no single church body, and then offered Lutheran bait in its pages. The Kirchen-Zeitung calls out to it: „Honesty lasts forever“ and „Never sail under false colors.“

II. Abroad.

Church and ministry. This year there has appeared at Stuttgart: „Karl Lechler, Doctor of Philosophy, deacon in Winnenden etc., The New Testament Doctrine of the Holy Ministry in its Main Features.“ From a review of this work found in the „Ev. Kirchenzeitung“ we gather that it seeks to refute the Lutheran doctrine of church and ministry out of Scripture. The way to reach this goal consists chiefly in this, that the author seeks to exploit the biblical parables treating of church and ministry in support of his so-called realistic view. The author plainly flies in the face of the old, tried hermeneutical canon: Sensus mysticus (allegoricus, typicus, parabolicus) non est argumentativus, nisi innatus i. e. ab ipso spiritu sancto profectus, non illatus; and, not content with the tertium comparationis, he accordingly arrives at strange results. He writes, for example: „If the church is a body, then it is surely bodily from the outset; nothing is more essential to it than that it be bodily.“ The author overlooks the fact that in the image „body of Christ“ it is not bodiliness in the sense of (visible) materiality, but the living, organic element that forms the point of comparison. The reviewer further declares: „The author takes no exception to reckoning the ministry among the means of grace in the wider sense, insofar as everything belongs there by which God offers and distributes grace; and, secondly, to speaking of a special „„holy estate““.“ It is certainly most distressing that in this way even such precious jewels of churchly language as the expression „means of grace“ are robbed from the church, and that thereby no small confusion is caused with respect to the orthodox concept as well.

Conversion of the Jews. At the annual festival of the Society for the Promotion of Christianity among the Jews on the 9th of June of this year at Berlin, the missionary preacher Krüger reported that since the founding of the London Jews' Mission Society, that is, in 50 years, 20,000